Saturday, I went to the Hunan Forestry Botanical Garden with some of the other foreign teachers. The on again and off again cold weather has sort of messed up the schedule for the flowers but most of the tulips were out and some of the flowering trees. It was just enough to cause a crowd at every cherry tree that had bloomed early. We were lucky because Jason and Julianne are those photo fanatics that are willing to - lug around and actually understand how to use - the multiple lens, cases, cameras, tripod, flashes and other paraphernalia. PLUS both of them have that “eye” to take great pictures. Here is a link to their photos
http://www.flickr.com/photos/28398373@N07/ Jason’s
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ojcamel/with/5562783530/ Julianne’s
We left at 7am to ride a really crowded bus for about an hour and then a wild “Disney-like” open cart ride thru the busy streets to the entrance of the park. This time instead of the “old person” discount I usually get, we all got a “student” discount with our NUDT ID cards. I think we actually showed up (8:30am) before the place opened but they let us in to start taking our pictures. By the time we left at 1:00 the park was packed with lots of people enjoying the sunny and white day.
Side Note – Besides taking pictures of the flowers – a lot of Chinese people took pictures of the rare species of 老外; lǎowài --especially when we were eating our lunch of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
PS – Hangzhou’s West Lake is still prettier….
