Frolicking in the Park

Today we hung out with Dreamer, who was my translator until February when she had to go back to school.

She invited us, along with Mandy, Sophie, and JinNian (no English name) and her husband to go to lunch and then walk around at Ba Gong Shan, which is a cute little park/mountain/hilly area with lot's of peach and pear trees that are in bloom right now. We had lunch at a restaurant that was in the park and apparently the mayor of Huainan was also having lunch there today so they were very slow with our food because the mayor was more important. The way you order food at most family style restaurants is, instead of a menu there's a cooler on the first floor with all the dishes they serve displayed inside of it and you pick a bunch of them. While we were doing that, I got a peek inside the kitchen:

Pretty neat! And here's a dish that I thought was going to be gross but it tasted just like noodles and chicken soup broth:

After lunch we walked around the park and here are a few pictures of our adventures:

Me demonstrating how short the trees were

Me hiding in the yellow flowers

Mandy showing off the yellow flowers

Adam keepin' it cool in the peach blossoms

A somewhat smoggy view of Huainan

Oh, and I also captured two tadpoles from a little pond, which I intend to grow into frogs and then release into the pond at our apartment. I wouldn't have done it, except there were little kids there catching them by the dozens so... meh. Besides, there was trash in the pond so technically I saved them. Yay tadpoles! I think I'm going to name them Ping and Pong.

Smudgie update: The cone is off! Here's one more cute picture of him with the cone on, just before we gave him to the housekeeper for the Yellow Mountain trip:

When we picked him up from the housekeeper, the cone was off. We suspect it was probably off the entire time. But we checked his leg and it seemed to be fine so we've left it off. Perhaps he was so distracted by all the new people he forgot to lick. But anyways, we are happy he is better.

ALSO, there was a serial killer on the loose in Huainan for the last month. I only just heard about him for the first time yesterday. Apparently he was hacking young women to bits with a sword and he'd killed five. But he was caught today. :D