We woke up pretty early today, so we walked around the community until eating breakfast at around 7:30. When all the family members from the four families were up and ready, we drove to a portrait studio called Tian Zhen photo. The big gathering was so we could take a massive family portrait, with the two grandparents, and the three families.

There was a total of seven different photographs taken, with different sets of people (everyone, just children, just siblings, etc...). I couldn't get any normal looking photographs from inside the set because of the flash detectiion thing. If a cameras flash goes off in the room, the 5 different studio flash machines flash also, making the picture completely white. The photographer said I was the most natural subject in our group, and when the adults reviewed the photos afterwards, they said I looked exactly the same in all the pictures. Thats hilarious.

My uncle was starving, so most of us left the studio early to go to the restaurant we were going to have lunch. There was a couple very interesting dishes I've never seen before, including egg soup using a sea animal as the bowl.

After the massive lunch, 8 of us drove to the Qingdao Underwater World, which has a ton of sea animal viewing exhibits. There was stuffed animals everywhere, including massive whales and sea lions. I've always wanted to see how big the giant whales I read about are in real life, and I finally got to see today. They actually display real animals they caught, only stuffed and painted on the outside. The whales, sea lions, and crabs are bigger than I expected in real life.

On the way home, we stopped by the beach to walk around. There were so many people on the beach that they looked like an army of ants from a distance. China has a lot of people. We walked from one end of the beach to the other, and the car picked us up while stopped on the already traffic jammed road. There was a lot of honking.

When we were finally home from the action packed day, a few of us settled down and played many games of bomb... At least thats what they called it. I think it's basically deuces, with a few different rules. For dinner, all family came together for a massive dumpling eating event. We stuffed ourselves and then sat around resting.

At night, my aunt decided to take us kids out for ice cream. I thought it would be some vendor on the street, but instead it turned out to be a Haagen-Dazs sit down place. It was really nice inside, and all the ice cream was pretty fancy but expensive. I got two scoops in a small glass bowl, cookies and cream & strawberry cheesecake, and a iced mocha. The mocha was extremely bitter, but I found that it was really sweet at the bottom so stirring made it better.

My camera battery was weird probably because I've used it so much for so long. Even after charging it all night, it dies after a few minutes, and the screen is tinted red. My uncle called one of his drivers, who came to us at the ice cream place and took the battery. He called back a while later and informed us that the place he went to didn't have the battery, and that he would have to go to a specialized camera place tomorrow morning to buy me one.