Saturday July 9th - 8th day in Atlanta, GA

Mommy, Lun Lun

Baby Po

~ 3 year old, Xi Lan

We got up and headed over to Zoo Atlanta. Way bigger than the Brevard Zoo, but very tiny compared to Guangzhou's Safari Zoo. Really hot, but enough shade around to not die of heat. Stuck around to see two of the shows. The bird show was nothing compared to the bird show at Animal Kingdom, but was still neat. We got to see the head silverback Gorilla get mad and pound his chest while running...that was pretty cool to see. We got to see, or rather hear, the lion roar. We got to see an elephant named Lucy paint (and they sell the paintings in their stores...too funny). We got to see the almost 3 year old Panda bear Xi Lan play for awhile, while the 9 month old Panda named Po, slept most of the time like her momma, Lun Lun. They were very beautiful, and Ashlyn especially likes Pandas since they are from her homeland. The tigers were there, but only the daddy tiger. The momma had just had babies a few days before, so she was in a nursery nursing them and taking care of them until they are six weeks old. You can see the pandas and tigers from Zoo Atlanta's website. They have webcams and stuff on during the week. They also have old videos and even show the Panda bear Po's birth.

Friday July 8th - 7th day in Atlanta

After dropping the keys off to the cabin rental management people, we headed to the Georgia Aquarium. On the long drive there, Jason got pulled over in Jasper county and got a speeding ticket! The cop clocked him at doing 76 in a 55, but only wrote the ticket for 69 in a 55 so the ticket won't go to Florida or put points on his license. Anyways, we got to the aquarium in one piece at about 11:00 am. It was crowded! We got tickets to the dolphin show and Deepo's 3D Wondershow. The Dolphin Show had a weird storyline...Sea World's is way better. It was so crowded for lunch, they opened up their convention room to eat in. That was really neat because they had the beluga whales swimming in an aquarium that shared a wall in this room. They also had the shark aquarium that shared a wall with this room. They had some really big whale sharks in that tank.

Later on that evening, we met with friends that live in Atlanta for dinner. We ate at a really nice little Italian restaurant. It was very nice seeing Samantha again. She was my mentor when I came to work at Northrop Grumman and helped me get settled and into the groove. She's been a good friend too! I miss not being able to see her as much...