Our New World Experience

Last weekend we decided to avoid the 1 hour 45 minute one-way drive to and from Dalian in one day, and stayed at the New World Hotel on Saturday night. We had a great time! We checked in around 2, went for a walk and ended up at the Xi'an Street Catholic Church, where we were planning to attend the 5:30 service.

We got there at 4:30 and went to check out the grounds, and it turned out that there is a 4 pm English service that was not over, so we made it to the latter half of Mass! It felt like coming home to hear Mass in English, and receive Communion. The priest was Korean, Fr Kim, and we spoke with him for a while after Mass. We now plan to make this our Plan of Record for church - especially since we actually found a toll road that takes us to Dalian and cuts about 45 minutes from the drive. :-)

Next we went out for dinner at the Brooklyn Bar downtown. Lucia enjoyed running around the sofas and chairs and watching football (soccer) on the big screen, and we all enjoyed pizza, burger, and veggie panini while meeting up with several other Intel families who just happened to be there too. This is like the only decent western bar food restaurant in Dalian, so many families "treat" themselves to it about once a month. :-)

Since we did find the toll road, we may not do the downtown thing as much as we originally thought - we planned on doing it about once a month. But it was definitely a fun treat, and we'll probably do it a few more times in our year here.
Dada and Lucia at the Brooklyn Bar:

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Mama and Magdalena at the same:

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View from our hotel room at night:

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A very nice Chinese man bought this balloon for Lucia from the street vendor - we didn't know him from Adam, and when Alex offered to pay, he refused saying that seeing her enjoy the balloon was payment enough for him. Very nice!

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Here are the girls kicking on the bed at the hotel:

Here is Magdalena enjoying a "flight" at the Brooklyn Bar. You can hear Lucia shout "I'm running!" in the background during this video - we did take one of her running around, but it's a bit longer, so not posted here.