5 star send off

For our last dinner together in Bayuquan Judy and I went to the Gang Feng, which is the town's only 5 star hotel. It has 3 restaurants: a revolving one on the 22nd floor, a Japanese one and a Western one. The Western restaurant was totally empty and the staff had to turn the lights on. They didn't have any white wine, so I drank Blue Mountain coffee and water and Judy also had water. She had a bowl of noodles she wasn't very satisfied with and I had some soup and a cheese and vegetable sandwich with French fries. They delivered the main course with the starter, so my main was cold and patently not the superior looking species as featured in the photograph in the menu but... it was actually ok taste-wise and I liked the gentleman's toilets, which I thought were really well done. Possibly in my top twenty. The nicest lavatories I've ever been in were in Simpsons but it closed down and was sold to Waterstone's some years ago.

Also, it snowed heavily on that night and the town looked much the better for it.

Judy and I don't discuss politics that often but we did this evening and Judy said Chairman Mao was a great man.

Overall, I think my visit was a success. I haven't much experience teaching middle school and senior high and it wasn't as terrible as I feared, though I was blessed by having several good students. So it seems I might return in the summer. My fee will be 250 RMB per hour but I will have to cover my own expenses, so I need to work for about half a month or a little more to make it worthwhile.