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!)