The Qianling Park Debacle

Our school bosses had an idea that perhaps sounds good in theory: have
the Saturday morning classes in Qianling Park- this is the park I have
been to a couple times that has monkeys. It was really meant to be
promotional more than anything, the idea being that random passersby
would see us and sign up their children for our school.

So I racked my brain for ideas to do outdoors and prepared materials-
including making trail mix and going to the small zoo at the park. It
rains a lot in Guiyang, so the weather was touchy from the start. I
woke up early on Saturday to check out the weather, and it looked
quite rainy. I thought it would definitely be canceled, but then Matt
told me that it wasn't so we all headed to the park.

We met up with our kids. About half of my class showed, and I decided
to take them to the zoo. The ground was wet so I didn't want to sit on
the floor anyways. We walked the 15 minute walk to the zoo, stopping
along the way as I asked questions about animals we spotted. My
personal advice would be to avoid zoos in China- they tend to be sad
with small cages, and immediately all my kids complained about the
smell.

They were pretty good sports, I have to say. But then it began to rain
quite heavily. We hid under an umbrella- we only had about 3 umbrellas
between us, by the way- and walked around a bit more. By this time we
were all completely soaked, basically, and then we headed back.

By the time my class had returned to the entrance of the park,
everyone else had left. We made sure that my kids were all on their
way home, and got a ride back to school with my student. Of course,
the traffic was terrible so I arrived 20 minutes late, quickly changed
(the other guys taught in their wet clothes), and ran to teach my next
class. I still made trail mix with them indoors.

So it's been a crazy weekend. And I'm pretty exhausted.