Monday 11th of September

Just writing the date in the title reminds me of terrible memories: an ordinary day for us, the gloomiest anniversary for many.
Anyway, that wasn't what I had been thinking of when i decided to write today's post.
It's going to be pretty hard writing everyday because we're really busy with work and really tired after that.
So... Yesterday's been the first day we took the time to go and see some touristic bits. After taking 3-4 buses, we got close to a small taoist temple, which marked our first steps into a taoist building.
We had seen plenty of buddhist Datsans in Buryatia and Mongolia, but the taoist style is really quite different. And the priests we saw there had really long beard and were dressed partly like kung-fu heroes you see in movies.
The weather was grey as most days -pollution is heavy here- so I'm not sure we'll have nice photographs to post but we'll try to do so when we have time.
Then we went to the Yellow Crane Tower, "one of the 40 most interesting places in China", and it was indeed quite impressive and it's a very beautiful site. Unfortunately, we came late and only had two hours to visit it. I would advice any visitor to come around noon, bring a picnic and stay the whole afternoon there. The architecture is a delight and it's very green and pretty.
We felt quite sad when we heard that the Pass for 12 months was only available to chinese citizens. That's bad luck, the entry fee is really expensive: 50 yuan and the Pass is only 60 yuan.
I argued with the lady because they actually had the cruelty to write everything about this Magic Pass in English, forgetting to mention that it was exclusively reserved to Chinese...
Anyway.
When we got home, we noticed that our pet, Lucy the Praying Mantis, was behaving strangely, as if she was going to give birth to a second cocoon. But Now it's been a whole day since then and she's just staying close to her first cocoon and seems much more relaxed than yesterday.
we shou