Shenzhen Safari Park/Zoo

We went to the zoo last week during our holiday. Kenya loved it so much! I think her favorite was the monkeys. She kept asking "more monkeys." And we still hear about the monkeys at home almost everyday. On the way to the zoo we told her that we were going to see the animals and so now she knows that word and asks to go see the animals. She is getting quite big and learning quickly. What a wonderful blessing she is in our lives! At the zoo we had lots of fun. We took our nanny Amy with us. We saw a great seal and dolphins show. It was great! We also saw a circus at the end of the day. I had been wanting to see a good circus for years. This circus was short, about 25-30 minutes, but it was great! We all had fun and it was something we could share with Kenya during our vacation.

This is Kenya already for the day. She was so cute! I put her hair in pigtails.

The Drapers in front of the zoo.


Amy and Kenya in front of Gibbon Island. This was the first thing we saw as we came into the zoo. Yep, monkeys!
Kenya got to ride on giant chickens. And she let us know they were chickens like at mama and papa's house.
We were super close to the gibbons. There was just a mote around the island, no cages!

We paid just over a $1 to feed giraffes. They sure have strong jaws, they ripped the branches right out of our hands. Kenya enjoyed this, as well as mommy and daddy!

The elephants were fun. Someone was feeding this one peanuts.

Zebras, Amy and I got to pet this one. There were several animals that you could pay to feed. Zebras were one of them. We did not pay, but I am guessing that is why this Zebra let us pet it.
Hippos. This is about all we saw of them. They did come up or a breath once or twice.
How, cute! The swans in the water fountains behind us are kissing too. This was daddy's cute idea!
Kenya, loves fish! Of coarse there were lots of gold fish to feed in the ponds.
These were the penguins. Kenya liked watching them swim. She loves the water and we were all sad when the pool at our apts closed at the end of September.
Here are some pictures of the show. There are videos at the end too!




Black panthers, Robert's favorite animals!
What a cute baby! She did great the entire day! She had a dry diaper the entire day. We had to brave using the Chinese public toilets, but it was her choice. Way to go Kenya!
Just before the circus started. I love it when these two walk around holding hands! I cannot get enough!
Yeah, he is upside down on a horse running full speed. They were quite good at their tricks! It reminded me of Toby Tyler!

This bear was being fed. He would stand there and beg, or ask nicely until someone throw him an apple.
The is a Tigon. This zoo has both tigons and ligers. To us they both looked the same.
So, I was going to post video, but it is giving me an error when I try. I will just post them later maybe.

Updates: Fireworks-Man vs Nature!

In this corner we have Man...aka Shenzhen...alias the 30th Anniversary of the birth of Shenzhen!
On September 6th we saw the best continuous, 30 minute fireworks display right from our balcony! We even saw more of the ground fireworks on the t.v. There were fireworks that made shapes of stars, smiley faces and planets! How would one even begin to figure out how to pack explosive powder into shell and have it create a complex design when launched hundreds of feet in the air?



In this corner we have Nature...aka Mother Nature...alias Electrical Storm...also known as Lightning! On the night of September 8th starting at about 7pm there were flashes of lightning in the distance. There was no thunder at that time. As the night progressed there were a lot more and brighter flashes, but still no thunder. We didn't really catch on that it was lightning until about 10pm. From that point on Mother Nature revealed her awesome power! There was continuous rumbling of thunder that lasted about 3-4 hours. This natural fireworks display lasted for hours! It was around 7am that this raging storm had finally began to fizzle out in the distance. Now keep in mind that we are on the 23rd floor of a 24 story building so we were in the storm and we could feel when our building was struck because we could feel the floor shake! Being so high up, we had great views of other buildings having their lightning rods struck!

The lightning in this first video struck the ground! It was pretty close to our complex. You can try to pause the video at 17 seconds to get a better look at the bolts.

We hope this doesn't slow down your computers too much, but it will be worth it. We put only a select few on the blog because they showed the best lightning and you can hear great samples of the booming thunder! Enjoy!






If we were the ones calling the contest between Shenzhen's fireworks and Mother Nature's we would rule in favor of Mother Nature simply because the display lasted longer and was louder and it was up close and personal. Either way they were two spectacular displays that deserve a lot of praise.

Updates: Fun in China.

This is Kenya after an exhausting day running around. She is a real trooper here in China!
These next few pictures are of Kenya playing at the little park that our complex has. She enjoys playing with other kids and she doesn't even mind the heat too much.


This is Kenya with her first date. One of the teachers here set her up with it. She did not like it much either. We all agree that she is to young to be dating anyway!

The Mid Autumn Festival was at on Sept 23. What the Chinese do on this holiday is look at the moon with their family and eat moon cakes. (I have not really found any moon cakes that were great. Don't get me wrong I liked some of them, but it is nothing I am going to miss about China.) Our boss invited us all to a wonderful dinner. It had been cloudy all day and so we did not think we were going to be able to see the moon. Then when we were going home after dinner we looked up and, sure enough, there was the moon. It was gone in less than 2 0r 3 minutes too. It was great! I wish this picture was not so blurry. It would have been a great picture to blow up.

The man on the far right is our boss, Mr Tian. He owns the school. The others are the head master and some of the principals. It was another great night and yummy traditional Chinese food!

This is Chicken served with the head on the platter.

Gotta love Kenya! She would sing, dance and sweep all day if we did not have other things to do.

Updates: Treats for the American teachers.

So, on September 10 China celebrates Teacher's Day. Basically some of the students bring in gifts and/or cards for their teachers. Our school also gave us a bonus and had dinner and a party. The dinner was very Chinese and quite good. We would have enjoyed everything a lot more had we know about the party more than 1 hour before it began. The school told us at 4:30 that we were going to have a meeting we had to go to and then after the meeting we would have dinner and then after the dinner there would be prizes for everyone. So, we did not have a babysitter or anything, but one of the other teachers stayed down stairs with all the kids. By the time the meeting was done all the kids were cranky because they were tired and hungry. So dinner was great and the prize thing lasted until almost 10pm. Kenya's bed time is 8pm and we normally eat at 5:30ish. She actually did really well in behaving. It could have been A LOT worse. What a wonderful baby we have!! Below are pictures of what we received on Teacher's Day and yes, that is a 40 inch flat screen TV. I won that as a grand prize. We continued to get gifts for a few days after that as well.




I just thought this was a great picture. This was on the 30th anniversary of Shenzhen, it was sometime in the beginning of September.
Mr Tian, the owner of the school took us out to eat. Man, I love buffets and I have seen some really big buffets. Nothing like this one! It was huge! I am not joking when I say that the menu had a map of the different kinds of foods because there was so much, or when I say there were several times that I got lost getting food. It was amazing! It was about $30 a person!

Updates: Our first trip to Hong Kong.

Our trip to Hong Kong was great, other than of coarse, you could guess it was too hot and too humid. We went to these beautiful gardens and then to the temple. We ended our day with pizza in the mall and a few American treats. These are the Nan Lian Gardens. There was a Nunnery connected to them as well. What a gorgeous place.

This is Kenya at customs on the Chinese side. We have to go through customs to leave China and then through Hong Kong customs to enter Hong Kong. Then vise versa on the way home.













A hot pink dragon fly!





There is a gift shop and restaurant behind that waterfall. Would have been cool to eat at if we had enough time.





They had an exhibit with rocks and raked pebbles. Really neat looking!


These next few picture are of a Nunnery right next to the Gardens. It was awesome. There was a monk chanting the entire time we were there. Not many other visitors were there and that is always nice. The shrines there was beautiful, but there were signs saying that we could not take pictures of them. We really enjoyed seeing something that looked Asian. We feel like we just live in a really big city here. There is not much ancient Chinese culture here in Shenzhen because it is such a new city.




Our first and definately not our last view of the Hong Kong Temple. What a wonderful place. The experience here has been so much more personal than at any other temple. Both times we have been there we saw and spoke directly to the temple president and his wife.