Hello folks, daddy here. Well, daddy in name only at this point—Julianna won't have anything to do with me. One of the several spectacular hour-long crying fits she had yesterday was sparked off by my touching her. And when she's crying, a word from me will send the pitch and volume up a few notches. I know, I know....hang in there and all that. But it hurts to be rejected, is all I'm saying.

Here's a picture of the fabled atrium here at the White Swan. I snapped this yesterday morning. it's five stories from roof to koi pond. click the pic to get a good view.

Yesterday, as Sherry mentioned, we went to Yuntai public garden on the side of Baiyun Mountain. It was very nice, with lots of vistas. I haven't posted many of the pictures I've taken because I know y'all want to see the kid, not the sights. But I took a lot of pics and when we get back we'll show them off.

After the garden we went to a "pearl market" which is a mall where all they sell is jeweley. When I heard that I was thinking a mall full of Kay's or Zale's type places, but it was more like a jewelery flea market.

Well as it happened, we got there right in the middle of a crying fit. So Sherry told me to go inside and get the skinny about where to meet up (so as not to be left behind) while she calmed Julianna down outside. We were way behind the group by then and by the time I got there the speech about where we were and where to meet was over—I got some sketchy instructions from one of the daddies and went back outside. When we tried to find the group, well....have any of you ever been hopelessly lost in a foreign country where every turn you make looks just like you've been there before? This was a multistory place, with tight spaces, where every store looked exactly the same.

Eventually we found the entrance where we got separated and Kelly was there looking for us. Whew. My personal #2 nightmare was over. Sherry got some earrings.

I have been neglecting to tell about GuangZhou the city. It's huge. It's the size of Baldwin County and is mostly tall buildings. At 9,000,000 people it's twice the size of Alabama in population. Luckily the little island the hotel is on has less of a press of humanity, but when we're out in the city looking at a buddhist temple for instance the sheer number of people is overwhelming. Imagine a fire ant bed, having just been kicked.

We haven't seen the sun since March either, because the smog here is unbelievable. I'm willing to bet Julianna has never seen stars. The only good thing I can think of about the smog is it cuts down on visibility so that you can't tell you're in the middle of a sea of high rise buildings. I like to imagine a horizon out there, somewhere, but I know that if the air were clear it would just be more alien and claustrophobic.

The architecture is a strange mix of ultra modern glass and steel to three-hundred year-old hovels. and every building on every street has shops in front, specializing in one thing. It's bizarre to see a store selling washers. No, not the appliance, the fastener.

Recognizable logos we've seen: McDonalds, Pizza Hut, Papa John's (which we had yesterday), KFC, all brands of electronics (duh, they're all made here), all brands of soft drinks, all brands of diapers, and a few nabisco brands, recognizable by the packaging, if not the logos. They have oreos here!

This is a mommy edit: Julianna let phillip pick her up out of the crib this morning. Progress.