It seems like it has been quite some time since the last blog. Nearly four days have passed by. A ton of great experiences have occurred between Friday and twilight on Monday night. I have decided to do this entry a little bit different than the rest. Because of all that has gone on in the last few days, I have decided to just post some pictures of some of the beautiful beaches that I have seen over the last couple of days. Before I do that, I will give an extremely short summary of what has been going on.
Last Friday was a big day for the Clemson crew. We all headed out to the beach for our first real beach experience. The idea to go to the beach, in the location that we did, was brought about by one of the Clemson teachers that teach the students Chinese. I am not in this class, but I wish I was. Anyway, we all headed out to the beach, with the professor, and had a great time. After exploring and looking at the large rocks that are on the beach, we all sat down at this little beach-side bar. In the time that we were at this little bar, he ordered us about 50 Lamb kabobs, 15 Pint size beers, boiled peanuts, trays and trays of squid, and some soybeans. We all had a blast! This professor is determined to show us all a great time in Dalian. He wants to take us all out for Korean Barbeque soon.
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| A sand that is very rocky is a sand with a lot of great skipping stones! |
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| We found a bunch of "sea-glass" at the beach. A beautiful "Shell" to match the nice, blue skies. |
Friday night was a night dedicated to the social scene. Almost all fifteen of us students went out to the bars together, and split up as the night went on. The first bar that we went to was this bar on the beach (much different than the one we went to with the professor). This one is an actual bar where the main purpose of it is for people to drink. There are options to get meat on a stick at this bar, but food is not the main purpose of it. This bar is what helped us figure out what the plans for the rest of the night would be.
While at the first bar, we met up with these girls from France, Scotland, and the UK, and decided that we would hang out with them for the rest of the night, since they have been students at Dalian University of Technology for about 8 months now. We figured that they now what there is to do at night in the city, so we took a cab and went to the next place. While arriving at this new bar/club, we met up with a bunch of other people from all over the world; Anywhere from Nigeria and Saudi Arabia, to Russia and Germany. After being here for a while, the entire group went to this intense dance club. I’ll end the night there. We all got a cab back to the hotel at about 6:30 in the morning haha. I don’t normally go out like this, but it is all part of experiencing a new culture and a very diverse group of people. There is something so attractive about being able to hang out with people from every part of the world, and dance with all of them while listening to American music. Haha, gotta love America.
This might seem contrasting from the last couple of paragraphs, but on Sunday a couple of us went to Dalian International Christian Fellowship. I’m pretty sure that is what it is called. As the name implies, this Church is for internationals, and not for the Chinese. If I had any choice the Chinese would be allowed to come to, but they are only able to worship as a group in the government approved Churches. I’m not too sure how it all works, but I guess this Church is approved. Who knows.
Anyways, this Church is on the 30th floor of some building! When we arrived on the 30th floor (the elevator only went to the 29th), we walked into a room full of love. We were met and greeted by people from all over the world. The ones that were not able to greet us, were in groups of about 5-10 people praying and speaking in tongues. We arrived a little early, so we must have caught the last half of some type of worship.
Once the service started, we worshiped for about 35 minutes and then listened to the pastor preach. The service was on Ephesians chapter two. She talked about how even though many races were represented in that room, we are all one in Chirst. She emphasized how we are all brothers and sisters and all have one spirit. It was a very great sermon for the occasion. There were probably over fifty countries represented at this Church.
After Church ended, we all ate with the entire Church. Before we ate, the pastor asked if there was anyone new in Church today, so I stood up and got a big applause from about 125 people. So, after the service we ate at this table with some of the leaders in the Church. After every service, a meal is prepared by one of the members of the Church. We ate Taiwanese food, next week they will eat African food, and the next week some other type of food from a different country. We all had such a wonderful time!
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| The first great beach-like area that we went to today (monday). |
This blog ended up being a lot longer than I expected! My fingers just wouldn’t stop typing ha. Today we went on a tour with some Chinese students and saw some beautiful places in Dalian. I will post some of the pictures to give you an idea of how beautiful this place is.
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The view from this bridge was pretty amazing. The bus dropped all of us Clemson students and our Chinese partners off at the beggining of the bridge and picked us up on the other side. |
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| This is the final beach area that we went to today. There were a decent amount of people on this beach. To the right of this shot, there was a group of 10 chinese guys in speedos playing volleyball haha. There are many islands in the oceans here like the one's in the picture. There are also a lot of these little boats at the beaches. |
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