As most of you know, today is a pretty important day. It is the day that Katelyn turned 14-years old. It is also the day that, if we would not have been able to get all of our paperwork completed in time, we would NOT have been able to adopt her. Just 78 days from start to finish. That is a pretty fast adoption.
But let me back up just a little. Last night we took a little walk up the banks of the river. We explained to Caleb yesterday that this is what we do during adoptions … we walk. A LOT! As we came up on an old train bridge we noticed that people were walking across and riding their bikes. Seemed like a good option to us, so up we went.
It was a beautiful old train trestle that spanned a very wide river. We were not sure if it went the entire way, but we were in for an adventure!
Seemingly abandoned since there was a new bridge just to the East of this one, the only real purpose now was for people to cross the river. To what? We didn’t know. But we were going to find out.
We got to the other side to find … nothing. Well, actually, not nothing. It was a little sketchy. We felt like we were literally on the wrong sides of the tracks!
We have rarely felt unsafe in China and we didn’t here either, but we realized fairly quickly that people were crossing the bring quite simply to go home. So, we turned around and went back.
We took a little stroll into the plaza for dinner at Pizza Hut.
As I have posted before, Pizza Hut is a fairly pricey place to eat in China. On Tuesday I had only exchanged $100US at the hotel since we were going to the Bank of China on Wednesday. But we decided to do the cable cars across the river and that took up a little more cash than I expected. Ali and I went to Pizza Hut that night to just order a large pepperoni pan pizza and bring it up to our room. When the bill came it was $220RMB, which is almost $37 and I didn’t have enough money! And they wouldn’t take my credit card. It wasn’t until last night when we went back for dinner that I started realizing the price on Tuesday was WAY too much. I am not really sure what I was ordering. It is expensive, but it isn’t THAT expensive. We all had dinner, with two pizza’s and drinks, for $153RMB. Not sure what Ali and I would have brought home on Tuesday!
Here is a little view of the square just outside the doors of our hotel. There is music playing and people milling until late evening every day.
First thing this morning we gave Katelyn her birthday present!
It was a watch, although it was purple and she is kind of a blue sort of girl. But she loved it anyway!
It was then time to set out to the Tiger Park! This place has 700 hundred tigers! That is right, I said 700! Caleb started things off as usual with climbing all over the first thing that he sees.
We got Lynn to take a picture of the family before we went in. You know … just in case one of us was eaten we would have a picture of how we used to look.
We then rode on a bus through a large outdoor section. It was a little difficult to take pictures since we were in a bus and had Chinese people rushing from side-to-side every time there was a tiger.
And there were a LOT of tigers. I think I heard 700. They had these “armored” Toyota Land Cruisers that were feeding cars and the tigers would run after them as they drove through the park.
After the driving portion, they had a walk-through area which gave me a better opportunity to take some pictures.
Towards the beginning of this area there is a lady standing by the fence with a bucket full of strips of meat and … live chickens! Seriously. I thought someone might have been kidding when I mentioned the live prey in the blog yesterday, but there they were! A box full of live chickens!
The group we were with was a little hesitant to put up the money for the “live show” but several were willing to pay to feed the tigers the strips of meet. The zoo employee would give them long tongs and they would hold the meat up to the fence while the tiger would eat it.
Do you see how close that guys hand is to the tiger?? That isn’t an employee. That is a visitor! Ain’t no zoo in America that is going to let you do that!
And then it happened. From the back of the group one brave, twisted soul ponied up the $180RMB for the chicken to be released into the pen. The employee pulled a chicken from the pen, opened up a trap door in the top of the fence, and threw the chicken up in the air. It flew (as well as a chicken can fly) for ten or twenty feet and then fell into one waiting tigers clutches. It was one of the craziest things I had ever seen. Scroll past if you don’t want to see the next picture, but here is the tiger enjoying his plunder.
The Chinese people loved it, but there was a couple from Spain that is adopting also and I think the wife was a little put off by the entire event. It was an experience to say the least.
After the carnage, we were walking around looking at … well … tigers (I think there are about 700 of them) and a couple asked us if they could take a picture of us with their son. Ok. I think that they actually wanted all of us with their son, but our guide said it wasn’t a good idea because if someone saw the picture and knew one of our adopted children it could cause problems. We thought that was silly, but agreed to just Kelly and I taking the picture. These folks were kind of lucky Kelly didn’t tuck this cute little guy into her sweatshirt and run off with him!
As we walked away Caleb was asking why the guide didn’t want us all to take the picture. Kelly explained that the guide was worried that maybe our kids biological mom would see the picture. But, Kelly added, “I would hope she would so that she could see how well you are doing and how much you are loved. I am sure it is hard on her every day.” That’s the kind of mom you need adopting you. Always loving and yet being realistic about the very difficult choices these moms have to make. It is rarely an easy decision and we are the beneficiaries of that sacrifice.
This next animal is a Liger. It is a male Lion mated with a female tiger. Crazy. It had faint stripes with a mane. I have never seen this before.
After leaving the Tiger Park, they had a large area with figures you could play on. Ali decided to pose for a pretty little shot.
We tried our best to keep Caleb from running into trouble with the tigers, but in the end I am afraid we were not successful.
However, Kelly jumped in at the last minute and saved him from certain death!
The crew enjoyed a little tiger-back ride.
I mentioned yesterday about how Katelyn watches over Caleb, but they really have bonded. Even this afternoon, as Ali was sleeping off some jet lag issues, the two of them played together.
The kids took another turn in the mouth of the tiger before we left.
We asked Lynn about coming to lunch with us today and any suggestions she might have. She said that several families have mentioned how much they liked the various Mongolian Hot Pot restaurants in the city. Having never had Mongolian Hot Pot before, we were happy to go with her. Our driver had a place that he enjoyed and he took us there.
Mongolian Hot Pot is basically The Melting Pot meets Asia. Each person gets their own little burner with a broth that is either mild or spicy.
Then you choose various meets and vegetables that you cook in your hot pot and eat with a Sesame dipping sauce.
They have this little cart that the only bring in to the room for a few minutes with additional ingredients that you can put in your dipping sauce like spicy peppers, ginger, garlic, cilantro, all kinds of different things. You personalize your sauce to fit your taste.
Then you start cooking!
It really was awesome. I was made fun of a little bit because I ended up pouring my dipping sauce on my rice and eating it that way. They said that isn’t how you do it, but it was delicious so I really didn’t care.
After lunch, Lynn came back to the hotel with Kelly just to review all of Katelyn’s paperwork to ensure it was correct before we leave Harbin tomorrow. If it isn’t right now, it is going to be pretty hard to fix once we have left!
Everything seemed in order, so we are a go for our flight out tomorrow afternoon. We travel on to Wuhan and will get Ashely and Charlie on Monday. The fun continues!
Cameron