At small group last night I realized my sleep schedule was somewhat irregular, so I went to bed early. (What a convenient excuse for skipping an update~.) Making up for it today.

To be honest, I didn’t do much yesterday. In the morning, I was extremely frustrated by the garbage internet while trying to register my university account at home, so in the afternoon, I went out to play basketball (actually, I asked the coach to add Mondays and Wednesdays so I can work hard on my stamina and show off to the morning run classmates tomorrow, hehe). In the evening, I went to the small group and tried to print a Cheat Sheet using the printer in the shared space, but failed after messing around with it for ages. Right when I was having dinner, my roommate posted some mouth-watering food photos; trying to distract myself by opening my phone, I saw a notification that read “20 Must-Try Air Fryer Delicacies.” Tears of drool streamed from the corners of my mouth.

So today I resolved not to stay cooped up at home. I cycled to Olympic Forest Park for some treasure hunting. (Puzzler’s Day in Hangzhou pulled me into geocaching, and I have been helplessly addicted ever since, for the record.) I opened the map to a field of question marks. Instant RPG.

First, following the GPS, I found a dead end. While taking a detour, I happened to catch sight of a boundary monument of three districts (Chaoyang, Haidian, and Changping) by the roadside. After excitedly circling around it, I found nothing at first, but when I looked down, I saw a small test tube containing a log sheet inside the hollow pipe of the fence. After logging my name, I commented: “Excellent cache, made me spin at the three-district boundary monument.”

I have to say, the Olympic Forest Park is massive, and its facilities are so complete that places like Aobei Park can’t even compare (if it weren’t so far away, I would run here every morning). The map full of question marks also proves that this has always been a holy land for treasure hunters. In the midst of all the running around, I resolutely took out my dusty Sony camera—to shoot birds!

It is often said that the ultimate end of photography is birding, but when you actually see a little creature hopping around on the grass, you can’t help but grab your gear and start snapping away. Fortunately, just as I raised my camera towards the mandarin ducks in the lake, it happened to “startle a flock of herons and gulls into flight,” and I captured the split second of the bird skimming across the water’s surface, getting a “legendary gold” shot! Achieving this on my very first try at birding, I’m already floating on cloud nine!

In summary: I did absolutely everything except what I was supposed to do (