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!