On Friday, the family packed up and we headed to a new water park in town. Water parks are a relatively new deal in China. As a matter of fact, most of our Chinese friends don't know how to swim. With their growing popularity, I thought I put together several things that I love about Chinese water parks.
1. They have amazing play areas for the smaller kids. This area had a huge pirate ships, twisty slides, water guns, and tons of things to climb on. I love this because they are too short to ride the bigger slides, but they don't feel like they are missing out because there are some legit slides in the kid area. This one above was three levels, with big slides running down both sides.
2. Most of the women have real bathing suits on. They are modest, cute, and comfortable. I love Chinese swim suits. They look like you would actually be able to swim and go down a water slide without flashing your goods to the lifeguards.
3. The kids on the other hand are wearing a different type of bathing suit. For being a modest culture, it cracks me up how naked kids get. Just last weekend, we saw a group of 8-9 year old boys changing their suits out by the pool. Nobody cares, nobody panics.
5. There are very few lines for these big slides. People will climb the 85 sets of stairs to get to the top, but just watch others go down because it looks so frightening to them. This afforded our kids to get to go down each slide dozens of times.
6. In the background, you can see a large covered area. This is the smaller kids' area. It's totally covered. Chinese are deathly afraid of tanning. With this area covered, it kept us fresh and relatively not sunburned by the end of the day.
7. The snack bars include things like: rice and cabbage bowls, beef noodles, and sticks of grilled lamb.
8. If you've known me for 2.3 seconds, you will know about this. I fear the water. Take that back, I fear my children and their relationship with the water. This place had life vests for the public to use! I almost kissed their feet.
9. Rules are simply suggestions. Charis was too short for the big rides, but when we first got there, the lifeguards didn't care and let her go anyway. They let me bring in tons of snacks.
10. It was small enough that we could all hang out together, but the older ones could go off from time to time without me feeling like I was letting them loose.
We had such a great time together. With the kids getting older, these types of outings are getting more and more fun. We all commented that this was one of our best family outings so far. Blessed.
