Today was one of the nicest days we have had in Dalian so far. The weather was decently warm, the sun was shining, and we even spotted some green grass coming up and some flowers budding on the trees outside our apartment. Even though we were tired from a full day of work, we decided to take this opportunity to explore a little bit.
Since we have moved in, we have been staring out our bedroom window at a pile of really cool looking rocks. Unfortunately we are separated from them by a ten foot high stone and brick wall, so so far we have had no chance to explore them. Today that changed!
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| In behind the knobbly trees are the really sweet rock formations (click on the picture to zoom in!) |
As we were walking down towards the beach on a road we hadn’t been on before, we saw that the rocks we have been looking at were just beside us (separated from prying eyes by a metal fence and sharp thorn bushes of course). When we rounded a corner, there before us was a ticket booth and a stone arch way. Through the archway we could see these really awesome rock formations, and seeing as no one was around at the ticket booth, we just walked in. Of course Kristen is a bad ass, so she wasn’t concerned, but Paul is a bit of a shall we say... pansy, so we was looking over his shoulder for the first few minutes.
After a while though, his attention was fully fixed on the amazing natural sculptures. Paul’s a bit of a rock nut, but even Kristen was totally impressed by some of the formations. And to think that this is literally a stone’s throw from our back balcony....
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| Just inside the entrance. |
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| Kristen contemplating the dinosaur fossils that are surely hidden just inches beneath the surface of these rocks. |
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| China? The Moon? Drumheller? You be the judge. |
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| Paul pointedly ignoring the do not climb signs all over the place. |
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| If you climbed to the top of this rock you could probably see in our bedroom window... good thing they don't encourage climbing.. |
After we had thoroughly explored the rocks, we kept walking down to the beach to watch the sunset and explore up the coast a bit. It was a wonderful little date, and after the sun had set we decided we really didn’t want the night to end.
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| Sampans... |
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| Classic Chinese scene. |
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| Don't not pass go, do not collect $200. |
We ended up walking back the other way and into Manjitan (the village a few minutes from the school) where we went to a Chinese owned Japanese restaurant. The lady who works there was so cute, and slowed down her Chinese so that we had a chance to understand her. She repeated all the words we were saying incorrectly and actually went out of her way to understand us when we were pronouncing thing abominably. Today was the first day that Paul was able to get someone to understand “Ta bu yao rou. Zheghe sushi ma?” (“She doesn’t want meat. Is this vegetarian?”- sounds like “tah boo yaow row. Je-guh su-tse mah?”). He was so proud of himself that he pulled out “Fuwuyuan, zheghe hen hao chu!” (Waiter, this is very good food) and “Wo yao maidan” (I want the bill). Kristen was also using her mandarin tonight to say thank you, goodbye and to tell the waitress that she understood that the wasabi in her soy sauce was spicy (“ming bai”- I understand).
All in all it was a great night, and a wonderful unexpected date.
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