We were glad to be able to get to our hotel room on the 4th and go to sleep. We woke up once during the night for medicine and then went back to sleep until we decided to get up from breakfast. The buffet is pretty nice. It is nearly all Chinese foods. There were small pancakes and waffles, but the “syrup” isn’t actually syrup. I think it’s a toasted sugar and butter. It’s very dark and actually just tastes like burnt sugar with butter. Hahaha. We were happy to have Dragon fruit again! Nothing like it! We enjoyed rice with scrambled eggs (it was labeled fried rice, but it doesn’t look like fried rice), potato smiley faces, bacon, flower cakes, watermelon, and Chinese pastries. There is a variety of noodles, meats, curdled, pickled, and sweet vegetables and meats, all different types of boiled eggs, and two types of congee for Jemma. Phil was happy to drink the grapefruit juice which he loves.
After breakfast we came upstairs and went back to sleep for several hours. I got up and started organizing the gifts a little bit for all the nannies and other people we brought gifts for while we are here. At 3pm, we met our guide, Nancy, in the lobby and she walked around with us for a bit to help us get comfortable with the area. Basically, she showed us the two malls and where it was too expensive to shop - LOL. But it was nice to get out and look around a little. We came back to our hotel and Phil napped while I watched Fixer Upper on amazon prime while I wrapped all the gifts for the nannies, notary, orphanage director, and the assistant director. Then we went out for dinner for our anniversary: Papa John’s!!! We used to go there a lot when we were dating - tasted just as good as I remembered! After Papa John’s we walked all over the mall. We watched the kids playing with the pools and fountains - the parents brought water soakers for the kids to use to suck up the water in the fountains and then shoot. Our guide had told us that it wasn’t something the mall advertised as an activity, but that the parents just let the kids do it. We went up to the fourth floor and walked around the kids level and found some super cute play spaces for Jemma - one even has a hot air balloon marry-go-round!
After walking around the mall, we walked back to the hotel, but then decided to keep walking past it. We stopped at the Starbucks and picked up my Nanjing mug. Then we walked down the pedestrian street to the Confucius temple. The river with all the lights and ferries was pretty. We decided to keep walking around. We got a few souvenirs from the shops and then we saw a street vendor selling tanghulu! It was a perfect thing to buy on our anniversary! The fruit was the hawthorn berry - a fruit that looks like a mix between a mini apple and a strawberry - and it was the consistency of a banana but tasted definitely like a berry. It was fun to walk around at night with all the lights. Very romantic! This is such a comfortable place to be - everything is all compacted so you can see and experience a lot without going very far or getting lost. (Well, I knew Phil wouldn’t get lost… I didn’t even bother trying to keep track of where we were and where we’d been.) We finally decided to walk back to the hotel. It was after 10pm. We slept well (even though the mattress is like a sheet overtop of a cement sidewalk - it is SO hard) and woke up about 5:30am.
Phil packed an anniversary card to surprise me with the morning of our anniversary!
Gift for one of Jemma's two main nannies
gifts for the other 8 baby nannies on Jemma's floor
organizing other gifts for guides, notary, drivers, director, etc.
donation for Jemma's orphanage
Anniversary dinner at Papa John's in the mall across the street
Even at 8pm there were still kids and parents shooting the water in the mall.
Ice Demon: an ice cream place on the lower level
A bakery just for Phoebe
Sensory play area - instead of rice or sand, it was like a type of flax seed or similar.
No shortage of Beedos!
Our hotel - Grand Trustel Mandarin Garden in Nanjing
The river by the Confucius Temple
The candied fruit street vendor that we chased down
Phil buying me a tanghulu for our anniversary
Periodically we spot hot air balloons and are reminded of all the tiny details that God has orchestrated in Jemma's adoption and in our lives. He is truly a God who cares and who has Immeasurable Greatness and Power!
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