Christmas decorations at Linyi’s TaoRanJu Hotel
Christmas in a small Chinese city is pretty quiet, as you can imagine. We worked as usual. Actually, the DH has been working everyday for a month now. At the moment he is doing a pretty good job of being a one-man flight school since the other flight instructors are all on holidays. The thing about pilots is that if they are flying, they’ll put with anything… 
A flying pilot is a happy pilot.
On Christmas day one of our students invited us for dinner. I have been giving English lessons to this student for a couple of weeks now and even though I’m not big on English teaching, I have enjoyed our classes. He is a former Chinese military pilot and I have found that students who come from the military have relatively low levels of English. This student may not be very strong in English, but he tries really hard and is an active participant in our class, which is not always the case with all students. He has interesting stories from his military days and I like learning more about what military life is like in China. Yesterday he and another ex-military pilot told me about their mandatory parachuting practice and we had some laughs about being pushed out of airplanes.
On Boxing Day (the 26th) the DH and I decided to visit the TaoRanJu Hotel (one of Linyi’s nicest hotels and foreign businessman-central) to eat some Western food. The hotel is done up for Christmas, as are many businesses in Linyi.
TaoRanJu Hotel – Linyi’s Finest
And in other good news, our apartment is no longer an ice locker. The central heating, through radiators, is now on (although not all day) and it is possible to walk outside of our bedroom without a parka and thermal underwear.
GG & the DH enjoying the holidays
We hope your holidays are going well, too!
