One Year Later

Tonight it makes one year since Barbie and Julia arrived at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport and what a great year it has been.

We continue to be so thankful for the opportunity to get a chance to add this wonderful child to our family. We have grown to learn much more about who Julia Binh An is. She is smart, funny, cheerful, bossy, and so much fun to have around the house. We wouldn't recognize life without her.

I doubt anyone will check this blog to see this post, but I wanted to take a moment and memorialize the overwhelming feeling of thanks that I have to the Creator for the gift of my family. And I also want to express gratitude to my friends and family (ok, so some of my family are also friends) for friendship and love.

Maybe I'll post something new in another year.

Peace,

Doug

p.s. If this post is the first one that you have read, the previous posts (from Nov. 2007 through January 2008) chronicle our family's trip to Vietnam to welcome a new daughter and sister to our family.

Home

What a wonderful word. I am so glad to be here!

I will do my best with this final post. My brain feels a little sluggish, I am not quite sure if it is day or night or what country I am in. I am surprised by the quiet, the big spaces between houses, how fast people drive here and still feel some disbelief that we are finally home.

Our trip back went well. Julia slept some on every flight. She slept 6 hours on the long flight over the ocean. She had a bassinet and I had empty seats on both sides of me, so we were able to spread out and do quite nicely. Going through immigration and customs in LA was a breeze. We had heard some horror stories about that, but it went very smoothly and the US now has a new citizen.

We had a contingent meet us at the airport. One of us was very glad to see the people who came to meet us and one of us starting crying and clinging to the other with all her might. You can decide who was who. Julia was a little nervous and didn't want me to set her down or hand her over to Doug. But she only had 8 hours of sleep (about 5 hours short) over the past 28, so crying and all she was doing pretty good. She did alright with the carseat - only a few stomping her feet complaints and she and Helen fell asleep on the way home.

It was about 11:00pm when we got home, so we decided to feed Julia some lunch. (It was lunch time on the other side of the world.) As we were making it, she was wanting to get down and play with her siblings and the toys. That happened much sooner than I expected. We had some snacks and got the kids into bed by midnight. It was such a wonderful feeling to walk in the rooms and see our THREE sleeping children all safely home - I had been dreaming of this day for the last year and a half. I went to bed shortly after, but my brain decided it needed to keep going, so although I was super tired, I had a hard time falling asleep. At about 2:00, I decided to take an Advil PM and pretty much as soon as I swallowed it, Julia decided it was time to get up. She was still not very happy to be with Doug alone, so I brought her back to bed with us and kept her curled up in my arms, and we both slept (albeit fitfully) until morning.

Julia had a great day here. She really warmed up to Doug, so that allowed Doug to spend most of the day with her, while I spent most of the day playing with Thomas and Helen. Julia and I did well with our sleeping schedules today so hopefully we will be on track soon.

On a final note, Doug and I can not express how grateful we are for all of you. Initially, we were quite surprised and overwhelmed by how many of you were faithfully following our trip. As things became more drawn out and the circumstances became more difficult our surprise was replaced with overwhelming gratitude for you and for standing with us during our journey. We are so very thankful for you and your support.

We look forward to beginning this next chapter in our lives. The details of the next chapter won't be quite as exciting, so the blog entries are probably done. (Those of you who read them at work will have to find something else to occupy that time.)

Thank you again for your support during this chapter. It would have been so much more difficult without all of you.

Love from all of us,

Doug, Barbie, Thomas, Helen and Julia Binh An Atkins

P.S. I didn't see the last two posts that Doug wrote, so that is why there are duplicate titles and some things are written about twice. This is perfect proof for why the blog should be done, we are already telling the same stories over again...

Home!

Barbie and Julia finished their travels and arrived at home at 11 pm last night. It was a kind of rough night for sleeping for Julia, but it is great to have them home.

It is amazing the sense of relief that I have right now that I haven't had for months.

We are very glad to be a Minnesota family of 5.

Take care,

doug

They're on their way!

As I write this White Bear Lake's newest US citizen and her mother are sitting on the tarmac at Los Angeles International airport taxiing to the runway to take off! They are on Northwest flight #308 from LAX to Minneapolis. Right now in checking the flight status, it looks like they might get in a few minutes early (currently on nwa.com the estimated arrival time is 9:10 PM and the scheduled arrival time is 9:36 pm).

I talked with Barbie briefly while she was waiting to board in LA. She said they had no trouble getting through immigration and customs in LA and they arrived at their gate in time to eat Burger King before the flight.

For those coming to the airport to welcome the girls home, you might check on nwa.com to see when the flight will get in. We will be trying to find Barbie and Julia in the baggage claim area as she comes out of the secured area upstairs in the terminal. Look for the group of people who look really excited.

Thanks to all of you for your love and support during our adoption process!

Doug, Barbie, Thomas, Helen, and Julia

A final post from Vietnam

A wrap-up:

Things I will miss about Vietnam:

• delicious 30 cents baguettes for lunch
• flowers in December and January
• watching the crazy traffic from the safety of a taxi
• walking along Hanoi's "embassy row"
• delicious breakfast and neat view at the Anise Hotel
• watching people eat meals on the sidewalk
• some very friendly people
• experiencing new things out of my comfort zone
• cyclo rides
• learning about Julia's birth country

Things I won't miss about Vietnam:

• the sewer/fish smell that is prevalent almost everywhere
• people yelling at me because they think that Julia is cold
• crossing the streets
• "squatty" potties
• no highchairs/car seats
• seeing people urinating in the parks

Things I look forward to at home:

• seeing Doug, Thomas and Helen
• being at our house
• hot chocolate at Starbucks
• Target
• snow
• sunny days
• having more than 4 shirts to choose from
• introducing Julia to all of you

Thanks for following us on our journey. We will see you soon!!!

Barbie

Barbie's Flight Information (are you kidding me?)

Barbie and Julia hereby welcome all interested parties to the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport on Friday, January 25 at 9:36 PM. She will be arriving on Northwest flight 308 from LAX.

Please check the blog before you come to the airport as I will post an update if for some reason she doesn't get on that flight. If there is no update then you can assume that she is on that flight! You can check on nwa.com to verify that the flight is on time!

This seems surreal. Friday can't come fast enough!

Doug

EXULTATION!

BARBIE AND JULIA ARE COMING HOME!

At 5:30 pm Vietnam time on Wednesday (about 2 hours ago) Barbie and her fellow moms were on a street corner in Hanoi when they got a call from the Embassy telling them that their children's visas will be approved and that they can come to the embassy at 8:30 AM Thursday for the visa interview. They will have the visas in hand Thursday afternoon, and HOPEFULLY, Barbie and Julia will get on a flight on Friday bound for Minnesota! Do you understand that this means that Barbie and Julia will most likely be home for the WEEKEND!

We are so happy and thankful!

I will write a new post soon to let you know about Barbie's flight schedule! She has stated that she would love to see anyone and everyone at the airport! I would prefer to have them to myself, but hey, if you want, I guess you can come.

We are in shock, but a good kind of shock. We are so happy that this part of our story is coming to an end soon so we can get to the next chapter.

Stay tuned for flight arrival information!

Doug

Hello from VN

Hi all,

I know that Doug has blogged for me already today, but I thought that you might want to hear from me directly. We are hanging in here on this rainy Hanoi day. Myself and another mom went to a "mall" today to get out of the hotel room. It almost felt like home.

For the most part, I am doing well. I miss Doug and the kids immensely and find myself dreaming often of when I get to go home. It is difficult to see the days that I had flights scheduled come and go and I am hoping that that doesn't happen again on the 25th. I have been here for two months and am ready to come home. The one bright side is that I am here with some great people and it makes this incredibly frustrating situation more bearable.

Julia seems to be growing and doing well. When Doug hears her on the phone, he thinks that she is making many more sounds than she was even 3 weeks ago. She hasn't been sleeping well the last few nights, but it appears that she has some teeth coming in, so hopefully that is the reason for the sleepless nights.

We are praying that everything lines up and that they grant our visas on Wednesday and for strength and perseverance if that doesn't happen. We will let you know later.

Thanks for checking in and for all your support.

Love,

Barbie

Sweet Dr. Pepper soothes the pain

I forgot to pass along a bit of information that Barbie told me from her Saturday. On Saturday, Barbie and her friends found a store in Hanoi called, "Western Can". Inside the store, Barbie found Dr. Pepper and Twix! She was in heaven. One of the other ladies found Doritos and the third lady found chips and salsa. These familiar snacks provided some much needed comfort for the ladies as they wait in Hanoi.

As I talked with Barbie tonight (which is Monday morning there), she told me that she and her friends were having a better weekend than they anticipated. On Saturday night they went to a family's home for supper. The mister of this family was a boyhood friend of one of the fathers of the adopted kids still in Hanoi. Barbie said that it was a great evening and they were able to take their mind off a lot of their anxiety for at least a while. Sunday morning Barbie went to church again with one of her friends. Barbie said that she got a chance to talk with a few Americans there and if they end up staying much longer they will have more people that they will have a chance to spend time with. We, of course, hope that she doesn't get to know them too well.

It was raining on Monday morning in Hanoi, so Barbie wasn't so sure what her plan for the day would be. She's getting good at making it through days.

The kids, my mom, and I are spending the weekend at the home of Granny and Gramps K. The highlight of the trip was expected to be a Sunday night visit to the Pizza Ranch to get pizza and Thomas' favorite dessert pizza. Unfortunately, the Pizza Ranch was closed (boo!) It wasn't supposed to be closed. We all kind of stood in shock for several seconds before knowing what to do next. It was -8 deg. Fahrenheit outside, so we decided that we should do something other than look disappointedly at the Pizza Ranch door. We went to the A&W and found the food their to be at least satisfactory. We'll go home tomorrow morning, and we'll get ready to start another week.

To those reading, thanks for continuing to follow our story. I know that the descriptions are becoming shorter and the entries are less frequent. Please know that there are still 24 hours in the days that are happening in Vietnam and there are probably just as many things happening that could be shared. We don't have the luxury of being able to give you as much of the story as we have in the past due to the fact that it's me reporting second hand on stuff that I glean from a 45-60 minute daily phone conversation.

Well, that's it for now. Take care and we'll try and keep you updated.

Doug

Another week

We got the news on Friday (vietnam time) that a decision would not be made on Julia's visa until next week. We are very disappointed with the news. 2 of the 5 families in our group got their visas preapproved on Friday, and they were able to get their visas issued on the same day, so if our file is approved next week, then the visa will probably be obtained the same day, so that's good news.

I talked with the officer in charge and she assured me that our case was getting attention and that we will hear something in the wednesday to thursday timeline.

We are very disappointed as we just want to get everyone back together at this point. Hopefully next week we will get some better news.

Thanks for checking in.

Doug

Rejected! (by a taxi driver that is)

Hi all (it's Barbie),

No, thankfully our visa has not been rejected. Just me - let me tell you the story.

Yesterday, I was going to go visit the Ambassador's Pagoda. I flagged down a taxi and when I tried to get in the back, the door was locked. He opened the passenger door and asked where I was going. He looked at the address while I again tried to get in the back. He handed me the address, said that he would not take me, slammed the passenger door shut and drove off. I am not quite sure what I did to deserve the rejection, as that has never happened before. (And Julia was not even crying at the time. She can get a pretty good scream going in the taxi as of late and I could see us being kicked out of one, but never refused from the get go!)

The pagoda was pretty. One odd thing - while I was there, I witnessed a monk dressed in his garb, talking on a cell phone and getting on his scooter. It was like two different worlds meeting, and my mind did not know quite what to do with this.

The hotel staff here is very kind. It is slightly chilly in Hanoi right now and because the hotel does not have heat, the staff was worried about our children. So yesterday they went out and bought space heaters for the rooms of the 3 adoptive families, so we can survive this "cold" front. Little do they know what these three kids have in store.

Well, again my time is up with Julia and the computer. We hope to hear good news tomorrow and find out that we can really go home next Thursday.

Miss you all,

Barbie

Light at the end of the tunnel?

I (Doug) had the chance to talk with an official involved in Julia's case on Monday (Vietnam time--Sunday night in Minnesota). After talking with that official, it seems that there is a chance that we might get preapproval for Julia's visa by Friday. If that does indeed happen (and any regular follower's of this blog knows that the only thing for sure is nothing), then we think that Barbie and Julia would be able to travel back to Minnesota leaving Vietnam on Thursday, January 24. Again...this is not a done deal, but rather the official was telling us when they think that we should hear something. That news has helped lift Barbie's spirits. We hope that this is really going to be it.

On Monday afternoon Barbie and Julia traveled back to Hanoi from Hoi An. Their travel was uneventful and Barbie remarked that it was good to be back "home" at the Anise Hotel. When I talked with her tonight (Monday night here, Tuesday morning there) it was cool and rainy in Hanoi. However, she is thinking that she has a list of things to do there and souvenirs to buy there, so she thinks that she better get cracking! That sounds odd.

One thing that she needs to buy is another Vietnamese coffee maker for me. I bought two each of two types of coffee makers at the Fivimart. One coffee maker makes one cup of coffee, so you need more than one. Well, the other night I made some Dragon Coffee for guests and one of the coffee makers didn't really work very well. I don't think I know how to use it. To make matters worse, that coffeemaker broke in the dishwasher. Therfore, I gave Barbie instructions on how to identify the coffee maker that I want her to pick up. Interestingly, the brand of the coffee maker is Inox, which was also the brand of most of the toilets that we used in Vietnam.

We really hope that we have some good news by the end of the week. We really need the rest of our family home with us. Thanks for keeping checking the blog (even when it's not very frequently updated or interestingly written), and remember, Barbie could sure use some emails!

Take care!

Doug and Barbie

85 Degrees and Barbie becomes a negotiator

This is Doug for Barbie.

She is having a pretty good time in Hoi An. She says that the city is beautiful and so is the beach. On Saturday morning, her and Julia went to the beach. It was warm and sunny and beautiful. Unfortunately, Julia refused to be put down on the sand and was quite nervous about the ocean. So, Barbie had to hold her most of the time. Finally, Barbie rented a beach chair so that she could put Julia down.

Barbie told me that she was thinking that it would be great to have me with her at Hoi An so we could experience it together. Then she started thinking that if I were there I would be crabby and continuously complaining about how hot it was and getting a headache from the bright sun. I think she then decided that maybe it was ok without me.

Barbie checked into the hotel at Hoi An on her Friday afternoon. She went out and saw some sights and had some supper. She came back to try and get Julia to bed early, but when she got to the room she learned that the AC didn't work and the thermometer in the room read 28 degrees Celsius (about 82 Fahrenheit). She went down to the desk and told them. They told her that they would give her a fan for the night. She said that it would be too hot for the baby (of course the baby has spent her whole life in such temperatures!) They then said that she could try the guest house that they had across the street, but she went and the bed situation wasn't right. Another couple just left the hotel and they offered her their room, but something wasn't very good about that room either. So, the manager said that they had a sister hotel across town that was nicer that had a room, but it would be $45 per night instead of $30. She said that she wanted to pay $30. They said $40, but she said she wouldn't pay more than $35. After awhile they agreed to her price (after she verified that it had a window).

So, Barbie took a taxi to the other property and the room was nicer. She had a big bed a baby crib, and even a high chair. There was a window and the A/C worked. She was happy. She went to the window to take a look at her view and opened the curtains to see a stone wall within arm's length outside the window. It was getting late and she decided that Julia really needed to get some sleep.

They had a pretty good sleep, until 3AM. Then something in the crib broke and that woke up Julia. Barbie didn't want to mess with trying to fix the bed in the middle of the night and so she brought Julia in bed with her. This led Julia to believe that it was time to play, so it took them an hour or so to get back to sleep. The next night (Saturday night), the crib was fixed and Julia slept quite well, but Barbie didn't sleep the greatest as she was congested.

Today (Sunday) they are going to the beach again in the morning and in the afternoon they are going to some sort of cultural show with cultural song and dance. She will be going back to Hanoi on Monday afternoon.

She says to tell you that she misses you all and longs for the day when she can give some good news. I'm with her.

The rest of us are doing ok. Today we went to our favorite Vietnamese family run donut shop, worked more on Thomas' make up math homework, went to the library (and returned a book that we found this week that was lost since october--we had already paid the library for it), and had some friends (Bill, Carol, and family) over (they brought ham--bearers of ham are always welcome here!)

The Christmas tree is still up here at home and is waiting for Barbie and Julia. Hopefully soon.

Take care and thanks for checking in.

Doug (for Barbie and Julia)

Barbie told me to blog

Well, Barbie sent an email from the business class lounge at the Hanoi airport asking me to blog. I don't know what to say other than Barbie was hanging out at the business class lounge at the Hanoi airport. She is coming back to Hanoi on economy. I don't think that there was any space available on economy going there. Business class on Vietnam Airlines is really nice. I hope she enjoyed it. I think that she should be landing about right now. (11:40 PM CST). I told Barbie that if she has a problem with this 1 hour flight that she is going to be in REAL trouble when she has to get back to the US!

I still find it hard to believe that it is my wife, Barbie, who is taking a flight, by herself from a city in Vietnam to another city in Vietnam (that she hasn't been to), and she'll be going on public transportation to a hotel that she's never been to to stay for three nights. I suppose she does have a Vietnamese tour guide with her (Julia). Barbie is not ceasing to amaze me!

Well, I don't know what else to say. If you want to pass Barbie a message, you can email her or me and I'll make sure to give her the news when I talk with her tomorrow (her saturday morning). She will be going to the beach saturday morning and I think that it is supposed to be 85 and sunny. Good for her.

Well, it's to bed for me. Thanks for checking in.

Doug

Off to Hoi An

This is Doug.

I don't know if Barbie will get a chance to blog before she goes, so I'm letting you know that she and Julia will be traveling to Hoi An on Friday morning for a little excursion. They leave the hotel at 9:30 am Friday and will return Monday afternoon/evening. I don't know if she will have access to email, but I will call her each day and read her email to her if you want to send any notes.

Google Hoi An. It's pretty neat looking. The girls will fly to Da Nang and then take a taxi from there (about 45 minutes). Hoi An is on the South China Sea and is an ancient town that has been well-preserved. They are really breaking the bank on this one because they are spending $30/night for a hotel (instead of the $25 for a room without a balcony). I'm sure it includes breakfast, too.

We continue to miss the girls but we are very proud of what Barbie is doing for our family. She is an amazing person!

At home things are going well. My mom is really handling all the details around taking care of the kids during the day. Thanks to dad's new GPS he received for Christmas (sorry, Dad, that you can't play with your new toy for a while longer) mom is able to get wherever she needs to go. Yesterday Thomas challenged his grandma to trying to get home from school without the GPS. She thinks that she could, but she didn't try it yesterday.

The kids are enjoying playing in the snow (at least what's left), and they are sleeping well at night. They miss mom and new sister, but for now they are managing just fine.

Thanks for following our story and for caring about us. We'll keep you updated on whatever there is to update you about.

Take care,
Doug

News, but not so good

Hi all,

This morning (my time) Doug called the Vietnam US Citizen and Immigrations Services office on our behalf to see what he could learn about our visa situation. The long and the short of it is that they are aware of our case and will be investigating it further next week. If the investigation answers all of their questions, then they will forward our file to the Embassy in Hanoi who will send us our pre-approval email. That could mean that we won't hear of an approval until the week of the 21st (and not on the 21st since that is MLK day). Right now I am hoping that I will get to come home on January 25th, but of course it could be earlier (although not very likely) or later than that. It was disappointing to hear, but now we have a more realistic date in our heads at least.

So on that note, I am thinking about taking a weekend trip to visit an old city halfway down the coast. It is a place called Hoi An and it is supposed to be a beautiful city near the sea that wasn't destroyed in all the wars. We will see if all the details work out. I or Doug will keep you updated.

Thanks for checking in,

Barbie

Not for the faint of heart

Greetings directly from Vietnam!

I borrowed a friend's laptop to be able to blog to you directly. There were too many things to tell you about to try to do it through Doug.

We left this morning from our hotel at 8:00. We got in the minibus, then a few minutes later, were told to get off as that bus was going to the airport (wishful thinking on our part, I guess!). So after getting on the right minibus, we went to the furniture making village. We saw some of the shops and watched a man who was hand carving a design on a table leg. (They said it takes 3 months to make a table.) We saw this beautiful dining room table set that they said was $10,600. Two men in our group were unable to lift the bench seat because it was so large and made of thick pieces of solid wood. I bet the shipping costs are astronomical. (Doug~ just sign for anything that comes to our house UPS no questions asked, OK? =) )

After the furniture village came the snake village. Here they provide snake meat for the restaurants in Hanoi and make bottles of wine with different snakes inside for fermenting "flavor". We went to a man's house "the snake garden" and saw all of his bottles of wine. Some have many snakes inside them, some just one, some with a cobra in them in striking position, etc. If we each paid him 10,000 dong (about 60 cents) he would show us his live snakes. He had 3 cobras and other snakes that he brought out for us. This was about as close to a cobra as I want to get!

After that, we headed to the snake restaurant. This place also had walls full of snake wine, lizard wine, bird wine, etc. As we entered, the owner was getting out a snake (a flower snake) from his cage. Turns out that this was going to be our lunch. He killed it in front of us, drained the snakes blood into a glass, put the snake's heart in a dish and took out some other organ (we think it was the liver or pancreas.) Then it was time to go upstairs for our meal. He put the glass full of blood on the table along with the heart (still beating although separate from the snake) and another glass of rice wine. He took the liver/pancreas, sliced it open and emptied its contents into the glass of rice wine. This was our drink. Now, if you read Doug's blog, he was right about the odds. I didn't drink the snake blood or eat snake meat, but in the spirit of the day, I did try the rice wine/bile drink. I will not try it again. Four people in the group did try the blood. After about 10 - 15 minutes, they took the heart away(still beating - seriously). We aren't sure what happened to that. Some people ate the snake meat and said it didn't really have a bad taste, just a different texture. I stuck with the beef. Towards the end of the meal, they brought out snake soup. Again, in the spirit of things, I tried this. It was kind of like cream of chicken, but not quite so good. Julia wasn't a big fan of it either. So there was my snake village experience. I decided to have cheese pizza for supper. (I took pictures of the snake things for the rest of you - I am not planning on ever looking at them again!)

We finished up the day by visiting ancient citadel remains. It was pretty. All in all, a good and interesting day.

As far as my mental state, I am doing fairly well. It was hard finding out that things will probably take longer than we hoped on Friday. If I were given a choice, I would come home in a heartbeat, but as long as I am here, I am trying to make the best of it. The time that I have with just Julia is probably a benefit for her, so I am trying to make good use of that. And I keep trying to find new things to explore here. Sometimes it is hard, and I am hoping to get good news soon, but am doing my best to make the most of this unique time while I am here.

Hope you are doing well and that I can tell you my stories in person soon!

Thanks for checking in,

Barbie

An update from Barbie (from Doug)

I talked with Barbie just before she was headed out for the Snake village on Monday morning Vietnam time. She was doing ok. She told me that the church that she went to was very interesting. She told me that people without Vietnamese passports were welcome to attend. I asked her how Julia got in (as she indeed has a Vietnamese passport). She said that people w/o Vietnamese and their families were welcome.

She said that the church met in a hotel meeting room, but was trying to get a building permit to construct a church building. There were people from all over the world there, Asia, Europe, the US, Australia, etc. She said the pastor was european, maybe from Germany or the Netherlands. The service was all in English and Barbie said that they had a Christmas Eve service that it would have been nice to attend had we know about the existence of the church.

Hmmm...other news...I guess that Barbie found a laundry service that has very reasonable prices (thanks for the tip, Marla).

This Wednesday a family that Barbie (and the rest of us while we were there) is leaving for home. I think she will miss having them around. They have a 6 year old boy and just adopted a 2 1/2 year old girl. They live in Minnesota, so hopefully we will get a chance to connect with them back here.

We are hoping that by the end of this week that Barbie gets word of Julia's visa pre-approval. If that happens, then the Visa should be obtained sometime the week of the 14th. We don't know if this will happen or not, but that's our current hope.

Well, keep up the good work of letting Barbie know that you're thinking about her.

Take care,
Doug

A Little Update

Barbie doesn't have a lot of time or opportunity to blog, but we talk to her every day, so I thought that I would give an update.

A couple of the other families joined her at the Anise Hotel on Saturday in Vietnam. Barbie is really glad for this. Now people are closer and she can have some breakfast company.

Saturday night Julia didn't sleep very well. Barbie thinks that she is cutting her lower eye teeth now. The past several weeks have brought many teeth issues for the Atkins family. One of the other families located a church that supposedly has an English-speaking service at 10:30 on Sunday morning. Barbie and a couple of others were going to try and visit. I'll let you know if they found it.

But...to let you know how bad things have become over there...Barbie agreed to go along on an outing to the Snake Village near Hanoi. At the beginning of the trip, there is no way that Barbie would have agreed to do this, but I suppose she thinks that it is better than nothing! I think that all the families from our agency are going there on Monday. I would give odds of 100,000 to 1 that Barbie does not drink the cobra blood. I think it is probably 25,000 to 1 that she doesn't eat the snake meat. They leave at 8 AM on Monday morning, so I'll have to call them early to see how things went on Sunday.

Today Thomas, Helen, mom, and I went to church. It was nice seeing some friends that we haven't seen for awhile, but I felt badly that Barbie and Julia weren't there with us. Everyone seemed to think I had lost weight, which isn't the case. We figured out that probably everyone else in America had gained weight while we were gone (Thanksgiving and Christmas), so by comparison, I looked smaller.

I'll see if Barbie has anything to add about her Sunday after I talk with her this evening (her Monday morning).

Thanks for reading.

Doug (for Barbie)

Bad news

Hi all,

We found out today that they are just beginning the investigation into Julia's file and that it could be later next week before her pre-approval is issued. This was quite discouraging as we were hoping that it would be wrapping up sooner than that. After the pre-approval is issued, there is still 2 - 4 business days worth of stuff that needs to happen before we actually get her visa. That means it could still be a couple of weeks before we get to come home.

We are doing OK. The weather has been nice, so we have just been enjoying time outside and saving our tourist things for cloudy days. But all that being said, we want to receive word soon that we can go home.

Well, again, Julia is telling me that she is done here in the business center, so I will sign off.

Thanks for checking in,

Barbie

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!

We are doing well on this side of the world. It was a beautiful sunny day yesterday and today looks like it will be the same. We spent the morning walking around enjoying the weather.

For those of you who would like to see my new place, you can go to anisehotel.com and check out their website.

We watched some of the Rose Bowl game this morning (Weds.) so we could see Doug's beloved Illini. When we heard that they were going to the Rose Bowl, I was really thinking that we would all be home, so it was bittersweet to see the game here.

Well, Julia has had enough.

Barbie

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