Friday, September 24, 2010

Day 2. Meet the Pandas!

Wow, today we spent the whole day learning about the Giant Pandas living in the Chengdu Panda base. The whole base is like a bomb of cuteness and its very hard not to feel touched when walking around.


 Entry of Chengdu Panda Base

All candidates had their posters shown in the base, this is mine.

Shortly after we arrived we had a welcoming conference were we got to meet the judges. Panda father and head of the project Dr. Zhang Zhi He officially welcomed everybody and held a heart warming speech. Present was also media from all over China.

After the welcome meeting the Chengdu panda base experts give us an extensive background information about the aims of the base, it's history, research programs and progress in conversation. They also teach us the names of the twelve Pandas that we from now on will focus on and describe the different characteristics of each Panda and how to recognize them.

Pambassadors clicking away. To the left we see the wonderful Ms.Susan,  one of the coordinators for Project Panda.

A panda perfectly making a peacock sandwich from the leafs on the bamboo.

This could be me in the morning.

Majestic panda climbing trees. It's very easy to forget that pandas are excellent climbers and hide enormous muscles under the fuzzy fur.

Young pandas loving the milk given by the keepers.

SiYuan chilling after a king size meal. Si Yuans charachteristic is that she has white spots on her hands.

Beautiful scenery from the base.

 Round and Rounder

Xiong Bang with his Mickey mouse ears.

"This is embarrassing"

"At least let me do a Kong fu pose"

"Either you feed me or you let me sleep"

These young pandas were just too much to handle. Watching them was like watching a slap stick comedy with perfect acting. These guys were just all over the place and even the experienced keeper couldn't hold back his smile.

Qiu Bang wondering away in thoughts while chewing on his panda cake. One day I will learn "pandanese" and philosophize with him over a nice tasty panda cake.

Thank you so much for reading and hope you will come back tomorrow
Pambassador Ali

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