Know what the equivalent to our American "Say 'Cheese!'" is in China--Eggplant! Technically, it is "qie zi", which is kind of pronounced "chiez-zah", which sort of makes your mouth into the same shape as our "cheese" does--and I'm assuming is the reason for the word choice! We heard this numerous times on Saturday this weekend when we took a "field trip" to the Tianjin zoo. We had a blast spending all day looking for animals and trying to identify their Chinese names. (Kevin made up flash cards before we left with pictures of each animal on one side and the name of it in Chinese on the other. We then made it into a sort of scavenger hunt game to see how many of the animals from our cards we could find!) We had beautiful weather, and our friend Joel joined us, who the kids LOVE spending time with. The kids had so much fun that they didn't even seem to mind too much that they were as much of a main attraction as the animals were. Thus the frequency of "qie zi" being heard throughout the park as our kids were constantly asked to pose with other Chinese kids for photos!
And of course boys will be boys, so Kevin and Joel had to have some sort of competition, adrenaline rush thing going. They decided to make it a game to see how many of the dangerous animals they could touch! One major difference in the zoo here and the ones we've been to in the States--if you want to get in WITH the animals (as in, get into their exhibit on their turf!), you pretty much can do so! (okay, this is probably a slight exaggeration--but not by much. It would be difficult to get into the exhibits, but you can definitely reach them and be a lot closer than anything we're used to.) People are always feeding the animals and messing with them in different ways. So Kevin and Joel were actually able to reach in and touch a rhino, a camel, a long-horned antelope of some sort, and a tiger!
Some of the other pics are of the show that we watched that was unlike anything we'd ever seen before. There was a tiger riding on top of horse, a bear playing basketball and riding a bike that you would've sworn was actually a person with a bear costume on by the way it moved, and a lion getting angry at the "trainer" who had nothing but a stick to defend himself with! It was all quite exciting. And the whole fam was thrilled to have a sweet time together of enjoying the beauty and wonder of the creation around us!
