Out to the Park

Yesterday we didn't have any appointments or tours scheduled; we had the day to ourselves. We weren't very adventurous. We enjoyed the huge breakfast buffet, like every morning, then hung out at the hotel most of the morning.

We explored the "grounds", checking out both of the swimming pools (both outdoor). We weren't ready to swim so we just had a look. We let Dong En splash her hands in both pools. (Although the air temperature was pleasant, about 75 degrees F maybe, the water temperature was not inviting. Benjamin still really wants to swim, though.) Dong En smiled and giggled when she was splashing in the pool with her hands. I said a Cantonese word for pool; she looked interested but didn't seem to know what I meant. I may have had the wrong word, but more likely she has not been to a pool before. I said "one can swim … " in Cantonese and she seemed to get that. Fortunately, she didn't jump in with her clothes on.

In the afternoon, we struck out into the neighborhood in search of a new place to eat and a park we had heard about. We found the park, as you can see in the photos in the last post. It had a smaller two-slide platform, a see-saw, and some monkey bars. There was lots of other equipment that turned out to be exercise equipment for adults (just like many American cities are putting along public paths to promote exercise), like leg exercisers, exer-cycle-like things, bars for pull-ups, sit-ups, etc. The difference is that here a few adults were actually using the stuff. I've heard that early in the morning large numbers of people go to parks to exercise: Tai Chi, stretches, calisthenics, etc., whether there is equipment or not.

For lunch, we ended up at one of the restaurants we'd already been to, Lucy's, a casual bar and grill place with outdoor seating next to a different riverside park. They have Western and local foods, and they always play American soft-pop hits from the 40's, 50's, 60's, 70's, 80's and 90's.

We returned to the hotel to put Dong En down for a nap. (The schedule from the orphanage and/or foster family said she takes and afternoon nap and then has a snack.) We closed the drapes, read a little book and we all lay down. She was sitting up in the bed and still kind of playing. I looked up "nap" on an on-line Cantonese dictionary. It came up with 3 different expressions. I tried to utter them all. A look of understanding came over her face, it seemed, and she lay down with us. We all fell asleep eventually, except Rebecca.

We just hung around the hotel for the rest of the day and evening.

Hopefully in the next post we can put up more photos.