June! Where did it go?

So now that the summer is here and I'm not shivering while sitting at my keyboard, the time is passing too quickly. My birthday was fun, 23 now, woo! I made myself a chocolate cake and took it to the bar to share with lots of people (it was a small cake made from my small oven, but still good). Nick and Poly and soon Dave have gone on summer vacation and others of my friends are leaving soon. :( a transitional period is what the summer seems.

I'm currently at the 2 month point left in my contract, after which I'm still deciding whether to stay in Dalian and enroll full time to study Chinese or return to the states.

Most importantly and fun, aka the main reason why June flew by, I had a visitor! Drew traveled alllllll the way from the states to see me, and we had a wonderful couple of weeks together. We went to Beijing and Xi'an, and hung out around Dalian for a week. We did all the touristy stuff in either city, in Beijing: Great Wall, Forbidden City, Summer Palace, Tiananmen Square, Wangfujing snack street, ate Peking Duck. We also visited where I used to go to school and had dinne with Molly and her boyfriend. In Xi'an: rode bikes on the old city wall, Terracota Warriors, Muslim Quarter, Goose Pagoda. All the while eating delicious food like paobo, mutton soup with bread and noodles, yumyumyum. and liangpi, cold skin, rice noodles with a sesame spicy sauce, xi'an specialties!


Some pictures, will have the rest online soon....



Classic Drew and Kate pose, in front of the Summer Palace


On the Great Wall at mutianyu, what a hike!


Some Sichuan food, delicious, flaming tofu and hongshaorou(meat and potatoes in a delicious sauce), unfortunately gave us a 24 hour bug!


A nice view of the SUmmer Palace and lake (we took a paddle boat out on it!)



Me Drew, Jenny and Kevin, teachers at my school