March 31 - The Zoo

A beautiful spring day in Shanghai. The trees are in bud, the weather is comfortably warm and the sun is shining! This weather is refreshing after a long cold, winter in Canada.

Joel, Papa and Naomi headed for the workout room this morning after breakfast. Naomi ran around and got some of her ants worked out of her pants. She and Joel then decided to go for a swim and were surprised to find out that it cost 110 Yuan per person to go swimming. Since Naomi was already pumped about going swimming, Joel paid the equivalent of $30 Canadian dollars and they enjoyed the pool. It was well worth the money though because she had a blast and then was tuckered out and had a four hour nap. We’ll have to not mention swimming again until we get to Changsha where it is free!

After Naomi and mom got up from their naps around 1:30pm, we headed for the Shanghai Zoo. Naomi was sure that she was going to see Santa Claus there (not sure what inspired that), but she was happy to see Rudolf instead. She also made friends with a camel, some giraffe’s, a hippopotamus who wanted to show her his teeth (we were remarkably/frighteningly allowed very close) and one of the two medium sized pandas that were there. The giant pandas were no where to be found, a bit curious since they are China’s national animal. We decided to take in a sea lion show, which Naomi loved, but we all wondered about the trainer who showed absolutely no enthusiasm for the show, never cracked a smile and ended the show abruptly with no fan fare. The Zoo is spread over a large area, so we did lots of walking and by the time we got in the cab to come back to the hotel we were all getting hungry.

We decided to head back to the hotel to greet Cheryl and Mike (our travelmates who were arriving today) and to get Lily to take us out for dinner. Probably a bit of an error on our part because Naomi fell asleep in the cab on the way back and then took a long time to wake up and didn’t want dinner. In fact dinner was her first meltdown of the entire trip – and since she tired, I figured that she was also entitled. She hasn’t eaten much today except for cheerios, watermelon, yogurt and goldfish crackers but she is drinking lots and we figure that once she gets onto a schedule that she’ll start to eat better.

It is now 2:30 am and all three of us are wide awake. Naomi is playing with playdough on the floor and getting restless. We’ve made a glitter glue card, done a few puzzles and are waiting till daylight to head back out for some activity.
Today (April 1st), Lily has arranged for a driver and some passes for the Pearl TV tower for our group at 10am. We will head to the Bund after the trip up the tower and then come back to the hotel to welcome the remainder of our group to China.

Only a 3 more sleeps until we meet baby Lilah!

Cheers,Karen, Joel and Naomi