2 June 2011: Speaking and Eating Chinese!

Greetings all,
As I wrote in the last note, I hosted a "celebration dinner" for passing an important milestone for our project.  I thought you might like to see some photos!  Since some of the people who are on the distribution for this note are work colleagues...or the spouses of work colleagues...you may recognize some of the people here!

 At this gathering, I was able to make a short speech in Chinese...and, people understood it!!  This is speech # 2 and people told me I'm making progress..always good to hear!

 Sarah speaking to the crowd  in Chinese (using some notes!)

At the dinner, we gave each person a small live house plant...a symbolic gesture (small plant today, help keep it alive and growing into a large manufacturing plant tomorrow!)  This is me with one of my Chinese colleagues!

 People grabbing for the bag with their name on it!

One of several tables of friends and colleagues here in Shenyang

 Another table of friends and colleagues here in Shenyang

 Yet, another table of Friends and colleagues here in Shenyang

 Another table of Friends and colleagues

 Yes, another table of friends and colleagues

 This is a typical Chinese toast (gan bei...or to "dry the glass" literally...meaning to drink it all!).  I am drinking watermelon juice and making the rounds toasting at each table! 

After the dinner, we were lucky to have a couple of Rod's friends visit from the US...and we took them to one of our favorite local chinese restaurants to eat dinner (no forks, spoons or English spoken here...so better get good on the chop-sticks!)

So that's about it for this update...Rod and I will go to Hong Kong next week for a much-needed vacation for a week!  I should get some good pictures and ideas of things to write about there!!

Until next time,
Sarah