Tengwang Ge

Fun day in Nanchang yesterday with no administrative tasks. Zoë has started drinking more of her bottles as we've made them hotter (I had read that this is common in China) and as she gets over a bit of a cold. She is still sleeping more than she had been in the orphanage, but that seems like a perfectly sensible defence mechanism to me. It must be quite the system overload between having to deal with us, living in a hotel room, walking around in the loud, busy city, missing all her buddies and nannies at home. Plus, she just got over the chicken pox and a cold. That seems like a lot to put on any 8-month-old. She does really like cuddles and songs and walking around in the Ergo.

We spent the morning at the Tengwang Ge pavillion with our guide Helen. Lunch back at the hotel then we went for a walk in the afternoon and ended up at a really good restaurant where nobody spoke a word of English. Through fingerpointing and gesturing, we ended with about 5 times more food than we meant to order. If I were half the blogger that my friend Mercedes is, I would have taken photos of the food. We brought home enough leftovers for 2 or 3 more meals and the whole bill came to $14!

Here are some photos from our day. By the way, I'm enjoying the "spot the clothes" game. Sean recognized his old blanket. Alison recognized Sam's blue pajamas. I'm sure Helen noticed her beautiful green sweater.

- Walking from the hotel to the pavillion. There were 3 drops of rain, so our guide and the hotel staff insisted that we bring umbrellas. Have to keep the baby dry. We bought her these shoes at a local store here.
- Approaching the Tengwang Ge - very impressive structure. It has rebuilt 29 times over the course of hundreds of years. It's fame and importance is largely derived from a poem. How many buildings can we say that about in North America?
- Part of a show we enjoyed in the pavillion. Zoë was entranced.
- From the bansai garden (which is apparently a Chinese artform, not Japanese??)

Some Zoë in the next post...

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