West Lake with Westlake

After a late night of Risk, one of the other foreign teachers, Danny, stayed over in our second apartment.  Since he lives on campus, he hadn't been to West Lake very much so we showed him around.  The ironic part is that he has been here 9 months, and his last name is "Westlake!"   We raised Jack's bicycle seat so that he would have something to ride.  Sue and Sophie were on one bicycle, Danny on the second one, Peter on the third one, and Jack and I on the fourth.  Jack is getting HEAVY to pedal up the hills!

 

We went south off the Guo Villa and climbed into a boat for a nice row and verbal tour around some small arms of the lake.  The driver served us some green tea and provided umbrellas for the sun which was starting to get warm.


Danny and Sue being silly in the boat.  We're going to send it to Danny's girlfriend in America.


Sophie is famous for changing her moods very quickly.  She can turn her sad face into a happy face in about .0000003 seconds.  Proof below:


Peter allowed her to sit on his lap for awhile and enjoy the view...

It was starting to get bright out, so Sue lent Sophie her sunglasses.


Jack, hanging out, enjoying himself on the boat.


We spotted these guys dredging up some dirt from the bottom to create this little island.  We're not sure if they were raising these plants as crops or what - so many mysteries in China!


We stopped at the Su Causeway and fed the fish - a West Lake must!


It's rare we get a picture of the 5 of us together - I don't often bring my tripod around and there are usually too many people to use a tripod anyway.  Thanks, Danny!

Here he is, being goofy for the camera.


Jack, Danny and Peter LOVE playing Warcraft III together.  They have a warcraft language all of their own.  "Does the Skull King bounce his spells off of the building onto the Acolytes?  I don't know, but we need to do a Star Fall!"


We stopped at one of our "haunts" at West Lake, Le Varza, and we have befriended this woman, who is also from Wuhan, the same city from where we adopted Sophie.  This woman also has a 4 year old daughter, so she always entertains Sophie while we eat, and even takes her to the bathroom!  Sophie loves her and calls her "ayi" or "auntie". 

Today we had a small accident on the bike.  Sophie turned her foot so that it went into the spokes of the back wheel, while she was on her bike seat, during our ride to West Lake!  It was really caught in there and we were afraid it was broken!  We carried her around today and checked for swelling, but luckily there was none.  She is now missing some skin on her foot but once she saw something that interested her she ran off to investigate and we breathed a big sigh of relief!