2008-01-02：
Yesterday I had the opportunity to celebrate New Year in China. Actually, the "European" New Year is not so important here in China; also X-mas. Nevertheless, the people like to celebrate, and why not to take the opportunity?
In the morning I solved problems, not yet knowing what is waiting for me. I only knew that An Yan is picking me up for lunch. Suddenly I realize that we pick up all the people with whom I had dinner at the weekend. We go to another "hotel-restaurant" and have BIG lunch.
I live in Moscow and somehow people have the opinion that I (can) drink a lot - maybe due to worldwide famous russian drinking habits. Yesterday they really tried hard, but without success; in contrary to my Chinese friends...
After lunch we went to the apartment of one of An Yan's friends. The men played cards, the women enjoyed tea and a chat. Luckily I had a go book with me, I solved LD- and tesuji-problems. In the evening - you may guess - we went to another restaurant. Again a lot of food and alcohol. I slowly start to wonder how come that most of the Chinese are slim though they LOVE food.

I feel very well integrated, it is alomost like a "family". It is really nice. The communication is a little bit complicated, but it works. At lunch there was also a person speaking English; they placed this person immediately next to me, kind gesture.
Here is maybe a further explanation needed if I say "family": To avoid any misunderstanding, I as a ordinary go-student - like all other foreign students - paid money, for the lessons, for accomodation etc. It is normal business. But you can do business in different ways. An Yan's style seems to me kind, warm; he really takes care. This is my point that he tries to treat his students in a nice home sort of way, they are from different countries but they feel comfortable in China far away from their homes. I personally like his attitude.

My name is Markus, this creates some problems here in China. Chinese is built on syllables, but there are no Chinese syllables matching my name in a European way: "Mar" and "kus".
A problem? No:
We take the syllables (in a spoken way) "ma", "k" and "s".
That means that the European "Markus" has been transformed to a Chinese "Maks". It really sounds cute.
Another example? Lets take the German city "Frankfurt". Again there are no Chinese syllables that match the German city: Frankfurt becomes in Chinese "Fran" + "kfu" (say: Falankefu).

In the evening I was quite tired, lets assume from solving of more than 200 problems; but I still had enough energy to learn a little bit Chinese before going to bed.

Happy New Year!