One Saturday, about a month ago, Xander and Zekey decided that they wanted to go sailing. More specifically, they wanted to launch a boat that they (well, mostly Xander) had made. One of their ongoing projects this spring has been the making and testing of various kinds of Lego and styrofoam watercraft in the big red plastic washbasin in our bathroom, but it seemed like they were ready to move on to bigger and better.
So the four of us (Ysa included) trooped across campus to the "fake mountain place", as it's known in our household. One typical feature of Chinese universities that I've neglected to describe up to this point is the artificial landscaped garden, usually featuring pavilions and a pond of some sort with some craggy rocks (natural or otherwise) in the middle, surrounded by groves of bamboo.
As you can imagine, three blonde children walking across campus taking turns carrying a chunk of cardboard and styrofoam almost as big as they are isn't exactly a common sight in most Chinese universities, so by the time we got to the pond, we had a small crowd of onlookers ready to witness the launch. Xander proved to be a fine MC.
After the launch, there was the small matter of getting the boat back to shore, which was soon solved with the help of some of the aforementioned bamboo. The boys, and a young onlooker or two, started poling and prodding the boat around the vast wide ocean (or small stagnant pond, depending on your point of view). I left with Ysa to go to a nearby ATM, and when I got back, the number of boats in the lake had magically doubled!
The adventure continued through the morning, until a combination of distraction and soggy cardboard brought our small fleet into drydock. A fine seaside morning in our landlocked little campus.
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