Short and sweet

Hi all,

Not to much to report. Julia and I did some more exploring this morning. We visited the oldest temple in Hanoi and then went and saw something called the Memorial House. Our travel guide book described it as "a thoughtfully restored traditional Chinese-style dwelling" worth seeing. These sight were just alright, but served the purpose of getting us out and about doing something.

Tonight we are meeting the other families for supper at a place that serves "street fare" but in a safer fashion. Doug, the kids and I went there last week and it was good. It is a very pretty restaurant.

Doug called this afternoon and they made home safely. Thomas slept about 3 hours the entire 24 hours of traveling. I think they will all sleep well in their own beds in the Minnesota quiet.

Well, Julia cereal snack is gone, so my time is up.

Barbie

60% of the Atkins family is in Minnesota

Thomas, Helen, and I arrived at our house at approximately 11 pm on 12/30. This was approximately 27 hours door to door. Much faster trip than the other way. We're hoping that Barbie will same the same with Julia. We only lost one luggage on the trip, but we have hope that we will get it tomorrow. It mostly has souvenirs and dirty clothes...so it's not a great loss as of yet.

We called Barbie and Julia as soon as we got home. It was good to hear their voices and we are confident that they will be able to make it well. We (at least I) already miss them terribly and can't wait to have them here with us.

I think my mom is coming on 12/31, but I'm not sure. I'll have to call her tomorrow and see!

Now we are old news...Barbie and Julia are the stars of the program and I won't have much to say except for what was on sale at Cub, and most of you get the ad already. We'll keep you posted as best we can.

Take care,
Doug, Thomas, and Helen

Just us girls

Hi all,

Doug and the older kids are now about to begin their long flight over the ocean. They left about 9:00 this morning for the airport. It was very hard to see them go and we pray that they get home safely.

Julia and I moved to our new "home." They have a crib that they are letting me use free of charge. That is a nice perk. Her nap went well in it, but waking up was hard. She didn't remember her new environment and was upset until we went outside. (Apparently motor scooters and horns are familiar!)

There is a park across the street so we spent some time there. All of these women kept stopping and asking me questions. I am learning that when speaking to someone who doesn't speak any English, repeating myself 100 times doesn't change that fact. I have no idea what these women are saying and don't know whether to nod my head, smile or shake my head no. Maybe they are upset with me for having this little girl outside snacking on cereal, and I am nodding my head in agreement. Who knows?

I miss the others a lot and am hoping that everything works out so that we can get home before the 17th/18th. After today, I realize that transitions are still a little difficult for Julia, so I want to get her to her real home soon.

Thanks for checking in,

Barbie

3/5 of the Atkins family's last full day in Hanoi

Hi all -

This is Doug and I will be taking Thomas and Helen with me tomorrow (Sunday) to the airport to leave for home. We leave the hotel 9 am Sunday Vietnam time (8 pm Saturday night) and we will hopefully arrive at the Minneapolis airport around 11:45 pm Sunday night. We will travel from Hanoi to Taipei to LA to Minneapolis. The trip back is somewhat shorter due the the wind direction, so that is a good thing. We will miss the other 40% of our family and want them to come back as soon as they can.

This morning Mr. Hien called us and said that although he couldn't get a good price on the hotel that the other families were staying at (the Sunny hotel), he could get a good rate at a hotel a couple of blocks down the road from the Sunny (the Anise Hotel). The rate was basically the same as the smaller room that Barbie was planning to move into at the woman hotel, and it was closer to the other families, so we decided to go give it a look. It was really nice. The room was nice and quiet, there was better satellite TV channels, the breakfast was good (better than at the woman hotel), the restaurant was on the 12th floor and offered an INCREDIBLE view of hanoi on 3 sides of the building. There is a business center that had 3 newer computers and the internet situation was MUCH improved from the woman hotel, so Barbie decided that she would move there. The business center usually charges $3 per hour for internet, but for adoptive families, it's free. I think that it will be a good change of pace for her. We met and briefly talked with a hotel manager, and the lady seemed very nice and accomodating. She told me that she would take good care of Barbie and Julia, and that meant a lot to me. We are happy for her new arangement. I think that blogging will be easier for her there. She will be leaving the woman hotel about the same time that we go to the airport and she will spend the day getting settled and figuring out her new environs.

Hey, the tooth fairy left Thomas a 10,000 Dong bill! Sometime during the morning, we realized that Thomas' other lower front tooth (the one that was still in his mouth) was loose--even looser than the tooth that I had pulled the day before. He really didn't want to pull the tooth, but I had a secret weapon up my sleeve. My mom (you know...the one who is travelling 600 miles to come up and take care of Thomas and Helen indefinitely...that one) has an issue (or at least she did when I was a kid). She loves pulling teeth. When I was a kid, if I told her that I had a loose tooth, she would ask to see how loose it was, and then she would pull it! After the first time, I would make her swear that she wouldn't pull the tooth (and she would promise!) and then as soon as I would let her wiggle the tooth--SNAP!! She would pull it out of my head!

Well, I told Thomas these stories and then reminded him that Grandma Atkins was coming up to see him. Well, Thomas decided it was better to decide for the tooth to come out on his own terms than to be ambushed by a well-meaning, but agressive granny. (Note to mom...sorry, I may have embellished the stories about you a little bit, but you have to respect the spirit in which I told the stories. After all, I was trying to get to pull Thomas' tooth out!) He came up to me bravely and asked for me to pull the next tooth, which I did in about 3 tries (I didn't have any pliers). Well, this one bled more, but he was glad to have it out and is glad that it is not corn-on-the cob season. Also, it is probably good that he won't be subsisting on hard baguettes for the next six weeks like he has the past six weeks.

Thomas hopes that he Vietnamese tooth fairy brings a 100,000 dong bill tonight. Something tells me that 10,000 is the going rate for a lower front.

For lunch we went to a coffee shop to celebrate Thomas first tooth (I think that his second came out after lunch...but I can't remember). We spent the afternoon deciding how to pack (who was taking what and what we were abandoning in Vietnam). I also gave Barbie all the address cards for Hanoi and the money. Now she can handle it all on her own (with a little help from Mr. Hien.)

After packing we headed to the nearest KFC for our last supper. FLG.

Now the kids should be about asleep and Barbie and I will watch a little more of the DVDs we brought. I'm pretty sad about leaving, but all is well--not perfect, but well.

You may notice that there is not a lot being said about how Julia is doing lately. That probably is a good thing. I think that benefit of all of us being thrown in a hotel room together for 6 weeks is that Julia has really got a chance to know us and to become more comfortable as a member of the family. She really seems like one of us now. She picks stuff up like a sponge. She says a few words, she can point to a few body parts when asked, and she knows 3-4 sign language words (we're not exactly sure how she learned one of them, but she uses is correctly in context.) She is a great little toddler (not really a baby), and we feel overjoyed that she has been entrusted to our family's care.

Thanks for reading this while we were in Vietnam. It has been a good exercise for us to digest what has happened during our trip and has made a more complete diary of our trip than I would have committed to paper. Your reading this has encouraged us to put it in the computer, and our family (especially Julia) will be the beneficiary for having this record to keep and remember. I'm sure not going to blog my regular life (no one would read--including myself), but this has been great for us.

One last thing I'll add. My friend, Marshall, gave me a list of several ideas of subjects to talk about when I ran out of material (as I alluded to earlier). They were very good ideas, but I haven't been lacking for material since then. In honor of Marshall, I will address one of his ideas here. His idea number 4 was to address the following question: What elements of Viet Nam would you like to participate in if you didn't have three kids under the age of 6 tagging along?

That's a good question, Marshall. First, I would try a lot of different restaurants. We are always on the lookout for kid friendly. That means not too fancy and for our kids it means, "Is there any western food on the menu?" Our kids don't really do rice or noodles and that eliminates about 95% of typical vietnamese fare. We are luck to be in Vietnam where the french brought bread, so that is what our kids have subsisted on. Also, we have found 2 restaurants that have a high chair. At least one time we made a decision to go to one of those restaurants based on the fact that it had a high chair for Julia.

Another thing that we would do is go more on more short trips. It is difficult to take Julia anywhere different from what she is used to, and travelling with the kids on buses, slow moving vans, and other transportation is difficult. Tomorrow a group of famlies is going on a trip to a place called the Perfume Pagoda. It's supposed to be pretty neat, but it takes a 2 hour van ride, an 1 hour boat ride (small boat rowed by a woman) and then a 4-kilometer cable car trip to get to the pagoda. Barbie didn't think she could do it with Julia. There is also a neat area of Vietnam in the north near China called Sapa. It has neatly terraced mountains and a number of indigenous people groups that are interesting to visit. To get there requires sleeping on a night train (leaving 10 pm arriving 7 am) sleeping one night in Sapa and then taking another night train back to Hanoi. The pictures look incredible...but not with kids.

One last thing that would be good to do (although I could talk on this topic of what to do without kids for a long time, Marshall), is that there are thes places that have signs that read, "Bia Hoi", which is pronounced "Beer Ahoy". Bia hoi is vietnamese for draught beer. These are places where people sit on stools drinking draught beer and just shooting the breeze on the sidewalk. Our guidebook says that $10 would by about 100 beers and a lot of new friends. That would be a fun thing to do at night and meet the locals. As it is, even if Barbie turned me loose, at night after blogging, I'm pretty much spent.

Oh, and one last thing. The answer to Marshall's question #6. We gave the little christmas tree to the hotel this afternoon and told them they could use it to decorate for next christmas. They gladly accepted the gift.

Take care,

Doug for the Atkins clan

Another item lost

Hi all,

As you know, we lost our camera a few weeks ago. Last week, we left Julia's only pair of shoes on the floor of a taxi. And today, another item of note was lost. Let me set the scene...

While we have been in Vietnam, we have been monitoring the status of Thomas' lower front tooth. His adult tooth had started growing in behind it and making his baby tooth loose (and all of the baguettes that he has been eating probably helped!). Today in the taxi to meet another family at the main lake in the tourist section of Hanoi, Doug wiggled Thomas' tooth and discovered it was quite loose. So after some talking about how neat it would be for him to be able to say "I lost my first tooth in Asia" at all of the icebreakers/guessing games that the will need to do in his life (and that he only had 36 hours left if he wanted me to see his missing tooth) he decided to have Doug pull it out. And so on the rocks that he loves to climb in front of the "tortoise temple" Thomas lost his first tooth today. We got some great pictures of an uncertain Thomas looking at Doug while Doug pulled it out. Tonight, when Thomas was going to bed he said "I can't wait if I'm a Dad and I have a son to yank out his tooth!" We hear that there is a Vietnamese tooth fairy and that she leaves dong (which is Vietnamese money and not something else less desirable like it sounds like it could be.) Quite fun!

This morning we went to the Big C supermarket about 10 km out of central Hanoi. We stocked up on some food for Julia and I here, and some snacks for the kids for the plane ride home. For those of you who have waited impatiently in lines this week waiting to return stuff, let me tell you how it works here. You have to check your bags when you go into stores here, so we checked our backpack. When it came time to leave, I went to go get it. Vietnamese don't stand in line it turns out. There was one woman behind the counter and literally 40 people trying to check/receive bags and the 40 people just maneuver their way/push others out of the way to swarm the counter and wait for the woman to help them. While you are at the counter, you push, move, (do whatever) to make your bag/receiving ticket claim the most noticeable so that the woman will choose yours next. This is one time that it helped to be Caucasian. It was crazy and made me thankful for the lines in the States!

As of tonight I will not be moving to the other hotel. Our agency rep wasn't able to negotiate a good deal. The other hotel wants to charge us $20 more a night for a smaller room than what I can get at the woman hotel. Although there are many benefits to moving, the benefits don't equal an extra $20/night (especially if I am here for almost another 3 weeks.) Our rep was going to go back tomorrow and see if something would change, so we will see if anything comes of that. It would be nice to get a better price and move, but if it doesn't work out that will be OK too. I will still be in contact with the other families and see them almost daily either way.

And just a FYI, after Sunday, the blog posts will probably be about once a week. It is going to be difficult for me to try and blog with a little girl sitting on my lap "helping" me type. I will be in contact with Doug daily, so if anything of note comes up, he will post it. And depending on how Julia does when I check my email, I will try and write a little short something on the blog when I can.

Well, the song playing on the CD player in the Internet cafe is repeating for about the 10th time, so that means it's time for me to sign off.

Thanks for checking in,

Barbie

P.S. For those of you who are wondering - I am now a pro at crossing streets!

Some news, sort of

Well, tonight we learned that the US embassy called our adoption agency's representative in Hanoi to ask for some information about something from the province that Julia is from. The piece of information that they asked for COULD have something to do with Julia's file, but of course it could have something to do with another child's file as well. So the news is...the US embassy in Hanoi is at least looking at some file from our agency! That gives us hope that perhaps Julia's visa won't be so far away...but then again...who knows.

We called the airline to change Barbie's ticket to a later date. We tried to change it to a week later than our departure (which would be January 6). Unfortunately, the airline said that the soonest date that ANY SEATS were available between Hanoi and Minnesota would be JANUARY 17! And that date includes a 12 hour wait in LA and taking the red-eye flight (which would actually be during Barbie and Julia's day time). We confirmed the change for now, but if the visa comes more than a few days before that, we will work to figure out how we can get them home sooner than that (note to self...send an email to our Minnesota travel agent).

We took a look at the Sunny Hotel today. Four other families from our agency are staying there right now and we wanted to see what it looks like and if it might be a good place for Barbie and Julia to be after we leave. It was pretty nice, but the rooms were smaller. The breakfast is better and the cable TV is far superior and it is close to some other Americans, so if Mr. Hien is able to get a good price for us, Barbie thinks it would be a good move to make.

I had a chance to enter into another negotiation in Vietnam. As many of you know I stupidly lost our camera a couple of weeks ago. Many of you also know that I bought a new camera here to replace it. Well...on Christmas night, the automatically-opening shutter cap started malfunctioning. It doesn't happen often...but for a brand new camera, it was unsuccessful. So, today I went (by myself) to the camera store to exchange the camera for one that worked properly. My warranty was only supposed to be good for Vietnam, so I wanted to take care of this right away!

When I got there, two guys looked at the camera and it wouldn't malfunction. They said that the camera is not broken so there is not anything that they could do for me. I insisted that something had to be done, and they went along helping other customers. A bit later, one of them was turning the camera off and on and finally the lens cap malfunctioned! He looked up at me and I said, "AHA!" He looked up at me and I knew that he understood that there was a problem. The other guy (his supervisor) did not see the malfunction and he stated that the camera is not broken, and besides, the camera couldn't be exchanged for a new one after the first week. I was beside myself. I explained to the gentleman that his salesman told me that there price was a little bit higher than other places, but that they buy direct from the factor and offer the best quality and best service and we should trust them more than the cheaper places. Well, the fellow said, in Vietnam you can only exchange the camera in the first week.

I was quite disappointed. First I lost the camera. Next I decided that we should buy a replacement in Vietnam (not a cheap one) and in Vietnam I probably paid $25-50 more for the camera than I would have at Best Buy (with a real warranty there!) I would be very disappointed in myself if the result of my poor decisions landed us with a half-working camera for a lot of money.

I decided it was time for an ultimatum. I said that I was not going to leave the store until I got a new camera and that I would sit down and make myself comfortable until they brought the camera. Then I sat down. There were a couple of teenage girls that seemed to be friends of the salesman, and when I did this, they started laughing.

Well, the salesman's supervisor seemed put off by the idea of my ugly carcass being in his store indefinitely, so he said something to the salesman. The salesman left and came back 5 minutes later with a new camera. I was elated, but had to keep my cool and act like this was exactly what I expected to happen. As the supervisor handed me the camera he said, you know, we wouldn't give this new camera to a Vietnamese person, because they wouldn't expect the camera to be exchanged after one week. Because of this experience, I think that if Julia's visa doesn't come through and we need to move to Vietnam and live for two years, maybe I could start a consumer consulting/training business where I could help Vietnamese citizens to learn how to demand a 90 day exchange policy...either that or be a boat captain at Ha Long Bay. At least now I have options.

Well...that's the news (soft of). Hope all is well there. Please remember to watch the Rose Bowl on January 1 and root for the Illini (although USC will kill us).

Take care,
Doug

Happy Boxing Day

I wouldn't usually think much about it being boxing day here, but I am reminded by watching the Australia Network that today is indeed boxing day and it seems that there is quite a big cricket match and some important yachting race. They show the cricket scores on the news, and I really don't have any idea after looking at the scores who has won and who has lost. The other night they were interviewing some cricket coach and he was using jargon (presumably cricket-jargon) and it sounded so funny that a person would talk so seriously in this jargon about a sport. I suppose it must be like what an alien would think if she were to land in the US and watch ESPN.

That aside, we have no news of visa progress. We spent the morning looking for a birthday present for Julia. Her birthday isn't soon, but we are trying to gather a Vietnamese souvenir for each of her birthdays that she celebrates with us (up through 18). Today was a misty, cool day. Of course here people were dressed very warmly. All of Helen's long pants were dirty and in the laundry, so she went in a short dress with long sleeve shirt and a jacket. We were chastised vehemently about how she (and Julia for that matter) were dressed. It was obvious to us that neither of them were really cold. It was interesting what different places think about what constitutes proper care for children. In the US, if a child is not in a car seat, you might be strung up, but here, children stand between their parents' legs on motor scooter seats and no one cares. Interesting.

Tonight we had supper with the same folks that we went to the park with yesterday (the ones with two kids, one 6 and one 2.5). The kids were a little bit wild, but it was a decent meal. I had cha ca, or grilled fish, which is a famous type of food to eat here. Interestingly enough, we were on Cha Ca street (which means, Grilled Fish Street). Many of the streets here are named for what they sell on the streets. Please forgive me if we already told you about this street naming convention, as I am running out of material to talk about.

I think that we have said that Helen, Thomas, and I are leaving Hanoi for Minnesota on Sunday. Barbie and Julia will stay until they get her visa. This is quite a bummer for our family, but I am confident that Barbie can do all that she needs to do to make it over here, and with my mom's help, I think we'll make it in Minnesota just fine.

To be honest with you, however, we are pretty disappointed, and of course we are sad to be splitting up the family. It is the best option that we have right now, so we will move ahead. We are still so glad to have Julia in our family, and she is opening up and really becoming one of the gang. She is a spunky, funny, smart, ACTIVE, little girl. Every time she does something that she shouldn't and I correct her, she thinks that the way to fix it is to pucker up her lips, screw up her face, and give me a kiss. It's hilarious.

Tomorrow I think that we might go look at the hotel that the other families from our agency are staying in. There are some pros to our current hotel, but it might be good for Barbie to have some more company closer to her after we leave. Regardless, Barbie and Julia will move our of our long-time room on Sunday and either move into a smaller room at the woman hotel or look at moving over to the Sunny Hotel. We'll see how that goes.

Well...I hope that you all enjoy Boxing Day. There's no need to be ashamed if you don't know what Boxing Day is. I checked on the internet just before posting this note. It turns out that this day gets its name from the need to rid the house of empty boxes the day after Christmas (http://www.snopes.com/holidays/christmas/boxingday.asp). Please email this piece of information along to all the people in your email address book. I did and I recieved a check from Bill Gates for $101,327!*

Thanks for checking in. Hope you have a great day.

Doug

* Please forgive me for this poor attempt at humor. I'm strapped for material.

A Very Viet Christmas

Hi from the most recently mentioned internet cafe.

We had a merry Christmas here today. It turned out that Santa DID read my email about us being in Vietnam. He must be quite the incredible fellow. Even in his busiest time of year he was able to read and respond to my email about our unexpected change of location (Vietnam versus Minnesota) on Christmas. If only the US government were so effective!

Not only did we receive a visit from the real Santa, but yesterday, the door man asked Barbie what time we go to sleep at night. She told him 10pm, because that is when she normally goes to bed, however the kids go to bed at around 8. At 9:30 last night (Christmas Eve), we had a knock at our hotel room door. I opened the door to see our doorman (a very happy and friendly fellow) dressed in a Santa suit and bearing gifts. He was disappointed to see the kids sleeping, but we took our picture with him to show them. The hotel director had provided a gift for each of our 3 kids, and our agency representative had sent along with this santa a CD of Christmas music for us and a nice card as well. It was a very sweet surprise.

Thomas awoke at 3 am to see that the oreos we left for Santa were eaten and presents were under the tree. He stayed awake for an hour trying to get back to sleep! That made for a little bit of a long day for him.

After opening gifts and eating breakfast, we went to Lenin park. This is avery nice park with some good playground equipment (of course for the 5 of us it cost $.25 to get in!) We met another adoptive family there (the one with a 6-year old boy and a recently adopted 2.5 year old girl) and the parents visited and the kids played. It was nice.

We came back to the woman hotel for lunch in our room and to hang out for the afternoon. I called some of the other families who are with our agency who were having an all-day round of negotiations with a travel agent of their own. I called to offer moral support.

At 5pm we had a get-together at our hotel's restaurant with us and the 5 other adoptive families from our agency who are currently in Hanoi. There were 12 adults, 4 older kids and 6 recently-added children. It was a great time. We brought down our christmas tree, played the new christmas CD on the laptop, and enjoyed a very nice buffet. The buffet included:

chicken mushroom soup
roasted chicken
spaghetti
sea bass stir-fry
steamed vegetables
lamb chops
french fries
baguettes with butter and strawberry jam
banna flower salad (very yummy)
fruit
juice
coffee

I thought it was yummy, but Barbie wasn't quite as impressed. One of the guys brought along a couple of beautiful cakes which were very yummy. Mr. Hien came and brought a bottle of wine for us to toast each other and celebrate the holiday. He really is quite a nice guy. It was a nice evening of spending time with a group of folks who are all kind of in the same boat in a variety of different ways. We were glad to have the company of these folks to celebrate.

We are a bit sad that we aren't able to enjoy Minnesota's first white Christmas in a while (and we hear it is VERY white). As we were visiting with our friends this morning, we were realizing how much we miss home and the clean air (it is very hazy and/or smoggy constantly here). People are telling us to enjoy the weather, but even though it is 70-75 degrees each day, it's not really like San Diego. We really have only seen the sun 2-3 times since we got to Hanoi, and while the temperature is comfortable, we haven't had what I would really call any beautiful days. Not complaining, mind you, just letting you know what it's like and what we miss. Right now I would long for one of those quiet minnesota winter nights where the snow falls straight down and you can go for a walk and hear nothing. We haven't heard nothing in ages.

A young lad just told me to hurry up and finish because they are closing...so I will. Again, we wish the merriest Christmas to all of you and encourage you to celebrate the coming of Christ to this world.

Wishing you love, joy, and peace from the other side of the world.

The Atkins Family

Happy Christmas Eve

Christmas greeting from Vietnam. No visa news to report today. Tomorrow we will take another break from checking our email often as the embassy is closed for Christmas.

This morning was pretty low key. Just spent the morning tying up some loose ends, extending our stay in the hotel and changing Doug, Helen and Thomas' flight one more time. We found out today that some seats became available on Sunday's departure from Hanoi, so we decided that it would be good for them to stay a couple more days. More than likely we will still end up coming home separately, but it is two less days that we are each parenting on our own. More importantly, we were concerned that Julia might not remember them as well if we were apart for 3 weeks, so lessening that by even two days is a good thing. Surprisingly, as excited as the kids are to go home, they were excited to find out they are staying a little longer. The EVA airline office here in Hanoi now recognizes Doug's voice on the telephone because we have been changing our ticket so much.

The kids opened their presents in shorts and t-shirts today. (Grimy ones at that - 6 weeks here is beginning to take a toll on the few clothes that we brought!) Even on the other side of the world, they still needed to sort out their presents into piles before they were opened.

Supper tonight was at the Moca Cafe where the kids ate garlic bread and french toast for their Christmas Eve supper. (Interesting combo, I know.) Doug got pork chops and I got a beef stir-fry. And we all had some yummy desserts! They had good Christmas music playing while we were there. A nice break from the only other Christmas music we have heard everywhere else. The everywhere else Christmas music consists of the regular songs, but to a fast 80s disco beat - Silent Night is not quite the same!

There aren't a lot of Christians in Vietnam, so celebrating Christmas is something that is new and apparently is getting bigger every year. I read that the thing to do to celebrate it is drive around this lake in central Hanoi (about 3 miles from our hotel.) That must be the case because the roads were packed with scooters tonight! It was amazing.

We are having our Christmas dinner tomorrow night with our dear friends here - some of whom we will meet in about an hour. =) Doug negotiated the menu with the restaurant today. One of the things that they are serving is a banana flower dried beef salad. We will let you know how that is...

Well, Merry Christmas everyone. We wish we were there to tell you in person, but this will just have to do.

Thanks for your support and prayers. They mean a lot to us.

Love,

Barbie

Welcome from another Internet Cafe

Not only did the stolen wifi signal that we were using for weeks dry up a few days ago, but today we have absolutely no internet access in our hotel lobby. So I am surrounded by twenty 12-19 year vietnamese boys that are gaming and IMing furiously in an internet cafe about 30 yards down the road from the hotel. For those of you who remember my description of the internet cafe in Ben Tre, this one is much less scary, and the proprietor is much less physically affectionate and also seems less intoxicated. The internet connection and computers are the fastest I have used in Vietnam, so that's a good thing.

Today we went this morning to a botanical garden that is about 3 blocks away from our hotel. It is a very beautiful place, but it isn't very large. The highlight for me was a cage of monkeys (would have been the highlight for everyone if the monkey cage had been cleaned out more often). The interesting thing at the botanical garden was there was this hill. One each of the four sides of the hill, there were steep stairs going up (maybe 30 vertical feet worth of stairs). When we got to the top, there were a bunch of pinwheels stuck in the round grass clearing at the top, and a black upright piano was in the middle of the clearing. There were cameras and a couple of dressed up folks, and it looked like they were shooting a music video. The question that Barbie and I had was, "who carried the piano up there?"

This afternoon I ran a few errands on behalf of Mr. Kringle while the others stayed at the hotel and rested and got crabby. I think the kids have hit the wall. Thomas and Helen are ready to come home on Friday, although they both express sadness that mom and Julia probably won't be coming just yet.

I have informed Thomas and Helen that I emailed Santa that we will be at the woman hotel in hanoi instead of at home this Christmas. I keep telling them that I hope he got the email, but it's a really busy time for him, so we'll just wait and see if anything shows up on Christmas morning.

Tomorrow three more adoptive families from our agency will arrive in Hanoi. Each of them is in the same boat as us (waiting for a visa and not knowing when they will get it.) We are having a get-together at our hotel on Christmas and I think that most of the families will be coming. We will be glad some folks from home to celebrate with.

My mom has agreed to come up and watch Thomas and Helen while I go back to work until Barbie and Julia get home. Thanks a lot, Mom! That really takes a load of worry off of our backs. Now if any of you works in the state department or in homeland security and wants to expedite our visa processing, we would be all set!

Well, I'll sign off now. Thanks for reading and we look forward to all of us seeing all of you in person.

Merry Christmas Eve Eve to you all!

Doug

The "I don't have an exciting title" title

Hi all,

Not much to report again today. After some calling around to different hotels this morning, we found one that would let us swim. (Well, actually we found two, but one wanted to charge us $16.50 per person and that was way to much!) So, for about $10 total, we found ourselves splashing in an outdoor, unheated pool on Dec. 22. Today was a good day to go. The temp is usually around 70 degrees, but 9 out of 10 days it is cloudy, foggy, misty, etc. Today was the one in 10 days where the sun peeked out a little bit. The youngest Atkins was not sure what she thought about this swimming thing, so the eldest female Atkins was happy to sit out with her. (Did I mention that the pool was unheated and it's Dec?) The three others had a great time splashing the morning away.

That's about it for the excitement. We ate supper with the other two families tonight. Tomorrow we will go check out some botantical gardens near the hotel and then try and find wrapping paper for the Christmas presents. Little errands like that are much more difficult than you might imagine. I know that we will be successful, it's just a matter of how exhausted we will become doing it. For you Target employees reading this, have they ever considered opening a store here? It sure would be handy for me right now...

Thanks for checking in,

Barbie

The more the merrier

We are getting some company in Hanoi. Besides the one family that is currently here (that has travelled with us from our Giving and Receiving Ceremony), there is now another family, and on Christmas Eve 3 more families will arrive. That will make 6 families in Hanoi with our adoption agency. Unfortunately, only one of the three families currently knows that they are able to get their visa soon. It is my guess that the rest of the families will get their visas at around the same time. The good news...we (and after the 28th, Barbie and Julia) will have more Americans around to commiserate with. I am glad for Barbie's sake that she will have some sort of support nearby when the rest of us leave.

Tonight we had dinner with a Minnesota family who arrived here yesterday. They have a 5 or 6 year old son, and have a newly adopted 2 1/2 year old daughter. We had a great time with them at dinner. Thomas and Helen really loved goofing off with the boy. It was nice having other adults to talk with as well.

Earlier today we made a trek to the Old Quarter in search of Christmas cheer. We browsed the Lego store and the Mattell store. These two stores seem really out of place in the Old Quarter (which is nothing like a shopping mall). The Old Quarter is much more like a Bazaar which makes it strange to see these types of stores. We found our Christmas cheer in the form of 3 foot tall artificial christmas tree and a few ornaments. We got lights and the whole deal. We came back to the hotel and ordered pizza for lunch (from pizza 112) and decorated the tree. It's not quite like Minnesota, but at least it's something.

Well, that's about all we have for now. Tomorrow we hope to go somewhere to go swimming. We'll let you know if we were successful!

Take care,
Doug

Thurs. night - Einstein factor night

Hi all,



Nothing much to report today. No visa news. We changed our tickets to next Friday, the 28th. Doug and the older kids will be returning that day no matter what happens visa-wise. We think that we would have to hear of Julia's visa pre-approval by tomorrow or maybe the very latest, Monday morning in order for the two of us to go back with the rest of the family. We are hoping that we hear good news tomorrow. It will be much, much easier for us to travel back together than separately, not to mention we are all eager to get home.



Other than that, not much to say. We are going to go buy some Christmas decorations for our hotel room tomorrow. Doug and I are in the process of trying to make it as much like Christmas for the kids as possible. They have been such troopers for this trip that it didn't seem fair to them to delay celebrating Christmas until we got home. Right now we think that Christmas Eve will mean a trip to the Moca Cafe where the kids can get french toast and bacon. (I would have never guessed in a million years that that could be a Christmas Eve meal for us!)



Went to KFC tonight for supper. We stumbled upon one that was less than 2 miles from our hotel, much closer than the one we had been going to. (A side note - I was tiring of seeing all of these signs around me and not having any clue what they said, so a couple of days ago, Doug bought me a Vietnamese-English dictionary.) While we were eating supper, they had a sign that said something about KFC and Christmas, so I thought I would translate it. I got as far as "Don't worry, let KFC help you push your hemorroids out" before I quit. Having never spent a Christmas in Vietnam, I don't know much about the traditions here, but I think that it is pretty safe to guess that hemorroids don't have much to do with it. (By the way, this story does not open it up for people to share their hemorroid stories in the comment section please!) Doug no longer trusts my translations.



Well, I better finish this up. It is almost time for Einstein Factor - Thomas' favorite show. Helen says she is going to watch it in bed, but I don't think she will make it through the whole thing. As for Julia, she keeps us entertained. Her trick tonight - to kiss her french fries before she ate them. Hopefully she will outgrow this before her first date.



Thanks for checking in,



Barbie

Well...maybe one more week

Hello faithful blog readers,

Congratulations on sticking with the blog reading for this long. It's been a long time and it's going to be a bit longer. We didn't learn anything today about the progress on Julia's visa, so we're not going to be able to come home on the 23rd. We're disappointed, but I think at this point we are going to be very surprised when the Visa does come through.

Tomorrow I will go to the airline office and try to change our tickets. We will try to change the flights for the 30th of December (pending flight availability). We hope that we will all be able to use those tickets, but if we don't have the visa, then Thomas, Helen, and I will come back and leave the other two girls here (insert big frown here). We knew all along that this would be a possibility, but we didn't think it was a highly likely possibility. Besides the obvious reasons that I would be disappointed for having to split up (missing each other, not having each other to help, Barbie being away from home even LONGER, and Julia delaying further her entry to her new home), it would be a bummer for me that I would not get to see the process through to the end that we have been breathing, eating, and sleeping for the past 2 years. Oh, well...you do what you have to do, eh?

There's not much to report other than that today. We stuck around the hotel much of the day checking the email every hour to make sure that we hadn't received any news. We did hear a response from the government that they could not ensure that we would get our visa when we hope to get it. I guess that we already know that.

I must also tell you a little bit about our agency's representative in Hanoi, Mr. Hien. Mr. Hien is a great young man who helps with paperwork with the DIA (Vietnam's intercountry adoption agency), helps us through the paperwork process in Hanoi, helps get accommodations for us, takes me to the airline office to change flights, helps me negotiate with hotels and travel agents, helps us plan things to do, and calls us at least once a day to check on us and see how we are doing. He has been most helpful during our time here and we are most appreciative of him. He always has a smile on his face and a kind demeanor. While waiting for paperwork, meeting in the hotel lobby to discuss scenarios, calling him to ask for advice on restaurants, and other interactions, I have had the chance to talk to this fellow for several hours, and he is a genuinely nice guy and very helpful. When we first got here, he made sure that we had his cell phone number and he told us, "If you need anything you call Mr. Hien." I asked him, "Even at 3AM?" Mr. Hien replied, "Of course!" I am thankful for Mr. Hien. He has been very helpful and I consider him a good friend.

A couple notes on Julia: I think that at this point she knows that Barbie is good cop and I am the bad cop. Right before I came down to the hotel lobby to blog, Barbie was sitting on the bed next to Julia, and the little girl was crawling around and trying to stand up. She was supposed to be going to sleep. I looked at her and said, "Julia" and immediately she laid down and stared at me. I think as soon as I left she probably got back up and started playing. Another thing about Barbie, Julia, and me...Julia now gives kisses. She puckers up and screws up her face and says, "MMMMMM" and then accepts a kiss. She is very free with her kisses with Barbie. However, she usually turns away from me. However, sometimes when I tell her not to do something, sometimes she starts kissing me to try and get me to forget about what she was doing. I think I'm in for a rough 17 years.

Talk with you later.

Doug

Christmas in Hanoi

As you see, there is no question mark at the end of this title. That means that unless Julia's visa approval comes through early tomorrow morning, we will be spending Christmas in Vietnam. We are bummed, but now just hope that it comes through soon so that we can still go home together. Right now the plan is that Doug and the older kids will go home sometime the end of next week regardless of Julia's visa to get Thomas back in school. If Julia's visa approval doesn't come through in time to go home with the others, she and I will continue to hang out here until it does. By that time some other families (who are adopting through our agency) will be here awaiting their visas, so I won't be alone. But it would be nice for our family to go home together.

That is pretty much the news of the day. We visited yet another temple today. They all have their different stories, but are no longer looking significantly different in our eyes. We are starting to scrape the bottom of the Hanoi barrel for stuff to do and are considering going somewhere else for a couple of days. The difficultly with that is that Julia doesn't do so well with that kind of stuff and at this point we want to minimize her difficulties.

Tried a new cafe tonight. Probably won't be back - it was expensive (by Vietnamese standards) for the type of food that we got. They did have kangaroo on the menu though. (There are lots of Australian tourists in Vietnam.) None of us tried it.

That's it for today. Thanks for checking in.

Barbie

P.S. For you Vikings fans out there, they have won every game since we left. Apparently us being out of the country is the key to their success. If the visa takes much longer, they might actually win the SuperBowl. (Hopefully we won't need to test this theory much longer...)

Nope...nothing yet

Long day...no email regarding Julia's visa...kids ready to go home...parents ready to go home...people having a rough day...hoping to get a second wind tomorrow.

Enough about today.

USAmericans are really lucky when it comes to international travel. I am sitting here in the hotel lobby here and there is a group of Korean ladies that is trying to get some information from the hotel desk staff. One of these ladies just started complaining to me that the hotel staff here doesn't speak good enough English for them to communicate. As I have written before, this hotel accommodates people from all over Asia and Europe. Most of these travelers do not speak Vietnamese, and most of the hotel staff (as well as restaurant staff) don't speak Korean, Chinese, German, etc., but English. As difficult as it is sometimes for us to communicate here, at least when we are trying to communicate with people here we have the luxury of doing it in our native tongue.

That being said, the next time we come here (which we plan on doing when Julia gets old enough to appreciate the trip), we want to speak more Vietnamese before we come. If for no other reason then at least to show some respect to the people that we meet. We were and are woefully unprepared in that regard.

However, if we never get Julia's visa approved, I have been considering some possible ways of earning a living in Vietnam permanently. My first idea is that I would like to buy a junk ( a boat) in Ha Long Bay. This boat would offer cruises of Ha Long bay while serving the finest BBQ pork available in the entire country of Vietnam. We would also serve our own microbrewed beers on board. Vietnam has some wonderful food, but they really could learn something from the US with respect to BBQ pork and beer. I already talked this through with the tour guide who went with us to Ha Long Bay and he is on board with the idea. It sounds like a great way to spend hot days in Vietnam during the summer, at least.

A second idea that I have is to do the same thing, but without a boat (and not in Ha Long Bay because without the boat Ha Long Bay is too wet). We could set up in Hanoi and specialize in food for people waiting for visas for adopted children. We would serve chicken nuggets so that people who traveled with their children to adopt a child would be able to say to their older kids, "hey guys look! you can get chicken nuggets!" And then the older children would say, Wow! can we come here every night?" Then the parents would say, "No, because it is more expensive than the Vietnamese restaurants." Then the children would start crying. Hmm...maybe we'll just hope for Julia's visa to come through.

In parting, I shared this pet peeve with Barbie earlier today: although there many things about Vietnam that are wonderful, there is one thing that I will not miss. I will not miss when you are being charged 30,000 Dong (about $2) for something and you pull out a 100,000 Dong bill (about $7) and you get a look that communicates something like "you must be crazy if you think that I'm going to be make change for that kind of money!" It's a look that you might get if you pick up some Chicklets at the grocery store and try to buy them with a $100 bill. I won't miss that.

Sorry for taking you on a trip down my stream of consciousness. I'll collect my thoughts better next time.

Doug

The other side of the world

Greetings, again, from Hanoi, where we are enjoying our visit, but sincerely hope that this is our last full Sunday here! We began the day with a return visit to the ceramics shop that we stopped at our first Monday here. There are so many beautiful things to buy at incredibly great prices that the only thing that stops me from buying A LOT, is the issue of getting it home!

This afternoon we again had the dilemma of figuring out where to go for supper. After eating out for 4 weeks straight, it is starting to wear thin. We had heard from our agency rep that there is a McDonald’s in Hanoi, so we thought we would find out for sure before we told the kids. Doug looked on their website – nothing. He googled it – nothing. So as a last resort, I thought I would ask the folks at the front desk. I wasn’t really expecting there to be one, but what happened shocked me. They had never even heard of McDonalds! We really are on the other side of the world!

So we found ourselves going to this pizza restaurant that we hadn’t tried yet. Two wonderful things occurred. One – they had a highchair. (A side note – cribs, highchairs and carseats are an extremely rare thing over here. We have Julia sitting on our lap at all our meals and in the taxi rides. This is getting slightly tiresome as she is a cute, albeit VERY squirmy, little girl.) It was wonderful for both of us to eat our meals without our plates being pushed 18 inches away from us out of a little girls’ reach!

The second wonderful thing - Julia is definitely my daughter! They had some great American music playing and the one and only song that she made an attempt to dance to was the BeeGee’s “How Deep is Your Love.” The girl has taste!

Julia is starting to understand some English words. It has been amazing to see how quickly she is picking it up. She is also starting to interact with Thomas and Helen more. Her favorite thing is to join in laughing when they are giggling about something funny.

Tomorrow we are back to email checking again – hoping for a good word from the US Government. The trip has been a great experience, but we are ready to get home and get everyone adjusted and readjusted (as the case may be) to our real life. We are really hoping to be able to use the tickets that we have reserved for the 23^rd. I guess we will know soon enough…

Thanks for checking in during this busy time of year. I hope that you are all surviving the pre-holiday stress. Only 9 shopping days left!

Take care,

Barbie

Another day in Hanoi

Hi all,

This being a Saturday, a day where no visa work would be done, we ventured out again (and away from our computer) to see some of the local sights. Today's choice - the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum. The Mausoleum is less than a mile from our hotel, so we have passed it often when we are out. Here (contrary to his wishes for a simple cremation) is where Ho Chi Minh's body is displayed in a glass sarcophagus. There are many rules for visiting. First, no cameras, phones, etc. Second, no shorts, tanks tops, etc. Then no talking, hands in your pockets, hats on your heads, etc. Guards stand about every 5 paces to make sure that these rules are enforced. There is an air of deep reverence by the Vietnamese people that go there. It was an interesting experience to say the least. Thomas thought it was weird and Helen wanted to know what the dead part was.

After that, we went to the Ho Chi Minh Museum (on the same grounds). That would have been more interesting if we knew significantly more about Vietnam's history and if we didn't have 3 children 6 and under.

The irony of it all is that, as I said earlier, HCM was supposedly a very simple man and desired a simple cremation and the Mausoleum and specifically the grounds surrounding it is probably the most kept up, grand, beautiful spot in Hanoi. The gardens are gorgeous, there are beautiful fountains, and real grass growing (as opposed to the crab grass that they grow in parks here complete with signs that tell you to stay off of it.) Many pictures could be taken there.

That was pretty much the highlight of the day. The other thing (that I am sure that you have been waiting for a report on all week) was that the helmet law went into effect today. Out of the hundreds and hundreds of motorbike riders we saw today, we counted about 10 people who didn't have helmets. It was fascinating to see how that changed.

Well, I am going to wrap it up. Julia hasn't been sleeping well lately, so I want to catch some z's while she is.

Thanks for checking in.

Barbie

Yet another hotel lobby negotiation...

Short word on the visa...nothing. On to other things...

We rescheduled our flight for December 23rd. We really hope that we're able to use those reservations. It was good that we were able to get seats during the very busy season.

Per the title of this blog entry, I spent another hour in our hotel lobby in negotiations with a travel agent (and others) here. A little background...we came to Hanoi three weeks ago, and our adoption agency's representative in Hanoi didn't know that we were coming when we did until 2-3 days before we got here (the original plan was for us to stay in Saigon longer). It is really busy in Hanoi right now and very difficult to get hotels, so our representative was forced to use a travel agent to find accommodations for us. The use of this travel agent has resulted in nothing but poor communication and misunderstandings. When Barbie's family changed rooms during their stay, the travel agent expected them to pay for 2 rooms instead of the 1 that they were using for their stay. We talked our way through that only to have the price raised for them by $15 per night at the point that they were ready to check out. That was finally resolved after much hand-wringing and consternation.

Today the travel agent came to settle accounts with us. The room here at the hotel was booked through the travel agent through December 16 (we'll stay here after that, but we will book directly with the hotel to simplify matters). All along I have been told $60/night. When the travel agent came today the charge was $70 per night! When we checked in we requested a room with two double beds and an extra bed (rollaway). We were told that the room would be $60 and an extra bed would be $10. When we went up to the room, there were simply two beds (one almost queen size and the other not quite double size). I asked where the extra bed was and the travel agent said, "there's no room for an extra bed in this room." It was my assumption that meant that we did not have an extra bed, and thus we shouldn't pay for it. The travel agent thought something that I still don't understand (maybe something like, this guy looks kind of stupid.) Well, perhaps I am stupid, but that's a different subject.

So after a bunch of cell phone calls to people, 7 people in negotiation (2 from travel agency 3 from hotel, my agency rep, and myself) I ended up paying the guy $60 per night. The things stated during our conversation included the following statements from the travel agent: "we don't need a written contract in Vietnam because verbal contracts are binding", "we have a written contract, but I don't have it right now", "Next time I will get it in writing", "I never saw your room when you checked in", "Of course I checked out your room when you checked in", and my personal favorite, "I don't think he's lying--he just talks fast" (said by the travel agency director of his employee). I remember the following question coming out of my mouth, "Is there a branch of the police that deals with crimes against tourists?"

After the travel agent took his money and left the hotel manager stated that he wanted me to book the rest of the stay directly with him at a discount. I asked him how much and he said, "Maybe $10 cheaper". If I had learned anything of the past few weeks I would have asked, "do you mean $50 per night and can I get that in writing?" However, negotiating in a different culture is a great experience, so maybe I should leave things a little vague for now.

Other than that, the day was mostly low key. I went with our adoption agency rep (Mr. Hien) to the airline office to change tickets. I really love the coffee here and have purchased a couple of Vietnamese coffee-making apparatuses. I was asking Mr. Hien what the best coffee to use was for Vietnamese coffee. He said without hesitation, "Dragon Coffee, I'll take you on my motor bike". So I took yet another trip on a Vietnamese motor scooter to go on a coffee run. Mr. Hien seemed to struggle a bit with balance (I don't think it has anything to do with me outweighing him by 120 lbs or so), but we made it there and back alright. I was able to get 2.2 kilos (almost 5 lbs) of Dragon Coffee for about $10. I haven't quite got the technique down for making the coffee correctly, though. I will work on it with Mr. Hien. When you're over after we get back, ask me to make you a shot!

It's 9:20 pm here and Barbie and the kids are sleeping upstairs. It was a rough night with Julia as she was upset about something. Everyone seemed to go to sleep easily tonight. This weekend we plan on getting back in the tourist swing. Tomorrow we plan to visit some of the Ho Chi Minh sites (the man, not the city) and Sunday we may go back to this incredibly cheap place to buy really cool ceramics.

For those of you still interested in following the blog, I appreciate it. The news isn't so interesting, new, or cool these days. We still appreciate the idea that we have family and friends who care enough to be interested. It really does mean a lot to us.

Many people have noted that they have tried to post comments unsuccessfully. We really do like hearing from folks, so if you want to email barbie or me, that works, too.

See ya later (but hopefully not too much later),

Doug

Time to switch our flight schedule...

No news today, so we have started trying to change our flights back to Minnesota. We have tentatively reserved flights on Friday and Sunday (the 21st and 23rd). The bad news is that right now there aren't seats available on the Los Angeles to Minnesota flights on either day...so we're working on that. We figure that if we have Julia's visa by time to leave next weekend, we can worry about getting back to Minnesota after we get to the US if we have to. If we don't hear anything from the US gov't by 2pm tomorrow we will select the Sunday the 23rd flight, but if we get our visa preapproval tomorrow before 2pm, we will target leaving on Friday the 21st.

Of course all of this is out of our hands now. I phoned the US Consulate this morning and we got the standard, "you know that it may take 60 days to approve" script. The other family with our agency called the consulate yesterday and they got some sort of vague reference to maybe the files will be complete by the end of this week...we'll see what happens. We have stopped any breath-holding at this point.

Today wasn't a bad day. I went to the airline office today with our agency representative in the morning. In the afternoon we hung out and rested at the hotel. This evening we went to a wonderful place called the Moca Cafe. This place had wonderful decore, great service, and SUPER food at a reasonable (but not Ladybird cheap) prices. To give a sampling of the diverse menu...I had beef with lemon grass and red chilles, Barbie had grilled pork chops and mashed potatoes (very good), helen had breaded fried chicken strips, and Thomas had french toast with bacon. We were all thrilled with the food and the experience.

Back at the hotel it was Thursday night, so you all know what that means...that's right...The Einstein Factor on the Australia Network (or the Einstein Factory as Thomas calls it). This is a simple quiz game show that Thomas simply does not want to miss. We got back to the hotel just in time to wash the kids' stinky feet (I couldn't stand it so much that I also washed their sandals), get into jammies, and watch this obscure show with obscure questions relating to Australian pop culture, history, government, and geography. I'm not sure that he gets any of it, but Thomas is a big fan.

Well, I'll make it a short one today. I'm going to try and call Northwest Airlines over my laptop and see if they can find any room for us on a plane.

Take care...we're all doing just fine.

Doug

An anniversary in Hanoi

Hi all,

It was a pretty boring day today here in Hanoi. Today was the last day that we could get our visa preapproval and still have a chance of returning on Sunday, so we stayed at the hotel all day so we could check our email every hour and take care of business if something happened. Turns out what they say about a watched pot is true... we didn't hear anything. Doug is going to call the consulate tomorrow and see what we can learn.

There is no Michael W. Smith playing in the lobby tonight, but I think that I would almost welcome it. Almost every time I have heard an American song here, it has been Celine Deon's "My Heart Will Go On." Out of the 30 or so English songs I have heard, I think I have heard that 10-15 times.

So, since you probably don't want to hear the boring details of our day, I thought I would expand more on the traffic here. The first thing that we will have to do when we get home is to retrain the kids that you don't cross the street if a car is coming. If you did that here, you would probably be waiting until the middle of the night (and I don't really know if the streets are empty then, since I am trying to sleep and haven't checked it out). To cross the street you wait until there is about a 10 foot gap in the traffic and you begin to cross. The key is to keep a steady pace, so the traffic can gauge where you will be when and then they swerve around you. I myself have only attempted one street crossing on my own. Doug told me today that if I end up staying here by myself, he is going to make that an assignment for me before he leaves. I'm thinking that if something isn't on the block that I am on, then I don't need it...

Thing #2 - if you need to make a left hand turn onto a busy street, is OK to drive in the oncoming traffic's lane in the opposite direction until you are able to weave over to your lane.

#3 - If you miss a turn, it is OK to stop and drive in reverse (again going against traffic) until you get back to where you want to be.

On the 15th, a helmet law goes into effect here for all the motor scooter drivers. It will be interesting to see if it gets followed or not. Right now, in our best estimate, 1-3% of people where helmets.

One more thing, there is no speeding in Vietnam. If they catch you speeding they take away your vehicle.

The amazing thing about all of this is that it seems to work. Everybody honks, all the time. If you don't get honked at you must be doing something wrong. The other thing is that I have only seen one incident where somebody got angry at someone else for some driving issue. Amidst the chaos, everyone seems calm and gets to where they are going.

A final note - we appreciate all of you who are supporting us in this journey and remember fondly those of you who were with us nine years ago today when Doug and I got married and are grateful for the rest of you who have joined up with us since then. Your love, support and prayers mean a lot to us. Thank you. (By the way, we went out to dinner tonight for our anniversary. Oh wait, I guess that is what we have been doing the last 3 1/2 weeks...)

Take care,

Barbie

P.S. The other day, I saw a man carrying an armchair on the back of his motorbike. I don't know if that counts as a new record or not, but it was quite impressive nevertheless!

No news is no news

This is Doug again. After a few patronizing remarks from snow-bound housewives on my last post, I know that I have to punch this one up a bit. We'll see how it goes. At the risk of boring through being too long...I will warn you that this is longer than usual.

We didn't get anything from USCIS today. Call me a Pollyanna or a rosy-dispositioned optimist, but I really don't think we will be here come Christmas time. It looks unlikely now that we will be able to get Julia's visa before the weekend and get home on December 16, but I gotta hunch that we won't be delayed much longer. I base this on nothing, so take it for what it's worth. As Parson Larson would say...it's free and worth every penny.

We awoke after the second straight night of an often-fussing baby. Since Granny and Gramps and Heather don't have a spare spot in a bed to share, now Barbie, Julia, and I have been staying in the same bed. Therefore, we all three get the chance to stay up. We thought it might be a good idea to get one of those pack-n-plan portable cribs for her to sleep in so that maybe someone might be able to sleep. More on that later...

When we got out of bed, we lazed around a bit and then decided to go to the Hanoi Zoo. Our travel book gave this glowing endorsement of the zoo: "It isn't the Singapore Zoo, but it also isn't one of the Asian horror shows." We thought that somewhere between a world class zoo and a horror show was worth a shot. We took a taxi to the zoo and spent about 1.5 hours walking around. The zoo had elephants (chained), several tigers, Asiatic black bears, white cheeked gibbons (a gibbon always scores high with me), and about 8 different varieties of macaques.

The highlight for Thomas and Helen occurred at a cage of something that looked a little bit like a porcupine, but without quills. The animal had its breakfast in the cage that included different veggies, fruit, and rice, and there were about half a dozen rats (not officially zoo animals) sharing the breakfast with the animal. We have seen more rats in three weeks in Vietnam than I think I have ever seen in Minnesota!

After the zoo I went to use my cell phone to call a taxi and it didn't work. There was just a Vietnamese language recording saying something. I called our agency's rep, Mr. Hien, and I received the same recording. I figured were were out of minutes on the phone and needed to refill it somehow (I wasn't sure of either), so we walked to a busy road to hail a cab and go to 1) fill the cell phone and 2) buy a pack-n-play bed for Julia.

(**Atmosphere note--at this moment in the hotel lobby, Michael W. Smith's I will be Here for You" is playing for the second time since I started this post and there is some sort of lizard on the wall...now back to the post.)

We had seen a pack-n-play at a very swank department store downtown the night before, but we hadn't looked at the pricetag. We figured it wouldn't be the cheapest place to buy a pack-n-play (seeing how we would just be using it until we left and then donating it to our adoption agency here), so we first looked at another shopping place that I had been to earlier in our trip. Seeing nothing there, we decided to go to the department store to get it. We found out that the crib at this store was 5.3 million Dong ($331!). Too much! We found a place to buy new cell phone minutes at the department store and then decided to go home (after stopping at the Fivimart for some croissants and baguettes), have lunch, and then I would go out and look for a cheaper deal.

I asked the hotel desk where I should go to look for this, and they directed me to a certain street where they claimed that it was baby store after baby store. They even put a mark at the EXACT place that they claimed that it should be. I took a cab to this place, and there were only electronics and camera stores around (very near where I bought a camera a few days ago). At one place, I bought a camera case for 70K dong (they showed me in the receipt book that I was the only person who did not pay 80K for it--I felt good about that).

I asked the proprietor (whom I had just got the better of) where I could find a baby store and showed him the picture on the camera that Barbie had wisely taken of the pack-n-play. He made two notations on my map of places where I could look for something like that. One was a kilometer away and the other was another kilometer from that. Well, as Murphy's Law mandates, today I had run out of clean socks, and I was wearing some new sandals. These sandals had rubbed a raw spot on one of my feet, so I really didn't want to walk that far, so when the motorbike man asked me (as they always do) where I was going, I showed him. I asked him how much and he said, "15." I responded, "10." He shouted, "no way!" I walked away and he laughed, "ok, 10."

I know what some of you are thinking, I am now a father of 3 kids and it probably wasn't the wisest thing to do (life preservation-wise), but riding on a motorbike taxi was on the top things to do in Vietnam according to my travel book, and I don't plan on drinking Cobra blood, so I just had to. The ride was relatively uneventful (and I ended up giving the driver $1 US which is worth 16), but the store didn't have what we were looking for. I took another motorbike taxi to the other store and also struck out.

I called Barbie and asked her if I should go to the fabled "Big C" supermarket to see if they had one. She said yes, so I went. (Michael W. Smith's song just started again.) After firing the first cabbie I tried (his meter was spinning like a top and I lectured him that his practice was not good for the future of Vietnam's tourism industry and threatened to call the police) but the pack-n-play must be a rare luxury item in Vietnam. I did get pringles, diet coke, red delicious apples from Washington State, USA, and some cereal for Julia.

We ate again at the Ladybird cafe. The whole family got full for $9.50 including tip. Nice. Barbie and I ordered similarly, and we think that we got one another's order. I ordered something spicy and Barbie got something spicy. We switched meals after she had eaten 1/4 of hers and I had eaten 3/4 of mine. Good trade. Thomas had a ham sandwich and fries and Helen had the cheese pizza. Julia mostly ate rice with some of the non-spicy sauce on it.

Tonight we're going to try Barbie sleeping in one Queen size with Thomas and Helen. Julia and I will be in the other. In a couple of days we hear that a roll away bed will become available. Barbie is postulating that Julia is teething. I hope she's right.

Well folks, we hope to have something more or definite to say. It would be nice if we knew how long we would be here. Right now we don't make many plans because we know that we might need to move quickly if we get an email. If we knew right now that it would be a couple of weeks, then we could take a trip or do something else. That is kind of hard right now. We will make it, though. Julia is a fun little girl and it will be wonderful to welcome her into what will become her new home. We are thankful for God bring our family together in this unconventional way and will try to not take for granted this opportunity to be here together.

I'm signing off before MWS starts his song again. Talk with you later.

Doug

Christmas in Hanoi?

Hi all,

After a long day of waiting and checking our email every hour this afternoon, I am sad to report that we heard nothing from USCIS today. It was a disappointing for us. If we don't hear from them tomorrow, we will not be coming home on the 16th. We aren't really expecting to hear from them tomorrow if how last week went is any indication. Last week all the visa pre-approvals were issued on Monday and none the rest of the week, so we are wondering if that will be the way it will go. (Again, this is a brand new procedure and so no one really has any clue except the people who are issuing the approvals and they are saying anything.) If Monday is the pre-approval issuing day, then our next chance is next Monday, which then would mean that we would get home around the 22nd or so. That is also assuming that we can get plane tickets then - apparently it can be hard to get 4 seats out together at this time of year on short notice. We are starting to make tentative plans for how we will celebrate Christmas if it ends up that we are still here.

When we came, we knew that we could end up being here for an extended period of time. We were told from the beginning that it could take up to 60 days to get her visa approval and the US gov't received her application on Nov. 13. That puts us at day 27 today. We are trying to be patient and just be thankful that we have our little girl and enjoy this opportunity to live (it is beginning to feel more like we are living here rather than just visiting) short-term in another country. It seems to be a great experience for the kids. Today, Thomas asked Doug and I if we would like to come with him when he comes back to Vietnam to adopt a child when he is an adult. It was good to hear that with all the ups and downs of this trip, that he still thought that this was a very good thing and would want to do it himself. On a different note, I have thought a lot today about the human condition of getting something that you want and then wanting something more. All we wanted was to have Julia with us, no matter what that meant (that sentiment lasted about 2 weeks), and now what we want is to go home soon.

This morning we walked to Vietnam's oldest pagoda, which is about a mile from our hotel. It was originally built in the 6th century. It was beautiful and very interesting to see something with so much history.

Christmas decorations are going up at various places around the city. The hotel put up a tree in the lobby today. Did I mention that it is 81 degrees here?

Thanks for checking in. We appreciate you.

Barbie

P.S. Thanks, Dave, for clarifying Angie's question. You got it.

Greetings from the lobby of the Woman Hotel

This is our third Sunday evening in Hanoi and it is three weeks today that we left Minnesota for Vietnam. All said, we are quite happy with our trip so far. Things have worked out for us, we have been comfortable, no one has been really sick (except for perhaps one or two quick trips to the WC that were easily remedied with some OTC medication), and we have seen and experienced some neat things. Our new daughter seems to be adjusting fairly well to her new family and home (our hotel), and the older kids have held up pretty well.

We are hopeful that we will hear from US Customs and Immigration Service (USCIS) soon hearing positive news of Julia's visa pre-approval. We will of course update the blog with any information regarding that as we get it.

Today Barbie's family (her mom, dad, and sister) left to return to Minnesota. We will miss having them around as it was helpful to have a few additional hands, babysitters, and english-speaking voices around.

So today was pretty low-key for us. We went to an English language bookstore here today to look for souvenir books in the morning. On the way back to the Woman Hotel (as it is sometimes called) we had the cabbie take us to the nearby Fivimart (supermarket). I went to the bakery outside of the Fivimart (as I do most every day) and bought four croissants and a baguette for our lunch. The girl behind the counter knows what I will ask for at this point.

After lunch we stayed in the hotel all afternoon. We took turns taking a kid to a different place outside of the hotel so that the bigger kids get some time apart from the others and with a parent 1:1. That seemed to work pretty well.

For supper we took a taxi to a restaurant in the old quarter called the "Golden Lantern". The food was fine, but it wasn't as good and was more expensive than our best find so far, "The Ladybird". We won't be going back there, I suspect. We walked down the road for a little bit because it was a street that sold toys. We were able to find a toy for Julia and finally we located some bubbles for the kids (after a 3-week long search!) We will break those out tomorrow and see what Julia thinks about them.

It just struck me right now what a dull post this is today. I suspect that many of you have stopped reading at this point. I don't blame you. I'm bored myself. Maybe I should change the subject...

We get the internet signal in the lobby of the hotel, so when we are typing the blog we are sitting in the hotel. Right now it is 9pm, and I expect that sometime in the next 30 minutes or so, a couple of tour buses will pull into the hotel. Every night there are 2-3 tour buses that pull in here. IT is really quite interesting, because I don't think that there are hardly ANY Vietnamese that stay at this hotel. It is mostly full of other Asian, European, and Australian travelers (mostly Asian). I know that there have been folks from China, Malaysia, Korea, Singapore, Germany, and Australia here at the hotel. The Asian folks even make more noise in a hotel than a group of Americans! There seem to be different sensibilities regarding how much noise is ok to make in a hotel.

One other thing that we did that was kind of interesting. Last night (for the last dinner with Barbie's family), we went to a restaurant called KOTO (www.streetvoices.com.au), which is an acronym for Know One Teach One. This restaurant is run by a non-governmental Australia/Vietnamese organization. The restaurant is a training ground for underprivileged street kids to learn the restaurant and hospitality business. They have a local training center here and they go through the program for 18 months before they are fully trained. The program has a 100% placement record for its graduates. KOTO serves vietnamese and western food, and you wouldn't know that it is a special program (great food, great atmosphere, and great service). George W. Bush ate there when he came to visit Hanoi.

The director of the program walked in while we were eating and Julia gave him the raspberries when he came in, which he gave her right back. Later, I was outside with her while she was fussing and we were waiting on dessert to come, and I got a chance to talk with the gentleman. He was Australian and had done a lot of work with UNICEF before he started to work on this project. He has lived for 10 years in Vietnam and has worked with KOTO for a few years. It was very encouraging to see such a special place and I think that we will go back before we leave (the kids really like the french fries there).

Tomorrow our plan is to check our email regularly (hoping for good news), maybe visit a couple of nearby temples or pagodas, maybe walk a couple of blocks to the Ho Chi Minh botanical garden complex, and then check our email.

Well...I'm sure that most of you (except maybe for my brother, the GOAH) have better things to do than to read my rambling, so I'll stop at this point. Take care and check back tomorrow. Barbie will write then, and if not, I promise to come up with better material.

Peace,
Doug

Come on down, you're the next contestant on...

The Vietnamese Price is Right. We stumbled across this show when we were flipping through channels the other day. It is very similar to the American version, just not quite as high tech. Still fun to watch though!

Not much happened today - just a trip to a coffee shop about a mile down the road. Our very homesick kids got to have ice cream at 10:00am for a treat. They wanted to continue trying new things, so Thomas got coffee ice cream and Helen got mint chocolate chip. They both loved their choices.

Since not much is new, I will fill you in on some misc. information.

We get the Australia Network and BBC for our English TV channels.

Turns out Vietnamese children have a lot in common with their American counterparts. We brought a bunch of new toys for Julia and her favorite toy is the box that our Aquafina water came in.

The two girls who clean our room love to laugh at us (good-naturedly we think) and we give them plenty of reason. A few days ago when they were cleaning our room, we asked to borrow their broom. They lent it to us, but seemed worried that we were unhappy with their job, so they followed Doug back in and hovered near him when he began to sweep under the bed. (I think that they were afraid that we were upset that they didn't sweep there and wanted to correct their "mistake".) When a little ball of Julia's came rolling out from under the bed with a push from the broom, they understood and laughed (looking much relieved!)

Today, I was doing some of our laundry and hung it out on the balcony to dry. A wind came up and blew our laundry off and onto another roof and onto the balcony below us. Doug went to figure out how he could get it and soon showed up with with these two girls again. He pointed to our laundry laying on this other roof and asked how he could get there. The one girl was laughing so hard, the other hit her to stop. They graciously went and got it for us (the one girl laughing the entire time). Keep in mind we don't speak a common language, so we are pantomiming our way through these interactions. I'm glad we can make someones day!

And last but not least, this is the label posted on every garbage can in the hotel:

"Keep In
Interior Pail
This is goods for those who wish to lead simple and rational lives."

Who knew a garbage can could do so much?

Thanks for checking in,

Barbie

An unexpected souvenier

Hi all,

Today we went to a village outside of Hanoi that is known for making silk. If you like buying silk, then this is the place for you. We hunted around until we found someone who makes silk, he showed us his process and in return we bought some items from him. As far as places that we have seen, this village was just all right.

While we were there, we bought some bananas from a lady on the street. (I bet you're wondering if the silk or the bananas was the souvenier to which I refered to in the title. You will just have to keep waiting.) The kids were hungry so we stopped at a bench in a park to feed them some bananas and set our camera down (now you've guessed it). In the chaos that sometimes seems to mark this trip, we went on our way and left the camera sitting there. We realized it 15 minutes later, but by then it was too late. We heard that someone had come and taken it. Bummer. The good thing is that Doug had been downloading our pictures every couple of days, so we just lost a few days worth. The bad news is that the last few days pictures were of Halong Bay. Fortunately, Mom, Dad and Heather also went to Halong Bay and took lots of pictures so all is not lost. And so Doug and I went camera shopping this evening here in Hanoi. It could have been much worse...

No visa news. Speculation is that they let people know of approvals on Mondays. So we wait out this weekend to see what Monday brings.

Thanks for checking in. We appreciate it.

Barbie

Another Thursday in Hanoi

Hello all,

Today was a low key day in Hanoi for us. Barbie's parents and sister took a day trip to the countryside and we spent the day mostly at the hotel. It was good to not have to get prepared for the day very quickly.

After breakfast and a bit of laying around we went to the old quarter to a street that sells decorations. It is interesting in the cities here. It seems that certain types of businesses congregate together. There is a street with hardware stores, one with bookstores, one with silk shops and tailors, and even one that primarily sells backpacks. I guess if you like comparison shopping it is a good thing. We went to buy some silk lanterns for the kids' rooms. This past November we attended the mid-autumn moon festival which was sponsored by a twin-cities vietnamese association. While we were there the kids thought the lanterns were pretty cool. so we picked up three for about $1.50 apiece.

We took a cab back to the hotel (stopping by the bakery at the Fivimart for some baguettes and croissants for lunch) and then stayed at the hotel for the afternoon. The girls (all 3 of them) took naps and Thomas made noise during their naps. After that, we had the kids run around on the hotel tennis courts with their toy balls.

It has been kind of a rough day with the kids (Thomas stayed up late last night goofing around with his grandparents and auntie), so we decided to have a western treat for supper. We went to one of 3 KFCs in Hanoi. The food was pretty close to the same as the US. I think the food was good for our souls. The KFC was the busiest restaurant in Vietnam that we have been to so far.

Tomorrow we will travel to a silk village nearby. We will see the process all the way from worm to necktie (I think). It should be interesting.

Barbie and I are starting to get a little anxious (one of us probably more than the other) about when our paperwork will be finished up so that we can go home. At this point I think that we will be fairly disappointed if we aren't able to go home on December 16 as originally planned We haven't yet heard anything from our visa pre-application. Today we learned that after we get this preapproval (by email) we must submit a lot of paperwork at least 2 business days before we can have a visa interview. Allegedly the visa is granted on the same business day as the interview. By my calculation, that means to me that if we don't get our visa pre-approval by Tuesday (or wednesday possibly?) of next week, then we we'll have to come home later than December 16. Tuesday is only 3 business days away from us, so we are kind of sweating it. We both know that in the long run an extra week or two or three isn't a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but it would be nice to know when we might back home. If for nothing else, we want to get Julia into the environment that will be her home so that we can help her start getting used to her new environment. Now she must think that the hotel room is our home (and she seems ok with that).

A Julia note, now she is giving us kisses. She is at the same time a stinker and a charmer. We are blessed to add this great kid to our other two blessings.

By the way...we are struggling with our internet lately. I'm surprised to be able to be posting this (I hope it works!) We haven't been able to read comments lately, but we hope that will resolve itself soon.

Take care and enjoy the snow in Minnesota.

Doug

Back "home" in Hanoi

Greetings, again, from Hanoi, that as Doug put in when we got back to our hotel room "This almost feels like home." To Julia, it is home - the place that she seems to be the most comfortable. That's not to say that we don't look forward to getting to our real home, quite the contrary in fact. There is still no word on Julia's visa.

Today was quite an eventful day. We had a lazy early morning and finally got around a little before 10:00. Since it was a free morning in Halong Bay, we decided to hit the tourist market a little over a mile down the street from our hotel. We weren't in the mood to walk it with our tired children, so we decided to have the hotel manager (who seemed to speak decent English) call some taxis for us. We told the manager where we wanted to go and he told the drivers. We knew enough about the town to know that the taxi immediately began driving in the wrong direction and much further than a mile. We had no idea where we were going! We kept trying to communicate with the driver, but he spoke no English. After about 8 km, we finally told him to pull over and waited for the other taxi with Mom, Dad and Heather to catch up. They pulled over and after much discussion (again with taxi drivers who didn't speak English) we decided to just turn around and go back to the hotel and try walking. We got back in the taxis and the drivers drove one more block to the Halong Market (not the tourist market, but the place where the locals shop) so we decided to just go there.

A market in Vietnam is kind of like a Vietnamese Target. A bunch of people have stalls of certain goods from toys to food to clothes to things for your motorbike, etc and then you walk to a stall of the type of goods that you are looking for. We weren't looking for anything in particular until I saw some fabric stalls. (Side note - I made a quilt for Thomas when he turned 5 and am going to do so for the girls.) I thought that it would be neat for Julia's quilt to have some material from her home country, so I began to look for some I liked. I found some and asked how much. After some discussion, I was able to find out and communicate that I wanted 1/2 meter of some purple material. The woman sold it to me, but told the other women selling fabric in their stalls how much I wanted and they were all pointing at me and laughing. I went to another fabric stall, and she refused to sell me such a small amount. I went to another stall and she would sell some to me, but you could tell that she thought I was crazy. While I was at the 2nd stall, I saw a stall that sold bedspreads about 15 stalls down, and at this point I wanted to have some of my dignity restored in their eyes, so we gestured to the ladies to follow me to the bedspread stall. So our family of 5, Mom, Dad and Heather and some Vietnamese ladies start trekking to this other stall. After I communicated that I didn't want to buy a bedspread, I pantomimed that I was going to take the material and sew one. The light bulb finally came on and the Vietnamese lady grabbed me by the elbow and literally marched me to her stall, the whole time telling everyone around what my plan was. We got back to her stall and she proceeded to show me every piece of purple material that she had. They were no longer thinking that I was some crazy American (or if they did, at least it wasn't so obvious!) It was quite a trip. Meanwhile, Doug and the kids were being swarmed by at times 10-15 of Vietnamese women, all wanting to touch, hug, squeeze, carry, etc our kids. We didn't move anywhere quickly.

We made it back to our hotel. Only one moment where our lives flashed before our eyes as we passed a truck while going around a sharp corner around a mountain...

On a Julia note, she is now responding to her new name. That is fun to see. She is a sweet little girl.

We hope you are all doing well.

Take care,

Barbie

P.S. Doug forgot to let you know that at our supper last night, the chicken included the chicken feet. In a show of bravado, Thomas was willing to try a bite. It was his first time and according to him, definitely his last!

Ha Long Bay

Greetings from one of the most beautiful, other-worldly places on earth.

Today we got up, ate breakfast and got on a 15 passenger bus. We traveled 170 very slow, very harrowing kilometers (which took about 3.5 hours) to a place called Ha Long Bay. If you don't know anything about this place, just go to images.google.com and type in the words, "ha long bay". You will see some amazing pictures or a calm bay on the Vietnamese coast of the South China Sea. In this bay are hundreds of rocky islands which jut heavenward out of the green water. It really is quite incredible.

We started off with a lunch at the hotel. It was probably the toughest meal so far in Vietnam. It was mostly seafood, with some time of whole fish and mussels. Most in the travel party are not seafood eaters. They also had some tofu. I tried the tofu, but even I (who can eat almost anything) couldn't pack down more than two bites of this. We asked our tour guide if he could ask the hotel to prepare us beef, pork, or chicken for supper. The kids keep eating bananas. At one point today I told Thomas that I was cutting him off of bananas because I was afraid that we would screw up his potassium level and send him into a heart arrhythmia.

After lunch we took the bus to the marina. The weather here was quite hazy (almost foggy), which is quite common for this time of year. Therefore, it wasn't as striking as it could have been, but it was great. We got on an old boat (called a junk), which was big enough for a few dozen people, but only our family and the other family that adopted at the same time as us were on the boat. The boat wasn't fancy, but it was kind of cool and quietly puttered its way around the bay.

We first stopped at one island that was fairly large and we visited a huge, incredibly beautiful cave that was only discovered in 1993. It was really neat. Thomas loved it and told me several times, "Dad, I don't need to remember much about this, because when I'm a grown-up I'm going to take my family here." After the cave we got on the boat and simply cruised around the bay for a couple of hours. It was beautiful, cool, and so relaxing. Many times during this trip I have to remind myself to enjoy the moment because this is a once in a lifetime opportunity for me to get to spend this kind of time with my family. As I sat on the top deck of our boat taking in God's beauty with my daughter, Helen, on my lap, I didn't need to remind myself how blessed I am. I will never forget that afternoon. It was even better than the Wisconsin Dells.

We came back to the hotel for dinner. The kitchen had prepared pork, chicken, and beef for us. They made the kids' day by making french fries as well. The chicken and pork will a little different, but it was a much better evening meal. Tomorrow we will eat breakfast here, have some free time, eat lunch, and then travel back to Hanoi, where we hope to get word that Julia's visa preapproval is progressing.

Along those lines...we heard from our agency today that another family whose visa application was submitted the same day as ours was approved yesterday. This means that it is possible that the new government process can take much shorter than the 60 days that has been communicated. We are now hopeful that maybe our preapproval could some soon and we would be able to travel back to Minnesota with our new little US citizen on December 16 as originally scheduled. That would be fantastic, and that is our hope.

This is a great trip, and a great experience. When we got here 2+ weeks ago, after a very long flight and having our body clocks 180 degrees out of phase, this place on the other side of the world seemed very far away from Minnesota and very different from what we are used to. I suppose that it IS very different in many ways, but now it is not so unfamiliar. I am happy that we, as a family, have had the opportunity to become in a small way familiar with Julia Binh An's birth culture.

I'm sorry not to have been sending out pictures, but it is such a major hassle that I might not get around to sending out more until next week sometime. Thanks to all of you for following our story and posting comments and sending emails. Those mean a lot to all our family. Also, while I'm feeling all warm and fuzzy, thanks to Mike for snowblowing out our driveway (I owe you a beer), thanks to Steve and Kris for keeping an eye on our place and our fish (it's just one fish, not fish plural), thanks to John and Pat for the ride to the airport (John, could I stop by when I get back to pick up a beer for Mike?), thanks to Rich and Penny for receiving our mail (please let us know if you get anything from US Customs and Immigration, would you?), and thanks to my brother, the Goah, for taking care of our finances without robbing us blind (perhaps wishful thinking).

For those who might be thinking this already, I thought a few minutes about deleting the previous 2 paragraphs because they sounded a bit mushy. But maybe for my sake I should capture the good feelings on the blog so that when something difficult happens tomorrow, that I can remember how I felt right now.

Time for bed, but before I sleep I'm going to try the shower in our hotel room. It has about 27 shower heads in it in all directions. I'm not sure it works, but it looks really cool.

Take care,

Doug