PANDA!!! Day 2 and the Taipei Zoo

Despite the cold, windy and rainy day we opted to go to the zoo.  I know it's strange but the amazing thing about this city is how everything fun is truly outdoors (in my opinion)  .  We hit the breakfast buffet.  amazing!  and then we grabbed our complimentary Hyatt umbrellas and hit the zoo.  Sophie was thrilled, we bundled her up in 2 sweatshirts, grabbed a taxi and off we went.

It's interesting when we were here previously it was a quicker trip and we didn't even make it out a few blocks from the hotel except our train ride to Tainan and the train to the HandiCraft market.  The cab ride from the city to the zoo albeit short was awesome.  Taiwan is FULL of beautiful lush foliage, trees, mountains and flowers.  This is evident also at the zoo. 

We've been a few zoos around PA but seriously this zoo is amazing!  It was not crowded based on the weather so it made for a nice quick stroll through all the animals.  Sophie loved it and so did we.  We were going to do the Gondola ride but we will do that tomorrow after we hit the Jade and Flower market in the morning.  It is sunny tomorrow and it will be better so we can see everything and enjoy the outside and hiking without the rain.

The zoo has some pretty cool animals.  The crowd favorites (sophie style) was of course the flamingo's (her fav), koala bears who all had their backsides to us and not cooperating, the Giant Panda, the giraffe and the zebras!  Everything sophie owns and loves is zebra print so she was just in awe.  Another crowd pleaser was the "pooper" yes it's true taiwan doesn't always have the full blown toilets so the in ground toilets of course make her laugh like crazy and to add to this new finding is the blown up painted drawings about using poop for energy that feature a pooping pig holding a hair dryer.  Since being back at the hotel she has brought this up several times.  Warning all of you now when you see her, this may be one of the Top 5 that she mentions to all of you  :)  Fun day, even in the rain.  Here are some pics!

Sophie inside the black bear "cave"

There were a ton of little caves throughout the zoo that the kids can go through to get to the other side of the walkway but a hit nonetheless.

Year of the Dragon exhibit.  This was a super cute exhibit!

Dragon mascot

 Dinosaur exhibit, this was cool.

 Coloring the dragon mascot picture she wants this emailed to Mimi and MarMar

" Mommy looks boys are APES!"  hysterical.

Daddy gave her the thumbs up for a new stuffed panda

His name shall be Fluffy she said but it later changed to Pandy.  Thinking either name will do 

Family pic in front of the spitting camels.  This will again be a memory as Chris tried to state" would you please take our picture this in Mandarin" and well everyone ignored us, so lord only knows what the website was actually telling us to say!  lol  so he went for English.  after all of the wonderful animals and beautiful scenery throughout the zoo, yep here we are after a rainstorm in front of camels ready to spit loogies.  Again, classic memory I'm sure you are all thrilled to share with us  

 And as if the camel shot wasn't enough here is the shot of the hairblowing pig pooping in the potty which is fueling a home.  Again so glad you all get to share this with us - lol
Seriously it is amazing if you think about it.  They are very serious here about conservation, energy and taking care of the environment with the amount of people here on this island to ignore it like we often do wouldn't be good at all.  The thought behind the graphic is a good one but the graphic itself put sophie and I over the edge with laughter.

Sophie and the giraffe 

Her favorite.  zebra!!!

I know there are many adoptive families reading this blog and I must admit bringing Sophie has been an AMAZING experience for her, well and us.  First of all we are doing things we probably wouldn't have done without her here (aka the zoo, just walking all over town, finding parks,etc) and as Chris and I just said - it wasn't until we were in high school that we truly understood and grasped there was a whole different world out there and Sophie is experiencing now.  The interesting thing is that she is really enjoying it and we know she won't remember everything but there will be pieces of this trip she will remember forever and that is the very cool part of it all.  To expose her to this has been one of the best gifts I think we could ever give her.  If there are others out there debating whether to take their children abroad whatever the reason, do it!

Until tomorrow...Jade Market and Gondola and tea houses are on the agenda...2 days until we meet our sweet Lizzie!