Getting Around

Getting place to place here is easy. Mostly we travel on the sky train - "Ching way". It is easy and Cheap, about 1 dollar to Dalian from Jinjiatan which takes 50 minutes. Kaifaqu is where we go more often during the week, it is closer and during the week we are just looking for food, and massages.
This is a photo of The ching way.

It is a lot like Vancouver's train, but cleaner and less packed, except at 5-6pm where you a little like sardines in a can. The trip is beautiful at parts and then you go through the slums. Parts of towns are run down garbage on the streets, maggots all over the side walk, people passed out and the smell of urine and human waste, while across the street is a new beautiful hotel.

We travel on the train about 3 days a week.

Our other mode or transports include the bus provided by the school to take us to Kaifaqu on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday and taxis. The drivers are wild, especially one of our bus drivers, it is the stop-go and fast-slow that he loves.

Driving here includes the knowledge of the horn, happy beeps for I am coming up on your left or right and angry honks for you cut me off. It is always a new and can be scary adventure in a car or walking on the road. Definitely not like Canada.

Ok, a little about the teaching

Some pictures of my school. The middle court yard has 4 basketball courts and the flags for flag raising ceremony. Flag raising is our schools Monday tradition. It brings all the students and teachers together to sing (school song and anthems) and stand in the cold in winter.


So I have been teaching for 2 weeks now, going into my 3rd. It is great. These kids are so friendly and excited to meet you. Today they confessed to me that they don't like science but love math. I think it is because there is a lot of new English in the science and new concepts. While for math it is mostly stuff they have seen before and just have to get used to the new words. Because of this I am enjoying teaching Math. They are happier to be there and we do have time in class for the students to get to know me and for me to get to know them.
Though they have minimal English they understand a lot of jokes and make jokes with me.

I have started to get to know a lot of students and they are interested in my piercings and everyone's tattoos, Tattoos here are only on Gang members - so we must look very off to them.

A Dinner Experience

4 of us go for an adventure into Manjitan for dinner, and we want something different, off we go down a dirty ally. Ha. Well the first ally was just too dirty so we take the second ally, much more up to par for us. And at the end of the street ally, we are invited into this family restaurant by a women. So in we go, first do they have menus, hand signing away to find out nope, they do not. Ok next adventure ordering a women who speaks no English and us no Chinese. What ends up happening is the women brings out food, we pick what we want and don't, point at other peoples meals, and presto - DINNER! It was great, awkward but great food, After we start eating, the family is woken up by the women to come look at us and they get on their phones and call everyone they know. By the time dinner is over, the place is pack with people looking at us and cheersing us with drinks. What a night and an adventure close to home.

Well I have been here now for 2 weeks. It was a long trip, 9 hours on a plane from Vancouver to Narita Japan, (close to Tokyo). The next day another 3 hour flight to Dalian China, then a drive to to school. It is HOT here. My hair is bigger then my butt, and looks a lot like frow on many days. When I first got here it was so humid that after about one hour outside you were covered in sweat. When we got here we had 4 days to get ready. We spent those days SHOPPING and shopping, house hold items, we only had what was in our suitcases. But it is cheap here, about a quarter for a beer. 1 dollar a meal. We did a drive by tour of Dalian but the water and cliffs, wow! What a beautiful place. There are castle like buildings, and many older looking buildings. Once you get out of the tourists areas, it gets china looking, dirty but friendly and lots of abandoned buildings. And here there are fireworks, every DAY. They are always celebrating something here.
I am teaching math 10 and Science 10. These students work hard and, try their best at English but it is much poorer then I expected.

What else? Oh yes! I got the bed bugs last week and man they bite, I had red dot's all over my body and 20 dead bugs in my bed. I had to raid my room. I think I was raided in the process. Hopefully only took off a few years of my life. The bugs are every where here and are huge compared to home, but that is something I am loving and everyone else is not.



Us walking through Kaifaqu.