Hi Guys!!!!

Our first glimpse
of shy little Thai.

Me and Juhn, the
driver/interpretor.

Little boy at
the zoo.

View of Ho Chi Minh
City from the
roof of a hotel.

Girls gone wild
in the HoChiMinh
City Zoo!

The market. Only
a video will
do this justice.

If you like
veggies, you
are in heaven
here!

YES, I have
no bananas.

Pho- the traditional Vietnamese
soup. Very good!

Cynthia using
the local
transit system.

Singing and sharing fruit.

At the children's center, we decided to have a celebration. Our driver sang traditional songs, we brought fruit, and we all sang and ate together. It was the most amazing fun! We played with all of the kids all day, with crayons and paper, the parachute, and other games.

Today was the Giving and Recieving Ceremony. Rebecca is now the official Mommy of Thai. It the most bittersweet experience I have ever had. On one hand, the new parents are filled with joy because the children they have been working so hard for and so long for are finally with them. On the other hand, the nannies who have been caring for the children since their arrival at the Care Center (in both of the childrens cases today, ages 3.5 and 2.5, they arrived at two days old) are very sad to be separated from the children. One woman in particular could not keep her grief concealed. It was both joyful and tragic at the same time. The children are now in the swimming pool at the hotel with their new parents and it is the perfect bonding experience for all of them. The 4 hour bus ride back to the city should be interesting.

Rebecca brought a parachute to play games with at the Children's center. They loved it. We had a great time tossing the Beanie Babies!

This woman has harvested her Dragon Fruit. The meat is white with Kiwi like seeds and consistance, but mild and sweet and easier to eat. It will soon be imported from here to the U.S.

Harvesting rice. One of the amazing scenes as we drove through Binh Thuan province to the Children's Center

We are ready to leave Maryland. See how happy we look? That is because we have not yet fully realized the reality of a 36 hour trip.

MMM! Care for some brains?

I have lots more pictures of the market and I will post them tomorrow!

July 28. Free day in Ho Chi Monh City.

I was up at 3:30 am today. Bright eyed and bushy tailed. I am actually forcing myself to stay awake until 9 tonight so my adjustment will be complete. Today was a fun day! We started out eating breakfast in the hotel at 6:30 am. In Viet Nam, breakfast is a soup called pho. It is a clear broth and into the broth you add fresh herbs, bean sprouts, noodles if you like, and other shrubbery that I could not identify. It is amazing. I also put in a couple of slivers of a sliced little pepper and just that little bit nearly seared the tastebuds off of my tongue! Awsome!

Cynthia and I decided to walk around and see some other hotels today. We crossed many streets, which sounds benign, but actually it is quite interesting. I really think the inspiration for the game Frogger came from someone who tried to cross a street here. Imagine walking into 2 or 3 lanes of hundreds of scooters and buses and cars. The trick is to look like you know what you are doing and don't flinch. Just walk and trust that they will avoid you. We were talked into riding around on a one bile rick-shaw type of thing and that was great fun. I took some video and will try to upload it later. By the way, we americans are typically much larger than the average Vietnamese person, so I believe that rickshaw guy was sweating a bit.

Trip over

Say you were born and raised in Ohio. On the farm, in a little town, Grandma's homemade cookies, naps in the cornfield. (do they grow corn in Ohio?) Then you move to New York City and spend 20 years there. When you return to Ohio after 20 years, are you feeling like you are home, wrapped in the warm embrace of childhood familiarity? I think so. My experience of our first outing to an indoor market in Ho Chi Minh City evoked that sort of nostalgia. Granted, I had been awake for nearly 40 hours from our journey over, so I was a little loopy, but when we walked in that market, the smells, the sounds, the crush of people hurrying this way and that, it all hit me and overwhelmed me with a sense of "Ahh..I'm home." Spending the first half of my life in third world countries had more of an emotional impact on my phsyche than I even realized.
The reason I am here is that my good friend Rebecca is adopting a child in VietNam. She asked if I could come along and help out. Also on the trip is Cynthia, and the three of us are incredibly excited to meet little Thai, the boy Rebecca is adopting. He lives in a children's center in Binnh Thuan Province, which is about 4 hours north of Ho Chi Minh and on the coast. We leave for that area tomorrow, so we have one more day in the city to recover from jet lag.
So far, I have been enjoying the food and the coffee very much! Sweetened condensed milk and several teaspoons of coarse sugar in a thick cup of dark coffee is the answer to many of life's little problems.
I am working on uploading pictures and videos, but until then, you can view some pictiures of our trip on Rebeccas blog: ourguythai.blogspot.com
Until the next post,
Bonnie (picture me with a BIG smile!)