Safari Park and SO Much more.........

Today we went to the Safari Park here in Guangzhou, it was amazing! We had so much fun seeing all the animals. There were lions, and tigers, and bears (oh my....sorry, LOL) and koalas, and pandas, and monkies, and just about every other animal imagineanble. The cool thing was that it wasn't just one or two of each animal, but atleast 10! We first went on a safari by motorized train, then we walked through the rest of the park, which was pretty much a zoo on steroids! The exhibits were huge (except the chimpanzees, not sure why but it was a little a lot disapointing depressing), a lot of the animals were being fed, which made for great pictures, and again there were so many of each animal, I took almost 300 pictures!! I won't make you scroll through all of them, so here are a few...........

 Feeding the ostrich from the car.

 There was a neat dinosaur exhibit, which didn't phase Olivia at all......

 Yes, this monkey is peeing.......

 But she did NOT like the snakes.......

 "Be carefully slip".........??????

 This is the chimpanzee......he just sat at the window.  :-(

Feeding the giraffes......She wasn't too fond of the giraffe's tongue, either......

 The pandas were pretty cool!  They were out in the open and so close to us!

 This little guy is called "the lesser panda".......

 She fell asleep before we got to the Tigers.

 These are some BIG cats!

After the Safari Park we got back to the hotel about 4 and met everyone for dinner at 5. Olivia was very quiet and calm all day. She did mouth the word PANDA a few times, after we said it to her, which was so cute. We ate dinner with 5 other families at a noodle restaurant......:-).......after we were finished eating Olivia deided she wanted some of the soup our friends had been eating. It had "beef butt" (hoping that means roast) in it. I gave her a few bites and she immediatley livened up. She took too many bites and chewed for what seemed like forever, before I just had her spit it out. I think it was too big for her to swallow. Anyway, we cleaned her up and put her in the stroller and she immediately began SMILING!!! Then Mike went to tickle her and she let out a little giggle. We needed to go to the grocery store (Walmart) to get a few things and the entire time we were walking to the store, in the store, and walking back to the hotel, she laughed and giggled, and talked to herself!!! It was the best day yet!!!! :-) I am one happy Mama! I will say, as soon as we got into the elevator to come upstairs, it all stopped, and once in the room she was done. I really think she hates hotels! She was whinny and fussy (yes, tired) and there was no smiling, but that's ok, I was overjoyed with all the smiles we got.

Now I MUST give praise to our God for this. Earlier today when we were at the Safari Park, I prayed "God, please open our little girl's heart, please let me see some smiles and contentment in her." You see, it's very hard to be here with MANY other adoptive families and EVERY other child is running around, smiling, acting like a child. I was getting REALLY worried. Why was she so solemn and serious ALL the time? We have a video of her from last August and she is happy, smiling, and talking in it....Many of you have seen it.....So I knew she had it in her......but you will be amazed at the things that run through your mind when your faced with the complete unknown of what exactly your child has gone through in the past 3 years of living in an orphanage. And sadly these things haunt us because we know they happen, maybe, hopefully, not to our child, but sometimes we will NEVER know.......Anyway, back to happy thoughts, God answered my prayers, yet again. I saw a happy, content little girl tonight, and I was walking on cloud 9! It was the happiest I've been since being here! Yes, I was happy when we got her, but I was worried and scared as well. Seeing those smiles and hearing those giggles, were nothing short of answered prayers!

One week ago today, we met.  Thank you God for this AMAZING blessing!!!