A 6 kilometer walk to the southwest side of the city.

We are getting out and exploring the city again now that summer is here. This is the Jiamusi Hotel. The name of the hotel is on the front in Chinese, English and Russian.

Many places of business start the day with the employees either marching, singing or dancing in front of the store or restaurant.

This is a restaurant across from No.1 high school.

This is looking east along a tree lines road.

Looking at the park across from the Jiamusi Hotel.

I thought I would include some pictures of some of the kinds of transportation they use around here. This is a motorcycle converted to act as a kind of small taxi. There is much government regulations on these so prices per trip are negotiable.

Here is another version that is a little longer.

There are also motorcycles that are converted to small trucks.

This a lady peddling a bike cart. It looks like she is selling baked sweet potatoes or something.

There are lots of city buses and tour buses around town. There are even some double-decker buses. You can get a better look at the bike cart in the foreground.

No.1 high school. The two colors of flowers are arranged to say something in Chinese. The way the public schools work in this city is that students are placed in schools according to their test scores. The better the score, the better the school. The students can be placed in the better classes in a school if their parents give money for placement preferrence. No.1 high school has the most students with the highest scores to enter college.

No.1 high school campus is really big and nice.

I don't teach at No.1 high school but I do have several students in a class at Ivy that attend No.1. They are the students we had over to the apartment last week.

A closer look at the motorcycle truck.

There are also pull carts.

You can see a small electric three-wheeled scooter. You can also see a worker waiting for employment. There are numberous places in the city where people who are unemployed wait with the tools of their trade or trades and signs advertising to passerbys what they can do in hopes for employment.

The only Good Year store we have seen here.

This is at the end of a road in a very nice gated community. The streets are lined with various shops.

Here are some ladys playing cards in front of one of the stores. Right next door to this store was a  Mahjong house.

This little boy wanted to pet Spot but the mother told him that dogs are dirty and he shouldn't touch. This is a commun view here.

This is looking back to the north along a very busy road on the west edge of the city.

Here is a big round-about at the southwest corner of the city.

You can just make out the mountains to the southwest through the city haze.

Jiamusi University is a large university and popular with locals and many foreigners from all over the world. The university is on the southwest side of the city. This is the university's football (soccer) stadium.

Another view of the mountain in the distance.

This hill is next to the stadium and part of the campus.

This is looking to the east along the northern edge of the university. You can see the guy on the scooter looking back at us. This kind of thing happens everywhere we go.

Deb checking out the stadium.

Spot was very tired after our long walk.

It was nice to rest at the park next to the stadium.

There were several students relaxing or studing in the park.

Construction is everywhere in the city, but especially in this part of the city. The area where all the cranes are building are shown Google Earth as nothing but old one level small homes.

Looking at the mountains from the pavilion on the hill top.

I would like to go visit the large building in the distance and find out what it is.

An armored car.

The government banned rickshas pulled by people except in high tourist areas, so now they are peddle powered. If you don't have your own car, there are four kinds of transportation available not counting bicycles: taxi, bus, ricksha or walk. How you get around depends of how far you are going, how much you want to spend, the weather, whats available and how much time you have. Many people will take a variety of modes of transportation. The rickshas are enclosed during the winter and have plastic to go over the tops during the rain.

Sometimes they actually use a motorcyle as a motorcycle.

I was this on top of a building a little over a block away and thought it was nice.

There are four christian churchs in the city. This one has sevrvices on tuesday, wednesday and friday with one of them in English. We have not been yet, but have gotten some dual language bibles for some Chinese friends from this church.

There are some horse or donkey pulled carts around town.

Because there are so many bicycles, you can find several places where people have set-up shop to repair bicycles.

At one point we had to go under the train tracks connecting to the northern part of the province from Jiamusi. We saw two trains while going this way, but didn't get a picture.

Here is a three-wheeled truck that is powered by a very unique engine that makes a noise that sounds like it is saying 'tug, tug, tug'. The "tug's" come in a variety of sizes and really are a workhorse.

This is the Chinese version of an 18-wheeler.

This banner shows what an area that is under construction should look like when complete, including a Wal-Mart.

A day for the birds.

This is from on top of an exhibition hall in the middle of the park.

We were lucky enough to be there just as two men were checking on the penguins in their coop.

They have installed some new trash cans since last year. It is an improvement, but still a little chinglish.

When a place of business is having a big sale or grand-opening, they really go all out to try to attract customers.

Beautiful afternoon.

Suzanne bought a new guitar for the equal amount of $15US. She plans on taking guitar lessons.

This little boy was just outside when we were leaving to go for a walk down by the river.

DJ ran right up to him.

He was very fascinated by her too.

The corner store put these in last month.

Down by the river looking East.

This is the biggest boat we have seen on the river here.

It came just by us and then started doing all kinds of fancy moves.

This is a newer section of the boardwalk.

These are the tall apartment buildings just behind ours.

It was a great afternoon along the river.

This area is so new that the grass hasn't even grown out yet.

This lot is on the way out of our apartment area going to the main street. There was an empty building here two weeks ago. They tore it down and seperated out the metal, brick, and concrete to recycle all of it into the new building they are starting. This time next year there will probably be a 30 story apartment building here.

DJ was playing with Suzanne on the couch when she ran out of energy and decided to take a nap instead.

Once around the block.

DJ, Deb and I took Spot for a walk around the block.

This is some construction down by the river that was started last year.

This is a faux light house that was put up during the winter.

If you go back to April 8th's post from last year, you will see these apartments under construction still. Now they are all finished and people are starting to move in.

This building wasn't even started last April and is almost finished.

This is the main building to a large factory. It was already here when we arrived last year. I like the clean marriage of modern and traditional architecture.

This walk around the block was 5.5Km and towards the end, Spot was a little tired.

Forth day of the forth month of the solar calendar and Spring is coming.

DJ had a great time taking her new stroller for a ride.

DJ liked going for a walk in the park. It was her first time to walk on grass.

We went to a favorite restaurant of ours for lunch and DJ loved the noodles.

We ordered five dishes: beef noodles, boiled peanuts, beef rice, slices beef and curry potatoes with rice.

We even took Spot in the restaurant. We can take Spot into our local corner store or even some restaurants. Either people like Spot or they don't. There are other dogs and dog lovers in the city but most people don't have pets at all for various reasons.

The river is starting to thaw.

This is the park along the river. We can take Spot into restaurants but we can't take him here, unless we carry him through the park and down to the river.

This is a picture taken just outside a tire shop called V-Kool. The tire shop is at the first major corner between our apartment and Ivy. We pass by it just about every time we go to the river.

We were all tired after our long walk, even Spot.

Debora and I took DJ out again the next day to the underground and bought some new shoes for DJ that she loves and a couple pair of pants. Debora also picked up a new pair of shoes. I couldn't find any shoes for me that I liked that were in my size. I will have to keep looking.