2008-02-05:

Some good news:

- The shower is again working

- The washing machine is again working

- I won my last game in the go-school before vacation period

The weather change seems to be stable, sunshine, no snow anymore, temperature around +2 - +5 Celsius.
On Sunday evening, after go-school all teachers and some invited guests, eg the president of the go-federation of the Hubei-province had a big dinner. Yesterday evening again big dinner, this time within An Yan's family. The go-school is now closed for the upcoming spring festival. Instead of playing in the go-school I am going to play the next 10 days against An Yan.

The following part is dedicated to Ludmila:

Food is important in China and for Chinese. As I have already described so-called hotel-restaurants are quite common. You can book a big room that - despite table - also has a second part where you have arm chairs and a TV. On Sunday we were 19 people and had such a big room. According to my opinion quite luxurious, waitresses well educated.

It seems to me that a lot of people bring their own drinks, rice wine or soft drinks. Tea is served. So, we had some soft drinks, three bottles of rice wine and two bottles of red wine.

I was told that the women usually drink soft drinks or red wine, the men rice wine (sometimes red wine). At the end of a dinner or lunch usually and only men smoke. Important are the toasts, they can be done individually, meaning from one person to another person or within the entire group. Very important: if glasses touch each other you need to drink all, meaning bottom up. That means that especially at the beginning men pay attention that their glasses do not touch. Food is put on a rotating table. We had different kind of vegetables, different kind of meat, different kind of fish, two soups, duck etc etc and different kind of desert. Yammi!

The following pictures are a selection of what was served, please enjoy: