Xi'an Museum (and the Little Goose Pagoda park)

 We went to the Little Goose Pagoda and the Xi'an Museum (which are all in one big park) last week. We've been there many times before but the park (and a few other parks) were closed since last summer (almost a year) for renovations. Are the renovations good? They took out many (almost all!) of the bushes and put in grass and new trees. The park looks nice but has lost much of its uniqueness and character. The pagoda itself used to be open to go up for a fee but now it's closed (maybe permanently?) to go up. We think a new company is in charge of a number of parks in the city because a number of parks have undergone renovations (and they are all looking very similar and loosing much of the originality each one had). 

Zoo

 We went to the zoo to celebrate the end of our school year. It's the first time we've been to the zoo here and the first time for the kids to go to the zoo ever. The zoo here, like in many other cities, used to be inside the city but years ago it was moved outside of the city to a much bigger area so that the animals have a bigger space to run around in. Part of the zoo is walking but part of it is going on a bus where you drive through where the tigers, bears, and wolves. They gave us meat on sticks that we could put out of the window (through special holes designed for this) and the animals came and ate from the sticks. It was a very hot day so many animals were resting or sleeping. However, it was a great experience for the kids to see so many animals they don't normally see up close. My favorite animal was actually not part of the zoo but a wild animal: the squirrel! Here in the big city (Xi'an) we don't ever see squirrels but since the zoo is by the mountains there were a few squirrels. I think it's my first time ever to see squirrels in China.