Coastal City

This past weekend we took a short vacation to a nearby coastal city to relax a little from language learning and to eat some American food. It was a much needed vacation & and a long overdue visit to Starbucks. Despite how beautiful the city is, our favorite part was the eating! We visited Pizza Hut, Starbucks, & Haagan Dazs all in one day! It was truly a spectacular day! This city makes our city seem so small & country-ish. There are a lot more foreigners there because it is one of the biggest port cities in China. Plus it is growing and expanding so much because it is playing a big part of the 2008 Olympics. The sailing competitions will be held in this city & there are signs & posters everywhere in the city preparing people for the upcoming event. Our hotel was very close to the beach front boardwalk so we had easy access to some very pretty sights. We took several pictures while we were there so get ready for another picture + caption blog.

Here's Brandon enjoying his Haagan Dazs ice cream!

The Pizza Hut we went to was the nicest Pizza Hut we've ever been in. They carried all sorts of pizza including some not so tasty sounding ones with corn on top. Luckily they had the "American Special" with cheese & pepperoni.

And now just to go along with all the hype all over the city, we're posting what apparently is a new symbol of the Olympics. He's everywhere...billboards, taxis, grocery stores, commercials, and he's even been inserted into the sidewalks lining the launch point for the sailing competition.

This is the pier for the launch point. It might be hard to see but there are flags lining the pier the extend even further to the left of numerous countries...unfortunately we couldn't go all the way out there because there is so much under construction getting ready for it all!