Beijing Zoo

We had a bit of another hiccup today. I'm so very grateful that the Lord prepared me for this trip. I went into this knowing that I had to go outside of my comfort zone and expect the unexpected. Most things have not gone according to plan. Our itinerary has changed everyday since our first day that we got here. Sometimes it changes in the middle of the day.

One of the laws in China is that when you visit, you must register with the local police if you are staying anywhere other than a hotel. Since we are not being hosted by the M family, that meant we had to register. The clubhouse where the M's reside will do the registering for you, but they need your passports to do it. We had to go to the local police station to apply for Kaiden's passport and visa as well this morning. We were told that they would need our passports, bothe parents, and baby. We were supposed to go straight to the Zoo from the police station. We needed to be back to the clubhouse by 1 pm with our passports.

Rather than risk being in violation of the law and have to go to the local police station ourselves, we split up. We all went to the police station to apply for the passport and visa. We needed to get Kaiden's photo done for the passport. This happened to be at his morning naptime so he was less than cooperative. Plus the orphanage director wanted to hold him for the photo and if he had ever known her, he had forgotten her, so his crying was even worse. They decided his photo from his file was recent enough that they could scan that and use it. So we didn't need Kaiden there afterall. Then they didn't need our passports. We ended up not being needed at all. Oh-well. We're getting used to this by now.

After this, I took Kaiden and headed to the M's house. Pete took all 3 girls to the Zoo. They had a nice time but it didn't even compare to the Detroit Zoo. I think we don't appreciate all that we have with our Detroit Zoo. They were only there for about an hour and headed home as well. I did want to see the Pandas but I was happy to miss the rest. The Beijing Zoo normally only has 2 pandas but through next week, they had 8 other pandas on loan.