When you sound out LEOPARD in the Chinese accent you get...

LEPORDA! That's great...! Good try :)

Look at this teamwork!

A Boring Walk

On Wednesdays I get off work really early so last week I took a long walk down my road. I went the opposite way of the city center which is the route that I usually take. Man, it was the most boring experience I have ever had in China!

After I walked about 2 or 3 blocks I immediately noticed that the population density really started to thin out. It felt pretty weird not being surrounded by Chinese people! In the horizon I saw a bunch of nice-looking, cookie cutter high rise apartment buildings. Even so, these buildings retain their Chinese identity I suppose with the huge white rabbit and dog statues you see in the picture there. How charming, lol. These buildings were either relatively unoccupied or everyone in them had a 9-5 kind of job because the whole area seemed pretty much deserted- no markets, no gambling old men, no cars flying at you as you cross the street. Not even a hair salon- the things that make Dalian great! I hope that this is not the future of Dalian :(

I do think this area is probably very valuable real estate though because it's right on the water and there is a ton of development going on around it as you can see in the pictures. So we'll see what happens...











This is the first and only stop sign I have ever seen in Dalian. And of course it's not even in a busy part of the city....sheesh.

















Finally some Chinglish just for fun- this housing development was called "Mountain Central of Rare Value" and below in the small letters it says "The leisurely life of the Spanish Garden we'll go hors".

It's Great to be in Gread 4

This really just makes me sad- in the main school that I work in (I'm there 3 days a week) all of the signs have grade misspelled. This is a learning institution...WHY?! I assume that the Chinese English teachers are aware of this issue so I have not said anything to them about it, although I am still debating whether to tell them or not because if they happened to not know it would really be better if they did! At any rate, it's very helpful that they have the translations for me...

A note on the classes- there are usually about 5 classes per grade, so about 200-250 kids per grade. I have seen it go up to 7 classes though!

Avoiding to be Stolen

This is one of my favorite signs in the city...it's at the largest grocery store near me, Carrefour. I understand the grammar issues, but some of the spelling, seriously?