Kempinski Hotel Dalian China

Ok, I did it, I ate some western food. I still haven't eaten at McDonalds or KFC yet. KFC is everywhere. I wonder if they were the first American chain to come to China. McDonalds are prolific as well. No, my roommate and his friends wanted to go out for a western meal and we headed down to a place called "The Real Eddies" Not sure of the story behind the name. But here goes - Eddie was trained as a cook/chef in the ...

... it is still hot for him. Oh well, I just continue to smile when people talk about how hot it is. I know they would laugh at me when I start complaining about the cold. <br><br>On one cool morning I was totally amazed as I went to school. It was so clear!! I could clearly see the mountains around Kai fa qu and thought, I need to get out and take some pictures. But, I had to work. Bummer! So as soon as work was over I headed straight to the apartment and borrowed Jason&#8217;s ...

... afterwards, the white towel turned a rather disconcerting brown. But nothing two thorough showers couldn't sort out! <br><br>Today I crossed over the sea from Dalian to Yantai. The ferry trip was not memorable, except perhaps for the bizarre and incongrous safe sex poster in the toilet: a picture of two snails, with their shells made out of condoms. I vaguely remember being told that snails reproduce asexually, which would make this ...

... the airport bus, helped me buy the ticket, and told the driver where to drop me off. The driver was extremely nice, carried my pack into the hotel for me and made sure I was checked in before heading home. The hotel staff were nice and the hotel was right next to a tonne of Korean restaurants. For this reason, despite a completely ****** traveling day and a telephone argument with hotel staff, my first impression of Dalian was positive. Nice people (except for one) and ...

... of the owner, who is also the school&#8217;s librarian, told us how long it took him to teach the local bakery to make real hamburger buns, both in shape and taste&#8212;they couldn&#8217;t understand why he didn&#8217;t want sugar in the recipe like their sweet buns.<br><br>It is amazing what kind of impact &#8216;comfort&#8217; food can have when you are travelling, or away from home.<br><br>Yum... cheese.<br><br>~Ashley

... hour, so they can create the logo themselves.<br><br>There are sometimes when doing something yourself is SO much easier than teaching it, or watching someone else do it, but I persevered, and didn&#8217;t change or overcorrect their work.<br><br>After school, Daniella and I went on the hunt for t-shirts, using the supervisor&#8217;s terrible directions, and the student&#8217;s rough estimates of the stall we should look for. Our last piece of advice was not to ...

... br>Before we arrived in China, the one thing we were told was that it was really hard to get the students actively involved in the class&#8212;that they remained stoic, sombre, and serious. That was NOT our experience. With very little prompting, students were up, out of their seats and rapidly trading, wheeling and dealing. <br><br>One student I watched kept making deals right before whatever stock he sold went up by hundreds of dollars, groaning at his misfortune ...

... in every form. They are poised and prepared for a future. China also has the least complicated tax, social, business, and government environemnts of the 3 countries. The effect is refreshing. Very little bureaucracy in relative terms, they don't even like traffic signals. It's not that there isn't procedure, they just understand and accept ...

... apartment which is about a ten minutes walk from campus (I haven't timed it yet.) The apartment is awesome! I love it!!! Beautiful hardwood floors, and a generally nice, modern design. On Saturday I woke up before 5 AM. Selina, one of the girls from the office, came at nine to take us to the University where we called home and checked our email (we don't have email or telephone service yet in our apartment.) After we got done with that she took us ...

... quite impressive and worth the visit. the group split again that day with me, al and katie heading inside the church into a museum and then onto some buddhist temples the highlight of which was a big 20 metre (?) high gold buddha. we all met back up later for dinner and drinks in a korean place. after that it was a mad dash to the train station in 2 separate taxis where we lost kama, nate, bai ling and gerhardt, and didnt see them again. we said goodbye to katie and ...