The Diaries

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June 22, 2009

Nearing the End...June 22nd

Posted by Alex Mutschler

The last couple days have been rather stressful due to the fact that Nat and myself have been studying for our Chinese language assessment. Today, at 8:30 am, we were the first group of students to take the assessment with our professor. It was rather funny because we’d probably studied several hours for this assessment and the “actual” assessment conversation only took 2 – 3 minutes. We must have done pretty well because Grace had told us “hen hao (very good).”
The assessment was the only thing we had scheduled to do for the day.

After our assessment, I decided to walk around Dalian University’s campus and see the golf driving range about three-quarters of a mile south of campus. While walking around I wanted to take some pictures of the campus in order to show my family when I get back home. As I walked toward the driving range, I was rather uneasy trying to cross the street because traffic signs really don’t mean a thing in the city. About the only other thing I did that afternoon was surf the Internet and look through my three email accounts.

The highlight of the day took place at 6:00 in the afternoon because we, the UNI students and faculty, hosted an American-style dinner. This dinner consisted of hamburgers/cheese burgers, pickles, onions, baked beans, apple crisp, potato salad, and deviled eggs. Because few, if any, Dalian students had never created a hamburger, so we saw some pretty interesting combinations of food items on a burger. Stewart and Joe were there to demonstrate a how-to on burger fixings but some students had other ideas—one rejected burger had apple crisp and onion on it. Overall the party went very well; Mr. Sen, Kelly, Grace and several other associates were able to attend the party.