Exploring

We had a fun few days exploring the area. We went to the boring butterfly park and even more boring seashell museum at the beautiful Yalong Bay. But we also ventured out more than an hour away by car (with a driver) to Monkey Island which was very cool! It was a beautiful spot, accessible by aerial tram.

The drive was on a paved highway most of the way with cows and water buffalo on either side, and once on the dirt road the cows basically just were walking wherever they wanted to. Lots of mango tree groves and betel nut tree groves. There are more than 2,000 monkeys roaming around monkey island and for visitors there are shows set up sort of like at Sea World. Oscar and Josie, the monkey lovers, were really happy but sort of scared once the monkeys got close. That was Fathers Day.

Today was huge rain off and on, with thunder and tremendous downpours for only about 5-20 minutes at a time. But the air was nice and cool as a result!

We hired a nanny/teacher for the kids, but in what seemingly is an epidemic around here, she decided she has a huge "problem" in her home town to which she must attend for the next 4 weeks. So we interview a new one tomorrow. If we can get a few hours of help on weekday mornings it would allow me to do Niko work during the day rather than every night, and Mike has to do work too, plus we have to study. On the other hand, come August we'll be doing some traveling and my mom and Chuck will visit, so its only about 6 weeks between now and then. If it works, it works, if not, then not.