A busy week

Due to lately travel schedule, mostly, illness, caused me not able to access computer at all. Now I am in Shanghai, tasting the fast-pasted changing city from every perspective. I feel that I am in an alive city! Every city I visited, I feel the spirit of 2008 Olympic Games, But in Shanghai, not only Olympic, but 2010 World Expro, which is an event I have been following and anticipate to be involved in. There are many construction and city planning going on to prepare for the event.

Let me tell you what have been happening for the past week: (since I have not changed my camera time zone to Chinese time, the date on the camera is 15 hours behind the actual events)

July 22nd Tuesday

I think I am still in U.S. timezone, by 5p.m. I will be so sleepy and at 4:30a.m. I will wake up. My dad took me to have “You-tiao” and fresh soy milk, oh, delicious and reminds me of old days at home. It is a typical Chinese breakfast, wow…

This morning, I will go to visit my cousin in navy, since he does not allow to leave the base, I will go to the military place. I began to realize how serious the government wants to make sure the success of Olympic. Close to the navy base, there is a Russian village. Dalian has a quite unique history, once was German colony, then occupied by Japanese for years, then liberated by Russian army. If you are an architect, you will like to see the buildings here.



On the way home, I took a look at the famous TianJing street, a well-known historical street and largest commercial street, almost the combination of history and modern changes. My dad took me to have the traditional dalian dish "men-zi", made from fresh grounded yam, light stirred friend, almost looking like short noodles, adding some secime paste, garlic and cilantro.





Today's I will invite my high school teacher having a lunch with me together. I stopped by the No.39 school, the best middle school in Dalian, visiting my high school teacher who is now the principle of this middle school. She is one of important influential people in my life, helping me through my high school, supporting my passion of music but encouraging me to go beyond to reach my potential, listening with my frustrations and directing my decisions when I applied university. There were many fondly memories together and I truly feel thankful to be her student. In old Chinese sayings, "A great teacher is like a mother to help you grow." Gracefully, I have many great teachers in my life, in China and in U.S. Their advice and caring have been tremendous support. Every new year in China I visited her at new year and teacher's day. Now I am home, I want to see her and spend some time together. oh, I may speak too serious here, really, a lot of fun to be with my teacher, the highlight of lunch is papaya shark fin, really tasty :)



Later of day I went to visit my sister, who accidentally hurts her back pretty bad last week, taking a few days off. My brother-in-law also took several days off, making sure to take care of her, oh, how sweet! ye, meeting sister was filled with laugh, jokes and funs we tried to make of each other. The moment I walked in her house, she said "wow, sister, what happened to you?" (give you some background information, I gained around 20 pounds of weight more than the last time I went home in 2006). see, what a sisterhood, very frankly :) I do not mind at all, when my brother-in-law tried to tell her to be nice to me, my response was " the year of 2008 best fashion is to see who can weight the most and still walk around, see I can manage it!", then we laughed loudly and hugged. (please do not feel offended if you concern your weight, here, totally a routine joke between my sister and I since she is always skinner than I.)



Later, they took me out for Korean food, only word I can give here is "Delicious"



spicy beef



korean noodle



Chinese phrase:

"Hao Chi!" means delicious. When you see those food pictures, do you want to try someday?