Martyrs Park

Today while the Harbours were touring with our facilitator Anna, we caught a taxi to a very large park nearby, Martyrs Park. I can't begin to tell you what all it has there, it is huge! There is an amusement park, a very large man made lake with power and pedal boats for rent, some amazing gardens, food vendors, fishing etc. We spent about two hours just walking and strolling. We drew a crowd most everywhere we went. Of course we were in trouble with some folks because in China many residences don't have heat. Children are always over dressed, to a western way of thinking, in many many layers of clothing. We had the girls in jeans and t-shirts...............did I mention it was 80 degrees and 93.8 pct humidity???? :-) The school children flooded the park about noon. It seemed like many classes were on field trips. They were incredible. They all start learning English in grade school and the bolder ones were eager to try to talk to us. We made a donation to a school group that were collecting money for the needy. There were about 10 groups from the same school and every group came and sought us out. We had to decline donating to everyone of them but it was nice to chat with them. A most amazing thing happened when we were leaving the park. We were trying to catch a cab without a lot of success. Many of them were waiting for fares that had called for them. Just as we were hooking up with a cab, a young school boy of 10 or so along with a group of his friends came up to me and said " sir is there anything I can help you with?" I told him we had just managed to get a cab. The then asked me if we were from the U.S., shook my hand and said "welcome to China sir!" Awesome!!! I had promised the girls ice cream if they were good on the excursion so when we got back to the hotel we went next door to a little market and bought 4 ice cream bars for $1.10!