Day 6: White Pagoda Park

This morning we took a cable car up the mountains that surround Lanzhou to the top to visit the White Pagoda. It was built in the Qing Dynasty as a treaty between the Qing emperor and the Tibetan leaders.

The mountains that surround Lanzhou are naturally bare, no vegetation, just mountains of dirt. When sand storms blow through here from the Gobi Desert to the north it is just brutal. So in a masterful plan, the government starting planting trees in the mountains in the 1970's and bringing water up into the mountains from the Yellow River to water them. The rainfall here is very low so the trees are watered every day with a sprinkler system that pipes the river water. You can see from the pictures how lush the mountains look now and there are birds singing in all the trees. The climb back down the mountain was very pleasant because of the shade. Just amazing.

We saw 3 car accidents happen in front of us on the way back to the hotel. One was the bus right in front of us slamming a car. Our driver slammed on the breaks and sent Brent with Amy in his lap into the front of the van. Amy was ok but cried because she was scared. I think Brent will have some nice bruises on his shins.

After her nap, Amy was a charming little sprite for the rest of the day. I finally got to see that bubbly personality I had heard she had but hadn't gotten to experience yet. She charmed us all afternoon and evening by singing and laughing and playing with us. We taught her “high five” and she says "momma daddy" now and she says “fee fee” instead of “pee pee” but that's close enough. We did buy some diapers and put her in them instead after 2 poop accidents today. All the babies and toddlers here wear split pants. I can't get over all the little bottoms hanging out every where I go! I didn't want Amy playing on the slide at KFC. ;-) I don't really like the high chairs either for the same reason!

Our dinner spot is KFC. 2 nights ago we offered Amy ice cream she hated it and made faces. It's only took 2 nights for her to go from hating ice cream to loving it! She has been eating our cones, she likes them but she doesn't want any ice cream on it so we have to clean if off really good. Tonight, Brent ordered one for me and one for him. She wanted some of mine and took a few licks, then she just took the whole cone from me and ate the whole thing! She kept laughing and shivering because she was so cold from eating it, but it didn't stop her. :-)

Instead of saying “momma momma” all day she started saying “Xie Xie (shey shey) momma” which means “thank you momma” don't know why but it's cute. Towards the end of the day she'd say “xie xie daddy” and even “xie xie Amy”. First night she went to sleep without crying herself to sleep, she actually sang herself to sleep. So thankful, I hope we've turned a corner.