Thursday in Guiyang

Its Thursday evening in Guiyang. Everyone else is asleep and I'm doing my usual blog before bed. Today was a pretty good day. We started out heading to the Guiyang Wildlife area which is about an hour and a half's drive from the hotel. We hired the hotel to drive us there and wait while we visited. At first we were a little freaked because after we arrived, the place was empty. No cars at all in the parking lot and we didn't see anyone inside the entrance. After pocking around a little we did see that they were open but there were no animal shows until 11:30. It was 9:30 at this time. We just decided to walk around on our own. It was weird being the only ones there. I'm sure in its hey day it was a very nice place. Now it is a little run down but nice none the less. The animals all looked well taken care of and they all had a lot of space to move around. Much more room then in any zoo we have visited. As you can see in the post, Suz got her picture taken with a tiger. I got one too but he kind of scared me. The trainers came out and fed the bears for us. Toward the end it started to rain so we hitched a ride on a tram (by now there were a few more people there) and trekked back to the hotel. We got back about 2pm. The girls were asleep and we got everyone back up to the room and crashed for a few hours.

The girls were pretty well behaved today. They are at least starting to figure out a pecking order. Karen, thanks for the encouraging post. We both had to laugh at the long road ahead dealing with these two.

We headed downtown for some KFC for dinner. I was able to get my order to them with my limited Chinese and sign language. For as big a city as this is, there is no McDonald's. Suz is going crazy only eating pizza all the time. Guangzhou will offer us a few more choices for food. The girls and I are happy just to find a street vendor for dinner, but then we reek of garlic and Suz goes hungry. We haven't found too many things that Rissa will not eat. She likes pizza, chicken, fruit especially watermelon and honeydew. Her favorite is fried noodles. I will have to break out the wak when we get home.

After dinner we went across the street to a park. So many people go out at night to walk or play with the kids. This park didn't have any playground equipment but there was tons of room for the kids to run around and be silly. There were several people with Chinese tops. They take a cylinder piece of wood, turn it down to a cone with a metal point. To get the top to spin, you have a stick in your hand with a piece of rope on the end. You whip the top with the rope to make it spin. When it starts to slow down, you just whip it again. They had a variety of sizes and even some with lights.

Tomorrow we get Rissa's passport. We are then free to got Guangzhou. We are going to celebrate with lunch and another trip to the local park with the monkeys. Mina loves the monkeys... (NOT)

We are starting to count down the days till we leave now. As with our last trip, its a bitter sweet feeling. We love China for many reasons but home is still home. Your own bed, your own food, your own home. Rissa has been a real trooper with all the changes too. She hasn't shown any more signs of homesickness. In many ways she is very independent. She brushes her own teeth, washes her own hair, and goes to bed on her own. She is picking up a few more English words and Suz even got a
"Wo Ai Ni (I love you)". She is still a little standoffish with me. Sometimes she likes me and sometimes she doesn't. I still don't get kisses but she likes to wrestle and tickle.

OK that's all for now. I'm getting tired and I still have to spell check this mess...

Michael