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