Take me to the zoo!!!!

Lions and Tigers and Bears...OH MY..... for real!!! We were off to the Chongqing zoo!

There were Tigers and Panda bears and Lesser Panda's. It was such a hot day that the Panda's stayed close to the shade eating bamboo!

The zoos there are a little different than the zoos that I have been to here in the states. They had small amusement park rides, but they weren't open. We saw the tigers first, then we saw the vendors....selling panda puppets, tshirts, post cards and whatever else they had in their bags! Then we were off to see the Panda Bears...we saw the Lesser Panda's which look a lot like raccoons to me. They were doing a little renovation around the zoo near the panda's. But off we went! While we were there we did get some post cards from one of the vendors and a stuffed panda bear for Hope.

We also saw people playing mahjong...a game that you see a lot of people playing sitting just about everywhere. At the zoo they were in a bamboo area...I guess because it is cooler!!!

After the trip to the zoo, we went to the Three River Gorges museum. This project is to help with the flooding in China. They are relocating a lot of people because they are flooding parts of China with the new dam that they are building. We walked through the museum and saw a painting of the entire project. After that, we went into the gift shop and saw lots of beautiful Chinese art work. We were able to meet one artist there that had no arms, so he painted with his feet and teeth. We were able to get a picture of the beautiful china cherry blossoms that he had painted and he signed it for Hope. He was a neat person to see do his craft!!!

After we came back to the hotel for awhile and had lunch and a rest, a group of us decided to be brave and take a taxi ride to a bookstore/shopping mall. It is daring to watch the taxi drivers from the bus or our hotel room but riding in one is quite the adventure!!!

We were able to find some cute books with Chinese and American words in them. Found some neat CD's for Hope. One is the Beijing Angelic Choir and another one was all Children's songs.

Hope managed to nod off to sleep in the taxi on the way back to the hotel, so needless to say she wasn't quite ready to go to bed. So we put in the Angelic Choir cd...it took a little convincing on our parts but we finally won!!!