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This morning, we left the hotel at 9:30am to visit the Chongqing zoo. The Giant Pandas (XiongMao in Chinese) are feed at 10am. Our guide says they are fun to watch while they eat, but afterwards, they just lay around.
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Eating with no exercise...wonder where their belly comes from?!?!
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Look... I can eat as much as Renée.
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Zachary is watching the Giant Panda. They really tear into that bamboo.
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In an all Chinese city, this sign was ironically only in English.
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Oh, the tough life. If only Garfield had it this easy...
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If you look very closely, this Panda actually looks like a flower.
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Zachary and Tucker having a blast.
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Zachary and Tucker watching the toy boats at the zoo.
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Zachary, Tucker and Kendyl watching the toy boats. These simple boats were probably the highlight of their trip to the zoo.
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The man who drove the toy boats. He did a great job in getting the children to want to watch the boats - but the mean parents would not pay the few yuan for them to drive these boats. Our guide said that though this instrument sounded cool, it is a very simplistic instrument that anyone could learn in a day.
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This is what happens to Eric when he takes a long bath.
The hippo tank was pretty neat to watch. Usually, the hippos just lay still - this one was swimming all over the place. The water though was quite dirty and made it difficult to see the hippo.
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Need to take a break from reality...time for Star Wars. Note his fingers. He has a very specific hand motion/configuration for the different types of ships. Though the name of this ship is not known, it does have many guns.
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They had a nice tiger exhibit. Two of the tigers wrestled later.
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We saw this cool grizzly-like bear.
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This was the animal that Renée liked the most. Probably because it was big, close and active.
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Tina and Renée along with Zachary and Eric loved watching this bear. The main reason the bear was so active was because people here feed the animals. So of course it will move around - it's hunting for food. If you held your fist out in a way that looked like there was food inside, the bear would reach up to you - getting about 6 feet away.
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One person was able to get the bear to turn circles while standing on it hind legs. They then dropped eggs as a reward.
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Mama... I'm not tired!
Renée lazily peers around mama to check something out.
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After the zoo, we headed for the trademark food of Chongqing called huo guo or "hot pot". By appointment only due to demand, we were presented with this table spread of various vegetables (lotus root on the left) and meat of pork, moo and fish. The non-standard table display of the rattle was supplied by Renée.
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| This is similar to our Fondue. The inside pot had boiling sesame oil and other stuff. The outside pot had boiling chili oil and hua jiao (flower pepper that causes the mouth to tingle). Once the river boatmen's campfire meal of leftovers from the day's market, huo guo is now the local favorite. My guide book says that this is sometimes because opium pods are placed in the brew. But we were not so "lucky".
When our guide made the reservation, she told them we were foreigners and we think they took the edge out of the fire. The inside pot tasted great and was not too spicy. The outside was otherwise. As Eric's coworker from Flagstaff and a native of Chongqing warned, it made Eric's tongue go numb. There was so much smoke coming from the oil that smoke would come out of our mouths.
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A server would cook and serve the first round. Tina was happy - they had forks!
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The outer pot had a strong order. Hungry for this food, our clothes clung to the oil vapor until they were washed.
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Renée had difficulty settling down, so Deborah our guide gave us a gift by watching Renée while we ate.
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Outside the restaurant window, we saw the city's monorail.
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Let's party!!!
At 4:40pm, we headed to the children's room for Renée's 4:30pm birthday party. She woke up from her nap quite angry. It's her party...
The hotel gave all the kids the ducks, which we saw throughout the remainder of the trip.
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Family pose during Renée's one year birthday party. The Conifer Hotel gave this party as a gift, supplying the cake, supplies, some photos and the room.
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Four of the babies line up with birthday cheer. From left to right: Praisiah, Jeff, Renée and Kyrah.
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Since Renée would not blowout the candles, she waved the number one to 'blow' out the candle.
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Okay... I'm ready for my cake.
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Candy our guide had fun feeding the first few bites to Renée. Since Renée would not let Candy get too close throughout the trip, Candy seemed to enjoy that she could interact with her this way.
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Other than her mother, who wants a clean birthday girl? So Eric began to let Renée feed herself.
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And she liked it!
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Messy girl posing with mom and dad.
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And then she got messier...
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Hug please!!!
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Posing with the beauty queen. We did not know that Zachary's hat was weighted with concrete.
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The little ones posing while trying to display their age: Kyrah, Praisiah, Renée, Joya and Jeff.
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A view of the lobby of the Conifer Hotel. The carriage looked like an antique. The second floor was a smoking lounge. Straight back on that floor was where we befriended the photocopier. The third floor was the Village Cafe, where we had many meals. Straight back was where Tina's birthday cake was served and where Zachary loved to look down on the people below.
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YOU took a picture of WHAT?!?!?
Yep, Eric took a picture of our washing machine / dryer in our Conifer Hotel room as Noah came to visit. Instead of giving us the deluxe room we had requested, they gave us an apartment room - two stories with many amenities including kitchen and washer/dryer. We had a dire need for laundry and with the help of our guide had some sent out to a Chinese lady to do the laundry with 24 hour turnaround. Tina needed something that evening, so we decided to use the washer. Hey, how difficult could it be?
After visiting the grocery store to buy some Tide (shown in the picture), we stuffed in a load. Note - everything is in Chinese characters other than letters A-F on the dial. So we set it to 'B' and let'er rip. A couple of hours later the washer stopped and Tina opened the door. What followed next was a scream and a lot of water on the floor.
"What do you mean you used it?!?!?" We asked our guide to help, who brought in house keeping, who brought in maintenance. No one could figure out how to get it to drain and spin. Eric found an interim drain/spin cycle, followed by an immediate fill. Our guide requested we say nothing - guess to save the face of the maintenance man. After the commotion ended, the spin and followed by the immediate shutdown worked and we had 'dry' clothes and floor. Including the dry cycle, we were able to get clean cloths in one fourth the time of the Chinese lady!!! American ingenuity at work!
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