3 / 23 / 2004
Our second to last day in Guangzhou! We can't wait to go home tomorrow night! Not that we haven't had a great time in China. It has been a unique and wonderful experience that will never stop. Before we left we were already talking about the possibility of coming back for #2.
Today we went to visit a big zoo/wildlife park. It was a cooler, drizzly day out. Very Seattle like. The zoo was divided into two parts, the walking tour side and the bus tour side. We did the bus tour part first. You take a bus through a fenced section into an area where the animals run free. There were 4 or 5 different sections. We saw zebras, giraffes, gazzelle,waterbison,bears,tigers,lions,camels,wildebeast and more. After the bus tour we walked around the walking tour side for a few hours. We saw an elephant show and one of our travel mates got to volunteer for a short bit. He had to lay down on a mat and an elephant lightly bounced his foot up and down on top of him. He said it was pretty neat. We enjoyed getting it all down on video.
The zoo was quite large but I didn't care for the layout. It also wasn't very stroller friendly.( The things you start to pay attention to now We're parents! ) We saw some neat red pandas, white tigers and lions, and lots of different monkeys and chimps. There was a panda there but given the confusing layout we couldn't find it. Not reading Chinese probably didn't help any.
After getting back to the hotel we gave our guide, Richard, Ruby's passport. This afternoon he picked up the kids visas. This is a folder of info that gets opened by immigration when we get to LA. Then she will officially be a US citizen.
After the visa Ruby and I rested in the hotel room while Julie shopped! There are lot's of little shops near our hotel that cater to the adoptive families. We even borrowed a stroller from one of them. I'll let Julie fill in later about the shopping.
This evening we met with the other families to attempt some group photos and then go to dinner. Two of the families are leaving first thing in the morning. Three other families are on our flight back to LA. It's been a good travel group and we have enjoyed getting to know these folks and be apart of meeting their daughters. We hope we will be able to have a group reunion some time in the future. Especially with the WA based folks.
Ruby has done pretty well the last two days. She hasn't had a good afternoon nap but hasn't been too bad going to sleep at night. She seems healthy and is happy most of the time. She does seem to be experiencing "night terrors". She will be sleeping and suddenly shout out crying. It usually won't last more than a few seconds and then she is fast asleep again. We need to read up more on this.
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