Day 43 and 44: Catching up on Homework and Pandas!!!!

*NOTE: DAYS 6, 26 & 27, 32, 34,  36, 37, 38, AND 42 HAD VIDEOS THAT WEREN'T WORKING, BUT I HAVE GONE BACK AND UPLOADED CORRECT VERSIONS OF THEM, SO PLEASE GO BACK AND ENJOY! *

Day 43, I slept in a while, catching up on much needed sleep, since I didn't set an alarm.

For a couple hours after getting up, I worked on Astro Club stuff (it's hard running a club from overseas....especially when you have to reorganize a bunch of things).
Then I video called a friend for a bit, and chatted with a couple others online.
After that, I went out for a bit with Jessica to the store a couple of doors down to get some frozen dumplings like the ones Nick had let us try some of yesterday.

We looked around everywhere, but weren't able to find them. Jessica was typing it into the translate app, and the one worker was trying to talk to us about something in Chinese while doing so. Eventually, she showed her the translation, and she laughed, leading us to the only place in the store we hadn't looked. She headed back, joking with the lady at the register, and Jessica and I knew we were being made fun off. But we made light of it, getting 4 packs of dumplings, and some other snacks for ourselves, including some coffee Chips Ahoy cookies for me.

Jessica boiled the dumplings for lunch while I washed dishes, and we managed to do ok with them. They weren't the best dumplings, but I'm not going to complain when you get 35 dumplings for the equivalent of $1! I had some of the mini oranges as well, which I had discovered were like grapes more than oranges....you were supposed to eat the peel. That made me like them a lot more, and I resolved that I might get some more at some point.

After that, I needed to finish my philosophy paper, as well as the weekly homework for the class, so I buckled down for a couple hours and did it. I also updated my blog from the day before, watching some anime simultaneously, and read a bit.

After a while, I was pretty hungry, and snacked on the chips I had gotten at the store (which were like Pringles because they didn't have many other plain potato chips....or flavors I'm used to) with some Coke from yesterday. Still hungry, I decided to make dinner, a ham omelet from the groceries we had gotten the other day, with some more mini oranges and yogurt, finished off with dark chocolate. Jessica was making dinner as well, so I asked her how her afternoon had been, and once I started making dinner, I burned myself on the pan, but I ran cold water over it for a while, hoping for the best.

After dinner, I read a bit, and then we went over to the guys' apartment to watch movies. I thought we were going to watch the rest of the movie from last night, but it turned out that after we had gone back to our room and Dom had gotten off his video call, the movie had loaded, and the guys had watched the rest of it. So we ended up watching a comedian called Bo Burnham, and rewatching "The Emperor's New Groove", a childhood classic.

The next day, we headed to the zoo, transferring subways to get there. Getting there, there was a grand pavilion of sorts that was the entranceway.

 It turned out when we were entering the park, they didn't take student IDs into consideration like Apollo thought. It turned out that they just scanned your stored value subway card when entering. They took just under 30 quai off of the card, and we entered to a bunch of statues and decorations for the Chinese New Year. Otherwise, it didn't appear much different from an American zoo.

 As soon as we got in, the pathways directed us towards the pandas, of both the red and black and white types. All 4 of us Americans were excited for the black and white pandas as none of us had ever seen those in person. We came upon the red panda exhibit first, and it was hiding in the bushes, but we managed to find it eventually.

Red panda hiding in the bushes (in the middle of the picture)

 Then we saw a giant panda! It was so cute!!  We found out it was a mother, and she had had lots of children, but she was just chilling in the corner, eating bamboo. In the same area, there was another panda sleeping on its stash of bamboo, which was even more adorable.

 As we turned the corner, there was a younger panda crawling around on a homemade jungle gym! There was also a panda gift shop with everything panda, and we explored it a bit as well. Apollo and I lost track of the others, so we went up to the next level, but not seeing them, we headed back down, finding out that they were again at the gift shop area.

Nick mutating into a panda before my eyes

 We walked up, finding out that the pandas up at the top were much older. One of the males had sired 25 children, who were now in zoos all over the world. There were also pandas named after sponsoring corporations, which was interesting (as there are also animals in zoos in the US named the same way).

We continued up the hill, looking at all the foliage.

 The first thing we saw at the top of the hill was an elephant. It was an Asian, not an African elephant (which is to be expected), and the crowd was enthralled by it. Too enthralled, perhaps, by the fact that they kept throwing food into the elephant's area. The four of us were very uncomfortable with it, although Apollo didn't seem fazed, and we noticed that there was not a "Don't Feed the Animals" sign anywhere, which made sense in a backwards sort of way, considering the crowd's behavior.

 We continued walking, seeing various other types of animals, some new to us, and some familiar.

Pere David's deer 

zebra

I thought these were something more exotic, and then the sign just said they were "ponies"

Then we got to the "exotic animals" area of the zoo (that is, outside of Asia and Africa) and we saw alpacas, and smaller gray kangaroos hopping around.

 As we went on, we saw more and more deer and antelope like animals as well.

 We were looking for the giraffes, hippos, and songbirds, but we ended up going down toward the Dinosaur Valley, which had life size animatronic dinosaurs. They had some Asian dinosaurs that we hadn't heard of before in the US, as well as the classics, like the T-rex, and smaller raptors. But overall, it was similar to an animatronic Jurassic Park.

 After the dinosaur park, we found that there was an entire amusement park, which had lots of rides (for an additional cost), as well as a 5D and 7D theatre. We were interested in the 7D theatre, but found out it was broken. We also found out that the 5D theatre was similar to the 4D theatres we have at home, and decided to save our money.

After that, we walked down toward the Goldfish House and the Reptile House, which had a great entranceway, straight into an oversized crocodile's mouth.

 I'm not much for reptile houses, and it was pretty crowded, so I moved through it pretty quickly.

lizard living the high life

 After that, there was a goldfish pond, in which you could feed the goldfish as they crowded to that corner of the pond. There was also a house with various types of goldfish, including ones that looked like they had their brains on the outside, chubby looking goldfish, ones with poms poms on the outsides of their mouth, and other strange looking ones.

Brains on the outside fish

Little chubby fish

A very poetic sign

 After the goldfish house, we discovered that there were hippos on the other side. In order to get closer to the hippos though, we had to go to the other side, and pay to feed them. We saw a sign that said it was 20 quai, and asking Apollo, he said that price was for a whole bucket of grass, so effectively, we could split the cost. Jessica and I were excited to do it, so we went ahead and did it. It really was the little kid game "Hungry, Hungry Hippos" with the hippos eagerly eating all the grass that landed in their mouth (or on their head, or on the ground......not everyone had great aim).

There was also a camel and donkey exhibit in which the camel and donkey were at odds with each other. The camel kept galloping after the donkey, and the donkey kept kicking at it. It seemed as if it had happened many times before, and I have no doubt that the staff of the zoo knew about it.

 After that, there were more younger, elephants, and they looked like they were missing their parents, as they were making lots of noise, and making motions as if they were trying to get out of their enclosure. As we walked away, my heart broke for both of them, and how they were trying to just get to their parents a few exhibits away.

Last but not least, we saw the giraffes. It turned out that they were closer than we realized before, just a little bit above the dinosaur exhibit. There was one of the keepers in the outside exhibit as well, trying to get the giraffe to go inside with the others.

We headed out of the park, eager to get food (since most of it in the zoo was street food of sorts), and saw that a lot more of the red pandas were outside, since it was time for them to eat.

Heading out, we saw an impromptu dance class out on the square (which are relatively common here).Nick pointed out a business in the middle of the skyscraper that was called Bourgeoisie, which reminded me of some men we saw on Tuesday which were gambling in a water jug store. It struck me as strange, and we all agreed it was still slightly better than gambling in a bar....

We headed down the street to a place that had a sort of build your own hotpot, without the need for so many people or so much time. You put your meats in one basket, and your vegetables in another, paying per weight, and had the cooks put them all in the same broth to be cooked. Jessica and I shared a non-spicy, tomato broth, while Apollo, Nick, and Dom shared the spicy broth. I also got a cup for a wide selection of drinks on the side counter, from different types of soy milk to different types of hot and cold juice. At first, I tried the chocolate soy milk, which was warm, and interesting, to say the least, and then I tried the syrup plum juice (cold) which was a lot better and sweeter than I expected. Jessica and I both agreed that we liked this version of hotpot better than the traditional one.

Non-spicy broth Jessica and I shared

After lunch, I grabbed a refill of the syrup plum juice, Nick browsed a shoe store, and we got on two subways to the Ancient Town of Ciqikou.

Very ominous sign, pointing to the prisons

The architecture of the "Ancient Town" was exactly what it had promised....ancient. The architecture was amazing, and I loved its authentically Chinese style. They had turned it into a shopping area, much like the one in Hangzhou. We wandered around for a while, going into different shops, and I decided to pick up a few cheap knickknacks for the last few people on my list.

As we walked around, Apollo told me that a lot of the stuff on sale here could be bought online for possibly cheaper or a better quality. I decided to keep that in mind, but unfortunately, it's very hard for non-Chinese speakers to buy things online in China.

Pearls fresh from the oysters

There were several stores that had hand made, or hand carved sorts of things that looked amazing, but were either very large or had a very large price tag. One of the places had a bucket with a frog, in which people would put coins for good luck. I realized that this was a pretty smart business move, in order to get lots of people's loose change.

As we went further into the marketplace, there was a small river or bay that intersected with it. We headed down to enjoy the view, and Nick went to talk to the salesman of some motorized model planes. Soon after, we saw the plane being demonstrated over the river with great skill, going far out of what I thought the range for such a plane would be, even dipping towards a spiral towards the river at some points, but always making impressive recoveries.

Originally thought these were firecrackers, but they turned out to be incense

Silversmith doing his magic

We went into various shops along the way, including a marketplace inside the marketplace, but I didn't buy anything else other than the knickknacks and a couple cheap necklaces, opting to come back another day if I still wanted something then.

Note the first sign on the left....

Nick tried once again to get a sword, but found out that since it was sharpened, he would have to get a special license for it to be shipped overseas. Giving up once again, we decided to head out.

Before we left, Jessica got one of the huge handmade cotton candy flowers, and Dom, Nick, and I got another one of the ice cream waffles. This one was different because it was topped with sprinkles, gummies, and Oreos as well as whipped cream, and only had chocolate ice cream as well. It was a completely sugar overload, but it was a good end to a great day.

We headed home, Apollo going on the opposite subway of us to get to his home, and we went home, a great night finished.

-Zoe