China Adventure: A Couple Weeks Behind

Well folks, I am not sure where to start. I am a couple weeks behind on my blog. I have been very busy and just have not had time to update my life. This posting will be pretty long but I may have to make to entries. You may get a little bored with my happenings but I guess this is about as exciting as my life gets. Hope you enjoy the good, the bad and the ugly of the past 2 weeks.

I will start with the saga of my passport. I am sure everyone wants to know what I had to do about this. This all started with losing it or at least not knowing what I did with it. I waited about a week before I decided to follow the process to get a new one. I thought maybe by some unbelievable chance it would show up. I turned my apartment upside down a number of times and checked in every stitch of clothing I had looking for the stupid passport. I checked the obvious places like the refrigerator and the washing machine as well as every drawer in the place. I checked on top of and below everything in the place. Guess what, I couldn't find it. I checked every shirt pocket, pants pocket and my underwear drawer. Nothing! I finally came to the realization that it was truly lost. By Thursday of that week I decided to start the process of procuring a new passport. I took Thursday afternoon off and started with having to drive back to my apartment an hour away from work to go to the police station and report the passport lost. The first police station by my apartment told me I could not report it there and had to report it at the police station where I thought I lost it. This happened to be about 20 minutes away. I got to that police station and went inside with my interpreter. The police looked at me like, what a stupid American. I have to admit, I would have to agree with them. How the heck do you lose a passport? Only the most important document you need in this place. We finally convinced the police that I was truly an idiot for losing the passport but still needed a report from them in order to me to go to the Chinese security bureau and report it missing. The formal report they gave me? Well, it was a hand written note from the police officer with an official stamp on it. Kind of like a note from my mother excusing my stupidity. My next trip was to the Security Bureau. Of course I couldn't go to the office which was just down the street in downtown Dalian, I had to go to the office which was where the Intel plant is in the DDA area an hour away. We jumped in the car and drove to he Security office in the DDA an hour drive of course. I was rushing to get this all done so I could go to ShangYeng and the American Embassy on Friday. Remember, ShanYeng is a 4 hour drive and is only open from 1:30 to 4:30 3 days a week. Also China was coming up on a National Holiday where the country shut down for 6 days. I got to the Security office and did the paper work there. They told me they would have a report and letter I can give to the American Embassy in 5 working days. Well, that blew my thought of going on Friday. I then had my driver take me home, an hour away back in downtown Dalian.

The next few days I got ready for Kathy to come and visit me. She was going to be here on Sunday morning. I did a little shopping and bought some flowers for her so my bachelor pad looked inviting to her. Just like before we were married. It worked:-). Anyway, Sunday morning I was going to go to church with my driver. He picked me up at 6:00am. I got dressed and started out the door. When I got to the elevator I went to put my glasses in my pocket of my pants, and to my amazement, my passport was in the pocket. I cannot explain how it got in a pair of pants that I have only worn once since I was here and that was the previous Sunday when I went to church and after I had gone to the Metro shopping center. I had checked those pants at least 3 times. I am not even going to try and explain it but the main thing is that I found it. I now have it under lock and key in a safe in my apartment. Now I don't have to go to the Embassy and reapply for the passport and then back to immigrations to apply for a visa and work permit and residence license. Problem now is that I think the police and security bureau have already logged me as lost. The story of my life. I will have to figure that out this week.

That Sunday morning it rained hard for the first time since I have been here. It just down poured. The streets flooded in a matter of minutes and many of the roads were impassable. That was not good since I had to get to the airport to pick Kathy up. Finally made it to the airport. Kathy was tired but ready to go on a wild adventure for the next 10 days. Our time together was non stop from the moment she showed up. We went back to my apartment and had some lunch. Kathy then took a nap for about 3 hours. Once she woke up, the 10 days began. On the go constantly. The first stop was to the Brooklyn Bar to meet our friends Barbara and Brian. The Brooklyn bar is run by a Chinese national who grew up in Chicago. He decided to move back to China and open a New York style bar complete with real western style food and thin crust pizza New York style. This is a local Intel Ex patriot hang out. Like I don't see these people enough at work already right? Anyway, we had some good pizza and enjoyed the atmosphere. We got home about midnight. This was the beginning of a pattern for us the next 10 days.

While I worked for the first 3 days while Kathy was here, she was able to do some shopping and begin to understand the size of shopping opportunity. She and Barb had a couple of very good days of walking and shopping and the obvious, spending money on items made in China. By the time Thursday came around we were ready for a good 6 days off together and with friends. Thursday we went to the Russian street and did some more shopping. While walking around with my driver, Kathy decided that he needed an American name. We narrowed it down to 2 names. Teng Jun likes both Bruce Lee and Nicholas Cage. We knew we had to choose one of those names. I thought we could call him Kado. Bruce Lee played him in the Green Hornet. We actually decided on Nicholas. It seems to suit him better. Kathy bought some things on the street for friends and I bought myself a new hat. Here is a picture:

Friday we left for a city called Dandong. This is a city that is right against the North Korean boarder. The first stop was the start of the Great wall of China. The wall was a good hike. We climbed up to the top of it with friends. From the top of the Great Wall we could see North Korea. You can see North Korea in the back ground behind Kathy in this picture:

We could also see from the top of the wall a small North Korean Village. Once we came down off the wall we walked over to a spot that was about 50 feet from the North Korean boarder. In the picture Kathy and I are standing next to a marker in China that says, Korea, only a jump away. We were not allowed to take any pictures past that rock, but I did. You can see the guard tower in the background.