can't read chinese? don't worry, hohhot has it in pinyin.

my favorite part about hohhot- they translate the park signs into chinese pinyin. i've never seen this before! they just couldn't go that extra step and put it in english. who is this helping? 'zhu yi an quan' basically means 'be cautious', which i know because i hear it on the bus overhead every time it approaches a stop.

interesting note about the character for 'an' which means safety- the bottom part is the character 'nv' which means woman, and the top part is supposed to be a shelter. so safety is when a woman is in the home...these characters are obviously old as dirt, but i feel like this idea is still prevalent today, at least among the generation before me and older. the men here always seem to go out with out their girlfriends/wives.

construction

these pictures are taken from my 8th floor apartment building.

above is before....


and below is after 5 months





it's hard to tell, but if you look at the left side of the first picture you can see just a big hollow foundation. now, 5 months later, the building looks like it's almost ready to go! it's probably another shopping mall, ugh. i hate to think that possibly soon the bustling little meat/seafood, fruit, and vegetable market down the street next to it will be gone :( i loved that market!

things are happening and changing very quickly in china. however, as this article about 'glass curtains' points out, some things are happening so quickly that laws and regulations can not keep pace. obviously, when glass is coming shattering down from buildings and no one can be held responsible, this is a problem. the article cites poor maintenance and poor construction materials as the main cause for glass curtain failure in china, also indicative of a lack of proper building regulations. glass curtain facades have become popular in china due to their aesthetic and modern appeal, especially in 2nd and 3rd tier cities (dalian would probably be considered a second tier city).

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/cndy/2011-08/30/content_13215835.htm

it never hurts to cry

after a hectic, but nice few days in hohhot it was time to leave and meet zach in beijing (finally). due to visa issues, the whole process of zach coming here has been stressful to say the least- our trip in china has been reduced from 3 weeks to about 1 day together in beijing. before leaving for the bus station, thinking that i was about to see him that night, i got word from him that his flight had been changed to the following day and wouldn't be arriving until 3 pm. although no fault of his own, i was less than happy about this.

i went over to the bus station anyhow knowing that i was going to spend a lonely night in beijing (albeit in a 5 star hilton what what!) and definitely feeling down. i went in and took a seat next to the gate where my bus was supposed to be leaving from, gate 10. my bus didn't leave until 10:30 but i arrived unusually early (for me) since i had a close call on my previous bus ride (zach's sister ariel knows about this, lol). well, 10:30 rolled around and gate 10 was still locked. i thought this was pretty unusual since in my experience chinese buses are ALWAYS on time, but perhaps things were different in inner mongolia. once 10:45 rolled around i started getting nervous.

i asked the guy next to me where he was going and it wasn't beijing. i jumped up and showed my ticket to the woman standing at gate 9 and asked her where the bus was. the people who work at the train/bus stations here are notoriously unhelpful- she shouted something at me quickly and i didn't understand what she said and didn't feel like dealing with her. i saw a girl about my age sitting by gate 10 so i asked her where she was going and again it was not beijing. i asked her if the bus had already come and she told me that it had and that it had left out of gate 9 where the mean ticket lady was. i stood there in shock, not believing that i had been watching the wrong gate the whole time and had no idea.

i didn't know what to do. i knew all the train tickets were booked for the next few days, and i had no idea how many buses there were that day. all of my emotions and frustrations about this whole trip engulfed me at once. as i sat back down in my seat, i buried my face in my hands and started shamelessly crying.

i don't remember why i looked up, but i knew that people would certainly be looking at the only foreigner at the bus station bawling her eyes out. however, i really did not expect it to be as many people as it was. i felt like i was a student in one of my classes crying while all the other students are saying, "teacher, teacher, he/she's crying!" i don't know why crying is such a public event here.

when i looked up not only did i feel incredibly embarrassed but i also saw that the mean ticket lady and all the people surrounding her were motioning me to come over. someone asked me something, i wasn't really in the mental state to listen, and of course someone shouted, "she doesn't understand!"

i basically had a semi-circle around me of chinese people trying to help me, looking at my ticket and talking to the ticket lady. they didn't speak english, except one guy behind me said "follow me", which didn't really make sense at the time, but at least he tried. they all had 11:30 bus tickets for beijing though. as i'm trying to calm myself down and wipe away my tears they were trying to make conversation with me and i'm just like ughhh not now!

finally, the ticket lady took my ticket and wrote in 11:30 on my ticket and gave me a seat number. i couldn't believe it. i put my backpack on the ground, sat on it, and started eating my emotions away with some peanuts. there wasn't a lot of room up there but everyone stood back from me a good foot or so to give me some space i guess.

when i passed through the gate, the ticket lady was super nice to me that time around. she spoke very slowly to me so i could understand and explained where my seat was. guess she learned her lesson.

not really sure how i got a seat as the bus was completely full and i even saw some friends/family have to separate because there weren't enough seats for some of them. i was even sitting in the very front- my favorite place to sit on these buses because you can see everything in front of you. did someone get kicked off or do they leave a few seats open to be filled at the end? at any rate, the perks of being a laowai i guess....

tape solves all

how things get fixed at the temple of heaven in beijing

hello from hohhot

hello from hohhot, china, the capital of inner mongolia! i just arrived here very early this morning after a very nice trip with zach's family (sans zach) in beijing. i will write more on both later once i get my pictures loaded, etc. a few things i have noticed so far after a day in hohhot-

i have never had anyone in china correctly identify me as an american except for here. maybe they think all foreigners are american? the first time, i was in a taxi and the guy called in to his walkie talkie thing and told someone that he had an american in his cab. i laughed, so then he sheepishly turned around and confirmed it with me, and told me that i had good chinese lol. the other time, a little girl was like, 'look mom, an american!'. i kind of miss how so many people in dalian ask me where i'm from though :(

the people here are pretty chill. i walked down a quasi tourist street outside a temple i went to and all the vendors were just sitting there calmly as people were walking by. i just got the occasional 'hello!' accompanied by giggles. this also held true if i walked into a shop, which was quite refreshing after being mobbed by vendors in beijing! they were selling tiger and leopard fur?

the staring here is worse than other cities i've been to. i think the foreign population must be very, very small here. some people literally stop in their tracks!

besides the taxi drivers, the people here seem to freak out when i try to speak to them in chinese. it's pretty annoying. i think it reduces their comprehension of me by about 50%. i know it is at least partly mental now because in beijing people understood me way better than i have ever experienced before, and the taxi drivers here don't seem to have a problem if i am making sense.


when i was walking today a lady stopped me and asked me something. i couldn't really understand her at first, and then i realized that she was asking me about whether some building was a hotel or not. i guess i do appear like someone who would be staying in a hotel, but seriously she just stopped me and started speaking chinese, i'm surprised she assumed that i would understand. besides the employees in the hostel i'm staying at tonight, it seems like most people's english here is poor to non-existent. i stayed in a fairly expensive hotel the night before (poor planning on my part forced me to do this) and the employees there spoke no english besides the words 'right' and 'left'. i guess they don't have many foreign guests...

they have undercover/fake cops here?? after i exited a temple i was holding my travel book and looking around like a big tourist trying to figure out where i was. i saw a guy in a blue dress shirt take note of me, and eventually he walked over to me and pulled out a laminated card that had a bunch of chinese on it and in big letters said CHINA COP. shady, but i asked him where this street was and he pointed me in the right direction and that was that.

there is a greater variety in ethnic appearance here, and i even saw some guys with pretty long hair! this is the first time i have seen guys with long hair in china. they all seem to like to keep it pretty short. guy with slightly interesting hair the first picture. he was a cowboy guy in the grasslands.

the buddhist temple i went to here is one of the coolest one i have been to in china. it sort of reminded me of the wats i went to in bangkok. the temple was super colorful and had really cool murals on the walls. the main part of the temple was said to be heavily influenced by tibetan architecture.
i went to a tibetan restaurant and had DELICIOUS tibetan tea. if i don't make it to tibet, i'm at least grateful that i got to taste this. i'm not sure if it was their famous butter tea but it was a hearty, thick tea (but definitely not too thick) that tasted like it was made from nuts. as cracked out as the waiter was trying to deal with me, i'm glad he at least had the sense to point me to the tea section on the menu. i also ate a yak dish, which was prepared well and tasted very good, but didn't compare to the tea. it kind of just tasted like beef. the waiter probably had a good laugh about me- i didn't know how to say yak in chinese so i just pointed to a picture of a yak in menu and told him 'i want to eat this animal' lol. i realized later that probably like 90% of the meat dishes on the menu had yak in it.

some people here speak in some really strange mandarin dialect, because they only sound like they're speaking chinese half the time. i think it's a mongolian dialect. they have most of the signs translated into mongolian. look how crazy the script is!

where do i live? no one knows

the taxi drivers here are cool, but some of them can be so prickly...

i just moved to a new apartment by the beach and needed to take a taxi out here today. so i flagged one and asked him to take me to tiger beach ocean park, which is right across from my apartment. after several attempts, he could only understand tiger beach (lao hu tan!) so i just told him to take me there. it might be the same thing in the taxi driver's eyes, i don't even know yet.

well he started grumbling and said that i wasn't speaking clearly. i surprised him and told him that I had spoken VERY clearly even though i probably hadn't lol. he said he couldn't understand, and i was just like 'you can understand!!' hahah. man, he was really making me angry with his impertinence.

he continued to complain about something i couldn't really catch so i just told him not to worry and that i would tell him where to go when we got there. i guess he warmed up a little- he said he could understand me then, but was still worried about something or other, however soon after he started singing a hearty tune so i think he was okay.


i gave him directions, and once we got to the ocean park i asked him if it was or was not 'lao hu tan GONG YUANR?!?' of course he's like, 'OHHHH lao hu tan GONG YUANR!' which to my untrained ear was exactly how i said it but whatever. we both had a good laugh and that was that. this is not the first time that this has happened to me- at my old apartment one time the taxi driver for the life of him could not understand the location i was saying (he kept repeating my words to himself trying to work it out) and was quite visibly nervous until i got him to my area and he put 2 and 2 together. again, we just had a laugh about it. i think i actually said sorry to that guy because he seemed like he was going to have a minor panic attack. ughhhh the chinese language- love it but also hate it, what a challenge!

dalian beach days with the africans

i didn't really want to write about this, but zach said i should, so i will write briefly. last week i went to the beach for the first time which i was really excited about. one of my friends from my company has a girlfriend who is from nigeria and she invited me to go, so we met up with 4 of her african friends. they are all students in dalian.

at first when my friend asked me if people stared at me here, i wasn't exactly sure why. i was like, yeah, sure, don't they stare at you? she said the staring was pretty bad, but i didn't really imagine then how much worse that kind of behavior was for black people than white people here.

i think the bus ride to the beach should have been an omen. my nigerian friend and i were standing in front of a bunch of russians who also looked like they were going to the beach (dalian is full of beach-going russians in the summer). there was a mom, a little girl, and 2 older daughters. i think the little girl had never seen a black person before, because once she caught sight of my friend she started giggling. then she looked to her mom and her sisters to see if they found this amusing as well. she was just staring at her throughout the bus ride. finally, with a big grin, the little girl takes her arm and puts it up against my friends arm to compare the colors. the little girl's mom finally scolded her and made her stop. i guess her mom felt guilty about the whole scene or something because after that she insisted on taking all of our bags and holding them since we were standing and she was sitting. it was very strange. after they got off the bus, my friend asked me if i had seen what the little girl did. she wasn't that incredulous about it, more just kind of noting. i told her that it was dumb but it seemed like the little girl didn't know any better.

well, take that scene, apply it to adults, and that was pretty much what the whole beach experience was like with the african girls. people were walking by trying to take pictures of them (i'm not even going to say us) with reckless abandon. the chinese people were the most obnoxious about it but i couldn't believe that the russians were doing it too!

the chinese people would stand at a distance and start to take a picture. my friends would say in chinese that they did not want a picture, and then the chinese person with the camera would strategically place a friend or family member so it looked like they were taking their picture, but they were not aiming the camera at their friend or family member- they were, as you can guess, still aiming the camera at my friends. wow, so lame haha. no one bought it. it got to the point where my friends started grabbing handfuls of stones (the beaches here have stones instead of sand) to threaten people who were trying to photograph them. one time a guy just got too close. he came over with his infant son and started trying to ask me of all people if he could take the african girls' picture. his wife was standing at a distance with the camera ready. well, at least he asked, but i told him no. he sort of stood there for a while, i think trying to seem more sympathetic in his cause with his little baby. eventually he started turning around and i guess one of the girls tossed a stone at him. it seemed like it hit the man and bounced off and hit his baby. the baby started BAWLING. my friends felt really bad, so they called him back and said they could have their picture. one of the girls reached out for the baby to comfort him and the chinese guy just willingly handed it over. he just stood there grinning from ear to ear while his baby was bawling his eyes out and we tried to comfort him. i think the dad was just thinking, 'sweet, now i get my picture!' eventually the mom came over to get the baby because the dad was obviously just enjoying the whole scene way too much and wasn't about to take his baby back just yet.

the russians were pretty ugly about it too, but they were much more likely to ask my friends if they could take their picture rather than trying to be stealthy about it. i think some of them thought that i was russian because again they were asking me if they could take their picture. my mind was just getting really confused at this point, so i told them in chinese that we didn't want a picture, then realized that they probably didn't know chinese, and just said NOOO!! i don't think they were expecting to be rejected, so they just sort of walked away looking a little confused.

the whole scene got so bad at one point that we were actually going to move to a different part of the beach. imagine being surrounded by chinese and russian vultures with cameras and trying to prevent all of them from taking pictures at once. it was pretty stressful. eventually after the initial excitement wore off though, things died down and we were pretty much just left with one lone chinese guy who was circling us and staring for a good 15 minutes. my friends got tired of him too after a while and threatened him with stones, and he gave us a sheepish thumbs up and then ran away. good lord.

afterwards, the girls pretty much just complained about chinese people the whole time. some of them seemed to feel more anger than others. i don't really blame them. some of them have been here going on 4 years in their studies and nothing has changed since they arrived here. it would be frustrating having people commenting on your skin color and appearance everywhere you go, especially when you can understand what they are saying and the person doesn't realize that you can. one of the girls was saying that even when she tries to be positive and friendly towards chinese people she gets burned- one day a woman said hello to her so she said hello back and then the woman started commenting to her friend on how dark and ugly she was. so much for being friendly.

i felt pretty embarrassed for them at the beach, and i was especially embarrassed when a young chinese girl came up and asked if she could have a picture with me. note....not of me...with me. not feeling like being mean i took a picture with her but the whole situation was quite eye-opening.

they told me they went to the zoo one day and that so many people were taking pictures of them that it was unclear who the animals were. they were joking about it but i can imagine if it were me being pretty angry at the time when it was happening.

i think the 2 main issues at hand are the lack of racial diversity in most of china and chinese people's strange preference for sickly pale skin. but if china really wants to step into the 21st century, they need to get over this fascination (or whatever word you want to call it) pretty quickly...

as a side note, i'm sure not all chinese and russian people behave in this way, but this is just what i saw on this day at the beach. there were some instances, like at dinner, where a russian person came up, nicely asked to take a picture with one of the girls, and thanked her afterwards for it. it's just the overwhelming majority of the day was not like this. at any rate, i think taking pictures with people you don't know is weird! what would you do with the picture?

summer night in dalian

unfortunately i was camera-less tonight, but i saw some interesting things on my journey through dalian tonight.

i've had a bit more free time than usual lately because school is out i'm just working random hours right now. so i've been doing a bit more walking and exploring new parts of the city.

i left my apartment around 5 pm because sunset is my favorite part of the day here. it takes a long time for the sun to set in dalian. maybe this is normal at home too during the summer, but daylight seems to linger here longer. i walked for a while through a fairly boring part of the city until i came to a bus stop that i had never used before. there weren't very many people waiting for this bus (which is always a plus- less people to fight with to get on the bus), and one of the stops was called jinsha beach which i had never heard of so i thought i'd check it out.

there was a large group of people standing at another bus stop which i briefly looked at but decided it would be too crowded. it took the bus forever to get the stop, and when it finally did, all of a sudden the huge mob of people that i thought i had been avoiding swamped the bus. turns out they knew that the bus always pulled ahead of the actual stop. of course, me being the foreigner, i was not able to push through the crowd to get on the bus quick enough to get a seat. i was one of the last people on the bus. this bus had nice seats too, i can see why everyone was pushing. as the journey went on, the bus got more and more crowded, and i was going to the second to last stop.

one thing i've learned here- chinese men do not give up a set to let a woman sit down. throughout the ride, a few seats were opening up, and these guys sat down as fast as they could, even if there was like an old woman standing next to them. i thought they should be ashamed of themselves. but i guess it's every man for him or herself here when it comes to the bus.

finally a seat opened up in the back and i have to say i pushed past a woman to grab it. i don't know what happened in the next 5 minutes, but all of a sudden a young guy next to me and a slightly older chinese woman started to verbally fight. at first i thought it was amusing, but then i realized that this woman was not going to let the issue go. she was accusing the guy of ripping her shirt, which was this like tan, lacy thing she was wearing over another white shirt. it really was not that nice of a shirt to get so worked up about and i couldn't even see a rip in it. she wanted the guy to give her money for damaging the shirt. the guy said that he didn't have any money but continued to engage her verbally. finally, i guess he had enough and stopped talking. the woman continued to stand in front of him glaring at him even though seats around her were opening up. it was one of the best evil eyes i have ever seen anyone give someone. then she got out her phone and made a phone call. i could hear her describing the situation, and it passed through my mind that she might be calling the police, but i really couldn't believe that she would do that.

after she got off the phone they started arguing again, and their voices were rising in volume so the fight seemed to be escalating. finally, the bus driver arrived at the stop where the guy was getting off with his friend. his friend got off, but then the woman physically blocked the guilty guy from getting off. here was this slightly older woman challenging a guy much younger and stronger than her. this is why you must fear older chinese women on the bus- you never know what they are going to do next. however, at this point, i was very afraid that i was going to see this woman get punched in the face. thankfully, the guy kept his cool as well as he could considering a stranger was blocking him from getting off the bus. he continued to yell at her more vigorously but he kept his arms at his side as he came into contact with her when he was trying to get around her. the bus driver started pulling away from the stop, and i saw his friend watch rather passively as the bus started pulling away. i feel like i would have had a much different reaction than that!!

as it was moving away, the two people moved to the front and told the bus driver what was going on. the bus driver then pulled over again and completely turned off the bus. i was like are you kidding me. after we had sat there for like 10 minutes and the argument still had no end in sight, i went to the front of the bus and asked the bus driver if he could open the door so i could get off. my stop was the next one and i figured i could just walk to it. he said no. i was like oh my god this is the worst bus ride ever. there were still a few people left on the bus and they started to engage in the argument as well. it seemed like the other passengers were reprimanding both of them- the guy for not saying sorry more quickly to the woman, and the woman for not letting issue go.

finally, i saw flashing blue and red lights so i knew that the woman really had called the police. they got off the bus and i saw the woman explaining to the THREE policeman who showed up about her shirt. at this point they had already put the guy into the cop car. what a riot!

after they got off the bus driver and other passengers who had been relatively calm through this whole event starting ranting at each other. i'm pretty sure they were ranting about how crazy the woman was to hold up the bus for like 15 minutes and waste everyone's time so that the 'wrongs' committed against her could be made right. i agree with them- i don't think i have ever seen someone with that much nerve in my life.

finally we arrived at the beach and i think it made the trip worth it. i got there when the sun was almost down but there were still a ton of people there eating, drinking and swimming. things stayed the same even after the sun went down, and even more people started to show up. it was kind of like a big beach party but everyone was just relaxing, there were a lot of families there, and most people were just wearing normal clothes.

after i left, the bus was waiting at the stop and i hopped on. there were no seats, but luckily i found this perfect little corner on the bus in front of a window where it was not possible to fit more than one person. the air from the windows felt really good and it was nice to be able to stand there in my own little space. when i looked behind me the bus was crowded as hell and i was so happy that i was not in the sweaty mix. i actually enjoy long bus rides here when i have a little room to breathe.

i got off the bus a decent distance from my apartment with the intention of getting some dinner and then walking home (at this point it was almost 9pm). i figured it would be hard to find some food so i just went in a kfc to get a chicken sandwich.

the lines in there were taking forever. i originally got behind one guy and then realized that he was standing in a line with a closed register. what did he think, someone would open up the line just for him? the funny part is that the kfc workers were just letting me, him, and 2 other people who had gotten behind me stand in a closed line with out telling us to go to another open line. after a while i saw that this was going nowhere and i moved to another line. i noticed that the other 3 people soon followed suit.

there was one lady in front of me, and i thought she was being awful to the girl at the register. the lady had ordered a lot, so the girl was trying to repeat back to her what she had ordered, and the lady was just completely ignoring her and treating her like she was dumb. after her food came, the lady said that the kfc girl had forgotten one of her orders, and she sighed heavily as the girl walked away to go get it. i was kind of like well...if you had been listening to her repeat your order back this wouldn't have happened...

so when it was my turn i decided to be nice to her. usually when a foreigner gets to the front of the line at a fast food place, the person at the register immediately gives him or her an english menu. when i stepped forward, she just stared at me dumbfoundedly, so i grabbed an english menu sitting next to her and put it between us so i could show her what i wanted. i pointed to a chicken sandwich and told her that i just wanted the sandwich and not the meal. she started looking visibly nervous and covering her face with her hand. i'm just standing there like what on earth is this woman's problem....then she turned away from the register and it appeared like she was looking for someone. now i'm starting to get annoyed- there is a big line behind me and she's making me feel like i am holding it up because there is some issue which she can't seem to verbally resolve with me. she finally pulled someone over and said something to them about spicy or not spicy, presumably to ask how to say it in english. the sandwich comes in both varieties. so i interrupted them and told her that i wanted the spicy one. she was like 'huhhh?' and then thankfully the woman behind me was paying attention to what was going on because she was like 'SHE WANTS THE SPICY ONE'. the woman at the register looked very relieved and put my order in. jeez i wanted to be nice to her but she really was a dead head after all, why wouldn't she just try to ask me and see if i understood?!? i've never had that happen before...usually the people at the register are cool and will take my order in chinese (because i always try to order in chinese...) unless there is some word i don't know, at which point they will say the word in english if they know it. i think most fast food workers here are trained to know key words from the menu in english.

she didn't give me any ketchup though, and i just happened to have learned the word for ketchup the day before, so i debated whether or not i should bother trying to ask her for some. it seemed very likely since i had never said it before that i would not say it 100% correctly and therefore she would not understand me. well, i went for it, and score 1 for her because she got it on my first try and gave me 2 ketchup packets. i started to give her some more credit, until i sat down and realized that she had not given me any napkins. they don't leave napkins (or anything else for that matter) out here so you have to get them from the counter, but they usually put 1, maybe 2 if you're lucky, on your tray. i just made due with out them, fml.

then i finished my walk home. so that was my night!

soccer

this boy thinks he's so funny, messing up what looks like would have been a really cute picture with some of my girls!

i played soccer with all my kids on the last day of class at this school. they had the biggest and nicest playground. at some of my other schools, trying to play soccer was like running through an obstacle course because there were so many kids all trying to use the field for different purposes at the same time. it was amazing how well they were sharing such a small space though!

however, if you look in the back of this picture, you can see some makeshift housing behind the blue wall. i don't really know who occupies this building, but i had 6 classes that day to take out and play soccer and the occupants were all there almost the entire time heckling me from their bunk beds. the cameras even came out. not the most pleasant way to play soccer with your students but i ignored them.

here is me all sweaty with one of my super sweet students below after playing soccer. he was really good! he noticed that the teams were unfair and volunteered to play on the girls team halfway through the game :)

neighbors

my neighbors in china have been wonderful- they are helpful, friendly, and when not doing construction, they are quiet.

one of my neighbors is especially helpful. he has helped me through 2 elevator card changes, installing new air conditioning units, etc. i don't think we have ever had a conversation about anything other than something i need for my apartment, and there is almost always something going on. the only problem with him is that at any given time when you are walking down my hallway, there is a high possibility that you will encounter him in his underwear, especially now that summer is upon us. he is a skinny little guy, so his presence is not that overwhelming, but still jarring enough to make me want to run back into my apartment.


i ran into him today when i was leaving and he was in his underwear. he asked me if i had gotten my new elevator card (we are going through yet another change...) and i said no, even though i was about to use the elevator. i figured for the time of day, there would be many people already on it and someone would have a card. i guess he didn't have this same thought though because i swear he was about to jump on the elevator underwear and all when it got to our floor. i guess he had his card on him? he sort of lunged because he was quite a distance from the elevator (i had moved really quickly past him to the elevator...lol), then saw that there were already like 10 people on it, and jumped back.

to him i think he sees me as this like little baby in china that needs help...even when he's talking to me after like every sentence he asks me if i understand lol. he usually talks quite slow and simple, which is more than i can say for most other chinese people i try to talk to!

yum

this is probably my favorite street food in dalian. it's a cold noodle dish that has a really nice combination of textures and flavors. it has cucumber shreds, peanuts, little pieces of tofu, parsley and is mixed in a chili sauce. i have yet to figure out what the porous white strips are, but they're good! their consistency is between a noodle and tofu.

either every single street vendor in dalian just learned about this dish or it's only served seasonally because all of a sudden i started seeing this stuff everywhere. in the little market across from me alone, i noticed this week that there are 3 different vendors selling it, lol.

If you were a cactus....

I'd endure all the pain just to hug you.

this is rather morbid. it's in one of my 3rd grade student's QQ (kind of like AIM) profiles. growing up early much?

moses

this student's name is moses...that's about all you need to know about him lol. his english was okay, but he was a pretty terrible student- missing every other class and rarely completing his homework assignments. so i'd always shout his name in a very exasperated voice, which of course would do nothing more than just make him giggle. i tried to actually get on his case one day and tell him that he was smarter than he acted and he needed to put in effort but i don't know if he caught my drift.