continuing our tour of the other half of the World Showcase, Friday afternoon
We left Frank, promising (threatening?) to keep looking for him and went up and around to get inside the Mexico pavilion. We spent a LONG time looking at the carved wooden animals and watching the artists work on them. DS8 was fascinated!
When we dragged him away into the marketplace area (wow, did the cool and dark in there feel good compared to the terrible heat outside! Even my eye felt a bit better in here.), we found Frank again! We asked him for a couple more pictures, and he ran around from stall to stall to find the props for these gems:
For some reason, we didnt bother with the ride here in Mexico. Im not entirely sure why, but its now on my list for our next trip. DS8 decided he really wanted to own one of those carved animals (but wow, were they out of his price range!), so we poked around for a bit until we found a ceramic parrot that looked just like carved wood. We didnt want to buy it yet and carry it around all afternoon (and shipping it to the resort wasnt something DS was interested in), so we promised to zip through Mexico again on our way out of the park. It was loud in there, so we decided to head back out into the heat and the sunshine over to Norway.
In Norway, there wasnt a long ride for the ride, so I convinced DS8 to ride with me. While I really liked the cool and dark (seeing a theme here for me?), he didnt like it at all. I dont think hell do that again! While we were riding, DH and DS5 found a marachai (spelling?) band to enjoy. There are also a zillion pictures of the boats going around the lagoon, so Im guessing they found those entertaining too!
Our next stop was China, where we found Frank again! We waited a couple of minutes for our turn here, but again it was well worth it. I love this one of the four of us (dont we look happy?) and he got more hats for the boys to wear!
We enjoyed looking around the gardens here and spent forever looking at the panda things in the gift shop. A good friend of DS8s had brought him a souvenir from her Washington DC trip, and he wanted to take her something from Disney. Evidently, she loved the pandas in DC, so he finally decided on a small stuffed panda keychain. Since we skip all of the movies here in the pavilions, it usually doesnt take too long to look around and move on. Im regretting that now, because I had wanted to see the terra-cotta warriors here in China, and I forgot all about them until weeks after I got home. Something else to add to the next trip wish list!
The next stop was Germany, but we had to walk though the African outpost to get there. I was simply plowing on, thinking about perhaps getting some German chocolate to snack on, but DH was paying attention to the outpost and saw that they sold frozen Cokes! I abandoned my family and hopped in line! That drink cheered me up more than you can ever imagine!
I had my soda, so I was happy, but we got some chocolate in Germany for the boys. They ate it up so quickly that it didnt melt all over them! We spent even more time with the trains which is really the only part of Germany they care about.
The next stop has a ton of pictures, so I think Im going to break it up here!
I'm glad you're enjoying it! As you can see, my two are a bit older than yours! 
Cool Hidden Mickey! I took a picture of an oil stain in a parking lot one time that was totally a Mickey head and DH picked on me so bad I deleted it. Now I kick myself for letting him "get to me"!!!
That reminds of when we visited POTC and the ride was down. I asked the CM if it was "broken" and he said "no, we're just experiencing a technical mutiny"!
. I've never ridden that before so we are aiming to try it out on our next trip in May....I'll be wary and head for a seat further back! 
It's so much fun when you decide to go back to WDW so much sooner than you thought you would.
