Meeting the Principal

John and I in DanDong!

Tuesday, March 24th (China time is 13 hours later than Central)

We left early this morning to head to Dan Dong. The trip took about 4 hours, and we got to play a rousing game of 20 questions with Ralph where he stumped us with South Korea! (We forgot to ask place - so we were totally confused).


The Van we took with a statue of Mao in the background!

One thing we noticed right away was how there was no longer English on many of the signs, we are more rural here. We were also the only Western faces in the crowd. To this point, the only other Caucasian I have seen (and keep in mind we are staying at a hotel) was a German restaurant manager.
Just a random goat!

No more English on the signs!



The principal of the school in DanDong wanted to meet us at the airport, less because of us, and more because of Ralph and our host, but it was really neat.
The New School Principal

After meeting them and buying our tickets home for Thrusday (we will take the bus home) we went to check in at our hotel and then went out to eat. The food was really good - it was some kind of barbecued pork cooked right at our table. We had a good time getting to know them a little (They could not speak any English, but our host translated for us all). They laughed at my and John's poor chopstick skills and got us forks. The principle was excited to learn that we want to live in DanDong and said she would help us find out the cost of Language School here in DanDong. It was a really nice meeting!

The view from our hotel room - looking at the walking bridge that used to cross into North Korea, and a train bridge that still does
We have a dart board in our room!

The curent principle left then to go back to the school and the retired principle (who holds quite a position of honor here) stayed with us. He took us on the bridge that used to cross over to North Korea.


Us at the end of the bridgeAwesome sign on Bridge!

We also took a tour boat that goes as close to the border as you can go. You still have to use binoculars to see anything on the other side. The differences between the two sides were striking. DanDong is prospering and they are only a few sparce buildings on the other side, many of which are a faccad. John could see several guards walking the border with the binoculars. Our Tour Boat!



North Korea Side


Dan Dong Side


We then took a drive out to the Great Wall - we were super excited! We did not get to go up to it, but it is cool to know it is here. It is a small section of the wall - but it is definatly the wall! A Local home outside of the city

Us at a spot clost to the Great Wall Another pictuer of the Great Wall

We drove a little farther to "the shortest point." It it literaly the shortest point between China and North Korea. You could walk across the shallow water and land if you wanted (although you would probably be shot) We could see guard towers sprinkled along the border and our host told us by standing there we were in the cross hairs of several snipers. Put us all at ease!

This sign says The Shortest Point

We then went back to the hotel and parted ways with the principle. We will meet them again tomorrow and take a tour of the school!

We had a couple hours of downtime (which I spent catching up on blogs from Dalian and John spent browsing the Chinese TV!)

We then went to dinner - which turned out to be quite an adventure!!! Our host and Ralph had really good roast duck last time they were here, and John and I were up for the adventure, so we set off to find duck. It is pretty cold here and we were freezing as we walked around looking for the restaruant. We went into one place, but the wait for duck was going to be an hour, so we decided to keep looking.

We passed by a KFC (the only Western restarunt here in Dan Dong - not even a McDonalds here) and becasue we were so cold we went into Tesco - a mall/ superstore very much like the Carefour in Dalian. We were really excited to find this here - now I know where I will be shopping when we live here!! There was a small restaurant on the first floor, but it served western style food and no duck. They told us to go to the thrid floor, that there was a restarunt there. When we got to the third floor it was filled with suitcases, cosmetics and clothing - no food whatsoever!! We were laughing pretty hard at this point, everyone must have thought we were crazy!

So we took back to the streets, looking for a Chinese restuarunt of any kind, but all we could find were Korean and Japaneese - Our hotel reccomended a five star restuarunt, so we got a taxi and drove forever - we had no idea where he was taking us! We drove though several completly dark neighborhoods. Our diver did not drive on the right side of the road, even when no other cars were present, and kept honking his horn, even when no one was around. It was pretty funny. We finally ended up at a Crown Plaza, which was a super fancy hotel. We went up to the restaurnt, and sat down to look at the menu - and they did not serve duck either!!! By this point the whole situation was so comical and we were all so tired and hungry that we were pretty slap-happy. We decided to leave and go back ot the hotel and politly let the restarunt mananger know. She was very nice and actually led us to another restarunt in the hotel. This one did serve duck - and the prices were less expensive! (And the restarunt looked fancier - go figure!) We had a good dinner, but agian all joked about our poor chopstick skills as we struggled to eat. THe duck was really good, but very oily. They roast the duck and cut it in small pieces still attached to the skin (I guess that is the good part) and you make small tortillas out of it! It was lots of fun. After we went back to the hotel and John and I went to bed pretty much instantly.

Phew... I think that gets me caught up - I am going to go shower and get ready to go out today! I will try to post again tonight!

We love you all!