Ocean Park Xiaomeisha

Friday, yesterday, the school went to Ocean Park in Xiaomeisha. It's like a mini-Sea World. This was a fun day, even though it rained the entire day. I was also exhausted by the end of it. The best part was a stroke of accidental brilliance. Accidental brilliance is when something happens, by accident, that other people would think you did on purpose and think you are brilliant for doing it.

The day started with everyone meeting at the kindergarten as normal. We had been told that if it was raining, we would go next week. Well, it was raining. We, the foreign teachers, did not want to teach and we were praying we'd still go. Luckily, the school decided to go anyways.

The school hired coach buses instead of opting to take the school buses, thank goodness. There was every parent or grandparent for each of my students except one boy, Simon. Simon is probably the smartest student but also is the cause of most the problems in the classroom. Since his parents had to work, he was my responsibility for the day.

We loaded up the bus and headed out in the rain. I was surprised to find it was only about 30 minutes away. We got there, took a big group picture in the front (I don't have a copy yet, I'll get one soon) and made our way in.

The first thing we saw was the polar bear. While I was looking forward to this, it just made me sad. It was poorly taken care of and in horrible conditions. It was in a box the half the size of the bus we were just in. There was nowhere large enough for it to swim and nothing for it to do, just a flat bottom. The polar bear was just walking back and forth, you could tell it wasn't happy and it needed more room to move around and feel comfortable. I like to think that it's only in that area for an hour or two a day for show and there's another place they keep it that's better suited for a polar bear.

Anyways, after that we made our way to the main stage area, where they have the big tank for the show. We sat here for about 45 minutes while the kids ate their snacks and shared. Evidently, on field trips, the kids don't get actual lunches but whatever they can pack in to a bag. Usually this consists of little cakes and candies and maybe some fruit. I ate some interesting Chinese things that some parents brought so overall I had 4 chicken wings, about 30 roma tomatoes, 3 swiss cake rolls, 8 sheets of seaweed, 1 cheese muffin, 4 dumplings, 2 hard boiled eggs and a box of soy milk, by far my least healthy lunch so far.

When the show started, it began with some synchronized swimmers which were interesting enough because they kept their show highly energetic and short. Then some special divers came out. They were more interesting but didn't do anything too grand. The best part of the show were the clown divers. I got a video of a minute of what they were doing but they were very entertaining, Sea World should steal their idea. I'm disappointed I missed filming their first minute because it was great.

After the clowns, they brought out the seals, then the sea lions, followed by the dolphins. Here some of the stuff was interesting but the only really good part was seeing how high the dolphins could leap out of the water, incredible. You can see in the pictures how high they're getting, at least 25 feet it seemed.

After the show, we made our way through the little aquarium they had and eventually over to a ride for younger kids. The ride took about 20 minutes and was very slow and not interesting. One of the kids fell asleep during the ride. I took a picture of her, Iris, because she's just too cute.

We walked around the park for about an hour then got back on the bus and headed back to the school. I tried to sleep on the bus but my entire class began singing English songs and pointing out everything that it's raining on, including each individual car and tree. I guess I should be happy that the parents were so happy the kids were using English and enjoying it but I really just wanted a nap. We got back to the school and we were allowed to go home early. It was a great Friday.