Waiting It Out: Part II

We've done both our adoptions with Children's House International. We were even with them while we were in Ukraine back in 2006. This trip was the first time we've ever met the director of the Chinese Children Program. Heidi and her family are travelling for her daughter's high school graduation heritage trip. They have been so much fun. Her daughters, Joy, Suzy, and Mimi are awesome and Louisa loves going places with them. It's also been fun for Jeff to hang out with her husband, Kim. I count it as one of the greatest blessings of this trip that they have been here with us.

We spent Sunday touring the Safari Park with them. My sister, Susan, always says that the thing she loves about China the most is that they have lots of rules, but at the same time, absolutely no rules. It's the greatest summation of facts that I have ever heard about this place. Let me be frank, this Safari Park was like a 100-acre puppy mill (only with tigers) and the only thing holding everything back was a thin line of electric fence....and all you could think was, "this is pretty freaking awesome--don't get too close or you'll be in a freak 'when animals attack' video clip."

 The first part of the park is "Tour by Bus"--they have all of the animals just wandering free in jungle enclosures. I saw a guy scooping hay to the hippos without ANY protection. Just wandering around in there--he obviously hasn't ever watched the National Geographic channel. I also saw a bunch of guys herding a large group of giraffes with nothing but a stick.

 Good old Engrish.

 One third of the entire world's population of white tigers lives at this park. I can't imagine that there aren't some serious genetic issues at this point--but they are pretty proud of these animals. Also, the camera isn't even zoomed in--this large tiger is just hanging out on the other side of a wooden railing. You can feed them (there are some seriously overweight tigers here) and even hold a baby tiger.

 Lots of pandas. They are all in indoor cooled enclosures. We spent some time looking at them and trying to recover from the heat. The koalas are also in cooled enclosures--they had one named Murray. This red panda below wasn't even in an enclosure. It just hangs out in the park. I asked our guide, Becky, why it didn't run away and she said, "animal very happy here, lots of food, plenty good". Classic.

Joy and Mimi on the elephant ride. Here they are spraying their mom with some water--
I remember riding an elephant as a kid at Hogle Zoo. We didn't take Louisa on the ride. She didn't really show any interest in the elephants. She liked the birds and the pandas the best. She signed to me that the panda was sleeping and that one was eating food. We also caught her leaning out of her stroller and pinching random people on the legs while we rolled past. She is quite the kid--she looks pretty innocent but she'll surprise you. We think that she was singing "the elephant song"--Jack and Lachlan learned it at Chinese class. I'm hoping that they can teach her all the words.