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Today was a busy day for our Lili and she did amazingly well considering it was not her best night (or mine). She has gotten her Dad’s(and now my cold) and she hacked and coughed for about 3-4 hours last night.  The room is really dry and I don’t think that helped matters and I spent the time trying to figure out the best way to keep her head elevated. We finally found a solution that made both of us feel better but she did awaken at her normal 6:30 and Thom took over giving her her bottle and then taking her out on a walk so I could sleep longer.  Here are some pictures from their walk.  Thom will have to fill in more details. 

 

One type of morning constitution

 A different type

Morning commutes in Guangzhou city

 

 View of Guangzhou from the bridge

Shamian Island is an interesting place in the morning.  Everyone is out doing their morning constitutionals and it is very fun to walk around and see people in their normal daily routines versus trying to sell us something. Don’t get me wrong, however, people do still try to sell you something if they are a shop keeper.  They seem to have all different kinds of group “aerobics” going on in the street.  Thom even heard the older people doing their exercises to “Like a Prayer” by Madonna complete with 70 year olds doing pelvic thrusts, or at least that is what Thom tells me.

After Lili’s morning nap, we headed out to the zoo.  Originally, we were going to try the metro because it is supposed to be much faster than the driving.  Of course, just about everything is faster than the driving and if you want to find cities with roads that seem to circle about endlessly, China is the place to come.  They have taken the Massachusets rotary and made it a spiral stairway.  Lili, however, was not feeling to well and since we were unsure exactly where the metro was and how far from the zoo we ended up, we decided to take a cab.  I had found a restaurant in the Rough Guide(which is only 1.5 years old) that specialized in soups from Jiangxi Province and was near the zoo, so that sounded good for lunch.  Our cab driver could not find it so he got out to ask the doorman of a hotel and after they both looked blank about the name that the hotel had written down for us, we concluded, correctly, that it no longer existed. The doorman indicated that Thom could go into the hotel and ask and he came out with the brother of the owner, who was named Robert and spoke excellent english and took us down the street to a restaurant and then offered to order for us and we invited him to eat with us.  Once again Lili was a hit.  She loves to eat and gets this huge smile on her face while eating and totally plays the crowd.  The food was fabulous and we tried some new things including a pork that is almost like peking duck.  Lili and I both thought that and the dumplings were the best dishes although I also thought the greens were quite good.  I think Lili found them a bit to bitter for her infant taste buds but she is definetely a girl that does not like plain food.  We tried giving her white rice the other night because it was really the only thing she could eat that we got and she would only eat it after we poured a sauce over it.

Thom and Robert outside the restaurant

Robert then pointed us to the zoo which was a short walk away.  We are sure that our friends Kim, Ben, Teagan and Kaelan will appreciate the fact that we found a zoo they have never gone to and we have taken Lili to her first zoo at the age of 10 months. Maybe we will be able to match their zoo count when she is as old as they are but I doubt it.  We enjoyed the zoo although we sometimes felt like a walking exhibit. We went up behind the ostrich exhibit and this couple wanted to have their picture taken with us.  First he took the picture of her standing with us then she took the picture of him with us.  It was quite funny.  At another point, we stopped to have our picture taken at the plastic chickens and the next thing Thom knew Lili and I were surrounded.  At the dinosaur exhibit, when we finished having our picture taken people flocked over to the dinosaur that we had been sitting on.

 

Posing in front of the plastic On the triceratops

 

As Thom says the zoo has a feel similar to what a zoo might have been like in the US in the 70s with small exhibits and a lot of cages, but clean with some interactive exhibits. Of course, it also had some weird things like the Pekinese in the children’s zoo but I guess dogs have not been common in China as pets until recently. 

   

Ostrich with personality Toucan  Crane like on Lili’s wall

   

Flamingos standing and nesting  Pelican  Dog at zoo

 

Thom’s favorite part was when he had the chance to go and feed the Macaque monkeys. The zookeeper even showed Thom what to do to get the monkey to climb onto his arm for the food. Could he look more thrilled?

Thom feeding the monkey

Tomorrow, I think we will hang out around the island and the area just over the bridge and get some packing done.  We need another suitcase which is not surprising although I am pretty sure that Thom will still end up with about 9 carry-ons.  Since we are not travelling with the group, we are willing to go over the weight limit which will not be hard since Lili does not count as a person with luggage yet and I am sure that there will be most of a suitcase for her.

My big smile attracts a crowd as I get my picture taken. -c

 

This is what I look like at dinner after I’m full and happy, before I melt down from being tired. I’m also learning how to model for daddy. Apparently he wants me to hold still for a complete second so the picture won’t be blurry. I don’t know how to do that yet, but I’m trying the best I can. I don’t know why but he keeps pointing this big black thing at me. I wonder if he’ll stop anytime soon…. -L