Dutch Girls and Pig's Feet

Today we stumbled upon a bizarre place---a beautiful park filled with interesting trees, colorful flowers, a waterfall, and also fake cows, giant wooden shoes and plastic tulips.  Peter did not understand our question about that, so we don't have an explanation.

We rode a cable car up to the top of Baiyun Mountain and hiked down.  The park was fresh and cool.  There are sweet-smelling tea olives blooming here now, and many other familiar plants (camellias, azaleas, etc)...In fact, China is where most of the Charlestonians got their flowering plants 300 years ago.  The Chinese refer to their parks as the "lungs" of the city, and they are indeed a place to go breathe deeply.  Groups of people gather for morning exercises (see photo of ladies dancing with fans), Tai Chi, dancing or playing badminton, and ping pong.

At the top of Baiyun is "Asia's largest birdhouse", a walk-through aviary filled with birds both strange (large cranes from northeast China) as well as familiar (peacocks, and I'm pretty sure I saw gulls, too).

Halfway down is a Buddhist temple where once upon a time, the younger "vegetarian" monks supposedly longed for meat so much that they secretly cooked up some pig's feet.  They almost got caught, threw them out the window and retrieved them the next day, only to find out that they tasted better having been washed by the cool mountain spring.  So that is how boiled pig's feet have become the traditional "snack" on Baiyun Mountain.  Mark, Faya, and Nathan all had a taste.  I worked on keeping my breakfast down while photographing for your viewing pleasure.

Yesterday, we found one of two incredible parks within walking distance from our hotel.  More fresh, green paths through the cool woods smelling of tea olives!  We are a long way from the smog of Beijing.  Further into the park, we came across the very festive decorations going up for the New Year. Huge decorations---everything here is done on a grand scale---giant red and gold dragons, lanterns everywhere.  Quite spectacular!

Lily is doing better each day, even tolerating the menfolk somewhat.  Great little eater.  Mark called her Chew Mei (Her name is pronounced She-oo May).  The only thing she has turned down is rice, which I find hilarious.  Don't tell the adoption authorities, but I gave her cold milk and she liked it just fine.  Thankfully she accepted the stroller today, so the circulation is returning to my arms.  She didn't like the cranes and peacocks at all and I don't blame her.  They seemed big enough to swallow her whole.

We have been waiting on blood test results (all is good) and now we wait for our US consulate appointment on Wednesday morning.  We have a good bit of free time until then, so we'll do more sightseeing, and then resting during the afternoons.  In the evenings after supper, Lily enjoys bath time and snuggling.  Last night, we listened to toddler sing-a-longs on my iPad, except we changed the lyrics to "Old MacDonald Had a Farm. ("And on this farm, he ate a                ...").

Baba and Little One

 Morning exercise in the park

View of Temple from Cable Car:

Big Chinese Crane

Who looks stranger?!

 Boiled Pig's Feet...

This little prawn went to the market, this little prawn stayed home...