The zoo turned out to be really fun! The boys were a bit weary of all the paperwork and shopping, but they REALLY liked this! Here are some pictures of our morning!
That castle-like thing behind my family is called Happy World. I like that. I want to live there. Oh, wait.... I do!
They have a monorail-type thing at the Guangzhou Zoo! They had all sorts of rides.... bumper cars, carousel, dizzy disc type thing, Dumbo-type thing, a train.... fun!
You go, girl. Napping in the stroller. Talk about Happy World....
Okay. This was COOL. The boys got to feed giraffes!!! Look how close they are!!! The really liked this.....
Do you see that thing sticking out its tongue?
Look at how long that tongue is!!!!
I bet that giraffe is thinking, "Kid. Just put the leaf on my tongue. I can't sit here like this all day."
Okay. This might be my all-time favorite picture that I have ever seen in all my lifetime. Look at it. Is it not hilarious? Are you smiling..... or LOLing??? Cause I'm howling here just looking at it again. I can't get enough of this picture. The boys have NO IDEA that the giraffe is posing with them..... And it is like, "Oh. Hey. Camera. CHEEEEEESE!" It's like a giraffe photo bomb! I can't get over it.....
What's at trip to the zoo without getting a picture of an elephant's behind?
Beautiful tropical zoo. And do you see the buildings in the back? I love that.....
Real? Not real? Hard to tell.... but it's totally real. And it kept doing tricks for us. His friend was swimming in the little river that was in their exhibit. All you could see was its head poking up out of the water, but we were SO close to it.... and that thing's head was HUGE. Beautiful creatures. This was Max's favorite (and mine, too!).
Monkey exhibit.
When we were finished with the zoo, our guide Helen offered to take our family to a local Cantonese restaurant for our last official meal in China. We had opted out of the Pearl River Dinner Cruise the night before (Mary was a NUT that night), and, since she didn't purchase our tickets for the cruise, she used the money we'd already pre-paid to buy our lunch. She ordered for us and it was DELICIOUS. There was, of course, noodles (very crispy.... very yummy), fried rice, beef (with peppers and onions), pork (the boys' favorite), vegetables, a sweet pastry, and, of course, hot tea. I think this meal probably tied with the last meal in Shanghai as our favorite. Yum. Yum.
Mary's little high chair. It just sat on top of the regular chair. She loved it! She also loves chopsticks! (more as weapons than eating utensils.... but whatever)
Our guide, Helen, ordered the entire meal. It was delicious!
Before the meal. Jack is faking it and Max is a bit worried that there won't be anything that he'll like. Oh. How wrong he was......
Want some tea? If you'll give Daddy these chopsticks that you keep throwing all over the restaurant, I'll let you have a sip of this hot tea.....
Big glass lazy susan makes the food easily accessible to the entire table! Here we have the beef, sautéed eggplant, and pork.
The pork was delicious.... and surrounded by roasted peanuts. Max kept VERY busy trying to pick up the peanuts with chopsticks. If we only had two more weeks in China, they'd probably get pretty good with those things!
Uh. Fried Rice. I think it was a hit at the table.
Fried noodles. Totally delicious. The ONLY reason that this plate isn't empty, too, is because it came at the end of the meal and everyone was stuffed. That's one thing that's interesting..... at a dinner like this, you order multiple dishes and they're served family style..... but everything doesn't come out at once. It comes out as it's ready. So, we had the beef and eggplant first and we munched on that a while. Then, out came the pork. Then, the fried rice came out and we all chowed down on that. Then the dessert pastry came and it was yummy. The last thing were these noodles.
Got back to the hotel and decided to do some work on the ole Magna Doodle.
See the window? One minute before I took THIS picture, it was a bright, sunny day. Then, out of NOWHERE.... it started POURING. You don't understand..... P.O.U.R.I.N.G. You can't even see the buildings across the street! And where were my two boys when this started happening?
At the pool. Max was actually swimming, so he jumped out and, since he was already wet, just wrapped up in his towel. Jack, on the other hand, was Max's supervisor at the pool. He didn't feel like swimming that afternoon, so these are his regular clothes. His regular DRENCHED, THESE THINGS WILL NEVER DRY IN THIS TERRIBLE HUMIDITY, clothes.
They did finally dry, though. FOUR DAYS LATER... in HONG KONG.
Max and his pal.
After the lunch, it was time to head back to the hotel and pack up. Next stop: HONG KONG! At 4:30, we waited in the lobby for Helen. She had run over to the consulate to pick up Mary's Visa so we could head out! She presented us with the infamous BROWN SEALED ENVELOPE (other than the child, this is the most important thing apparently) and gave us back her passport. We were ready to go!
We chose to take a van to Hong Kong (as opposed to the train) because 1) we have a lot of bags (and for your information, JOE, we needed EVERY BIT OF IT.), 2) it's easier, and 3) we just want to get there.
A word about the VAN RIDE: CHAOS. That's a word. DANGEROUS. There's another word. HOWINTHEWORLDDIDTHISPERSONEVERGETPERMISSIONFROMTHECHINESEGOVERNMENTTODRIVEACAR? Is that a word?
I spent the first few moments of the ride calming Mary down (I find it funny that, just now, when I was typing the word "ride"..... I missed a keystroke and my autocorrect changed it to "die"..... cause that's what I thought I was gonna do....) Anyway.... the first few minutes were soothing a tired, hungry girl. There was singing. There were puffs. There were Cheerios. There was a bottle. Then, the fingers went in the mouth, the ears got a good pull, and she was OUT. So, I moved on to the next phase of my trip: looking out the window and enjoying the scenery. The ride to HK from Guangzhou takes about 3.5 hours.... and we were FINALLY out of the big city and able to see some of the China countryside. And it is GORGEOUS. I literally saw gardens and fields with people working with straw hats and women with babies tied to their backs. There were beautiful rivers and lovely mountains. A VERY nice ride. In the middle of nowhere, you'd suddenly come upon HUNDREDS of high rise buildings where MILLIONS of people live. Right there in the middle of NOTHING. I was reminded over and over again how many people live in this country. It is mind boggling. Then, after I'd taken a deep breath and let out a long sigh and enjoyed my scenic tour through China, I started looking out the front windshield at our drive. THAT IS WHEN I ABOUT LOST IT. This dude is a maniac. First of all, he was on his phone texting/talking NONSTOP. Put BOTH hands on the wheel, man. Then, he was driving a gazillion miles an hour (MAX even noticed and questioned just how fast he was driving)..... and weaving in and out of traffic like you wouldn't believe. It was not safe. NOT.
About halfway through the trip, he announced that he needed to stop for gas and that we could, "Use toilet. Very clean." Uh. No, dude. I do not use bathrooms in gas stations. We will sit in the car. Joe, of course, is a little more adventurous, so he hopped out and went inside the SHELL. (Yep. Shell gas station.) He bought some drinks and a snack.... little wafer cookies called JACKSTER (totally didn't get a picture of the package... shame on me.... ) He also took a picture of the potty for me:
That, my friends, is a squatty potty. They're all over China. And the answer to your question is NO, we did NOT.
Once we made it to the border of China and Hong Kong, we had another one of those AM I GOING TO MAKE IT OUT OF THIS COUNTRY ALIVE moments. First of all, as you're driving over the border, you pull past a series of kiosks..... here, they wave a big radar thing around the car..... that's the temperature check. You got fever? You got problems. (I'd heard about this, so, of course, Mary got a round of Motrin a couple of hours before we left.... just in case....)
Then, we pulled up at China Immigration Inspection. Our driver told us to go inside with our passports. Okay..... so we got out of the car and literally had only our passports and our children. As soon as we walked into the building, Max turned around and noticed that our driver was DRIVING OFF. When he mentioned it, we all just looked at each other, shrugged, and hoped for the best. We went through the line for "foreigners" and got our passports stamped, walked out the back door, and, THANK GOODNESS, immediately saw our driver waving at us from across the parking lot. We happily jumped back in the car and continued to HK.
A word about Hong Kong at night: I can't even THINK of a word to describe the beauty of this city at night. (and by day, for that matter).... I have never seen anything like it. I tried to take pictures, but I had a sleeping baby in my arms and we were driving so darn fast that all of the lights are literally a blur. It was stunning. STUNNING. I was so glad that we arrived at night so we could experience that view.
We pulled into our hotel: The Metropolis.... home sweet home for two more days.
We crashed pretty quickly once we got settled in..... boys were excited to see several English speaking TV channels (Cartoon Network anyone?) and I couldn't get enough of our view. (I won't mention the part about discovering the costly wifi and the drilled in hairdryer and stupid adapters and such. K.)
OH!!! We also surprised the boys with the news that the next day they were going to Hong Kong Disney!! We hadn't mentioned it to them because several things had to fall into place in order for it to happen. If there had been delays with Mary's visa, our transportation out of Guangzhou, etc, it wouldn't have worked... but everything worked out. They were super excited. More to come about this adventure......
So. That was TUESDAY, July 2.
(And sorry that we went a couple of days without posting any news..... but now you can see why!) CRAZY BUSY! (and did I mention the costly wifi?)
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