Holidays

Hey!!! I got back from my holiday in sunny Dalian Monday night at around half past 11 (which, I must mention, is when I applied for my student housing! You won't believe how tired I was. But I take this while first come first serve thing seriously. And I wanted those halls!!)

Anyway, as promised to most of you, i'll give the account of my time away...

Wednesday I worked all day and packed after work. Just a little suitcase of things (thank you DT – that thing is invaluable!) Then me and Thyra had our 3rd ritual of beer and cake! Honestly, the cake in China is amazing! Shortly after, the 2 guys coming with us arrived at our place and we hung out till around until 1am. Then we grabbed a cab to the train station.

Our train was an hour late so we actually didn't leave Shenyang until 3 in the morning! But fear not! The Big Mac that I had definitely made me feel much happier about the waiting time. We paid for hard seats for the 6 hour train journey because we're cheap. It cost is about £5 intead of £14. And the difference is huge here in China!!!

I didn't actually sleep the entire journey. For those who know me well enough, i'll sleep through/on ANYTHING! But this train, no. the other 3 did though. So I listened to my ipod and read some of my book. Then we arrived! We headed straight for our hotel, which is the most difficult hotel to find ever! It's just like the Chinese to shove a hotel in a back street ally outside of the main city! Whatever! It was very nice, a family run thing. As Thyra and I were shown to our room we were told in Chinese by the 2 young girls working there that we were beautiful! (I knew I learnt that word for a reason! :P)

So the first day in a seaside town, of course, we head to the beach! Golden Pebble Bay, to be precise! It was gorgeous! Upon arrival we swam in the sea! The Chinese people thought we were crazy (we were, to be fair. It was FREEZING!) So we tanned, we walked, we swam, we buried Kenrick in the sand. Then it was dinner time! To get back to the station to get the train back to the main city we grabbed a ride on a (DONOT READ THE NEXT BIT MUM) a motorcycle! I had complete faith since I only paid 20p for the journey. :-/ I might not try it again. I didn't like it much, in fact I was terrified. I blame my parents. :P

So we head to the hotel, shower and go to a nice local restaurant recommended by our hotel. We ate ridculous amounts of food, drank plenty of beer and then when we holla for the bill, we're told (in Chinese BTW – i'm getting quite good if I do say so myself) that it's free. The manager did not want us to pay. How sweet! We were very touched.
After that we headed to the prak were the Chinese tend to congregate for evening kareoke, ball games, hacky sack kicking and general socialising. It's always a nice atmosphere. And we are always treated like celebrities! Then we kicked back in a nearish pub for a cranberry bircardi breezer (well the others drank beer or something – but I couldn't resist! It was a holiday after all!)

The next we decided not to put our skin through another day of tanning (or burning in some of our case.) So we started by visinting the Russian Street of Dalian. I guess it's like China Town in London. Of course we were mistaken for Russians many times and spoken to in Chinese and Russian most of the time. Not so useful! We detoured around the back streets to check out the Russian slums which was really interesting too.

After all that we made our way to a famous park in Dalian. It was full of street performers, fair ground rides, snack places and Chinese people! We took a cable car to the top of the big hill from where you can see pretty much all of Dalian from! Then we took the mountain slide back down! Imagine a tabogan type situation, except less safe and i'm wearing a skirt! :S As they say in Chinese 每时, never mind, doesn't matter!

We visted some other non-interesting sights then back to the area around our hotel for some dinner. The evening was spent at Noah's Ark Bar which was advertised in someones guidebook. They had 4 guys playing guitars on stage and they were very good! It was pretty enjoyable!

So the next day we hit the beach again. Lao Hu Tan. Well, that was the plan. But we arrived and discovered that some ocean park had claimed the length of the cost there and were charging £20 to get in! Shocking! So some randomer approached us and asked us if we'd like a lift in his mini van. So he took us to another beach for just 50p each – much more managable! It was a gorgeous beach! We would have missed all the gogrgeous scenery and that beach had we paid the extortionate price of the water park! It was hard to believe we were in China. It was more like a tropical island! Plenty of sunbathing and ocean swimming was had!

That night everyone but Thyra and I left. They all had to work either Sunday or Monday. So they take off and Thyra and I are alone! Yay! Shopping! He hit the markets and shops big time! We got a fair amount of very cool purchases. Clothes, jewelery, shoes and a blow up frog chair (don't ask.) And all for about £25! I love Chinese prices!

Monday evening we grabbed our train. I slept this time for a couple of hours. It actually arrived home and hour and a half before we were expecting which was a huge blessing since i'd planned to do my student finance!

And there we have it! I wish I could tell you much more but i'm dying here! That's taken ages and the heat in our flat is ridiculous! And this hot laptop on my lap isn't helping!

A quick update until now...

Tuesday night I had my usual Chinese lesson, Wednesday I taught an evening class of 7 year olds for some extra cash. And this weekend i'm running 4 houres worth of training for kindergarton kids entered into an English speaking competion. That'll be an extra £40! Next weekend i'll do the same for some more money. Thyra can't do it because she's not a native English speaker which sucks. She's got more of an English accent than most and she's the most fluent non native person i've ever met! She's too modest! But i've passed over the evenign class job to her so she can earn some money that way since I have the weekend thing.

And now, I am closing. I'm so sorry for the length of this! Pictures of my time in Dalian and the sports day/performance put on by my Kindergarton will be on facebook as soon as I can!

I LOVE YOU ALL! xxx