Chinese Zoo and Famous Americans

{much appologies - I know many look for updates all day, I was not able to upload everything and get it on the blog yesterday, as my two littles neded my attention. 

Hopefully, you'll get a double today.  Elizabeth}

 

 

Daddy playing with Baby Girl!  Looks like she loves the bowls!

 

 

 

Hello friends!

 

We are having a great time here in China and are feeling more adventurous every day!  It seems a little surreal that we now have a new daughter in the family!  I was anxious to know how I would feel holding a baby that I didn't birth but was now mine.  I have to say that I honestly feel like she has always been ours, just like any of our other children.  Our Daddy has been so good to connect our hearts rather quickly!  Baby Girl has started to prefer me, though she is fine to be with anyone who will hold her.  She is looking for me though and starts to hold out one hand and whimper when she wants me!

 

Our guide has our day planned out for us with some flexibility, but it has been nice to have to get up and get going every morning.  Today, we headed out the Lanzhou Zoo.  It was supposed to rain all day, so I was tempted not to go with Baby Girl being sick.  But, I did and it didn't rain! Thankful for that!!  Our whole day was spent at the zoo which is actually a zoo with a couple of city parks attached to is as well. 

 

Our bus driver dropped us off at the first park where groups of locals were gathered enjoying their morning exercise.  They played music and all would dance similar to line dancing to Chinese or Tibetan music!  I tried to join in but gathered a crowd of baby touchers and didn't last long! Our guide translated for me and said that the older ladies were asking about Baby Girl and wanted us to know that we were good and patient parents for adopting her.  We were truly humbled by their approval

 

Locals "Line Dancing"

 

 Locals exercising in the park

 

Next, we walked up to the zoo which had such a foul smell that I wasn't sure we were going to be able to make it through!  The zoo was quite different than those we have been to here in the states.  The animal cages were simply concrete floors with no natural habitat, water or green plants.  Most of their animals were labeled with names we have in the  US, but the animals looked like some sort of cross bred between other animals.  The brown bear looked mixed with some other bear, maybe even the panda bear??  And the mallard ducks were so much larger than our wild mallard ducks because they had bred with the domestic white ducks in the cage and maybe even the geese.  We did see our first kangaroo here and camels too!

 

Lanzhou Zoo

 

Chinese Brown Bear

 

 MV was happy to see the wolves!

 

Daddy and Baby Girl at the monkey cage

 

When we were leaving the zoo these crazy Chinese girls came running up and asked if they could take their picture with us.  Robbie said sure (because he is having a blast entertaining everyone he meets with his sense of humor!) and this group of about 6 girls ran up to him, arms around his waist and posed for pictures! How I wish I had a picture of this!  I didn't pull out my camera till the group attached the girls!  MV smile and obliged, but Hambone was so far out of her comfort zone!  The girls were holding their hands, hugging them and just acting plain crazy! Hambone has been super uncomfortable when this happens, even when our guide comes up and takes her hand to walk with her.  She just looks for us and begs for help with her eyes! She thinks she's famous and is ready to be "un-famous"!

 

Crazy Chinese Girls!

 

Poor Hambone!  It's a rough life being famous!!

 

 And MV holding hands with the Crazy Girls!

 

We walked out of the zoo and up to a cable car station to take a cable ride up the side of a mountain to another park situated at the top of the mountain.  Rob and the girls weren't so sure they trusted the cars, but we couldn't pass up an opportunity to see the city from the top! This is such a huge city filled with skyscrapers and lots of smog! It was beautiful at the top though, and much greener than any area we have seen.  We even found a man-made waterfall in the park to climb!

 

Cable Car

 

 partial view of Lanzhou from the top of the mountain. 

There are just as many buildings and skyscrapers looking the opposite direction

 

Waterfall on top of the mountain

 (the girl is a college student interning to be a tour guide)

 

Last stop of the day was for a late lunch at some local restaurant that Robbie kept telling me was the Melting Pot!  It was similar in that you have a "hot pot" in front of you to cook your raw meat and veggies, but it was slightly different!  They didn't seem to understand the need for a separate utensil to pick up the raw meat and drop it in the pot and another utensil to fish the meat out of the pot!  They ended up bringing us forks since we are terrible with the chopsticks and we just used the chopsticks to pick up the raw meat! The food was amazingly good!!  Our family shared 2 pots and the waitresses brought out 3 huge plates of freshly sliced meat.  Even the girls loved it!  Hambone ate plenty of meat plus 7 bowls of soup from the pot!  We were so stuffed we skipped dinner!

 

 Chinese version of The Melting Pot!

Tomorrow is a Free Day and we need it!  Hoping to make it back to the Yellow River for a raft ride and to the nearest street market for some local shopping.  We hear that all prices are expensive in this area though (As seen by the $200 laundry bill!).

 

Till next time . . .