A Rainy Day in Nanchang

Our flight to Nanchang was out of PuDong International airport, which was a 1.5 hour drive from our hotel in Jiading.  Other than the long drive, our flight was uneventful, the best kind - they even served us a lunch of rice and beef with carrots; I thought it was pretty good for airplane fare.  We arrived to a rainy Nanchang around noon, and Janet, our guide for the next 3 days, was waiting for us.  We were supposed to visit a famous temple pavilion on the way to the hotel, but because of the rain we decided to go to the hotel first so we could dig out our rain gear.  Even though it was raining, we went on to the temple pavilion anyway.

This was an important first step for us in Nanchang because Lois and Hannah visited this same pavilion 7 years ago (I was actually sick and in the room that day).  After going through the pavilion we went down to the pagoda overlooking the goldfish pond - 7 years ago, almost to the day, Lois took a picture of Hannah looking through the stone railing at the gold fish, but refusing to feed them her cracker.

And here she is 7 years later at the same pond ...

Our little girl is growing up ...

After the park, we decided to head up the street to the grocery store to buy a few essentials.  And on the way, we made a surprise detour to the Gloria Grand Hotel - the very hotel we stayed in when we got Hannah.  Our guide told us the hotel is very old now and is supposed to be torn down in the next few months, so we felt very blessed to be able to visit the old hotel and take a few pictures.

This is about where we were sitting 7 years ago when we first saw Hannah walk through those doors.

After a somewhat brief stop at the grocery store, where we bought some candy for the children at Hannah's orphanage, we headed back to our hotel.  Our guide helped us order dinner at a restaurant across the street, then we headed back to our room and got a good night's sleep - tomorrow we are going to Ji'An to visit Hannah's orphanage.  It will be a long day (a 3 hour drive one way), and quite emotional for all of us ...