We went to the Gorge Sunday night with Jarred and Ting-Ting, Jon's fellow grad students at the Ag Building. Being with Ting-Ting gave me the opportunity to see my native language in a new light. She said things like "I am allergic to handsome men." We all had a good laugh, and Jarred told her now that she knows what it means, she can still say it, but as a joke. I wonder how the Chinese would see me if I was abroad, fumbling with their language.
We had an adventure at Whistling Arch. Jon had gone a ways down the trail, to see whether it looped on itself. Ting-Ting and I were examining a peculiar rhodendhron leaf when we saw Jon barrelling down the trail at us, hollering, "Bees! Run!" So we ran for a long ways, all the leaves and branches we smacked into drenching us with their stores of rainwater. It seems that Jon came upon a crack in a rock formation, where there was a hive tucked in out of the rain. Some bees started buzzing out, and he didn't wait to find out what they were going to do.
Due to the rain, we stayed at a rockhouse near Parched Corn creek. It was quite impressive, like a primordial temple lined in front with stately columns of tulip polars. The ceiling was several stories above our heads at the outermost tip of the formation.