Safari Park Day!

early Monday morning - August 15th

Yesterday we had to wake up the kids to get them dressed and fed in time for our 8:30 departure for the Safari Park.   The girls were excited about their adventure; an outing that really had nothing to do with adoption and not specific to China's culture and history sounded really fun to them!  They were especially excited about seeing some pandas and they heard that they may even have an opportunity to hold a baby tiger.  (Unfortunately we didn't get the opportunity to do the baby tiger thing - there had been too many guests and the baby needed some rest - but we did get to see several babies!)  As we left the park, they told me that they think that for every trip we take to China (hahaha), we need to have a "Childrens Day" just like we did yesterday, something fun just for them!  & Tricia, they wore your "Max's Jie Jie" shirt to the park and they seemed to answer people's questions!  So cute!  At one area I think our kids were as big as an attraction as the tigers were, lol!

The kids all did great at the park.  It was so fun to watch Max, realizing that he had never seen anything like this before.  Every animal he saw evoked a  "LOOK!"  and then chattering in Chinese!  We knew that the Chinese word for tiger is lao hu, and there are so many tigers at the Safari Park - it seemed like all we heard for an hour was lao hu, lao hu, lao hu!  So cute.  It may have been the first time that the girls had seen white tigers.  I think that even the girls were surprised at how many tigers there were, and they loved seeing the babies in the animal nursery.  Daddy bought some meat for them to throw to some young tigers, and they fed leaves to the giraffes.   They said that they enjoyed feeding the giraffes more than feeding the tigers.

With our early departure time we were hoping to avoid the worst of the heat.  Heat index was predicted to be 110 yesterday.  The plan was to do the walking Safari first and then do the Safari on wheels, but it turns out that the walking Safari didn't open until 10:30 so we had to reverse it.  So by the time we'd seen the tigers and the pandas near the end of our day there, we were all pretty much exhausted.  We went ahead and made it through the Australia section where the kids all saw their first koalas.  So cute!  We watched the workers going in and extricating a few koalas, then taking them into their "nurses station" to put them in a tree-like sling to weigh them, then carefully carrying them back out and putting them back in the tree and carefully opening their little paws to make sure they had a good hold before the worker let go.

Max fell asleep just before we left the park.  (We'd been there for about 4 1/2 hours!) He slept until we got to the hotel but really needed a much bigger nap.  When Max gets tired he struggles much more, vacillating between being wild and out of control, to crying and fighting us as we try to comfort him.  I've noticed that he doesn't sleep nearly as peacefully at night if he is overtired also.  After giving up on trying to get him to take a real nap, we took him and the girls down to the beautiful White Swan swimming pool.  They have  a baby pool, so I was hopeful that he may actually be able to play in the water.  After I told Rick that Max and I would go up to the room if he was too scared of the water, I took him over to the little pool and oh my goodness!  He loved it!  I've got to take him to swimming lessons soon while he still has no fear!  The girls swam with Daddy the whole time and had a ball, and Max wasn't ready to leave for dinner when it was time to go.  I'm sure we'll squeeze in more swimming over our last three days here.

For dinner we decided to try the Chinese restaurant on the 5th floor over Jordan's shop here on the island.  It was a long trek up the stairs with all the kids but oh-so-worth-it!  The food was absolutely delicious.  (& Jordan helped them write down the English menu so we didn't need a translator - thanks Jordan!)  We of course had noodles (delish!), rice, yummy vegetable dumplings, roast chicken (complete with the head, but sans the feet, thank you very much) spicy diced chicken with vegetables and peanuts, and some spareribs.  We decided that we would skip the spare ribs next time but everything else was just so good.  & it had the feeling of eating in someone's kitchen, it was so homey.  They had the fridge for big Tsing Tao beers and big bottles of Coke and it looked like a big help-yourself tea pot and pot of rice as well.  Our group of nine ate for about $40, and it will be less next time because we now know that we only need one huge plate of dumplings and we'll skip the spare ribs.  The rest was just about perfect.  For contrast, our family of seven ate at Lucy's for much more than that the night before, and kids ate things like soup, pb and j sandwich, grilled cheese, and grilled ham and cheese.  A bit ridiculous on their pricing now, really.

When the food came out to the table at the Chinese restaurant,  Max was VERY excited.  But of course it was all very hot and we've learned that all the meat dishes have many bones, so I picked up some chicken and took it off the bone for him and put it in his dish.  Oh my.  He got so upset.  Started shoving it away (here comes the  Bu Yao, Bu Yao, Bu Yao!).  Next came the rice, but it was also so hot, so he was very upset that I was trying to hold his bowl and blow the rice.  I quickly gave it to him but by now he was just mad and upset and started arching his back, crying (what happened to Daddy being the one to feed him at the restaurant this meal? ha!)  Within minutes, I'm guessing it's the restaurant owner/chef, comes out to him - shouts one short word and claps his hand to get Max's attention - Max clamped his mouth and watched the man, who then said a few words in Chinese to him, and Max immediately quieted and started eating!  Lol our table and all the other tables just laughed and laughed and applauded!   I wish we had THAT on video!

Okay, as I see how long this post is I realize that we really did have a very full day yesterday - but it was a good day!

This morning we'll have his TB check at the clinic.  He's got a little reaction, so we'll be praying that there is no problem.  If it is over a certain size we'll have to do the chest xray.  I'll keep you posted.

And now some pictures from the Safari Park.  We'll try to get some pool pictures today.