A tale of three cities: Jinshitan, Kaifaqu, and Dalian

This weekend I definitely treated myself again. On Friday night, we played ultimate frisbee afterschool with a bunch of teachers and then headed out to Kaifaqu. Anita and I met up with Anjali for dinner and we tried to convince the other teachers to come out for Korean food with us, but they really wanted to go to Pizza Hut. Seriously?? Pizza Hut in China?? It's incredibly overpriced and not nearly as good as the asian food options. Needless to say, our Korean meal was incredible and the company was great :) We shopped at Trustmart and a bunch of little stores along the way back through Kaifaqu. At the end of our long night we enjoyed some McDonald's ice-cream. It's a little creamier than the Canadian variety and it hit the spot. We were sooo exhausted! We planned a little bit for our Beijing trip - I can't believe we'll be there in less than a week! Even though we got back from Kaifaqu pretty late, I stayed up to watch a movie for the last time in my apartment.
On Saturday morning, I switched apartments with Rody, so now I'm rooming with Anita - yay! I'll have to post some pictures of my new place soon. My new room is huge and has a nice view of plants outside my window. I was surprised how quickly the move was with all the help we got, but I still needed to clear my head before I started unpacking. I headed into the ESL building and played piano for a good two hours. The pianos are okay, but unfortunately the building is never open when I need it to be! I wish I had a key or could climb in through the windows. Maybe I should try that... Some students poked their heads in while I was playing and convinced me to teach them how to play Apologize, so I acquiesed. Eventually I dragged myself away from the pianos and started a little lesson planning (not before first grabbing some icecream at the school cafeteria store. It's still almost 30 degrees outside and I can work up a sweat planning :) After dinner I got a massage at the Blue Phoenix, which was incredible. I didn't realize how much tension I had built up over the week. It was a foot massage (later I wondered why I had chosen the foot massage of all things, because I'm sooo ticklish), but they massaged my whole body and left me feeling so relaxed. Best of all, it was less than ten dollars and there's a chance that the school will compinsate some of the costs. I'm going to make this a weekly tradition! I came home and watched the Bourne Ultimatum before bed (my DVD player is definitely getting good use).
This morning, I went to church with Anita, Rody, and Yimming. The worship time was very uplifting and helped me refocus for this week. We went out for the best jiao ze (my favourite is mutton and cilantro) and a nice restaurant downtown and then met up with Tyler and Peter to get another dry hair wash and massage. We did a little shopping at a 2 quai store (a dollar store where everything costs 33 cents) and picked up a bunch of plates and utensils since we do a lot of entertaining. All in all, it was a great weekend, but I'm feeling behind on planning and marking so I'd better get to it!