Winding Up

Phase one of my life in China is coming to an end! This time next week I will be back in Ireland! Wow! Time does indeed fly! I think it will freak me out a bit being home. I will be able to understand everything locals are saying! And I’ll be able to watch something good on TV, besides the drabness that is CCTV9!

So, hopefully I will spend the week gong out to bars and restaurants saying goodbye to various people!

I have signed up for another year in this Uni, so I will be back with a vengeance some time in August! Maybe this year I will task myself with taking a Chinese proficiency test (HSK). It will give e a concrete goal in my Chinese learning! Teachers can be lazy students as well! Only problem with this is that I would be learning towards an exam, which I am sort of against in principle! It’s why the Chinese education system produces regurgitatiors rather than thinkers!

In one way, it’s good to leave Dalian, cos my little friends, the mosquitoes have come back! The good thing about Ireland is that there is nothing to bite you, except maybe some of the locals!

I went to the beach for a BBQ last weekend, which was nice. Rather than drink themselves into a stupor (as would be done in Ireland), they had some interesting games to play. One involving one team jumping over a line, but having to land and balance on one foot. The other team’s goal was to reach over the line and try and knock down the other team members! I thought it was quite good. My long arms came in handy! I did tuck into some beer afterwards of course! ;-)

Online Dalian Resources for Expats

I know there are a lot of China blogs out there. Although mine’s called the Great Blog of China, it ain’t that great! The original intention of this blog was to write stuff so the folks back home could keep up to date with what I am doing here. I thought it would be better than a load of those batch-emails that people send from Australia! Well, as it happens, I have had the chance to also help out some Dalian-bound people along the way, which is also cool!

Anyways, in case you are googly-challenged (is that a new term I just coined?), here are two useful resources about life in Dalian for expats:

• DalianXpat.com: this site has been going for a long time and is a great resource for people living in Dalian. Also, for those who are thinking of/intending to come here, it will give you an impression of what life in Dalian is really like for foreigners!
  
  
• Panda Passport Dalian Forum: I just discovered this yesterday after its owner e-mailed me. He has a Dalian forum, which is packed full of useful stuff such as English language school reviews, info about learning Cheese in Dalian, restaurant section and chat section.

I will put links to both those sites down the right hand side of my blog template. Now, there’s my bit of community service done! I also want to write something about my experiences learning Chinese, cos I think it might be of help to people.

New Google Earth With Dalian

Google has released Google Earth Version 4 BETA recently. You can get it from the Google Earth Download Page. Go for the beta version on the right.

With this version, you can actually see right into Dalian. You can see my school and my hosse! Well, you could do except that google earth is crashing on me!!! Maybe it's a problem with my laptop...

Look Ma, It's Me On The Telly!!!

A friend told me about the wonderful website called YouTube, whhere you can put your videos for all to see!!

So, I have put up a video of me playing at that gig in the uni a few weeks ago! Click on play below to start it. You will need shockwave. If that doesn't work, try here.

Home For The Summer

For anyone in Ireland who reads this, the school has told me they've booked my flight home for the summer. I should be arriving in Dublin on July 3rd!

I will stay at home for the a month or so and then come back to Dalian again!

Summer Nights

Summer is here and temperatures are rising, so it’s good weather for sitting outside drinking beer. So, that’s exactly what I did last Saturday night!

Myself and Rob hit Noah’s Ark for a beer. See pic below and see if the Chinglish “Noah’s for your ark bar” makes sense.

After Noah’s, Rob suggested going to near his Uni for some cheap eats. So, we hit a BBQ place, which was cool. Sit outside with your own shoe-box sized BBQ and cook away! There were a load of lads behind us getting stuck into the beer. Since one of them had said “hello” earlier, we decided to join them. They were great craic! The fact that they’d been drinking away all evening probably helped! This was a great way to practise Chinese, since the lads didn’t speak any English! I don’t know what sort of shite we were on about but the chatty guy wants to join the IRA, I think! He said he wants to join the 北爱尔兰共和军! Which is Northern Ireland Republican Army, so I think he actually meant the IRA! Here is the lad himself, while challening Rob to an arm-wrestle:

Another thing they were crazy about was the movie Braveheart! Why, I asked, to which they responded holding their fists aloft, “because it’s about freedom!” They were also big fans of Mao Zedong! All this seems a bit contradictory to me!!

They want us to come boozing with them next week. Except, this time they want us to bring along some Western girls!! Funnily enough, I can’t see any of the Western girls jumping at the chance! And I don’t think those men’s’ wives would be too impressed either!