As I imagined, spring is beautiful here in China, especially at Chaoyang Park. I enjoyed even the little meager introduction to spring with small amounts of leaves growing on bushes and trees. And I quickly learned how the rivers, after months of collecting debris and leaves from fall and winter, got cleaned.
And then within a few weeks, we had loads of flowers on the ground and trees to enjoy.
I couldn't help but capture these cute kids loving the flowers and walking and running through them!
The kites and kite fliers are out, as well as the flower blossoms. It's wonderful! Every Saturday and Sunday, everyone is out enjoying the good air and the breeze that carries their kite away. Those perfect weather days are not to be taken for granted here! Since January, we've had a number of high pollution days (over 150 where an N99 should be worn if you go out), particularly a few days of 2000+ because of dust storms from the Gobi Desert. On these days, people usually just hunker down and do things indoors. Not ideal for people like me that like to get out and exercise and get fresh air. 
On this particular day, being the middle of the week, there was only one kit flier, and it was awesome! An octopus or squid of some sort, dominating the sky and making me feel small. It seemed so real with its movements in the air mimicking what it's movements in water would be. So fun to watch!
A good air day where we could see these buildings pretty clearly.
The kites and kite fliers are out, as well as the flower blossoms. It's wonderful! Every Saturday and Sunday, everyone is out enjoying the good air and the breeze that carries their kite away. Those perfect weather days are not to be taken for granted here! Since January, we've had a number of high pollution days (over 150 where an N99 should be worn if you go out), particularly a few days of 2000+ because of dust storms from the Gobi Desert. On these days, people usually just hunker down and do things indoors. Not ideal for people like me that like to get out and exercise and get fresh air.
During Bri's language training, he's been getting out of language class at 11:30am on
Thursdays. Usually he'll go to the embassy and study after he gets lunch, but he chose to come home on this particular day for lunch. After we ate, we took a nice decompressing, stress-free, romantic little walk through Chaoyang Park to see the spring flowers before they totally
went away. I got to show Bri all of my favorite areas of flowers as we enjoyed our relaxing walk. We went to my favorite forest
and fields where purple flowers covered the ground, and got to see some
"snow" on the ground after some wind blew many of the blossoms down. Stunning.
The flowers were soooo fragrant too! My first time walking by them a few weeks ago, I had my N99 mask on due to the bad pollution, so I walked through half my route before I decided to take a break from it, and all of the sudden, I was smelling flowers! I had forgotten that the flowers could smell so good just walking by them from a distance. I've kept my mask off since!
The flowers were soooo fragrant too! My first time walking by them a few weeks ago, I had my N99 mask on due to the bad pollution, so I walked through half my route before I decided to take a break from it, and all of the sudden, I was smelling flowers! I had forgotten that the flowers could smell so good just walking by them from a distance. I've kept my mask off since!
On this particular day, being the middle of the week, there was only one kit flier, and it was awesome! An octopus or squid of some sort, dominating the sky and making me feel small. It seemed so real with its movements in the air mimicking what it's movements in water would be. So fun to watch!
A few days after my walk with Bri, on a Sunday afternoon, Rhea and I took a walk over to
Chaoyang Park with the intention of taking pictures in the flowers I had taken Bri to see. I never tire of capturing her sweet smile on camera. Rhea appreciates the flowers and outdoors as
much as I do, so when I suggested going to the park for pictures, she of course
had to put her floral print dress on and agree with the idea! We had a great time deciding where and how to pose, until unfortunately, her bladder wouldn't let her
relax on the last portion of our picture taking, so we had to quickly get
home. We couldn't find any open
bathrooms on our path home, but luckily we made it back without incident. ;) We love our ray of sunshine!
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