Da Jie Hao

This is Richard, can you remember me? I came back from my China tour 2 days ago. That was a wonderful trip. The life style, Laobaixing, and Kang, where we can talk and have dinner there are all so spectacle. They were not the most famous attractions in China. My tour consultant advised me to have a try. Wow, that’s a fine try.

I cannot believe that we will come to the end of the semester. My friends and I were glad to have a special tour. Having had their flight postponed out of Shanghai, they had a 7 hour lay over there (ouch), so didn't arrive in Dalian until late Saturday night and were in need of a good nights sleep. We spent the next day showing off our school and community and exploring the Jinshitan area. Unfortunately it was windy and cold, including a bit of rain, but time passed quickly.
We celebrated their first night by buying a large box of fireworks and setting them off in the middle of the street just down from our apartment. I had hoped we could go to the beach and enjoy the evening, but it was too cold - fun fireworks though! They are the kind that we would see at home on the first of July- big and colorful, but by no means the biggest that we could have bought. It was just the biggest that we could easily carry! I think they were about $7 so well worth the money. The second day we took the train into Dalian and KaiFaQu, where we did some shopping and ate lunch at IKEA - a favorite haunt of Maple Leaf teachers, but not the best lunch in town! We should have gone local! Everyone was so tired from getting up at 4:30 with the sun rising, that we crashed early.
On our third day, we had a driver take us into Dalian for the day to check out some sights that Rick and I had not seen yet, including a large square called XingHai, and a beautiful drive overlooking the ocean. Geoff and Chris loved one of the underground shopping malls - 4 floors underground - small vendors all entreating you to spend your money with them. We still laugh at Rick buying a pair of shoes that he really didn’t want. The two saleswomen were so good that the really didn’t stand a chance of going out empty handed.Whenever they didn't have a size or colour, one would run (literally) off to some unseen location and come panting back with the item in question. Too funny. Chris, Geoff and I laughed ourselves to tears watching him try to negotiate himself out of the shoes, but they got the better of him. We finished our day off with a delicious meal at an Indian curry house and then got dropped off for our evening flight to Beijing.

Byebye
Canada, Garry