The first Visitor

Last Friday was the end of one of the busiest weeks at work yet, everything seemed to go terribly wrong and projects were develeoping a little bit out of order. Buth then on Friday my saviour arrived at Beijing airport: Rob will help me organise the Chinese environment sector, a task appropiate for six months, hihi!

The whole weekend was spent trying to get rid of the Jetlag, so we bought a 'Flying Pigeon' for Rob and cycled up to Hohei to watch the Chinese play on the frozen lake and the Chinese watching us not trying to fall over on the ice. After a nice, not so Chinese, hot chocolate we finshed the weekend off with a beautiful dinner in a Yunnan restaurant, which is always terribly busy and probably the only place in China where you have to wait for a table for about half an hour. As if this wasn't torturing enough when you're hungry, some Chinese see the waiting for a table as optional, squeeze past the host guy and try and find a table bythemselves. We have not seen this strategy working out particularly well in the past since if there are no tables, there aren't any tables, no matter how determined you ignore the line!

So, next week will see Rob and me encountering the joys and difficulties or rivers and forests in China, I'll keep you updated ...

Oman

Well so far I think we've been pretty regular with the blog, but we'll both make an effort in 2009 to keep it even more up-to-date.

So to bring you all in line with the Christmas break, here are selected photos and videos from our trip to Oman:











These are just a brief taste of the photographs, the rest of which (mine anyway) are on my flickr page here.







Again, just a few of the many videos I took.
If you're interested in seeing any more, they're on the youtube page, here.

In summary, Oman was beautiful and interesting with a strong cultural heritage and it also managed to be a relaxing and very enjoyable holiday with Caroline's folks.