Safari Zoo!

Eric and I were feeling a little better today, so we went to the Guangzhou Safari Park.  We'd been twice  before, and knew it was very fun.  But each time is different!

First we happened upon a young (15 month old) spider monkey.  We were allowed to pet him, and then watched him scamper around.  At first XinYi wasn't sure about this but she eventally warmed up to it and even felt brave enough to pet the monkey too.  Bonus - she now has full grasp of the English word "monkey", and used it later in the evening when she was telling me a story.

Next up was feeding baby tigers.  I'm sure this is not considered good zoological practice, but we decided to give it a go.  We were allowed to pet the baby tiger also.  We even heard the little one give a little baby tiger roar.

After lunch, we boarded a little "train" (but with wheels so it doesn't need tracks) and toured the safari part of the park.  It is very cool.  We watched our train driver play chicken with a giraffe.  The giraffe was striding quickly across the road, and our driver just kept going and didn't even slow down.  The giraffe did yield in the end, but only inches from the train.  As a result, I can now say I have viewed giraffe knees from a distance of 8".  They are quite bony and have lots of callouses on them.

After the safari park, we toured the koalas (home to the world's only koala twins!  But they all look the same, so who can tell?!?) and the giant pandas.  The pandas were hot and mostly napping.  But still very cool.

Our last stop was to feed giraffes and elephants.  For the elephants, you bought bananas and chucked them into the elephant area.  For the giraffes, you could buy a bundle of leafy sticks.  The giraffes would lean over and grab it with their tongues and take it from your hands.  Xin Yi didn't want to do this herself, but was okay with watching the jie jies do it.  Until Eric had them turn around to take a picture, and one of the giraffes leaned over to check if there was any more food in the girls' hair.  Xin Yi clearly thought they were going to be eaten by giraffes and started shreeking about her jie jies.  I asked Medora to come over to Xin Yi and show her that she was okay.  This mollified Xin Yi a little, but she modified her shreeking to "liang ge jie jies!  liang ge jie jies!" while holding up two fingers (Two sisters!  Two sisters!).  It wasn't until Lian joined her too that she relaxed.  Poor kiddo, it would be terrifying if you thought your beloved sisters were going to be mauled by a giraffe.

As we rode the subway home from the zoo, it was super crowded.  Xin Yi started talking with a young woman in her 20s.  She chatted that woman's ear off.  I could follow along a little bit - she told the woman she had a mom, and a dad, and two jie jies (emphasizing the two by holding up two fingers).  Then she made sure to point each of us out to the woman.  Then she told the woman all about their matching blue t-shirts.  It was very cute.

Tomorrow we have to be up early to fly to Shanghai.  Until later....