Tiger Park!

Today we went to the Heilongjiang Siberian Tiger Park in the afternoon. It was -10 with a little wind and we all wore our red snow suit gifts, so we felt warm. You can actually buy animals to throw out into the open area and watch it get eaten. We were going to buy a cow and split the cost which was 1500 Yuan = $200 us dollars, but they didn’t have any cows or sheep or chickens. The cost to get in to the park was 65 Yuan = $9 dollars, and for 10 Yuan= $1.20 you could by big strips of meat to feed the tigers yourself with tongs. There were concrete caged in platforms that we could walk through the park with tigers roaming all around you and hand feed them the meat with tongs. I fed 3 tigers and took a lot of pictures; the tigers ripped the meat from me so hard I thought they would take the tongs with them. We went and got on a bus that had bars on the windows so you could slide them open and take pictures and not get eaten. The tigers were huge! A little suv with bars all over it including the tires pulled out next to the bus when we stopped in the middle of an enclosure and threw meat out the door. He didn’t throw it by rolling down a window or through the bars; this dumb guy threw it by opening up his door a foot with the tiger right next to him. One even jumped on the hood of the car when he was about to throw the meat. Scary! There are over 700 tigers in this huge park with open areas where they can roam “free”. They had Siberian tigers, white tigers, snow tigers, black tigers, white lions, ligers, lynxes, panthers, leopards, African lions, and cheetahs. We were also quite the attraction there, people kept on wanting to take pictures with us which I find weird. We had a blast, totally worth it!

The tiger park is next to the Songhua River which is where they harvest the ice blocks for the ice festival. We saw the festival from far away, it looked awesome! We are going on our next day off (23rd), I can’t wait!

So I got games assignments for the next two days:

February 21st 10:00am
Great Britain vs. Japan
Referee: Maija Kontturi
Linesmen: Laura Johnson, Kerri Rumble

February 21st 7:30pm
Finland vs. China
Goal judge: Kerri Rumble, Laura Johnson

February 22nd 7:30pm
Canada vs. China
Referee: Maija Kontturi
Linesmen: Laura Johnson, Satu, Auno

February 23rd
Day off- Ice festival

That’s all I have for now, big day tomorrow have to get some rest! Good night!