The Diaries

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June 14, 2009

City Tour, SlingShot and lots of “Měiguórén!”

Posted by Stewart Sieleman

Started a little later today so we got to sleep in an extra hour. We took the tour bus to a monument which features a long stretch of foot prints from various Dalian citizens to commemorate the city’s founders. It leads to a giant stone book which you can walk on.

The area also has a small amusement park with rides and places to take pictures. All but one of the rides were for little kids: the SlingShot. It took a little convincing but we managed to talk several people into trying it out. Even Samantha, who yesterday passed on the zip line, agree to go after relatively small amount of persuasion. We even managed to get Chris Schrage, the faculty member responsible for the trip, to go after convincing her that Alex wanted to go but had no one to go with. Of course Alex had to be coaxed into going and could really have cared less if he went or not.

They strap you in and then pull the bungee cables tight and then hit the release. At the top the entire cage spins which somehow I was completely unprepared for despite the fact that I had seen others do it before.

Samantha was nervous as we were getting strapped in and then let out a wicked scream as we were launched into the air. The original plan was for Nick and I to go together but going with Samantha, with all the nerves and screaming, was much better.

Then we drove to Tiger Bay, the same place as yesterday but on the other side of the bay, and walked around and took more pictures. Then lunch at a cafeteria style Chinese restaurant.

After lunch we went to the Russian Street which features Russian architecture, stores and street vendors selling random stuff. It was a cool street but by that time I was getting sun burnt. One of the side effects of the malaria medication is extreme susceptibility to sun burns and when they say extreme apparently they mean it. Luckily we were able to jump from one vendor’s covered booth to another.

Samantha found some pig’s noses in a convenience store... not sure what else to say about that.

After the Russian Street we headed back to the hotel to rest up for Karaoke. Some of the Chinese students were nice enough to take us out. We had a great time, even though they were much better signers.