A few weeks ago, the weather really started turning around here in Chongqing. It had been cold and rainy, overcast all day. Not that I was complaining; the Oregonian in me wasn't at all upset with the wet gray blanket that Chongqing had turned into.
That said, when I saw my first blue sky here in the 'Foggy City' (we all know it's the really the 'Smoggy City', c'mon), I couldn't help but smile and want to take advantage of the wonderful weather. In this spirit, our little gang decided we needed to do some sort of outdoor activity. At a suggestion from our student/friend Jerry, we settled on the South Mountain Botanical Gardens which was just outside the city. It didn't hurt that he knew exactly where it was, offered to drive us, and buy us all dinner, either. Don't think for a second that we were using him; we really like Jerry, but this was also the first time we had had an activity with one of our students outside of class, so I was interested to see how that dynamic would go.
Anyway, apparently, all of Chongqing also decided that this was the perfect time to go to the gardens because it took us something like two hours to get there with all of the traffic. I've already complained about the traffic here, so I'll try not to get into it too much. But we were on a mountain people! Outside the city! And it was bumper to bumper. Anyway, it was definitely not supposed to be that long of a drive but I'd say that it was eventually worth it to get outside of the city in the sunshine and nature. Nature is certainly something that I'm missing with living in such a big city. Even their parks lack real open space and grass to lay in and the massive buildings block out direct sunlight unless you get there exactly at noon.
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| This is South Mountain |
