I'm posting this on Monday morning here in China, but really it's from Sunday. We got to our new hotel so late last night that we all just went right to bed. Yesterday (Sunday) morning we had breakfast, checked out of our hotel, and our group went on the bus to the panda reserve. It was about an hour and 20 minutes from Chengdu. We saw a lot of pandas, and a lot of them up really close! It wasn't quite like a zoo because the pandas have a lot more room to roam around, but they do have food and water provided for them, as well as air conditioned enclosures that they can go into because they like cooler weather. Even though the reserve is a ways up into the mountains where it's a little cooler, the pandas still prefer it even cooler than it gets in the summer there. It was cloudy and humid, and Ezekiel used his monocular a lot and was able to see most of the pandas. We all had a lot of fun seeing the pandas!
Next we had lunch and then spent quite awhile in a really large market. There were a lot of people there, but it wasn't a tourist area, so our group was the only group of Americans that we saw. There were lots of neat stores and we bought some things and had fun walking around. We've had a lot of Chinese people coming up to us asking to have their picture taken with us, especially lately when we've been in the less "touristy" areas where they don't see Americans as much. Ironically, the Chinese people all want to have their picture taken with Ezekiel, and of course they don't realize that he's actually Chinese. They love his hair. Sometimes he gets upset when people try to lift up his hat, but he's usually okay with people taking his picture - I think he likes the attention. Unfortunately, some of the Chinese people try to indicate to us that they want a picture of our family but not with TongJie in the picture, but we tell them that he's part of our family and usually put him in the picture anyway.
We went to the airport and had an evening flight from Chengdu to Guilin. Our flight got in after 9:30, and it was after 11:00 by the time we'd all gotten our baggage, walked to the new bus, and drove the approx. one hour to our new hotel. Ezekiel slept through the flight and everything. The rest of us stayed awake, but crashed into bed as soon as we got here. We were able to sleep in a little this morning and not be too rushed, so we're looking forward to another day of adventures!
Pictures of a panda that we saw at the reserve, and us standing by a horse statue at the market.
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