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!