Wednesday, February 10, 2010

The zoo

We went to the zoo today with our travel group.  Here is how the trip went:
 
*Keep Claire from throwing up on the bus.
*Check out the super loud, squawking swans.
*Check out the big cat family who are in tiny concrete cages pacing back and forth.  Ugh.
*Look at the hippo and get scolded by a Chinese lady who thinks I'm telling Claire to climb through the lower opening when I was actually telling her to look through it because she was too short to see over the rail.  Yea, because I'm into tossing my kids into the hippo cage and seeing who wins.
*Leave the old, mean lady and head for the peacock- Claire's favorite animal.
*Watch Claire run with excitement, trip and fall head first into the concrete.
*Run with a screaming 7 year old who's forehead is now double the size and purple to the first aid station.
*Find the first aid station which is behind a gate saying "No admittance".
*Dad goes berserk again and crosses the gate anyhow and we startle the ladies working in the office.  Unable to speak much mandarin we point to Claire's head and they understand what we need, sort of.
*A guard comes in to question why were inside the gate and this freaks Claire out.  I'm trying to tell him what is wrong.  Me not speaking mandarin and him not understanding English didn't get us very far.  They grab other people and finally I remember the mandarin word for ice- beeng.   So I start saying "BEENG!" and pointing to my head and her head.
*They finally understand and took us to a shop where they banged on the side of the ice cream freezer to get chunks of ice (they don't use ice machines here.)
*Get a taxi ride back to the hotel because the group doesn't leave the zoo for another hour.
*Go to the clinic inside the hotel and get told what we already know- watch for vomiting, dizziness, etc.
*Give Claire Tylenol and have her rest for an hour and then watch her come back to life.
 
By the end of the day she was running around (well, with us saying no running!), jumping and laughing like her normal self.  A Hello Kitty band-aid cleverly disguised the swollen bump but when we took it off tonight she still has quite a goose egg on her forehead.  It will probably be sore for quite awhile.
 
Tomorrow we pack up and get ready to leave.  We will try very hard to get some pictures uploaded as well.  I thought I could do that today but feisty girl here gave us alternative plans.

No comments:

Post a Comment