Rabbits! 2011 World Bunny Expo!

This is Jesse again!

Today we went to the 2011 World Bunny Expo.

Like the name of the Expo, it's all about rabbits. CUTE rabbits.

The ticket is NT$160 for students and NT$ 200 for adults. On Saturdays and Sundays there are shows in the Expo. Today is Tuesday, so obviously we missed the show. :(

But the rabbits were interesting enough for our trip today. :)) We learned quite a bit at the Expo.

The World Bunny Expo was held at the Taipei Youth Activity Center where you can do lots of fun activities. The Expo was on the second floor. The people who were selling the tickets were nice though. :)

He was the first rabbit Elly and I saw in the Expo. I'm sorry about the unclearness of the picture, but it was hard to take pictures of those rabbits with glass in-between. I always got myself into the picture because of the reflection in the glass. :(

I liked this one and another gray one the best. I loved how they ate and jumped and ran around their little living places. I loved them the most when they stood still to let me take their pictures! 

Like this one:

He actually reminded me of one of my friend. He gave me the exact same expression when I was taking a picture of him.

Isn't he adorable?? I want to take him home so bad!!

"Can you hear me?"

"Of course. I have long ears just like you! Don't you know that?"

I actually thought of Romio and Juliet when I saw them. Haha. One was begging to see the other, but the other was just resting there and wasn't even paying attention.

Elly was trying to draw some of the rabbits. But they were moving so fast that she gave up in the end.

Still, she dropped down some notes.

There were couple of people who took care of the rabbits. They were also kind and was willing to tell us knowledge about rabbits like how to take good care of them and how society was wrong about these animals.

(Thanks for Elly who took good notes about this, or else I don't think I can remember all these.)

This white rabbit is called Angora. It's a type of rabbit that exsist from the very beginning when people were still eating and using rabbits' skin and fur for clothing. Before people started to think rabbits are cute and kept them as pets in the house in the 20th Century.

By the way, the man with the microphone was one of the guide in the Expo. He was telling us about the rabbits, kind of like introducing. I don't know him though. But when I showed his picture to my mom, she sounds like she knows him and that she said he was an actor.

Anyway, he's a guide in the World Bunny Expo now.

I kept noticing this rabbit when the guide was speaking. This gray rabbit was the other one that I liked in the Expo because when the guide was introducing the Angora, this little one was nodding and standing up and doing some poses like he was dancing.

I couldn't help but kept watching him. I hoped I can take him home. Too bad I still need to go back to Falgstaff and I can't have a rabbit there in the house. 

One that was sleeping in the trough.

One thing that's important that if you are planing to have a pet rabbit:

Rabbits don't just eat carrots and they do drink water!

Some people think that rabbits don't drink, and that they only eat carrots but nothing else.

But according to Elly's notes, rabbits would die in five days if they have no water and only carrots as their food. Their stomach can't really metabolize starch.

Look! He's looking at me!!

His name is FiFi. He's the only one that I remember the name. He looked like a cat. Or perhapes a large hamster?

The guide was holding on FiFi because he was afraid that FiFi was going to run away from him. Not that he was afraid to lose FiFi, (but I'm sure he was afraid of that, too,) but was afraid that FiFi might fall on the floor and break his bones.

Rabbits have 360 digree view angle. They can't see at the 10 degree angle though, and that's why they have their noses in the front. (Who doesn't have nose in front? =  =")

And so that, rabbits only have flat version. Not like human, rabbits can't see the hight of the table. They can fall from the high table easily.

There were some people interviewing the rabbit guide. I think those people were kind of rude. They didn't offer him enough time to finish his words. And they kept interrupting him. :(

FiFi was lifted up a little bit so that people could see he is REALLY a boy. Well, the guide said that FiFi is actually a father now.

Although he lifted FiFi up. He told us not to do it because rabbits' bones are often hollow. If we accidently drop them, that could break their bones.

Sounds like rabbits are really brittle. There was even a saying that rabbits can't be washed because they would die from the water.

It wasn't that bad though. At least rabbits can be washed, just not with shower because they really can die from the moisture.

I found it interesting to just take pictures of their backs and huge bodies. :)

You know what?

Rabbits can have babies every 31 days!

If you have a pair of them, I believe you'll get 100 within one year or less.

Aw. Are you that tired?

I just found out today from Elly's notes that though some of the rabbits' eyes are red, they can't recognize the color red. In fact, they can only see blue and green. I wonder what would I look like for them when I was watching them. Perhapes them watching me?

This rabbit was as long as my arms are. He was one of the giant knid.

Most of the giant kind rabbits were sleeping while other smaller ones were spending time eating or running around. They looked lazy. I guess they're like human: the bigger you get, the lazier you are. Haha.

In the end of the Expo, there was space that you can go and touch those bunnies. I'll say don't try to catch them though, they are fast runners and they can be hurt easily. If you don't do anything, (just like me, :)) they might lay down around you like one of the white bunny did when I was trying to take photos of others.

My mom said this one looked silly. I say he's adorable. :)

This picture must be my best version of this trip.

Once again, I'm sorry if my pictures hurt your eyes. :(

Elly got one!

They were having a nice relationship there until I asked Elly to pick the rabbit up. (Oops, sorry I shouldn't ask her to do that. :P)

The rabbit peed on her hand.

We forgot to smell the pee though, so we can't really tell if that smell. But one thing I noticed was that although those people were taking good care of the rabbits, somehow there was still a little bit smell in the Expo. Maybe rabbits do smell. Just not as strong as a dog smell when he didn't take shower for quite a long time.

Perhapes that's not true. I heard someone told me that rabbits stink. :P

The white rabbit that I said earlier that came to me when I was taking pictures.

He was calm and nicely laid there. Not for too long, as soon as a group of dating couples went in, the rabbits started jumping around again.

By the way remember I was saying that I wanna take one of those rabbits home?

You really can do that!

In the Expo they were asking people to volunteer to take rabbits home. Too bad children can't take home any. :( But their parents can. :)

If you are a rabbits lover, come to the World Bunny Expo and take a look at these lovely ones, and if you are able to, you can take one (or more?) home as a pet.

Just please take care of them. Remember they are britter and can be easily hurt.

That's all for today!

Thanks for reading along and sorry if I make you fall asleep, haha.

See you next time! :)

Love & Peace: the Polar Expo!!

This is Jesse. As you see, today is my turn to write about the exhibition we went.

I'm not that good at writing, but I'll try my best to tell you everything that I learned from places we went.

Let's get started now. :)

Yesterday Elly and I went to the Polar Expo with our friend, Anastasia.

At the outside of the Polar Expo, we saw many statues designed by Vicent J. F. Huang who is famous about his environmental friendly artwork.

There were many aluminum robots. Some were making wierd faces and some were having interesting poses. There was a table with five little aluminum robots on it which interested me. One of them was riding a motocycle, another one was feeding the aluminum dogs, and others were doing something else like carrying stuff.

I have to say that they look silly to me, or maybe I should say that they are cute?

Anyway, they made me laugh when I was looking at them. By the way those metal dogs really looked like suasages. Haha.

It was  about -8 celcius inside the building. People needed to get a jacket in the front door so that they wouldn't catch a cold. Elly was wearing shorts, she said she couldn't even feel her legs in the end of the Expo. I was fine with the low temperature in there because I've been staying in Falgstaff, Arizona for one and a half year, and snow and cold weather like that were pretty common there. I wasn't feeling cold until 10 minutes later. 

There was snow on the ground and there were couples of Eskimo houses. There wasn't much in the house, only a few ice chairs. I was knid of disappointed when I saw the Expo because I thought it would be like the Body World, showing how it will be in Arctic and how the heat would affect the polar ice cap. But the Expo was actually more likely to be a place where you can experience how it is in Arctic, which is extremely cold.

This is a slide which was made of ice. It's cool and nice to slide down from it. (Just be careful you don't slide too many times or you might get your pants wet. :P) There was a camara in the middle of the slide so that you can buy your picture of yourself sliding down the ice slide after you get out from the Expo. There were also ice castles in the Expo. They were really big and nice and colorful. Too bad I didn't take a picture of the castle, it was pretty.

Elly was lifting the ice cube :)

There were many ice artworks ine the Expo. Like the castle I was telling about earlier. There were ice penguins, polar bears, an ice bar, and even a big carriage with a big ice horse!

I was hoping to be able to clinb up onto the horse's back, but the horse was slippery and there was no way that I can climb it. =  ="

This is the tea that they were having inside the Expo. You can use your ticket to exchange a cup of tea, it was tasty, but it was freezing as well. I thought it was hot so I was so excited to exchange my drink, but it ended up being so cold. :( It was fine though, I think it's knid of fun to have cold drink in Arctic. Haha.

By the way the ticket was NT$200 for students and NT$250 for adults. NT$30 for the jacket. I kinda feel unfair about the prizes, it was that much but the Expo wasn't what I thought it would be.

But I thnik I would take my niece and nephew to this Expo. It's a great oppurtunity for kids to learn the coldness in Arctic, and the Expo was like a big part that I think kids would have lots of fun there. :)

My favorite of the ice artworks was the one called "Statue of Liberty."

It wasn't the only one that had a meaning with, but the only one that really showed what it meant.

The Statue of Liberty was kneeling inside the ice castle, or I think it was more like a prison. Looked like the Statue of Liberty was being sorry about the heat making the ice cap melting. I think this artwork was telling that we should be responsable to the Global Warming. We should all be sorry and stop producing so many greenhouse gases.

I think this was also the meaning of this Polar Expo--to let us notice how bad we were destroying our Earth.

So, let's do this together, cut down our use of unrecyclable products and, like the title today, save the ice cap; save the polar bears. :)

(picture comes from google.com)

So CUTE :))

Last, I wanna say:

Love & Peace

2011  Polar Expo!!!

(Loving Elly and Anastasia)

The body world!

Hey, this is Elly, and I'm here to tell you about my life in Taiwan!

This blog is owned by two girls, Jesse and I. :)

And, this is my first post, which means it may be bored. :/

Please bear with me.

So, today we went to the National Taiwan Science Education Center to see an exhibition, "Body worlds and the Cycle of Life". I think we spent at least 4hrs there. The exhibition is quite interesting and beneficial. Everything that we saw from the exhibition is real. They need about a year to become a specimen. Those specimens are made through the process called Plastination invented by Dr. von Hagens in 1977. I know it would be weird if i said this exhibition is awesome, but it really is. (Maybe to someone who likes bology?)

Anyway, in this exhibition, many organs are shown. There are five area in total, and let's talk from the beginning of the exhibition. The first area is about pregnancy. They showed us the foetus from the 3rd week to the 28th week. Do you know that the foetus in the 3rd week is so small that it's not even bigger than my little finger's finger nail. It's just so TINY!!! And gradually, it grows. I didn't know that the toenails are grown first then the fingernails until today I saw this exhibition. Haha. It's not important, but just an interesting fact that surprised me.

The second area is about the bones. Nothing much to talk about. But I spent some time in sketching the thighbone. It looks exactly like the bone that the dogs use to grind their teeth. Oh yeah, the introduction says that every human has 27 bones in one hand, but when I counted my hand, I've got only 19! Where are the others? = =' Then it shows some specimens about the disease Osteoporosis.

The third area is about the brain. Various kind of brains are shown. The normal ones, the water on the brain ones. And then we saw the skulls, the whole one and the separated one which is made of 22 individual bones. Then we saw the skin area, the nerves area, and many systems area. What makes me shock is that they are able to obtain our blood vessels, it's like we really have many many tiny little vessels around our body. When we only dye the vessels of our organs, all we can see is lines as thin as threads forming the organs.

The forth section is about diseases, like fatty liver, kidneys that have cancer, the black lungs, the empty lungs, etc. I have to say, those who smokes, your lungs are black! No jokes, it's really black! The fifth section is mixed with the other four, it shows people in many movements, when playing rugby, when playing high jump, when driving the boat, when jumping across the fence, and many many. Muscles are clearly seen, bones and nerves and some organs like stomach, reproductive systems, anything you could think of. How they're joint, the sizes of any organs, can be seen. I find it (a little bit) disgusting after seeing so much human bodies with only muscles and bones, sometime blood vessels. Hahaha. Anyway, at the exist of the exhibition, there's a touching section! I didn't dare to touch it. =.= But Jesse did. And she told me that the lungs are hard. I expected to be soft, but it's specimen, what can I expect?

[All the specimens don't look real to me at all,

and I hate it so much that we're not allowed to take picture there! :( ]

Jesse is touching the lungs.