Having fun on our vacation!

Hello Everyone!











Well, our week-long vacation has begun and we have already been making the most of it. It started yesterday (Monday) when we walked on the Binhai Road, which is a 12 mile walk along the East coast of Dalian. We started off at Xianghai Square, where we saw sculptures of all of the Olympic sports (Yes, we even thought we saw one for Speed Walking). I saw this sculpture of a woman volleyball player and it reminded me of you Nikki! These sculptures are pretty amazing, we figured out that they display the three key movements in each of the motions...pretty cool! On the rest of the walk we saw some beautiful views of the Yellow Sea, got invited to join a group of wonderful (non-English speaking) Chinese people for lunch on the side of the road, and ended up at Tiger beach. It was a great long walk and we got to see much of Dalian that we never knew existed.











While on our walk we went passed what was Dalian's Forest Zoo, known as Asia's largest zoo (so we heard). So, we decided to visit it. The zoo was enormous..not many more animals than you would see at a normal zoo I don't think, but the amount of space it took up was amazing! We even had to take a 15-20 minute long gondola ride to get to another part of the zoo! The zoo was unlike one Josh or I had ever been to in America. For example, feeding the animals was a common trend and animals being let to roam around the park. One of our favorite parts of the zoo was visiting the bear exhibits. Both of us were expecting to find a few different kinds of bears sleeping in their caves and barely being able to get a glimps of them...wrong! All of the bears (including polar bears, sun bears, and a few others) were out and putting on a show for the crowd. We were able to throw apples and cucumbers to the bears to make them do tricks like spin around or wave...it was amazing! And we were able to see them up close and personal, only having about 15-20 feet distance and a deep moat in between us!
After the bear exhibit, we went to our first show titled "Violent Animals Performance." Here we saw four tigers and one lion doing tricks and walking on balance beams...but that's not all. After the show the crowd was invited to come into the giant caged in stage and take a picture with one of the younger tigers for only 10 yuan ( about $1!) How could we resist! :) It was one of the scariest things we had ever done...but now we can say that we touched a tiger with our bare hands and never do it again!!



Next we took a beautiful gondola ride to the next part of the zoo to catch the Thai Elephant performance. As we entered the park, standing straight in front of us was another photo opportunity of a lifetime.. being lifted in the air by a Thai Elephant! After I had already encountered a tiger and survived, what was there to stop me? After watching many other individuals successfully be lifted up and down I decided I would pay the $2.50 and experience another feat I never thought I would accomplish! It was pretty amazing, I don't really remember thinking anything while up in the air, only feeling an odd sense of security with the elephant's trunk wrapped tightly around me. You can watch this video for yourselves on our youtube link!




















Well, other than walking around the park (with little to no lighting) trying to find an exit and encountering a heard of free-roaming alpaca, the rest of the zoo trip was pretty uneventful. :) Needless to say we are having the experience of a lifetime already! Can't wait to fill you in on our next adventure in China!

We love you all so much!

Love,
Ashley and Josh

P.S. Tomorrow is Dalian's version of Disneyland called Discoveryland! Woohoo!