Tuesday the 7th

This morning was our consulate appointment at 0900.  We got up early and went over to the White Swan Hotel to meet our guide Eva and the H family who is with our agency.  We got on a bus with some other families we didn't know and we were off.  The consulate used to be on the island but they moved it about 40 minutes away.

When we got to the consulate we had to go through major security like at the airport but we also had to surrender all electronic devices including cameras.  Then we went and waited and after a while we were all sworn in together and then one by one each family went up to the window to present our paperwork and get visa's for our children to enter the United States.  I don't remember what the swearing in consisted of, I wish I would have written it down sooner.  Anyway, I almost missed it because I was in the bathroom changing Daisy's poopy bum.

I think we were there for probably a little over 1 hour.  Then it was back on the bus and to the island.  We had planned to go to the safari park after the consulate so we freshened up, packed up our backpacks with snacks headed out to find the subway.  We had tried to find it another time but got lost and ended up taking a taxi.  This time we asked the hotel people first and found it right away.

It was a hot day and when we got to the safari park we realized most of the people getting off the subway with us were heading over to the water park next door.  Much better idea!  But, it was good because the safari park was practically empty!

This was hands down the best zoo we have ever been to.  At each exhibit there were tons of animals.  I swear there were like 15 elephants!  They were all playing in the pond and wrestling and everybody looked healthy and happy.  The place was clean (in China!), well taken care of and you could get really close to the animals.  They had a cool panda exhibit and koalas too.  When we got to the giraffes, we were able to buy a branch of leaves for less than $1usd to feed to the giraffes.  The giraffes came right up to us and ate the leaves from our hands and licked us and they were so close!  It was awesome.

Gorilla crotch garbage can

Poor Daisy was sweating buckets!  (As evidenced by sopping wet hair)

We had never seen elephants wrestle before!

It was nice and cool in the Panda exhibit.

The panda lets it all hang out!  Zack thought this was hilarious!

Daisy looks freaked about the giant fake panda

Guinea Pig heaven!  Zack loved this exhibit.

What would we have done with out grandma?!

Feeding the giraffe with joy!

Oh, mom was at the zoo?  One of three pictures of her.

On the safari train ride

Next, we made our way over to the safari train.  We boarded and it took us on a ride to see all the other animals.  There were tons of 4 legged animals, like deer, things that looked like deer and things I had no idea what they were because we don't have them in the mountains of Utah.  They had hippos and rhinos and there were also all the big cats.  They happened to be throwing meat chunks to them when we went by and it was cool to see them attacking their food.  The ride took about 30 minutes.  Daisy loved looking at all the animals and pointing to them.  She loves to point her little pointer finger at things.

After this were were bushed so we exited the park and took the subway back to our island paradise.  We had planned to have dinner with our friends the H family if we got back in time so we called them and planned to meet down the street from our hotel.

We met up with them and they knew of a street close by with shops and restaurants so we headed that way and ended up eating at a big restaurant called the Guangzhou Restaurant.  It was good and probably the most expensive restaurant we had eaten at, about $40 usd per family.  Big spenders!

After our meal, I was tempted by all the shops on the street.  Everyone wanted to go to the park by our hotel and let the kids play so my mom and I let them go and we stayed to shop.  We were after some cute shoes.  Ha!  Did you know my size 8 feet are HUMONGOUS in China?  My mom is a half size bigger so good luck finding shoes for your giant feet Sharon!  We went in a couple of stores and they just took one look at our feet and shook their heads.   My mom did find a store that had a pair she could squeeze into and she bought them.  Then... we stumbled upon the most awesome shoe store ever!  It had great music playing, hip people shopping, and tons of shoes just my style.  You would show the girls the shoes you wanted and say the size and they would say it into a little microphone.  Then a few minutes later the shoes would come down a shute from the ceiling!  I started ordering every cute pair I could find in size 39 (a tight squeeze) or 40.  Most of the shoes did not come in those sizes but I was able to find a few and I ended up buying 2 pair.  One cost $7 and one $10.  It's probably a good thing I couldn't find my size because I would have bought soooo many shoes and Steve would have been mad because he had to figure out how to pack up all our stuff and cart it through air ports.

One of the pairs of shoes I bought.

We shopped until they were all closing up and then we carefully found our way home through the dark streets of Guangzhou.