Good morning Xiamen! I had a wonderful night! Okay, I cheated a bit as I took Melatonin to get rid of the jetlag by avoiding getting awake during the night. I woke up at what I thought was 07:30, time enough for a nice shower and to prepare relaxed. Half an hour later I watched my watch and saw 09:00. Help, still get to find some breakfast and we should meet at 09:30. I turned out that my cellphone screwed up by changing from summertime to wintertime, which is not done in China. Finally, I made it to meet in the lobby at 09:30. Today is a special day, it was Megan her birthday!

We met our two missing team members Vani and Shrikant! The planned activity for the day is a visit to ‘Gu Lang Yu’, an island in front Xiamen. We took the ferry to get there and walked around till lunchtime. Most people preferred to go for a beer and lunch, five of us went further to visit a monastery and climb to a small summit for a wonderful 360 degree view of the island. On our way back we stopped in some kind of tea house. Three different traditional green teas were served (all oolong tea).

Before dinner we had time for a short stop in the hotel. I still had to get rid of the wrinkles in my suit. Having nothing to iron I had to use the shower trick. So I turned on the hot water and when the shower was filled with steam I hung op my suite. It’s a pretty cool trick which you might need to do two or three times, but it works.

#ibmcsc china

The China 22 team

In the evening DOT.org organized our team dinner, a hot pot. I can tell you … it was hot! Our community services representative from the Beijing office joined the dinner. As a nice closure of the evening Megan and Mukund were surprised with a nice birthday cake. As mentioned, Megan celebrated her birthday today and Mukund yesterday. The cake was cut into pieces and shared among the entire team. Great evening! Think they both will have good memories to this special birthday for the rest of their lives.

Let me introduce the rest of our team:

Vani (US)

Sabari (Sweden)

Shrikant (India)

Just to make it complete: myself from Belgium

Taking the ferry to Gu Lang Island

Gu Lang Yu

Trying to getting around

Gu Lang Yu is a famous place in China to make wedding photos

Temple

Temple

Monks

Crowded Ferry

Boy on the Ferry

Team Dinner with Hot Pot

Happy Birthday Mukund and Megan

Happy Birthday Mukund and Megan