Day 13 – GZ Zoo & Circus

Today is day 13, hard to believe that we have been away from our kiddos for 13 days. While don’t get me wrong, I have enjoyed our time in country, I am just ready to get back home with all my kiddos in one place. Only 5 more sleeps until I get to squeeze their necks and kiss their cheeks. FaceTime has been wonderful to see them everyday and has made our time away a bit easier {for me at least}.

Thank you all for your prayers for me yesterday. Somehow I caught something and I am so thankful to say I am 100% better today!

Today started out like any other day. We got up, FaceTimed with Sara Kate {as the other 2 were already in bed} and my mom and Aunt. Adam decided he would take a shower and that is where the fun begins. For the first time he decided it would be a good idea to lock the pocket bathroom door so Samuel wouldn’t come in. Well, when he wanted to unlock the door and head down to breakfast, he couldn’t….the door was stuck! Somehow the lock was jammed and he was trapped in the bathroom. With Samuel yelling Baba {Mandarin for daddy} I called the desk to get some help. After a few minutes the lady came to our room and with hand motions she told me to tell him to unlock the door by turning the lock. I explained to her that he can’t because it is stuck and she proceeded to show me on another lock how to unlock it. After trying to tell her over and over again that it was stuck and he couldn’t turn it she said hold on and tried to get some other help. About 5 minutes or so passed and the lady came back with another lady. She too wanted me to tell adam how to turn the lock and after explaining to her over and over again she went to get more help. This time the 2nd lady came back with what appeared to be a matainace man {he had some tools, so I knew one way or another my hubby was coming out of the bathroom}. By this time it probably had been 25 minutes or so since adam has been trapped in the bathroom. After some attempts to unstick the door, he just broke the lock and unlocked the door. Thank goodness, because we still needed to eat breakfast and meet up with our group for the zoo.

Breakfast was uneventful and we managed to eat, enjoy the yummy cappuccino from the breakfast buffet and not be late to meet our group for our zoo outing.

Today’s adventure {other than being stuck in the bathroom} was the Guangzhou zoo. We were excited to go to the zoo because Samuel loves animals! He always points to the animals in his books and names them all so we knew today would be a fun time.

We arrived at he zoo, got on the little golf cart with a guide and took off to see the animals. This was a nice way to see the zoo because there was a breeze blowing through the cart. And unlike the zoo in Atlanta, we were able to get real close to the animals. Samuel loved seeing the tigers and the monkeys, but his favorites were by far the horses, elephants and the giraffes.

We then headed to the ‘gymnastic show’. This appeared to be a family {mom, dad, sister and brother} and the stuff they were doing was crazy. Adam took pictures and I am sure they won’t do the stunts justice, but it was crazy.

After that, a guy in our group decided he would hold a boa constrictor….yuck. I was glad it wasn’t me holding that snake around my neck. We then walked over to the pony because Samuel talks about horses ALL THE TIME. He was fine seeing it from a distance, but the when we got close he was not happy. After we said bye to the pony we headed back to the cart to head to the front of the zoo Samuel then began to ask to see the pony over and over and over again.

We said goodbye to the zoo and loaded the bus to head back to our hotel. We were thankful for the air conditioning. We are used to hot and humid, being from Atlanta, but Atlanta has nothing on Guangzhou’s humidity.

After returning to the hotel, we headed in for some lunch. Sandwiches, Asian pear, goldfish and Babybel cheese for lunch. {I have to say my $1 Babybel cheese was well worth it}

After lunch we headed down to the pool to burn off some energy from little guy before nap time. The pool was fun, Samuel loves the water! Adam and Samuel enjoyed playing in the water while mommy took pictures from the side. We had the pool all to ourselves and then another family came to join us. Yea for friends!!

Side note, it has been so fun hanging out with other families, getting to know them and hearing their stories about how The Lord has turned their heart towards adoption. We enjoyed chatting with our new friends and the headed up to our room for naps.

During nap time we got a call from our friends about going with them to the circus tonight. They said that its pretty easy to get to via the subway and that it would be fun. When I Rome, right?!

After Samuels good nap {2 hrs} we headed down to the lobby to meet our friends for the circus. There is 3 families going.

———– end Jess’s part of the blog post and being Adam authoring ————

We headed to the subway to make our way to the circus. We were a little uneasy about it, not really knowing where we were going and knowing that almost no one speaks english, but we braved it with two other families and I’m glad we did. The first thing I noticed about the subway (metro) is that it was crazy clean and nice! It makes Marta look bad (which isn’t very hard to do). The second thing that I noticed is that it was surprising easy to navigate, which was a nice surprise.

We got to the circus early and our guide had told us there was a good restaurant across from the circus, so we set out to find it. We ended up in a five star hotel trying carefully to be sure that we were not about to be seated in a restaurant that we could not (or did not want to) afford. After deciding that the prices were high, but better than “park food” that we would likely get inside the circus, we were seated.

This place was swanky and we were a bit out of place, as Americans, and being a little underdressed, and having children in tow, but hey, we rocked it anyway! We had a nice dinner and it turned out to not be that expensive at all. Samuel really liked the noodles and once again ate more than I did. It was really nice sitting and talking to other adoptive families at dinner too. The kids did great and the fellowship was much needed.

After dinner we headed over to the circus. We were posing outside to get a group photo when lightening struck very, very close by. It must have been the loudest thunder I have ever heard. So, needless to say we hustled into the circus to avoid more lightening and the torrential downpour that came just a few minutes after we were safely in shelter.

And now to the circus, it was awesome! It was like they took the best parts of other circus shows and put them all into one big show! I’m going to have to make a video with some of the footage because describing everything we would next to impossible and wouldn’t do it justice anyway.

Unfortunately, Samuel did not like the loud music of the way they took the lights down to make it completely dark. So, after a few minutes of him being upset, Jess took him and stood at the top of the steps so that she could walk with him out the door to help him calm down. Fortunately this was effective and they were still able to see the whole show. Samuel’s favorite parts were the horses and the elephants, man that boy loves him some horses!

After the show we followed the crowd forever to find the bus. Several times we thought weren’t sure we were going the right way, it was odd having the bus stop so far from the circus and it was not a well lit area. But, we bumped in a lady that spoke English and Mandarine who was looking for the bus as well, and she helped to point us in the right direction (thank you Lord for that).

On the subway ride back Samuel sacked out. He is so much like our other kids with sleep, the boy can sleep through a subway ride and Jess carrying him through a rain storm, and he sleeps about 11 to 12 hours a night! He is a great sleeper.

Now we are finishing up things and going to crash. It has been a really long day today, fortunately we don’t have a lot to do tomorrow until the evening, so hopefully we will get some good rest. Ok, until tomorrow!

Adam (and Jessica from her writing above)

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