Yi Yi Lou Hotel Dalian

... 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...

... a close look at the blue street sign and you will see the road to the seashore bathing place. That is the beach to you and me. I really can’t figure out why China doesn’t hire a few foreigners who can speak and read Chinese. Their full time job could be to translate for signs and advertisements. They seem to want to have things translated into English, so why not do it correctly? Oh well. I can’t do it so I will just take pictures of the signs that amuse me.

I ...

... rather ironic and confusing symbolism, but perhaps memory fails: please do comment on this if you know about such biological matters. In Yantai I'm staying in paradoxically the cheapest but nicest hotel of my current trip. And I've just had a divine bowl of fish-and-pickled-cabbage soup. The restaurant was small and very scruffy, but the food was glorious, and the place was filled with a charming, down-to-earth family simplicity. So all is well.

... that I would feel happier living on the coast. Even after I made the decision to stay working in Jinan, I figured I would go to Dalian for a weekend to relax at the beach at some stage. The weekend never came around, until arrived in Shenzhen. So, fleeing the humidity of the south, I packed my bags and headed for the airport, for a flight to Dalian.

Unfortunately, on the way to the bus stop, I decided my pack was much too heavy and lugging it around was ...

... then downhill. Back up and – well you get the picture. We came around a bend and finally, we could see the beach. So, with a spring in our step we made it to the entrance and walked down to the water. We did have to pay an entrance fee of 2 yuan but that was no problem. We walked along the beach and saw several people playing and barbecuing and gathering sea weed from the water. This beach actually had sand. Remember ...

... our faces, necks and shoulders. It was heaven.

It wasn’t until he started moving to my arms, that I realized that my masseuse may be blind, as he had to 'look’ around with his fingers to find the part of my arm he was looking for. At one other point, when he started to massage my arm, he let my hand fall in his lap—and I instantly tensed—not because I was in an inappropriate place, but more ...

... I felt more at home. So I tried to encourage them to think about design, what they want the t-shirt to say, or represent... I drew an example on the board of a simple combination of ‘E’ and ‘A’ and that was it, they were sold. I would have changed things around and been a little more creative if I knew I was suggesting ideas rather than suggesting examples... Oh well. Next challenge, teach the students how to use InDesign from scratch in ...

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 ...

... When the vendor hits the traffic right, he can sell several hundred pounds of fish in not more than 30 minutes and be back on his way to the port. The more sophisticated sidewalk vendors have some sort of portable rig with all their gear on it. These can be anything from kitchens on motorized tricycles to a sharpening wheel on a portable sawhorse, carried by hand. Typical street vendors include shoe repair, locks and keys, tailors ...

... Jaywalking in China has become more popular than the Macarena. 7. Smoke Chinese cigarettes until your lungs are as charred as a Shanghai skyline. (Note: Due to its rapid development over the past two decades, China now has six of the top ten most polluted cities in the world) 8. Play cards, mah jong, or Chinese chess until 2 in the morning on a sidewalk underneath a dimly lit streetlight or a smoke-filled restaurant. Be sure to cuss real ...