Water park

Okay, I love how my last post was about how Shenyang's kind of crappy. And today it's just the opposite. Shenyang's awesome!!! Well, at least the water park is pretty much awesome.
The water park is about an hour away from downtown where we live, but luckily we live in a place where public transportation is ready and available. We just walk 5-10 minutes and hop on the Lei Feng Bus Line, and it takes us directly there. Why is it the Lei Feng Bus, you might ask. Well, good question; thanks for asking! Lei Feng was a communist soldier in the crazy 1960's, and after he died, his diary (or "diary" if you will) became a great piece of propaganda to propel Mao back into positive public sentiment. Lei Feng was real. All his boy-scout heroics may or may not have been. Same for his ardent fervor in praise of Chairman Mao.
But anyway... he died in Fuxun, which is just outside Shenyang-- past the water park. So we took the Lei Feng Bus Line, and the whole way there, we were treated to a movie playing a dramatization of Lei Feng's life, and a military awards ceremony in his honor. I felt very patriotic afterwards. Sort of.
Anyway. The Hawaii Water Park is pretty much the awesomest ever! It's all indoor, and they have a wave pool with real sand on the beach. There's a fountain and a splash park for kids, which is where we spent most of our time. One of my friends watched Meimei for a second while I went down one of the large slides. It was AMAZING! It was terrifying and invigorating... and then terrifying again. Right at the second I'm saying, "Wheee!" the little voice in my head is saying, "This ride was made in China with Chinese safety standards and maintenance." Apparently this made for a great face as I came down. If I get a copy, I'll post it.
Naomi slept on the Lei Feng Bus, which meant she was happy for the next few hours at the park-- while I held her the entire time, of course. Eventually she ate and then slept again on the sandy beach. So while I was scared I'd have to leave a couple hours after we got there to take my cranky kids back home, they held up just fine. It was awesome!
One cringe-worthy part: the hula show. I've seen some hula dancing before, and this was not it. Hula is beautiful. There is storytelling, beauty, and swaying hips. This one just had hip waggling, arm waving, and finger wiggling. It was pretty bad. But you can't expect good hula dancing in Middle-of-Nowhere, Northeast China. So it was okay. I tried not to visibly cringe.
The unsettling part was afterwards. Some girls came on the stage, like fashion models. They wore their bikinis and high heels. They stood on stage for about 60 seconds, then left. Half were Chinese, half looked Russian or something. I thought it was really strange and out-of-the-blue. But weird stuff happens in China. I'm usually used to it.
I talked to Kevin about the water park and how we HAVE to go back sometime. I also told him about the bikini models. That was weird, he agreed. Why would you have foreign models on staff if their only job was to go on stage for 60 seconds a day and then leave? Is that really their only job? Hmmmm..... ew! Ew ew ew! At the water park?!? And that was just an advertisement! How wrong is that!
I'm suddenly a little less enthusiastic about the water park.