The kingdom of the animals in prison

Photography, ping-pong and animals

We decide to leave because there were some people waiting to lunch with us. We take a cab to go to China’s biggest photo agency, whose director is one of Dad’s old students. We got to the entrance and ask a man to help us find the way. He takes us down the street where Melody, a friend of Dad’s was waiting for us. We enter the building, and there, guess what I saw! A ping-pong table! Two boys were playing. What joy! The youngest boy, about 8 years old, had bronze coloured skin, seemed to be just learning the game. That’s Michael. The other boy, the bog one, with the same colour skin looks like he is 16 but as a matter of fact, is actually 20 years old. With Dad we take a visit around the photo agency, and I can see that Dad is proud of his student’s achievements, and I am happy for him. Then we went to eat. They brought us pizza with ham, I thought to myself this moment that I was going to have to do the unthinkable, but at that moment another pizza arrived, with chicken instead. I looked up at the sky and thanked Allah. They also brought us some iced-coffee, it’s so tasty! I even drank Dads. Afterwards, I asked Michael if he wanted to play ping-pong with me and he said yes, but since he was just learning, we couldn’t have a proper game. At that moment Dong joined us, and there I managed to show some moves; it made me so happy! I played against Melody, who said I was good, which happily surprised Dad. I didn’t want to stop playing and could’ve gone on until the next day, but it was time to leave for the zoo. When we got there we had to queue to get tickets, when we eventually got them, we had to wait some more while Melody went to park the car. Ten minutes later we entered the zoo, only to find out we had to buy special tickets to see the pandas, so into another queue it was. I was super excited to see the pandas walking, running, eating, sleeping, and even doing their business. Then Michael showed us round to the other animals, we saw turtles, lizards, and even ostriches. Although the zoo’s closing time was 6 p.m. we didn’t leave until 7! When we got to Melody’s car, we decided to go have dinner all together. I became good friends with Dong and Michael. During the meal Dad received a text message from our assistant who told him that he got my cell phone fixed. I immediately called him and thanked him for this. I also told him that tomorrow we would not need his help because we were going to go with Melody, Michael and Dong to the Great Wall of China. Back at the hotel I wished a Frenchman a Happy Bastille Day, and that’s when I realised, here in a foreign country, that I love France.