1st Day

I arrived in Dalian, China at 10am on Friday. During our approach to the airport, I got a pretty good view at the entire city. It is a massive port city, there where at least 15 huge cargo ships sitting in the ports. While landing, looking out of the window of both sides of the plane, I could see several old Russian MIG fighter planes along with other derelict military equipment. Getting through immigration and customs was a little intimidating as uniformed soldiers where everywhere, but I got through easily. I was picked up by Frank and Cindy. I will be working with Frank this up coming week. He is one of our best developers in this campus, and I am really looking forward to working with him.

Cindy is about my age, she graduated college last year and I had the pleasure of ridding in a taxi with her (sorry Jessie). She speaks excellent English, as she majored in English in college. Her primary position is translating and teaching the other people at the campus English once a week. In the taxi she told me about important buildings in the city, a little about its history and what she does on an average day. As I looked out at the city I kept noticing the strangest things, Christmas trees! The one thing I thought I knew I would never see would be anything involving our little western holiday of shopping, eating, and some little cute baby sleeping in hay, I asked her about the trees and she sad they were in fact Christmas trees and that in China they celebrate a lot of American holidays even thanksgiving. Cindy went on to make a profound statement, “I don’t know why we celebrate these holidays, nor do I know what they mean”. Immediately I thought of Stuart Briscoe, “Reason for the Season”. However, I was about to move my mouth and she immediately changed topics because she may have been afraid or didn’t want to know the answer.

Swiss’otel is a 5 star, World Class hotel. It is about 35 stories and neighbors the largest shopping district in Dalian. Inside and out, the hotel was decorated by wreaths, tress, ordainments and lights. I am on the 31^st floor with a great view of the bay.

Strange Lunch

Frank and Cindy offered to take us out to lunch. They were really concerned about finding a restaurant that would cater to out western cow consuming stomachs. However, we reassured that we where her for an experience so they took us to a place within the hotel complex. The restaurant was, again, decorated with Christmas in mind. They even had a selection of Christmas music playing in the background. Chinese renditions of Jingle Bells and Frosty the Snowman, even song in English like “Ohh Holy Night”. Once where we sat down by the red stocking hated wait staff, Frank and Cindy immediately started going through the massive menus. What was strange was it took a long time. We told them to order what they liked and it seems like they did, however the long time discussing was strange. It seems like they do not get the opportunity to order and were confused to the offerings. Lunch was really good though, lots of really different food and I got to show off my madd chop stick skillz. Frank and Cindy used a spoon once a piece of food became a little to difficult, I had no such problems and they were impressed.

After lunch we went back to our rooms to relax and unpack. Dave and I made plans to eat dinner at 6pm. Needless to say, dinner was skipped and sleeping to precedence. However, thinking about it now at 4am it would have been better so I could have slept through the night.