ABB Dinner and Spring is here!

Last weekend we had the annual dinner for ABB maintenance Rizhao at Hua Mei Hotel. Family members were invited, and all in all we were about 70 people! 

We were welcomed as usual to the Hotel...

The dinner was opened with a few words of my husband (site manager for ABB here in Rizhao) and some sparkling wine.

A lot of food, both beautiful and tasty, and some food less so. As always with these official Chinese dinners: they serve what is considered 'fine' and 'good' and that is not always the most tasty food. This time however we had no bugs or sea cucumber, and even the Chicken feet were quite nice...

Oysters and scallops are always nice!

After the food it was time for entertainment! Sam told me that many at work had been practicing for several days before the dinner on their performances after work! And as they absolutely love to both look at performances and be on the stage, we had 10 performances to enjoy! Here you can se one group doing the Gangnam style in the ABB-rizhao style ;-) we also got some old fashioned Chinese opera (spoken though), poems, songs, sketches, more dances and of course the lottery!

Sam and Tony were the last to perform, and they sang and played for us. After that it was time for drinking: everybody goes around and cheers with all the tables. And as the cheers always are done in 'gambei' -style (bottom up), the party always comes to and end quite fast after this stage. Usually Sam's Chinese co-workers are very keen on singing karaoke, but we only had to listen to a few this time. Everybody seemed to have a very good time, so it was a successful evening!

And then something else: Spring has arrived in Rizhao! Last week we still had a few evenings when we had just around zero on the meter, but now we had had three days of +15 degrees. And yesterday I saw the first butterfly of this spring on the move!

 
At home I have been painting:

Here is my easel with my works in progress. I usually work like this with many paintings at the same time. As I build up my paintings with many layers, they always have to have time to dry in between. 

And a close up from two of them. There will come a blue-tit on the left, and on the right you can see the first stage of a great-tit.