Sunday Jan. 18

It’s Sunday and it’s hard to believe that we’ve been here now for over a week. And more importantly, that we’ve been parents for almost the entire time. We went out to dinner with Mr. Haong and his wife and 3 month old daughter last night. It was really lovely, a traditional Vietnamese dinner – prawn soup (very spicy), followed by morning glory salad – it looked like a stringy seaweed with garlic (very delicious), beet salad and fried tofu. Then we had rice, pork and prawns cooked in a honey sauce. What Mr. Haong explained to us was that you tried each thing individually, then when the rice came out you put it into a bowl and added all of the things you had been tasting. So we had the seaweed, tofu, beet salad, and pork mixed in with the rice. Greg and I were good and only used chopsticks.  Then when you finished most of it, a big tureen of soup that had tomatoes and fish in it came out and you added this to what was left so you had a rice soup with all kinds of bits in it. We finished dinner with big pieces of grapefruit.

Now there is a very common thing that happens over here that we had been cautioned about. The Vietnamese love babies, I mean love babies. Every time that Greg and I are walking down the street, people will stop their conversation or whatever it is that they are doing and look at Elizabeth. Usually they will say something like, “Very pretty baby” or “Lucky baby,” etc. Another thing that happens is when you take your baby out to dinner. The serving staff go crazy – coming up and waving at the baby, cooing and also, asking if they can pick your baby up. OK, what’s the big deal? Sounds kind of cute right? Actually it is, it’s really sweet and every place we have gone to, they make a big deal about Elizabeth, asking how old she is, how long we’ve had her, what province is she from, etc. But up until last night, that was pretty much it. Well, last night, one of the servers came up to me, Elizabeth was on my lap and asked if she could hold her. Absolutely I said. And here is the thing that we Americans don’t expect to see happen. She walked away with Elizabeth. I mean, clear out of the room, taking her completely out of sight, showing her off I guess to the other servers. Thank goodness we had been told that this was normal, because I think I would have had a very different reaction otherwise. She kept Elizabeth with her for about 15-20 minutes, so guess what? I got to finish my dinner without Elizabeth on my lap! (They didn’t have high chairs so it was my only option.) Greg and I kept joking around with Mr. Haong after a while, saying “Didn’t we have someone else with us?” and “What was it we came to do in Hanoi?” He loved that we had a sense of humor about it and was glad to see we didn’t freak out. He also said to us that he has worked with many families and he doesn’t remember ever seeing a child respond so well in such a short time to her new family. He was there the day we got her and has watched her just blossom over the past week with us. How much we can take credit for, I don’t know but it felt good to hear that we seemed to be doing something right.

So today we decided to do a little shopping. We went into the old French quarter and all I can say is that it is very stressful shopping there. The streets are narrow, there is hardly any room on the very small sidewalks so you are forced at times to walk right in the road with mopeds whizzing by. The streets remind me of the European cobblestone alleys. There is a whole street with baby things, lots and lots of decorations for Tet – the Vietnamese New Year. A whole street of hardware, it was endless. We did some bargaining here and there, bought some decorations for Tet, I found an adorable set of carved Vietnamese musicians. Elizabeth was starting to fidget – she had been in the Snuggly for almost 2 hours so we decided to head back to the hotel for a diaper change and a bottle - there was literally no place for me to put her to do either.

We then went to the Hanoi Towers which is a large hotel with some small shops on the ground level. We had lunch there – we actually ate salad – we had been avoiding any uncooked fruits and vegetables simply because of the quality of the water and oh man, have I missed my roughage! We were told that the salads there were safe to eat.

Headed back to the hotel for Elizabeth’s nap and then we went to a shopping mall that is about 3 blocks from the hotel to finish getting things we wanted to bring home.

Good news is that we are scheduled for our US Embassy interview on Tuesday afternoon which means that we will then have finished all necessary paperwork and will be cleared to travel on schedule! We plan to see the Temple of Literature and maybe catch a few museums before we leave at the end of the week. We will miss spending time with our Canadian friends, they have been simply wonderful and have made this trip so much easier. I won’t miss the constant honking of car and moped horns though. It does begin to grate on your nerves after a while!!