I got to see the Panders!!!!!!

 Panda eating Bamboo

Red Panda

Hey everyone!  Today, we went to the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Research.  I will now give you a quick lesson on the base and pandas.  The research center was started in 1987 with six pandas from the wild.  Since then they have had over 100 pandas be born and like 87 are still living.  The base's research lately has been on working with the pandas on breeding new baby pandas.  Something I learned today, is that panda's mate for love and the doctors are having trouble getting them to "fall in love."  Anyways, so there are six different times of the year where the panda breeding process is done. In March-May, the pandas participate in courtship and falling in love and breeding.  In August to October, the baby pandas are born and they teach the mama pandas how to care for them.  When the panda is born it is only about 100 grams and has no hair.  It looks like a naked mole rat and is quite gross.  It later grows hair and becomes the cute pandas that we know and love.  We did not get to see any really little pandas because of the time of the year, but did see some Pandas that were about a year and a half old.  They were so cute and fluffy.  Made you just want to hug them.  We saw probably about 10 other older pandas that are from about 2 years old to the "old pandas" that are 22.  The big ones were so fun to watch.  We got to get so close and they really looked like people dressed in costumes to me and not real.  It was a really interesting experience.  Other than the regular Giant Pandas, we also saw Red Pandas.  Red Pandas although not as esquisite as the regular panda were very interesting to look at.  They looked like a mixture of a racoon and panda with a monkey tail.  Check out the picture for yourself.

After the panda place and lunch, we went to Lotus Garden Market.  It was a huge open air market that sort of looked like a flea market.  This was not the best place we have shopped because no one wanted to give us a good deals.  I have been very careful so far in what I have been buying since I still have so many other places to go, but did pick up a few things for myself and some other special little people.  What I bought myself was a Maijong set, I think I mentioned this a few days ago.  Maijong is basically like Chinese Dominos.  Tomorrow I am going with my friend Jeannette to learn how to play it.  I am quite excited.  

Tonight, after dinner I actually hung out with my host family.  It was quite fun.  I helped the kids on their English homework.  The mom would read the boy an English word and he was practicing spelling them.  She would then tell me what the word was in Chinese and I had to repeat it.  I do not remember anything I learned though...It is so hard! Then the mom decided that she wanted me to give her an English name.  So I went through every name I could think of and finally we decided on Lina.  I am not sure how we came up with this, but she liked it.  Since I cannot say her Chinese name I am going to call her Lina from now on.  So, I think that is really about it for the day.  Tomorrow is our day off and like I said I am going to learn how to play Maijong and then for dinner we are going to go eat Hot Pot.  I am not sure how to describe this, but I am a bit nervous.  It is supposed to be very spicy so hopefully they will go easy on me.  I will take some pictures so everyone can see pictures of my family which I know is greatly wanted.  Also, stay tuned for the photo slide show of the week that will have more pictures of the pandas and everything else!!