Sunday, 9/21/17

I’m falling behind, so to catch up i am going to try to stay current, rather than catching up, and i will backfill when i have time.

I will often tell the story of the day, and sometimes, the days just aren’t that exciting. On those days, i will add some of the other stories we have accumulated.

Today is Sunday, so we got up a little later than usual, went to breakfast, and came back to the room and lazed around a while. We took a walk around lunchtime, and it is as hot here as it is there, or close. We hit a high of 92 today i think.

I had to do some catching up on schoolwork, so Pam went to the attached mall and got a pedicure.

The most exciting part of the day was dinner, and i mean it. We walked out into the older part of Dalian and looked for a restaurant where we could get dinner. It was about a 15 minute walk, and we passed several restaurants. We saw one good candidate, and walked over to look more closely at the menu. As we were standing there, a woman got our attention, pointed to the restaurant, and gave a thumbs-up. As good a recommendation as any!

We (non-Chinese speakers) order by looking at the pictures on the menu and pointing. Mostly we can recognize what we are looking at, but there are subtleties. We saw a shrimp dish on the menu and pointed to that, and the hostess, said, no, very hot. We took her advice and stayed away.

We ended up with a beef dish and a chicken dish, and it turned out they were pretty much the same except for the meat. Here they are:

The beef is on the left, the chicken on the right. Both were excellent, a good but not overpowering sauce, vegetables, and a little bit of thinly sliced meat. Just enough for the two of us, we shared both dishes. The whole dinner, with a bottle of water each, cost us 36 RMB, or about $5.40. Yes, that was a great deal.

Here we are in the restaurant:

Pam is wearing a dress she bought here, a lightweight casual cotton dress. I’m wearing what i brought, khaki shorts and a cotton polo. Did i mention it is hot here?

Here is a shot of our hotel, with the attached Galleria mall, a 5 story shopping center!

We are living on the top occupied floor, the 24th. It takes a measurable amount of time to go to the first floor, and you can feel your ears pop! More on the hotel later.

That’s all for today, while it may not seem exciting, it happened in China, which makes it entirely different from our normal lives.`1