By Zhang Rong
Translated by A.Z. Foreman
White clouds have gone away from the hills.
Pure breezes have paused beneath the pine.
You really want to taste grief of parting?
Scale a lone tower and watch the moon shine.
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It was a rainy Saturday, but none of us were complaining because the original forecast said sleet and hail, so a bit of rain wasn't much of a bother. The three of us who did not have robotics all day went to Gaithersburg's Lakeforest Mall for the opening of the annual Chinese New Year festival. This year's theme is Chinese Operas, which was not of great interest to Adam, but he went with us to see the dancing, photography show, and calligraphy exhibition. The mall was very crowded so we didn't do any actual shopping or eating (other than a stop in the Himalayan store, since there's nothing like that in any of the malls closer to where I live), but we walked around to see the various dragons, flowers, and lanterns decorating the mall.
Adam was itching to take photos someplace more interesting to him, so we went from the mall to Meadowside Nature Center, which has snakes, turtles, frogs, and dozens of birds outside both visiting the feeders and living in the flight cages for injured raptors. We didn't hike, since the paths are still covered with snow, but we walked around the nature center's indoor cave, which was filled with screaming children (younger son has forgotten that he used to be one of those). Then we came home for dinner, and now I'm totally distracted by part two of Pride and Prejudice with Daniel. And the Queen likes The King's Speech. So all in all, a pretty good day.
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