Another Trip to Dalian

Took another trip to Dalian last week and took a few more pictures. I did a lot more walking around mall there this time...so I have a lot of mall pictures. These pictures also almost got me in trouble.

I was taking some of them in one mall when a security guard runs up to me "Hey, what are you doing?" (in chinese of course). So of course I was like... "oh, I am taking pictures for my blog, we don't have malls like this in America." This response was obviously good enough... he calmed down and just start asking me random questions.... the usual stuff... and we talked for a bit and then he gave me his business card... and showed me it had his phone number............. I wasn't sure the point of this.... but ok.... thanks.

Many restaurants and shopping centers here don't allow you to take pictures inside.. . because they don't want other places to steal their design....

The last picture is another one of those..... "is he seriously taking a picture in a public bathroom?" pictures... but yes I totally am! I couldn't use the flash... because there were other people in the bathroom this time... but you can still tell what it is..... totally found a glory hole in China! It was in the bathroom in the basement of one of the malls..... I think there was also a walmart on this floor somewhere.

Cooking!

Well.. with all my trips to Dalian and with some attempts to save more money, I have decided to try to cook at home a little more ( up from never isn't too hard). I started keeping track of what I spend each day.... and even though taxis and restaurants are pretty cheap here (compared to america)... it was definitely interesting to see how much i was spending by taking a lot of taxis and eating at fancy restaurants. Granted... it was winter.... and now that its warmer i am more likely to ride my bike or walk somewhere.... but the buses are also pretty convenient as long as you are not late.

So here are some of my attempts at cooking here.

The first one is just a big thing of chicken salad... sadly I made far too much and didn't end up finishes it before I went out of town for a few days. I think I am going to go for egg salad this week.

My students are awesome

I went into the class and she showed me she could do this...... so I messed it up again and ran to grab my camera.. she finishes this in under a minute!

Snow + Dalian

I finally made it back down to Dalian at the beginning of March...... but before I could make it there we had a nice snow storm in Songyuan..............that totally followed me to Dalian! Luckily Dalian is a lot warmer and it melted faster.

I spent a few days in Dalian visiting Dongmei and looking for jobs.... I know its a bit early.... but its helping to get a good idea of what jobs are available there... and I am making some contacts with the Dalian foreigners.

this is basically going to be a picture post...... the really snowy pictures are Songyuan.

Songyuan train station

Changchun train station

Dalian

This street in Dalian had a great name 黄河路 huang he lu... which translates to yellow river road :)

Programming?

Just installed visual studios C# express........ almost a year and a half.... lets see if i can still do it... i think my brain needs it.

I have a few ideas written down in a notebook.. time to see if i can make them into something..... learning chinese taxes my mind a lot.... but its still completely different then how i have to think for programming..... i feel i need some of that way of thinking for awhile.. before my brain revolts.