Friday...leaving for Beijing and then HOME!

Friday was our last day in Guangzhou, and as of yet, we had not really bought much, so we set out to get some gifts from the remaining open stores on Shamian.  (It's kind of a ghost town these days...like the mall everybody *used* to go to.)  This didn't sit well with Ross YunLong, who would grab something from nearly every aisle and beg us to buy it for him.  He knew (it had been explained) that we were getting a gift for each of his siblings back in the states.  A little temper tantrum, and a refusal to eat lunch, checkout of the hotel, and then it was time to meet our guide.  We had a few hours to kill before heading for the airport, and she offered for us to go to a museum or the zoo.  We asked the kids, and they (of course) wanted to go to the zoo, and we felt that was best.  Our guide didn't seem too happy about our choice, but oh well.  When we got there though, we saw they had a separate part of the zoo that is more like a Sea World (in a smallish, not so nice kind of way.)  We exchanged our tickets and went there instead, since we'd already been to the zoo in Kunming.  

Again...what a difference from things in the states!  At Sea World, during the dolphin show, there's usually the obligatory "pick the girl out of the audience and let her pet the dolphin and it then kisses her cheek" bit.  Well, here...they have the girl get in a blow-up raft and the dolphins pull here around in the VERY deep show pool!  (Can you even imagine the insurance premiums for the liability of someone falling out of the boat here???)

Inside the aquarium part, there was a shark tank that was only waist high...and open on the top!  You can just stick your hand right in with all the sharks!  There's just a gal posted in front of it who says, "Just be careful!"  Then, just like at the zoo where we fed the lion, they had a tupperware full of fish parts so you could feed the sharks.  Bo, of course, had to let the kids do that!  They gave them each this grabber thing.  They loaded fish on one end, held it in the water, and the sharks would come at it and grab it vigorously, splashing water everywhere!  Quite cool, actually!

Then we were off to fly to Beijing, much to Ross' chagrin.  He kept saying he didn't want to go to Beijing.  He wanted to go to America!  We got in late, slept, and then left for the airport in the morning.  The flights from Beijing to SanFran, and then on to Denver were largely uneventful.  The kids mostly watched TV.  (In fact, they didn't sleep on the flight over, and only slept on the flight to Denver.)  

Kara was timid, getting off the plane here, but Ross was skipping and jumping and excited to meet his new siblings.  He was silly and playing with all of them from the get-go!