Weekends

It's Sunday night and the haze of a dark October fog is making the sky outside my window thick and heavy against the glass. I just walked in the door after taking a brief but entertaining trip to the capital of Liaoning province, Shenyang. Darren plays with a hockey team made up of teachers from his school, so they had set up a couple of games with the Shenyang team they've played on a few occasions in previous years, so I tagged along as interim coach and single member of the Dalian Ice Dragons Booster Club. We left yesterday morning for the 6 hour bus ride north to both the political and cultural capital of this province. It was once a vital city in the Qing Dynasty, and there's a palace in town that is second only to the Forbidden City in Beijing for Qing history.

Although I didn't have much of a chance to see the sites and explore the city, Shenyang left a very different impression on me than Dalian has since I've been here. It is much more a city of bright lights and neon, and seems a lot more structured and ordered than Dalian has seemed so far. I think part of this is due to the fact that Dalian is still expanding and growing in a very large way right now, whereas Shenyang is much more well-established and doesn't have to contend with the hilly terrain of this part of the peninsula. I'm hopefully going to return to Shenyang again in coming  weeks and explore more of the sites and check out the Palace and another cool local features: the "Strange Slope". Apparently it's an anti-gravity hill like the one that can be found in New Brunswick, where your car will coast while going "up"hill and you must accelerate to go "down"hill. I've been told that there is some sort of optical illusion at play, but whatever the case truly is, I'm intrigued like you wouldn't believe!

I've realized that my ambition to explore this area more and this city as well has been severely hampered by my lack of confidence in getting around and being able to figure things out here. With no access to local maps or bus/LRT schedules and no real sense of the language, I've been avoiding getting out on my own to trail-blaze my way through this very foreign place without a tour guide to translate for me. I hope that in coming weeks that changes, as I'm only ever good at finding my way around if I actually attempt to figure it all out myself through trial and error. A map would be hugely helpful as well, so I might have to get in touch with my Canadian contacts to see if they can conjure up a recent Dalian map that will help me figure out this crazy place. Once I get my marking and school prep under control, the self-directed adventures will ensue.

T