Honglin Hotel Dalian

... jackets are IN too! Find the puffiest, brightest, shiniest jacket ever to be cool. But its even better if its bright purple! In Dalian, purple is the hottest color right now, your nothing without purple in your wardrobe!!

Fur! Fur is so hot right now. If your not wearing your puffy shinny jacket, your wearing the mangiest, ugliest colored fur you can find! Make sure ...

... meal cost 32 yuan. When I compare it to American prices, it is less than $5 so I should be fine with that. But to compare it to China meal prices it is quite expensive.

As a bonus I am adding some KFC pictures. This is taken in Dalian and my western friends call it the KFC church. Because ... it looks like a Church. None of the others look like this one. So, I wanted to share it with you. Enjoy...

... make it back to the apartment safely. I was a little more daring on the last part of the ride and actually followed the traffic in a left turn lane. I parked the bike and can check that activity off my list. I rode a bike in China. For the short time I have left here, I do think that I will stick to walking.

Things have warmed up a bit from those few days. It is still very pleasant for me but not as cool as it was then. I hope you enjoy the pictures from that interesting bike ride.

... for me. She replied that if I did that I might lose my booking. I hung up, muttering to myself "and what a bloody great shame that would be!" The people hanging out by our gate looked at me wide-eyed in disbelief. I assume this was because of the whole “foreigner speaking Chinese on telephone” thing rather than the “foreigner completely losing her cool in public” thing, but I could be mistaken.

Take off from Ningbo was delayed yet ...

... means I had to buy a seat for an all night 12 hour trip. Now I am starting to dread this trip. I show up at the train station and hang out for awhile and then go ahead and go into the waiting area. A man with a dolly wants to carry my suitcases. (for a price) AND I don't want to let go of them. I have no idea where he wants to take them and I haven't seen anything on trains about checking luggage. By this time I am ...

... of the owner, who is also the school’s librarian, told us how long it took him to teach the local bakery to make real hamburger buns, both in shape and taste—they couldn’t understand why he didn’t want sugar in the recipe like their sweet buns.

It is amazing what kind of impact ‘comfort’ food can have when you are travelling, or away from home.

Yum... cheese.

~Ashley

... to look over all the 'opportunities' I was looking for something that would be small, and over quick—the festival itself was three weeks long.

One of the roles was to assist with the Opening Ceremony... which totally fit the bill. Small setup and only scheduled to last ten minutes. Well, I was kind of right.

The students who were responsible for this part were sweet, but extremely indecisive, which meant that we kept having meeting, after ...

It is Heidi first full day of teaching, and we are launching our Stock Market Game. The premise is simple, randomly handout six cards to every student that is either $100 or a stock (A,B,C,D) explain to them the goal of the game is to amass the most wealth that they can. It works best with two people, because one person can be in charge of randomly changing the price of stocks (all going up) and the other can be the bank, loaning out $1000 for every $100 of insurance ...

... in the world. Consumption in China has grown from 11.5kg per capita in 1990 to an average of 25.6kg per capita in 2006. Shrimp consumption has grown tenfold in the last decade as China has geared up to produce 41% of the world's supply. Carp is China's fish staple, accounting for 72% of fresh water production. All very upscale. China has also captured the fish processing market. 100 million pounds of Alaska's salmon harvest, for example ...

... city into a showcase example of what China can do with a deep water port and freedom to trade globally. Starting in 1966 with the Cultural revolution, and gaining speed in 1976 when that program ended, the central gov't realized how strategic Dalian was for shipping and started pouring resources into the area. This was after 60 years of Russian and Japanese occupation who were trying to do the same ...