Luc and Maisie

Luc plays asleep and awake

2008-11-09T07:41:00.001-06:00

Luc as Elmo at Halloween

2008-11-09T05:53:00.001-06:00

Maisie at the computer

2008-11-08T10:59:00.001-06:00

Luc can count!

2008-11-08T10:43:00.000-06:00

Long time since the last update

2008-10-14T09:24:00.007-06:00

It has been almost a year since we last posted here.

We just thought we should put something up to let you know that we are all doing well.

Peggy is back teaching at the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools. Ed is teaching and coaching at Saint Ignatius College Prep. Luc and Maisie are now in full day child care at the Easter Seals Center across the street from Saint Ignatius.

Maisie is a happy and active two-year-old, who likes to climb into the pantry to find what she wants—and likes to climb onto the kitchen bar stools to play with mommy’s computer.

Luc has made remarkable progress . His official diagnosis, a simple qualifying diagnosis for Early Intervention services, is cerebral palsy. He has been walking now for almost six months, and walks easily now without his AFO supports on his legs. Most exciting has been his intellectual development. He’s become a curious and busy child as he walks around our condo and his play areas. He loves books and shapes, and he speaks with words oval, circle, and square, along with the standards like momma, dada, and bye.

Halloween Part Two

2007-11-03T22:11:00.001-06:00

What we didn't include was specifics about trick or treating in LaGrange Park. Maisie and Luc were accompanied by their cousins Elizabeth (the cute and scary witch), Doyle (the pirate) and Sean (the spider) along with Tom (crazy hair guy), and Kathy. The weather was perfect. And Ed took awesome pictures, so here are more!

As Ed mentioned, Maisie walked with Elizabeth, but she also had several encounters with furry creatures.

Long time since last post!

2007-11-02T12:56:00.000-06:00

So we haven't posted forever. That means we missed the birthdays on October 10 and 11. But how can we miss our first Halloween together?

We went out to LaGrange Park to visit Peggy's sister and her family, partly because we didn't want to brave the craziness of trick or treating in Hyde Park and mainly so that we could trick or treat with our cousins!

Maisie walked the whole way--about four blocks maybe. Oh yes, it is news to the blog that Maisie is walking....

This short blog is really just an excuse to post the pictures. The costumes, as it happens, were birthday presents from big sisters Mairead and Hanna.

Still Catholic after all these years

2007-06-13T16:15:00.000-06:00

We’re still not sure what we are doing with this blog.

It is no longer a blog about Vietnam, but a blog about our new family.

And something new about us, something that started in Vietnam, perhaps, is that we go to church. We’re not sure how it happened. Not so long ago, it seems, Peggy was making proposals for a Buddahist naming ceremony as a way to welcome a baby to our family.

Last Saturday we gathered about twenty family members and friends at Holy Family Catholic Church and Rev. Jerry Boland baptized Luc Au Su and Maisie Minh Tam. Then we ate a nice lunch at Saint Ignatius, with pizzacottos from Pompei (and cannollis for dessert). The weather was beautiful, the church was beautiful after many years of careful renovation and refurbishment, and, according to all the guests, it is hard to remember that Ignatius is just a high school, because it looks so good inside and out.

In fact, and surprisingly, perhaps, we’ve been going to church at Holy Family regularly since our return from Vietnam. In Vietnam, you might remember, we attended Easter mass at the Catholic Cathedral, where we also watched a staging of the crucifixion on Good Friday.

Peggy and I do not consider ourselves to be very religious or very strong in our beliefs as Catholics. Some of our beliefs go against traditional teachings of the church.

But we have found ourselves comforted in the church itself and among the parishioners, who have been generous and welcoming. It is also the place we have come to associate with Declan, our infant son who died just two days old, because we held his memorial gathering of our friends and family at Holy Family. We have visited the church each of the last two years on his birthday. And now, visiting there each week is, in a sense, like visiting him with our two new family members.

In his remarks at the baptism, Father Boland noted that Holy Family, which is celebrating its 150th anniversary this year, had been founded as a church for immigrants—a place where immigrants from many different countries gathered with something in common. In a strange land, the church brought people together. He talked about a helpful conversation with another priest with a Vietnamese background, in preparation for baptizing Luc and Maisie. The Vietnamese, Father Boland noted, have tremendous feeling and respect for their ancestors and believe strongly in a connection between the living and family members who have died.

Organizing the event was a little bit hard, especially trying to find a date that worked for everyone and that fit with the schedule at the church. In the end we couldn’t make it work for everybody. After our event we drove out to LaGrange Park where Peggy’s sister Kathy was holding a birthday party for her youngest son, Sean, and where all of Peggy’s family, her brother John, and her other sister Eileen, were able to be together for a few hours. John, his wife Sara, and their kids Kate and Griffin were able to make both events in the same Saturday afternoon trip from Champaign.

Earlier, at Holy Family, her Aunt Fran and Uncle Bud, and her cousins Jimmy Devenney, with is wife Cathy, and Peggy Abboud, with her daughter Ellie, had joined us.

On my side my brother Bob and his wife Sylvia traveled from Boston for the weekend to be god parents, with Eileen for Luc. My mother Joyce also made the trip, and she has been visiting with us for a week now. My daughters Mairead and Hanna brought their friends Sham, who works with me at Ignatius, and Alex.

Finally, but not least, our friends Kelly and Jeff were godparents for Maisie. Through these hard years they have been the friends we have relied upon most.

It was a beautiful day for us, and all our guests—and Father Boland--made it feel special for us.

On Sunday, my mom joined Peggy, Luc, Maisie, and me again at Holy Family. At the end of mass, Father Boland introduced all of us, but especially Maisie and Luc, to the parish. “Most of us have already met these beautiful babies, who have made a long journey to be with us,” he told the congregation. “But now we can welcome them as new members of our Catholic church.”

Two days before, on Friday, we had talked with the church deacon, a retired Ignatius teacher Rudy Kotleba, who explained the baptism ceremony and sacrament to us in our preparation meeting. Baptism is a ceremony that introduces us to the ups and downs of family life, he told us. He asked us why Catholics pray to their saints—because we believe in intercessions—and what Catholics can expect because of their communion—remarkable consistency from church to church and place to place, because of the connections between Catholics everywhere through the church.

About a year ago, as Peggy and I continued to struggle to start our own family, her sister Kathy gave her a Saint Gerard medal, which, she believes, had helped some of her friends who were struggling to start families. “If you wear it every day,” she told Peggy, “it will work for you, too.”

Peggy and I still don’t know where our beliefs really begin and end, when it comes to religion. Clearly we are in some transition. But a year ago we were beginning a long wait for a baby from China, after five previous years of waiting and two tragedies in our attempts to start a family.

Today we are home with two babies that we love very much, and we have family and friends who have been a great help and support in getting us to this new family and new home. And in strange ways the strands of this story have been weaving a pattern that reveals itself a little bit at a time—but each bit is interesting in its own way.

As Eileen said at one point, “Peggy, you’re really going to church?”

A day at the beach

2007-05-30T04:38:00.000-06:00

If we had made this post right away, our day at the Indiana Dunes beach on Saturday, May 19 would have seemed more impressive. Now it is past Memorial Day—and beaches everywhere are open!

In fact, there was no swimming allowed at the Indiana Dunes that day. But if Maisie could talk she would tell you that the water made her feet very, very cold.

This post is really just an excuse to post some pictures of Maisie and Luc. Our trip to the dunes was also just an excuse to drive our BOB jogging stroller around in a new location.

In terms of other news, we continue to grow and learn as a family. Our Dunes trip was a try-out, as well, for a family car trip. We did reach Maisie’s level of tolerance for time in her car seat during a long day in which we left home at noon or so and returned at 7 in the evening. Our Dunes trip included a swing through Valparaiso to shop at a Target. What did we buy after our day at the beach? Sand shovels and buckets, baby beach chairs, and even a baby beach tent! Also some size 3 diapers for Maisie and some new plush bath towels.

Ed eyed the double bicycle stroller attachment, but Peggy suggested holding off—in part because there was no room left in the car.

We’re ready for summer, baby!

So what else has been going on?

2007-04-29T06:59:00.000-06:00

Of course we have to say more about the last two weeks—actually, closer to three weeks—since we’ve been home. If you want to know how we spend our time, we're usually either on the playmat or out for a walk!

Peggy has been catching up with her classes at the University of Chicago, which started without her while we were in Hanoi. I’ve been at home much of each day with the babies, until Peggy comes home in the afternoon. Then I head to Saint Ignatius to coach our boys track team. The schedule works great, with the only problem on Tuesday afternoons when Peggy has class and I have to coach. We’ve been getting help from Peggy’s friend and colleague at the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools, Maureen Schmidt, who has stayed with Maisie and Luc. She has been a lifesaver for us. Peggy's sister Eileen took an afternoon class, too!

Weekends have been lots of track meets and some shopping. On one visit to Target we used the gift card from the boys on my team to buy various baby essentials. As noted, we also splurged on a jogging stroller.

We’ve had lots of visitors, including friends Kelly and Jeff, Charlotte, Uncle Johnny and my daughter Mairead, who of course is also Maisie's and Luc's sister. When Peggy had a late afternoon meeting with one of her professors on campus, she met up with Mairead who took the babies for a stroll around campus—except the short stroll turned out to be two hours. Mairead managed well, but she got worried when the sun was going down and the babies started to get cold and a little cranky after she had already fed them with all the supplies we had given her! Peggy and I both returned in the nick of time. For Mairead it was a little like Vietnam was for us, when one woman told her that she needed to put more clothes on those babies!

We have so many thank yous to give—especially to Peggy’s Lab School colleagues who threw her a shower where they met Maisie and Luc.

So how are we doing?

2007-04-29T06:29:00.000-06:00

We’re all adjusting well. We haven’t blogged for a while—just busy.

Part of our busy-ness: We bought a double jogging stroller! Last night we took it out for the first family walk on the lakefront. We drove downtown and parked near Northerly Island and the Planetarium.

While on Lakeshore Drive we noticed a large number of people marching around in the Soldier Field and McCormick Place parking lots. Then we noticed lots of cardboard boxes. It was a rally to protest the refugee status of children around the world, with special attention to Darfur. One of my Ignatius runners, Jim Mumford, had mentioned the rally to me the day before. The kids are all going to sleep out overnight.

After we parked, we walked back toward the rally. We parked the stroller outside the gate and surveyed the crowd. I recognized an Ignatius student, a former runner Mike Mason, standing among the boxes, and then I saw Erin Casey, Molly Hogan, Caitlin Lanigan, and Danielle LoVallo—with a bunch of other Ignatius students. We called to them and Danielle and Erin came over to say hello to Luc and Maisie.

We wanted to say thank you to the students who spent the night at the protest. Luc and Maisie, of course, are in their own way displaced children.

And we thought we were adventurous...

2007-04-15T19:22:00.000-06:00

Things are going well here at home.

The last member of our Hanoi cohort, Marci, has also returned. Her son, Jamie, remember, had an ear infection which delayed their return.

But in the meantime, in Hanoi, Marci, Betty, and Katie kept busy. We thought we were adventurous. It seems the longer one stays in Hanoi, the more adventurous one becomes. Here's Marci's email to us about her final adventure before her return:

"Well, tonight we had a true Vietnamese experience. We went with Peter (the American guy that lives in Hanoi), his wife Mai, their son Bao, and her friend Hong to the Botanical Gardens where they play badminton. Afterwards they took us to this little restaurant just outside the Gardens gate. We were the only Western people there. When we walked up there was a little piglet roasting over this big grill (which we eventually ate). This is the kind of side of the road restaurant. We ate outside on little metal tables. They ordered all this food for us to try, and everyone else and my mom had this special beer (I don't like beer). Well, one of the dishes was dog. It was actually pretty good. If you thought it was beef it would have been excellent. They said that eating dog makes you lucky and that when people are having a rough time in their life or they are fighting with loved ones they eat dog and then they feel better. I figured we needed all the luck we could right about now. So since I ate my dog and was now full of luck I decided to try my luck on a motor bike in the streets of Hanoi. Mai's friend had her motor bike with her so she took me on a ride around the city. It was an amazing evening. It was real Vietnamese not commercial Vietnamese. Just thought I'd let you know about our night."

Home

2007-04-11T15:01:00.000-06:00

We're home.

Maisie Minh Tam is maybe having a bit of an adjustment. I just set up the baby cot to give her something familiar here. She's now napping. And Luc Au Su is napping. And Peggy is napping.

And Robbie is napping.

Robbie, Marci's son, will spend the night here in Chicago. We arrived in the Chicago skies around 10:25, a bit early, and then we began to feel the telltale glide and thrust of the holding pattern. When we did finally land around 10:50, we found out why. It was a snow storm--at least a wintry mix. As we taxied it was clear that the runways had been plowed. We have since learned that the storm is worse on the other side of Lake Michigan, specifically Grand Rapids, where Robbie was heading after Chicago. Robbie's 1:20 flight was cancelled, and flights were cancelled for the rest of the day. There was a chance he could get out at 9:00 tonight on standby. We weren't exactly in a position to leave a 13-year-old in the airport all day.

So Robbie is with us tonight and we will take him back to O'Hare for an 8:05 AM flight.

What else to tell about the flight? It was long. We left the Hong Gnoc Hotel at 9:00 PM on Tuesday night in Hanoi. We arrived home today at approximately 3:00 PM Wednesday, which would be 3:00 AM Thursday in Hanoi. That's about 30 hours, door to door.

Just fitting our baggage--and the extra person--into our car at the airport was a challenge. Then we made a trip to Peggy's sister Kathy's home in La Grange Park, where Luc and Maisie met a few of their cousins, Elizabeth, Doyle, and Sean. Luc fit right in, but Maisie had some harder moments. Of course it was midnight for them, Hanoi time.

Now we're home. And everyone, as I said, is napping....

Hello from Seoul

2007-04-10T18:46:00.000-06:00

Hey, we're in Seoul on a four hour layover.

We had an adventure at the Hanoi Airport. We're travelling with Robbie, Marci's son, and when we got to the airport, Marci discovered that the passport she had retrieved from the hotel was her daughter's passport, not Robbie's. It seems that at the time of the passport photos, Katie had short hair and Robbie's was long.

Martin called the hotel and one of the employees brought the correct passport out by taxi.

We made it through baggage and check in, then passport control.

Martin said some partings are emotional, but this one was kind of crazy.

Then our flight was delayed from 12:45 to 2:30 AM. We had plenty of time in Seoul, so there was no problem.

We flew Vietnam Air here, and then we fly out on Korean Air.

But the big excitement in Hanoi: We packed up the baby cot and despite Martin's skepticism )and my own), the oversized package made it on the plane!

Fly late Tuesday night, arrive Wednesday morning

2007-04-09T00:24:00.000-06:00

Our travel agent has been checking all weekend, and we made another visit to Korean Air this morning.

But we cannot get to Seoul from Hanoi tonight, even if there are seats available on the Seoul to Chicago flight.

So we fly tomorrow night, so late on Tuesday at midnight that it is already Wednesday AM. Then we arrive in Seoul for a six hour layover, before the long flight--13 hours, I think--to Chicago. We will be there at 10:40 AM Wednesday, April 11.

We have at least one more blog idea--a picture tour of our favorite walking places in Hanoi. We'll see if we get to it before we leave.

What we remember about the G&R day

2007-04-08T21:03:00.000-06:00

It seems so long ago, the days before the babies. But this is what we remember about G&R day.

We were in the van at about 6:30 on the G&R day, after taking some out the door photos in front of the Hong Ngoc--Marci, with Betty her mom, her daughter Katie, and her son Robbie, and Peggy and I. Nancy came as the World Child translator and facilitator, with Jenny along, as well. Our photos turned out pretty dark, and I guess it was dark.

The drive was a repeat of the Friday trip. We were much less interested in the scenery and the drive. We weren't really sure what the schedule would be. Orphanage first? Right to the ceremony? We also didn't really know how it would all happen. It seemed to be one of those "need to know" days.

We drove through Lang Son for a while. Nancy made a phone call, it seemed, or else she decided we were lost. We stopped for directions. Then we doubled back and eventually made our way to the Ministry of Jusice building at 9:45 or so.

We moved quickly into the building and up the stairs to the second floor, where we were ushered into a meeting room. We carried a lot of stuff to the back of the room--bags with various gifts. In the meeting room there was a statue of Ho Chi Minh and slogan banners hung from the walls, with a big meeting table. Along the walls were chairs. In some of the chairs sat small groups of Vietnamese. In whispers, Jenny told us that these might actually be the birth families. Nancy had disappeared. We asked about taking video or photos; Jenny suggested we wait. When Nancy returned and Jenny asked her, we were told no--no cameras right now, it is a solemn occasion.

It seemed that more families had arrived.

Nancy eventually called Marci out of the room, and she disappeared for a period--between 15 and 30 minutes, perhaps.

We watched the families. Perhaps the babies and caregivers arrived. It was two weeks ago, now, and I sort of forget. Plus, emotions had begun to build at that point.

A few moments after Marci returned, Peggy and I were called. We entered a small office near the meeting room. Ms. Trieu, as I think her name is spelled, sat at a desk. With her was one of the women who had been waiting with a family--Au Su Nghiep's mother.

With all of us gathered around the desk closely, Ms. Trieu went through a series of questions with her. Nancy translated for us. Then Ms. Trieu asked questions of us--names and birth dates of the babies, our own information.

Through Nancy, we spoke to Ms. Trieu. Then we spoke to Au Su Nghiep's mother. That conversation, it seems, should be private.

Then Nguyen Minh Tam Thi's mother arrived. There was a similar drill with her.

Ms. Trieu spoke to all of us directly and clearly at one point, as Nancy translated: This adoption is not for the benefit of the birth mothers, or the adopting parents. The adoption has been approved because of the best interests of the babies.

As the interviews took place, Ms. Trieu's phone rang several time. She answered quickly and efficiently. She also had a cell phone that rang several times; she handled that in a similar way. She had a tape recorder that she turned on and off during the interviews. She also took notes. In front of her was a complete file on the babies. Handwritten notes seemed to document their cases and the "difficult situation" of the birth mothers. That was what we were told. Au Su Nghiep's mother had chosen to give him up for adoption because she faced a "difficult situation." Nguyen Minh Tam Thi's mother also found herself with a "difficult situation."

Ms. Trieu also had what we recognized as copies and translations of documents we had completed months ago at home in Chicago--perhaps even including our home study and dossier.

I've been factual here about the interview. It wasn't as easy or efficient on our end or for the birth mothers as it sounds here. Ms. Trieu was all business and extremely professional in what, as you can imagine, was an emotional situation.

Once the interview was complete, we returned to the meeting room. The babies had arrived at this point and the caregivers were there. The orphanage director arrived.

Ms. Trieu, I think it was, made a statement about the events that would take place--adoptions of four babies whose mothers faced "difficult situations." The orphanage director made a statement--and also a province official, I believe. Then I had to give a speech. Nancy had told me that there was a meeting to follow for the officials, and I should speak briefly. It had been an emotional morning already. But I think I was pretty coherent.

What I said, I believe, was along these lines: These babies would show the people of the United States the love and hearts of the people of the Vietnam. There was clearly a feeling of loss in the room, for the mothers. Peggy and I had known such a loss, because we had lost a baby once, too. We promise to educate the babies, teach them to be good people, and teach them about Vietnam. We thanked the people who had done so much work to care for the babies and make the adoptions possible. The babies would fill a hole in our hearts. We hoped that for the mothers and those who experienced loss today that life would bring them a joy in the future like the one they had made possible for us.

At least that is what I think I said. I am not sure whether that was brief, or not.

The birth mothers were invited to speak. Au Su Nghiep's mother asked us to care for him and to bring him back to visit Vietnam in the future.

The ceremony itself involved us signing papers and a book. Then we stood with Au Su Nghiep's family, and his mother handed him to us. Both groups--on the birth family side and on our side--took photos. We repeated that process with Nguyen Minh Tam Thi's mother. Again, there were many photographs.

Then Marci went through the same process to adopt her two babies.

After the ceremony, it was a bit emotional. There was a hurried collection and sorting out of the gifts we had brought--for the orphanage, officials, and caregivers. We also had gifts for the mothers. We were concerned that one mother had left without a gift. There was some informal contact between the families as we left the room--and a few last kisses from family members.

Nancy ushered us down the stairs quickly. Peggy and I climbed into the van with two babies in our arms. Marci's family delayed a bit. They wanted to take more pictures outside the ministry. I think I remember a street vendor or two approaching the van, even. The scene had gotten a bit crazy. Nancy became a bit insistent, and we left somewhat abruptly. We headed directly out of the city--no visit to the orphanage.

Jenny explained later that the ministry officials had been anxious--even insistent--to have us leave. It had been a bit "thick," emotionally.

When I apologized to Nancy that my own tears or words had contributed to the emotion, she just smiled back at me.

She had done this many times, I told her. Was it any easier for her, the emotions of the G&R? I asked.

She shook her head.

Easter Sunday

2007-04-08T00:19:00.000-06:00

This entry will make Grandmother Joyce happy!

It is Easter Sunday. We woke up refreshed after an early night. The babies were down by 7:30 and we were down by 8:30. Luc Au Su was up at 7:30, bathed and fed by 8:00 or so. Maisie Minh Tam slept late. But we were downstairs at breakfast by 9:00 or so. Then we had a short nap upstairs, and at 10:30 we went out for the day.

Marci and her family were at breakfast, and they gave us the mass schedule at the Cathedral: 5 AM, 7, 9, and 11. If we are going to mass, it will be the 11!

Marci had visited the church the night before, in the dark, and caught the mass schedule on a sign. But the square had been full, she said, of people watching a movie projected on the side of the church, on white sheets: The Passion of Christ.

We headed to the Cathedral. At 10:35 it was a massive snarl of motorbike and pedestrian traffic as the earlier mass exited. Then it was gone. At 11 the church wasn't even full, and most of the people there were Westerners, like us. The mass, it turns out, was in French. We sat in the back. Luc took a bottle early, then conked out. Maisie went a little while later. They woke up toward the end of the mass, and they just watched the event with interest.

As we sat and stood, we looked around, too. Late in the mass I noticed the window across the aisle on the opposite wall: St. Ignace de Loyola.

Sorry, we forget that some of you don't know the significance of this. Peggy graduated from Saint Ignatius College Prep in Chicago, and I teach there now.

For dinner tonight, Marci and her family invited us to the Easter dinner. Marci bought several packages of ham steaks, which she had the kitchen here prepare. We had Vietnamese style stir fry vegetables, with mashed potatoes and cucumber and tomato salad. Probably not the meal we would have had at home, but it was an Easter dinner.

Thank you Marci and Betty--and Robbie, Katie, Mylie, and Jamie!

Good Friday

2007-04-06T06:30:00.000-06:00

We have had several inquiries about how the Vietnamese celebrate Easter. Well, most of them don't know much about it. Even Martin had to be reminded about the weekend and what he knew about it--"Bunny," he said and nodded. But our hotel is two blocks from the Cathedral. We discovered it our first evening in Hanoi, a Sunday, when we went out to dinner and discovered Sunday mass was being broadcast outdoors and hundreds of people seemed to be celebrating mass in the square outside the church. The French were here a long time.

Now we walk past the Cathedral several times a day. Earlier today we walked by and photographed the Easter weekend banners that had been unfurled. There is a school nearby, as well, and the children play in the square today.

But later, in the evening at 5:30, we walked by to discover an entirely different scene. The photos below retell the old story as it was reenacted.

Meanwhile, as the passion played out, motorbikes, cars, taxis, and minibuses whizzed by, and pedestrians milled about. Most of the city just went about its business.

The call!

2007-04-05T19:38:00.000-06:00

Luc and I have been up since 7:00. We tried to take a bath, but there was no hot water.

We did eat and take some medicine. When we went downstairs, just the boys, to breakfast, we found out why the hot water was gone. The place was packed. I sat at the bar with Luc in his stroller.

When we got back upstairs, Peggy was finally stirring. I went downstairs to bring her up some coffee.

"Guess what?" she said when I returned. "Martin called. We have a 1:30 appointment at the embassy."

We will try to get the Monday night flight now, but worst case, we fly on Tuesday night, pretty much for sure now.

I guess we can be a little less grumpy now. Today's agenda, then: We will take Luc back to the SOS clinic for a follow up. He is doing much better. Then it will be a day of our usual rounds.....

Delayed Once More

2007-04-05T07:42:00.001-06:00

After waiting all day, hoping for the call from the US Embassy that our last visa interview would be today, we heard from Martin that there was no news. We'd already found the Korean Air office within walking distance from our hotel earlier in the day (but arrived during the lunch break form 12:00-1:30), so we walked back in the afternoon.

Flights are booked tight, but we did get on a flight out of Hanoi Tuesday at midnight that stops in Seoul (early Wednesday morning), where we catch a flight that arrives in Chicago around 10:00 in the morning on Wednesday. Flights are so tight that we'll have to take Vietnam Air to Seoul, and this caused us some worry about the baggage limits since Korean Air is more generous than Vietnam Air, but our bags will be checked though Korean Air, so we are all right.

Marci just made it to the office in time after our call to come quick to book her family, and she also is on our flight, with the last four tickets that were available. Lisa leaves tonight on the flight that all three of our families had hoped to be on together.

On the walk back from Korean Air we stopped at our local Hanoi "Walmart" to pick up some formula, a bottle opener and baby nail clippers. Marci also found chocolate bunnies on sticks, giant gold-foil wrapped chocolate eggs and smaller ones as well. She plans to do Easter here, and even found an English speaking Church that we could all attend on Sunday. The Church is Catholic, and Marci and her family are Lutheran, but she said it was close enough.

Before Lisa, Cindy and Tiann left, we had a baby cousin photo shot on our big bed. They were all obliging for the paparazzi, but Luc didn't like being on his tummy too much!

Now we wait again to hear something tomorrow from the Embassy. Even though it is Good Friday, we do think they are working. At least we hope so.

We need a call from the embassy on Friday or Monday to have visas for the babies by Tuesday, so we can fly.

A man behind a glass window

2007-04-04T20:12:00.000-06:00

We continue to promise a blog about the G&R, especially for those of you going to Lang Son and who will likely meet birth parents there.

But we missed another step, the first embassy interview with Mr. Adamson, the man behind the glass window. We blogged about Wednesday before we told you about Tuesday.

The US embassy is in the upscale western business office side of the city. There is a covered driveway leading up to a big office building. You step inside and walk up a tall flight of stairs to the second floor where the consular visa section is located. You go through a metal detector. They take a driver's license and keep it while you are there for identification. If you carry a cell phone or camera, they check it for you, but you are not supposed to bring electronic devices. They sell a few US embassy Hanoi items, like hats and t-shirts there.

In the consular section, there are a bunch of service windows and chairs set up in a waiting room. It wasn't clear to me if Martin alerted them to our presence or if they were expecting us. But he ushered Marci and I to a window where we each had to pay an additional fee for our second baby and therefore a second I600 application. If you are adopting families members, more than one child, this extra fee does not apply, but our babies aren't real twins. I tried to pay the $540 with cash, but a machine kept spitting out the perfectly clean and crisp $100 bills we had brought and carefully stored for this purpose. So we used Visa.

Then we waited a few minutes. There is a water cooler in the reception area, and the water was really cold on a hot day outside. People keep telling us, remember to keep hydrated! Marci's name was called, I don't remember how, and she and her babies went through a door. They reemerged fiften or twenty minutes later.

When they came out, we saw a man behind a glass window, and he invited us in. I realized that it was a small room, actually almost a closet, maybe four feet by six feet even, with two folding chairs. We barely fit in there with our stroller and two babies. Mr. Adamson sat behind a glass window, like the kind they have in Chicago at Harold's Chicken or at the gas stations in inner city neighborhoods.

He spent a lot of time spelling out the procedure. This interview was to evaluate that our adoption had been conducted properly. Adopting in Vietnam, he wanted us to know, is not the same as adopting from China, for example, where adoption procedures are programmatic and institutionalized; in Vietnam, each case is different. He did not want to alarm us, but there had been cases, for example, where it had been discovered that a child's mother had not, in fact, agreed to an adoption of her child, and the adoption had been stopped.

At that point I told Mr. Adamson that we had met with birth mothers of our babies; they had publicly given their babies to us. Is it possible that these were not the real mothers of the babies, I asked? We also could have told him how careful, professional, and thorough Ms. Thiuy, the Lang Son official at the Ministry of Justice, had been. I don't really remember his answer--but he kind of skipped on with his presentation, which laid out the timeline. After this interview, the file would be reviewed in Ho Chi Minh City and in three to five days we would hear back from the embassy to return for a second visa appointment--assuming that the review was satisfactory. We have a flight on Thursday night, we told him--any chance we will get out by then? The process, he told us, would be three to five days--assuming no power outages. A power outage might cause a delay.

He proceeded to ask us questions about fees we paid, whether any special fees had been requested or added during our visit, and how long the drive was to Lang Son. He wanted us to describe the orphanage and give our impressions of the care there. He does not get to all the orphanages, he told us. We told him the orphanage had about 100 children, from what we understand, of different ages; it has a soccer field, even.

He then asked us some questions mainly about Au Su Nghiep. Again we mentioned that we had also met the birth mothers and visited the ministry of justice for a Giving and Receiving. Marci, it turns out, had told him about meeting both the mothers of her babies; he seemed surprised, she thought. He seemed almost suprised again that we had met the birth mothers--but that might not be fair because he seemed to want to keep a very straight attitude.

The one glitch in the interview was when he said the fingerprints on our I171H had expired. It turned out that he had a old copy of the I171H produced before we updated our fingerprints. The new one had been cabled to Ho Chi Minh City and the US consulate there, so he should have it. He had the one our agency must have submitted in its original dossier that was submitted to the Vietnamese province. But we simply gave him a copy of the new one with the updated fingerprint information, which we had with us. He copied it for his records.

The end of the meeting was kind of anticlimactic. It just seemed that time was up and he told us again we should wait for a call in three to five days.

We left the little room, with Mr. Adamson still sitting behind the window. Then we all left the embassy.

Next stop was for Marci and I to pick up the Vietnamese passports for the children at the "police station." The taxi ride was awful, because the driver did not turn on his AC--or else it didn't work. But the AC was on at the police station, and our stay was very quick, which was good because Marci and I each carried a baby. We had a reciept from the previous visit telling us to return at 3 PM that day, Monday. We went to a new window, presented the reciept, and waited a couple minutes. They called our names, looked at our passports. Then they had us sign the receipt, and they gave us the passports for the babies. Martin had asked us to check the names, birth dates, and gender on the passports. We did so, then he did so again.

Meanwhile, Peggy with a baby, Marci's daughter Katie with a baby, and the new World Child staffer Kenny went on ahead to a photo shop to get passport photos take of our babies for their US visa applications. We arrived to get the two babies we carried with us photographed. It turns out to have been at the same shop where we had had pictures produced the previous week.

Peggy and I and the babies told Martin we would walk home, and we went to the Vinaconex, our Walmart, for some supplies, and later walked back to the hotel.

Just so you know how out of control we all have become, Marci and Katie took a cyclo with the babies!

SOS Day

2007-04-04T00:51:00.000-06:00

Today was our SOS clinic day--physical exams for the babies to get their visas. We went with Marci--and her two. So we monopolized the clinic intake room for quite a while.

The clinic sits on the ground floor of the the United Kingdom embassy building, about a 15 minute walk from our hotel, but we took a taxi with Martin and a new WC staffer, Kenny. The intake, where they weighed and measured the babies, is on one side. Then you walk outside, through the main entrance, to the other side of the clinic, where the docs work.

We arrived at 8:30, and we were home by 11:30. So it did take some time.

Maisie is doing well--13+ pounds, doing well developmentally, alert and healthy, with some congestion and cold.

We had some concerns about Luc's immediate health, and the appointment came at a good time. He's been coughing at night for two nights, and he is very congested. His German doctor, with a pony tail and goatee, found some congestion in the lungs, and he was somewhat concerned. He's calling it bronchiitis, but Luc is getting an anti-streptoccal in case it is heading toward pneumonia. We got a puffer/asthma inhaler, and a chamber to administer it (the chamber was the big expense $60). And then he got a heavy duty decongestant. With the physical ($65), the total was $180. We think our insurance might cover some of it for us.

The doctor also noted, as we have, that there might be some other developmental issues for Luc, but we will follow up on those when we get home.

We returned home on hotel arrest--which is a good thing. Martin says that the embassy could call now at any time. We need a second interview today, though, if we are to get the visa tomorrow and fly tomorrow night.

If not, it gets complicated. Todd Gallinek, our travel agent, tells us that there are seats available on Sunday night, but not Saturday. We could switch our tickets to Sunday. But then we are on watch for tomorrow for the embassy interview. If we don't get it tomorrow, then we can't get the visa until Monday. So we would have to change flights again. We could just change tickets tomorrow for later next week to be safe.

But we want to go home now.

Maybe the gods will be kind and we'll get a phone call this afternoon.

How long is the Ha Long boat trip?

2007-04-02T17:25:00.000-06:00

Like some other World Child groups before us, yesterday our group of five families--with eight babies total--made the trip by minibus to Ha Long Bay. Three and a half hour drive each way; the first hour follows the route to Lang Son, but the second two hours are on a bumpy highway. We were in the back row, and it was really bouncy--like seasick bouncy. We held on to the babies carefully.

The boat ride--on a tourist "junk"--was 6 hours; we had been told it would be five. Four would be about right. Cost was $30 per person--adults. We arrived at the dock at noon. Tables were set for us, and a half hour into the trip lunch was served--and served and served and served. They kept bringing more plates. The seafood included crabs, shrimps, and a big fish. I must have been busy eating, because I forgot to photograph the table when all the food had arrived. After I took the first picture, I kept thinking, I better take another. I never did.

As we arrived to our first stop, I made a joke to our server and our guide that I couldn't get off the boat because I was still eating. The guide seemed hurt. "You must go to the cave!" she insisted. She went and talked to the food staff.

All the babies and families walked up the steps of an island mountain and into a cave. Peggy said that it made her think right away of Flo Vaughan -- she would have loved this cave. The signs, we figured out, were asking us not to leave grafitti or carve our initials into the rocks. It was an amazing walk, but Luc got tired and we hurried through.

When we got back on the boat, all the tables had been cleared, except for ours. My half eaten fish--fish head intact--was still there. Peggy told me to stop making jokes, especially ones that involve irony, that no one in Vietnam will understand. But when I explained to Martin what had happened, he explained to the guide. Everyone laughed. But Peggy is probably right.

The boat took us past a floating village--supported by the government, as our guide explained. She also pointed out another cave, an opening visible from a distance, which she said was the setting for a James Bond movie, perhaps the first one with Sean Connery? It made sense to me...

The final stop was TipTop Island, where Ho Chi Minh met with the Soviet delegation to seal their alliance. That alliance founded Vietnam as a Soviet-style socialist country; the gold and scarlet and hammer and sickle of the international socialist revolution are still everywhere here. It was also the basis of the famous "domino theory"that justified the Vietnam War.

We were invited to climb to the top of the mountain island; there is a beach at the bottom. Peggy and I had a plan that one of us would quickly climb and return, then the other one. But Luc got really cranky, crying and crying. Maisie wasn't doing so well, either. Peggy never even got off the boat; I carried Luc off, then returned, and walked around on the top deck for the next hour and a half because it was the only way to keep him from screaming.

Remember the two days for a bowel movement issue? It had been three days. Don't worry we dealt with it today, and we think we have that one under control.

The three and a half hour ride home went better than might have been expected. I had to find a position that Luc liked, or else he cried. We did all right. Five of the other eight babies did their share of crying, as well.

It was a relief to get home. We were all exhausted.

The trip was worth it. But don't ask us to do it again tomorrow...

Not just what to buy, where to buy

2007-03-31T04:57:00.000-06:00

We have bought all kinds of things these last two weeks, most of them intended as gifts.

We don't yet know who gets what.

But there are all kinds of small items that we still need to get--like Chairman Ho Chi Minh star hats, etc., and the pointed cone hats.

They sell them at hundreds of stalls and stores. How to choose?

Near one of the restaurants we like, we found one called Minh Tam, just like Maisie. That seems as good a way of picking a store as any.

Do you see anything you like? We can get you a good price....

These are just the bags. We'll get photos of some other things--hats, chop sticks, dolls, t-shirts....

Bia Hoi: This one is for Kelly and Jeff

2007-03-30T03:41:00.000-06:00

They will know what Bia Hoi means....

Here is an article on beer drinking in Hanoi.

We've tried the Tiger, the Bia Hanoi, and the Anchor.

We prefer best the Red Beer. We visited the brew pub, and it turns out the Moca Cafe, where we ate dinner last night with the group, is owned by the Red Beer company--or vice versa.

The end game, or trapped in Hanoi

2007-03-29T18:25:00.000-06:00

What to write about?

We had a few minutes last night after the babies were asleep, around 8:30 or so, and Peggy started to work on the blog. She had nothing to say or write about. Part of the reason is that life now is just about babies. People do talk about that. But people are usually more interested in the minute goings on of their own kids than in those of other people's children. Do you really need to know that Luc Au Su goes two days between bowel movements?

I kind of feel the same way, with nothing to say.

We have been doing this to some degree to try and answer some of the questions we had about this Hanoi adoption trip for people who might follow us here. We still have a little bit of blogging to do on that score, explaining this end game, which we kind of think about now as "Trapped in Hanoi." That will also let those of you waiting for us back at home when we might be returning.

We also need to write something about the giving and receiving day. As we've discussed it, there are aspects of it that need to be private, out of respect for the birth families of Luc Au Su and Maisie Minh Tam. But there are also things we can tell people which might help them be prepared. Still, we're not ready right now to do that.

So one idea when time was short was to write a blog with a list of topics that we could and should tell you about. That is a process idea, which can then help us to prioritize which topics we will get to.

But I had a moment to write now--and an inclination. It is 7:00 AM here; Maisie Minh Tam is still asleep and Peggy is giving Luc Au Su a bath.

Here is where we are now: When we returned from Lang Son after the G&R, we went to the "police station," as I think it is called, to apply for Vietnamese passports for the babies. It was pretty quick--just Marci for her kids, me, and Nancy from World Child. Take a number, fill out a form, stand in line. Nancy had passoport pictures for the babies. We submitted the papers at one window and got a reciept. Took that to another window and paid 200,000 VN dong for each baby. Got another reciept which says the passports will be done in one week--next Monday at 3:00 PM.

Just so you know, the babies return home to the US on Vietnamese passports.

Then Nancy said she would email the US embassy to set up our USCIS interview. That is an interview with a consulate official who will ask us questions about our adoption process, including, as we understand, our fees and costs. They will also review all our paperwork, US and Vietnamese. We have already recieved pre-approval from the US immigration services to adopt two orphan babies, and that approval is on file here in Hanoi and in Ho Chi Minh City. That form is the famous I171H that adopting families wait for like gold. We had a bit of excitement when we had to update ours from one to two babies, and Susan from World Child and the USCIS officers in Chicago were very helpful to us. But here in Hanoi we have to submit a new I600 form, I guess it is, for the final adoption. We also have to pay some fairly large fees.

On Tuesday, as I remember, Martin gave us the news that our first USCIS interview would be on Monday. So Vietnamese passport on Monday and US interview on Monday. We have nothing else we can do to get out of here until then.

But with the date we will receive the passports set, we can also set up a medical appointment which is required by the US government. You need the passports for the medical appointment. Martin called for that appointment at the SOS Clinic, and the date is Wednesday.

The final step in the process is an exit visa interview--the second US interview. That is a quick one; they just approve your paperwork. But you can't do that until you have everything else complete and your paperwork is reviewed after the first interview. They have your visa ready the next day.

Our deadline for all of this is a late Thursday night/early Friday April 6 1:00 AM flight to Seoul. We are very worried that it won't get done.

We have bumped into a lot of Americans with babies in Hanoi--a bunch of them in this hotel. There is talk about a backlog or at least a traffic jam at the US embassy. What seems to have happened: There was a big rush to get people to Vietnam and then out of Vietnam before Tet. We missed that window. But we are here now on the next window, the first adoptions after Tet.

We are not here in that window alone.

We don't really know at this point if our Friday April 6 return to ORD at 10:40 AM is even possible at this point.

Until then, we are here, trapped in Hanoi...

Maisie Minh Tam is awake. Bye again....

Yes, we have our hands full

2007-03-29T03:23:00.000-06:00

We managed to get some photos out of the camera and online through Shutterfly for our families.

I've managed a few emails, some typed with one hand while I held a baby with another.

But we haven't been near the blog, we know, since Monday! And don't expect much now, as I steal a moment.

Peggy has the babies in the room next door playing on the bed. This is now a family ritual. There really isn't anywhere else to play.

We have established something of a routine. Morning feeding, diapers, bath, and shower. Then breakfast. Some kind of outing, then a return to the room for regrouping. More diapering and feeding. Then playtime on the bed. Another outing...

Last night Peggy and I actually ate a dinner meal together at Vine e Pane, an Italian restaurant, while a waitress and a server carried the babies around.

Bed is at about 8:00. We crash ourselves soon after. Nights aren't too bad, with one big late night feeding bash--last night at about 2:00 AM.

That's all for now. Here are some photos....

A moment to give you some photos

2007-03-26T21:20:00.000-06:00

It's mid-morning, and between having one baby or the other down we've managed a shower and a few minutes to work on yesterday's photos. Earlier we ate breakfast in the hotel--with coffee--while Luc Au Su and Maisie Minh Tam hung out in teir Bjorns. We had Misie facing out, and she just watched; Luc slept, while Peggy ate carefully over his head. Then we took a slow walk around the block, and fed Luc again. We're about to take them out for walk.

We still have a lot to tell you about yesterday. But you are all asking for photos. Just so you know what kind of day it was, when we looked in the camera there wasn't much there. Here's one photo of our signing. Marci brought her Nikon D70--oh yes, you remember the lens shopping trip--and we think/hope that she documented the event for us. We assume Marci and her family are adjusting as dramatically as we are, so we don't know when we will get those from her. We never even got the video camera out. And I am not sure that Peggy or I took a single photo all day.

But here is what we have, photos of Maisie Minh Tam and Luc Au Su in the van, taken by Marci, while Katie, Robbie, and Betty held her two babies, Jamie and Mylie.

A new day

2007-03-26T17:15:00.001-06:00

Okay, we have a lot to catch up on, obviously.

We're just waking up on Tuesday AM here. Luc Au Su, as we now call him, started stirring at 5:45. His diaper was wet, but he didn't seem to want a bottle. He just wants to play, and I hear him gurgling away with Peggy in the other room on the big bed.

Meanwhile, Maisie Minh Tam is still sleeping, despite our stirring about.

This makes sense to us. Luc basically conked out yesterday whenever he had a chance--especially while we walked around Hanoi on our regular rounds, now with the babies in Bjorns.

We had a challenging but wonderful day yesterday. Last night wasn't too bad. But generally I would say we don't yet have to listen to the "I told you so" crowd, but those of you who have been though baby life and have been waiting to see our adaptations, they have definitely begun.

But we are doing fine, which is most important. The babies are healthy and definitely happy, even with us. The both have some colds and congestion. Maisie Minh Tam had some coughs during the night--but it seems to be, as Forrest Gump would say, "cough due to cold." They are both a little stuffy. Peggy worried in the night and wondered about seeing the clinic today, but now it is morning. They are both sleeping, eating, and playing--probably not time yet for the doctor.

We have much to tell about yesterday. I'm not sure when we will have time. That should tell you something!

Thank you all for your support and comments. This is an entirely new part of the adventure.

Trying to eat breakfast with one hand should be interesting.

Going out the door!

2007-03-25T16:16:00.000-06:00

So we're up at 5:15. I've actually been up since 4:00.

We've got our duffle bag full of gifts and our two baby backpacks with clothes, bottles, and diaper stuff. We put scoops of formula in the bottles last night, and for the trip today we will just add bottled water and shake it up.

We also have a bag with some soccer balls we bought yesterday.

Peggy bought a wrap around silk skirt and top for the G&R today, and I'm going with khaki pants and a white shirt.

Four more hours...

The waiting is finally over....

2007-03-25T08:56:00.000-06:00

We know we haven't posted for a couple days. But I guess we are just waiting.

We filled yesterday with some wandering around Hanoi, at least our Old and nearby French quarters. We bought some clothes on "Baby Street" to bring to the orphanage in Lang Son, trying to buy things like the clothes the caregivers there seem to prefer for the babies--two pieces, tops and bottoms, and sweaters, especially zip up or snap up sweaters. They use tops and bottoms, because, as we learned, they don't use diapers. They must just change and wash the bottoms. We filled a big plastic grocery bag for $20 US.

As Nancy made clear on our visit there, they need clothes and formula for the babies. It makes sense. We recognize the same clothes in all the pictures we received, and they were wearing the same clothes when we visited them on Friday. They must need more clothes!

Then we made another trek to the mall, this time bringing along Marci and her family. They filled a grocery cart with various items--including a lot of snacks for the family. We didn't buy much--but we did get some shaving cream and disposable razors. If we haven't made it clear at this point, you can get anything you need in Hanoi--except, as far as we can tell, American baby bottles and liners.

On our third outing of the day, we ate dinner out at Al Fresco's, part of the chain of restaurants owned by the same owner. We've already eaten at Pepperoni's, which is a block from the hotel and features a pizza buffet bar for $4 US. Al Fresco's costs a bit more. We noticed the Vietnamese customers were all buying the "jumbo ribs" platter. I went with the tacos, just to say I ate tacos in Vietnam. Peggy had a salad and quesidilla. The food is fine, and it is fun to be eating Tex-Mex in Hanoi.

Other errands during the day included getting prints made of the babies with their caregivers, which we will give them tomorrow in Lang Son.

The day went quickly.

Today started off a bit more slowly. We slept later than I have been sleeping, and got to breakfast at 8:30 or so downstairs in the hotel. Peggy and I started making plans to take a trek across the city to the big West Lake, which we figured to be as long as 10 kilometres or six miles. Then we got a call from Marci with an invitation from World Child to take a trip to the "Ceramic Village." The famous Jenny of WC, whom we know only from phone conversations, would join us. We gave it some thought to sticking with our own plans, but we decided to join the group--and in the end it was a good decision.

We loaded up in a van at the hotel, and then we went to the Melia where we picked up the Keller family. We have barely met them.

On the drive to the village it was interesting to compare their experience in Hanoi to ours. They arrived later--maybe even Tuesday--and then they went to Thai Nguyen on Wednesday to get their babies. So while we have had more than a week here to get the lay of the land, they got their babies right away.

The babies from Thai Nguyen, it turns out, all suffered from a fungal infection that gave them visible sores. The Kellers took their baby to the clinic right away on Thursday or Friday. After getting a diagnosis and some medicine, the doctor advised them to keep the babies indoors at the Melia, a controlled environment, for a few days. So today was essentially one of their first outings out of their hotel, other than going to pick up the babies.

For those of you adopting from Thai Nguyen, Jenny talked about the problem in the van ride. The orphanage is going to be cleaned and sanitized. Our conversations about the orphanages gave us a little bit more information. Adopting from Thai Nguyen orphanage is a little bit like adopting in China; these are babies for whom the birth parents aren't known. We learned, as well, that for some of the ethnic groups, superstitions are strong--and that twins are sometimes abandoned for superstitious reasons.

The ceramic village, located a few miles outside of Hanoi, wasn't a big hit with us, at first. We started in a big main building, with several floors of pots, cups, flower vases.... You get the picture. Some of the pieces interested us--like big coffee mugs. And we liked these "kissing cups." On one floor there is a demonstration set up, with unfinished pots, paint and brushes, and a kiln. Robbie, Katie, and Betty painted their own cups. It's free unless you want them to fire your cup.

But once we went outside and started going shop to shop, we warmed up to the village a little bit more. Eventually we found some interesting smaller items that we think will fit into our bags--and make it home intact. The Kellers had some friends who made the same trip in December, and they did some buying. When they got home to the states, the pieces were broken. We hope we can do better than that because we bought small things that we can pack safely.

We have been told the Luc's name, Nghiep, means accomplishments, and we have seen it used in different ways--including a giant flower display apparently celebrating and literally spelling out Ho Chi Minh's accomplishments. But at the ceramic village we found a sign with Maisie's name, Minh Tam, for the first time.

Tonight Jenny organized a dinner for all the families at a restaurant that also featured traditional Vietnamese food and music. In the van she copied the name and address of the restaurant on a piece of paper. She told us to give it to the taxi driver. I took a look at it, noted the address, and passed it on to Marci.

At 5:30 Peggy and I met Marci, her daughter Katie, Lisa (carrying her baby in her Bjorn), and her mom Cindy in the lobby and we headed out to the restaurant on foot. "The address is 1 Ly Thai Tho," I told them confidently, "and so that must be near the big statue of Ly Thai Tho down by the lake, on the other side." It would be about a one mile hike.

We followed our usual route to the lake, made our way around to the other side, found the statue, and then found Ly Thai Tho street. We followed the numbers down to number one. But it wasn't a restaurant. It was a dress shop next to a motorcycle garage. Marci had given the sheet with the name of the restaurant to her mother, who took a cab. We were, well, really, really lost.

It was a moment of some distress--and it was my fault. We were late for dinner, lost in a strange part of Hanoi, without any idea where we were supposed to be going.

Eventually we called the hotel's main desk, which called Martin, who told them where we should go. So my phone came in handy. It turns out we were on the wrong side of the lake, after our 30-minute walk. The address was 1 Le Thai Tho, not Ly Thai Tho. And the restaurant was a big restaurant right on the lake--just five minutes walk from our hotel.

We hailed taxis, gave the correct address, and arrived at the restaurant--only 50 minutes late. The rest of the group didn't even know about our adventure.

Dinner was nice, with real Vietnamese food--and we bought a CD from the musicians. We sat with Andrew, a World Child volunteer who helps with translating--and has a whole life story that is pretty remarkable for a 22-year-old guy. He is also really tall and really big; he used to play football and basketball. Among other things, he operates a Nepalese restaurant in Ho Chi Minh City.

We still keep asking about Martin, whom we haven't seen for days. We're told he's doing a translating marathon, trying to prepare the paperwork for the next rounds of World Child families who will make this trip.

On the way home, yes, we walked, and trusting that we knew how to get back to the hotel, we stopped for ice cream. We got back to the hotel safe and sound.

So we have managed to pass the time since we visited with Maisie and Luc on Friday. And now tomorrow at 6:00 AM we board the van to Lang Son again--and this time we return with the babies.

We have been thinking about our plans for their names, and we have come to a decision to incorporate their Vietnamese names. Luc will be Luc Au Su Doyle, with Maisie's name Maisie Minh Tam Doyle.

We can't waiting until the morning!

Happy healthy and quiet...

2007-03-23T05:31:00.000-06:00

We're back from our trip to Lang Son. And the babies are amazing--healthy, happy, and quiet. It was hard to leave them behind, but we will return to Lang Son on Monday for the official giving and receiving ceremony. Many of our questions were answered--and we got to know Luc and Maisie at least a little bit.

Some details: Lang Son is a three-hour trip in a comfortable van arranged for by World Child. The fee, split between the two families, was 1,400,00 VN dong. Nancy, whose English is excellent, does an amazing job answering questions. She arrived with the van at 8:30, and we were on the road at 8:45.

The first hour of the trip winds through Hanoi's streets and then over the Red River bridge, where there are more Hanoi streets. Then it is out over a second bridge over the river, which must wind back and forth, and travel is fast on a four-lane divided highway. That highway narrows to two lanes in opposite directions the second hour, but the travel is still fast. It gets a little hairy as the driver uses the opposite lane to pass. He has some kind of warning horn that he presses constantly; you get used to it.

The third hour is amazing. Tall cliffs tower on the west side of the road, with terraced fields and small villages, as the road follows a valley. Lang Son is set in the middle of a lowland, but you can see the jutting mountains nearby. Total distance is 155 kilometers--about 100 miles.

The orphanage is tucked up an alley road after a ten minute drive through the city of Lang Son. It has a fence around it. There is a garage area with a parking lot. There is a main office building. Then there seem to be two buildings, several stories high, that house the babies and older children of the orphanage. In front of these buildings is a garden, which Nancy says the older children work each day, and a patch of grassless field. We didn't notice the first time, but at either end of that patch are small soccer goals!

We were directed into the main office building, which seemed almost deserted. It has a big reception or meeting room, with an oblong table and a statue of Ho Chi Minh. A large sign on the wall celebrates the new year of 2007, left over from Tet, and a government banner proclaims some kind of slogan, no doubt.

We met the orphanage director, first, as Nancy translated. The babies and the staff were eating lunch at noon. They would come to see us when they finished.

We were all upstairs on the second floor at the WC when Peggy looked out the front window and said, "Babies are coming!" Everyone ran downstairs; Marci never made it back to the WC.

The caregivers held two babies, and they were saying, "N-gip, N-gip." We still can't say the name the way they say it. So the two Nghiep boys arrived first--one for Marci and one for us. Nancy later told us that the caretakers hadn't realized we were there for four babies, and the other two followed a few minutes later after she reminded them.

Both Nghiep boys, who also share the same birthday, are cared for by the same woman. Marci and Peggy seemed to know right away which one belonged to whom. Peggy said she recognized Luc, but the real giveaway was that he was wearing the same shirt he wore in his pictures. It has green tanks on it.

Luc moved from adult to adult easily. We noticed right away that he makes the pouty face we've seen in the pictures. The caregiver joked to Nancy that he's trying to talk when he makes that face, but that he doesn't know how.

Minh Tam, our Maisie came last, after Marci's girl arrived. Her caregiver seemed a little bit more protective of her. Maisie wouldn't take her eyes off the caregiver for the first few minutes that I was holding her. But she started looking at other people--including the person holding her--after a while.

We switched the babies back and forth a few times. We took lots of pictures in various combinations--Peggy with two at once, the caregivers with each of their babies, Peggy holding one and me holding one.

Nancy had warned us that the visit might last as little as 15 minutes. But in the end it was an hour. Luc's caregiver was friendliest, but even Maisie's caregiver warmed up.

One highlight was when Luc peed on me. They don't use diapers. The caregivers just laughed at the spot on my pants. Robbie, Marci's 13-year-old, took a picture of it.

Maisie's caregiver took her away first. That was the cue for the others.

Nancy went into the orphanage itself with the cameras and some gifts for babies from other World Child families that had been sent with Marci. When she returned, she did some business with the orphanage.

Then we loaded up the van again at 2:00 or so and returned to Hanoi. We hit Friday rush hour traffic at 5:00 when we hit the city. I took some video out of the window of the van to catch the swerving motor scooters in action.

We originally posted this without the photos, but now, as you can see, the photos are here. You have been such great readers and responders. Thank you for your support. We love to get your comments.

In case you don't know, we actually cannot read the blog here in Hanoi using blogspot. We can see how it looks only in the preview mode for the layout. Blogspot must be blocked. We did see it in Sa Pa, which is interesting. Of course, my cell phone didn't work there, but it does work in Hanoi.

Mairead says the comments link disappeared from this post for a while. But I think I fixed it now.

Baby Cot and a Visit to Lang Son Soon

2007-03-22T05:22:00.000-06:00

With news that we travel to Lang Son tomorrow at 7:30 to visit the babies, we at least prepared by finally finding a baby cot at what we call the Hanoi Mall (also known as the Trang Tien Plaza). We bought it on an afternoon shopping trip with Marci and Lisa, and it was just delivered to our hotel room. For 1,200,000 VN dong, it is a bargain! The delivery man, who probably delivered it by scooter, wouldn't take a tip, but he did accept one of our Chicago Marathon hats.

If you haven't figured it out by now, we are just visiting tomorrow, and our G and R is now scheduled for Monday. We hope that is a firm date, but one never knows in Vietnam. Patience seems to be the name of the game.

Our baby cot purchase at the Mall gave me a chance to get a photo of the motor bikes lined up waiting for what appears to be one of three traffic signals in Hanoi. These traffic signals seem to be only suggestions to drivers, bikers and pedestrians, rather than actual rules about whose turn it is to cross.

On Ed's run, he discovered a place called Bar-B-Que Chicken, so we ate there today with the whole crowd (Lisa, Betty, Marci, Katie and Tien), and then celebrated our fast food indulgence with the masks they handed us on the way out. If you can't tell in the photo of the motor bikes, many riders have face masks, I assume to block the exhaust of the traffic. You can buy them all over. But we got our chicken masks just for eating at the hip and trendy new Western style chicken joint (though they served a side of fish sauce with the chicken and rice).

We did miss our driver's arrival with the baby cot, but here's a glimpse of our street at rush hour. It is a one-way street, but no one seems to pay much attention to that. Mostly, it is more like a warning than a requirement.
We had to laugh at the two guys on a motor bike carrying a large pane of glass. And I particularly liked the family of three with mom in a mini-skirt and high heels sitting side saddle, no hands. For all of my worry about walking around the streets with the babies, the rest of Hanoi seems perfectly happy to ride with infants and toddlers astride motor bikes. And we worry about kids on bicycles without helmets!

Take the Last Train To Sa Pa

2007-03-21T21:47:00.000-06:00

World Child must know that we are all anxious, so when we arrived on Saturday with nothing to do until Thursday, they planned a trip to Sa Pa for us to pass the time. Martin arranged with the hotel for us to take the night train to Lao Cai and then a mini-bus from Lao Cai to Sa Pa, up a switchback mountain road.

We piled out of our mini-bus in front of the Hanoi train station to a crowd that would rival Grand Central, but it was all out of doors. The noise was deafening, and there must have been 100 Pho sellers squatting by the road side. The honking and screeching taxis and scooters made crossing the road to station a delicate operation. We trekked out to the tracks, walked down the dimly lit walk, peering into the sleeper cars with tiffany lamps, water bottles, flowers on the tables, and two beds adjacent to dark wood walls. But, we just kept walking. The next cars didn't have the wood wall, but they did still have a lamp and this time four beds in the sleeper cars, but we still kept walking.

Finally, we reached our car. Martin looked shocked and the rest of us tried to take it all in stride. After conferring rapidly in Vietnamese with the train conductor, Martin assigned us to our berths. Marci, her mom Betty and her two kids Robby and Katie shared a room with Lisa and her mom Cindy. Ed, Martin and I were in the room next door. The six berths, about the size of coffins, were stacked and stocked with pillows and blankets. Martin agreed to climb to the top, Ed took the middle and I was on the bottom bunk. Just before the train pulled out, our other three roommates came in and settled into the berths across the spacious aisle. Around 2 am two of our roommates left and two new ones got on.

As Ed said to Martin, "If this was the Titanic, we'd been in steerage, with the Irish." I'm not sure Martin got the joke, but he was interested in steerage.

I didn't sleep much on the train, and by the time it was day-light, we were approaching Lao Cai. Staring out the window at the neatly terraced rice paddies, tin-roofed wooden huts, I noticed water buffalo precariously near the train windows. They seemed unperturbed by our passing.

Our mini-bus from Lao Cai swerved and rocked up the mountain to Sa Pa, dropping trekkers and backpackers off along the way. As the last stop, we were hindered by the mountain-top traffic jam, but made it to our hotel, the Green Bamboo, in time for breakfast. We met our guide, Hao, at breakfast and he explained the next two days. We'd visit a Black H'mong village first, then on the next day Giay village.

Hiking down to the H'mong village, we were literally surrounded by H'mong girls, all speaking fabulous English that they learned from tourists, who were trying to sell the traditional H'mong indigo embroidered clothing and bags. Robby and Katie made friends and even exchanged email addresses with the H'mong girls. (Though the girls speak excellent English, and some of them French as well, they don't read and write, so I am not sure how effective the emailing will be).

Hao confirmed to us what my suspicion had been all along. The H'mong people had been a much more nomadic group, hunting and growing corn and rice all around the Sa Pa mountains and valleys. More recently, the Vietnamese government has taught them to farm in a single area, and much like the Native American reservation system, the government seems eager to on the one hand protect some aspects of traditional H'mong culture, while on the other assimilating the H'mong into Vietnamese society.

The children don't attend school regularly. Hao explained that the Vietnamese government has tried to teach the H'mong about family planning, but that does not seem to be working. I felt like an intruder at times, especially when Hao brought us into a H'mong family house, explaining that they would hang green leafs outside if they were praying or didn't want visitors. On the other hand, the H'mong people themselves were hospitable and welcoming.

I do wonder about the issue of cultural integrity, and whether this influx of tourist money is something that will ultimately be problematic. It does seem that the encroachment of the West and a more urban Vietnamese culture is inevitable, and perhaps this mix of government protection along with "improvements" like electricity in the small houses, is the only way to avoid complete cultural annihilation.

The physical beauty of the place is astonishing, and even though we were there on a rainy and foggy day, the green terraced mountains and the 40 foot bamboo stands seemed to exude a kind of calm.

On the way back up, Betty got a ride on a motor scotter, and our other guide Martin came zooming by on one as well. Ed and I and the others took the long walk back up to our hotel, then made plans for day two.

Ed and I also made it back to the Sa Pa market, where up top you can get all of the textiles made in the villages and down below you can get every kind of food imaginable: rows and rows of whole chickens, buckets of crabs crabs, pails of fish, entire slabs of beef. The smell is of wood smoke mixed with fish and damp. As the early morning shoppers, we were surrounded by H'mong women trying to sell their wares.

Lucy, a 16 year old H'mong girl, became our translator for the morning. We bought bags, traditional baby carriers, wall hangings, hats and outfits for the babies, and even a stuffed water buffalo. All have the smoky smell of the homes where they are made. We wonder about the indigo dye, but someone told us that we can wash them in vinegar to set it when we get home. We'll have a big pile of things for Elizabeth, Doyle, Griffin, Kate, and Sean to choose from.

In the Gaiy village, there was clearly a feeling of tourism, since a little store/restaurant had been set up to accommodate the many trekkers.

Out back, we climbed a bamboo bridge over a river that feeds the rice paddies. Ed spent much of the time in this village talking with Ping, a girl of about 11 or 12 who spoke English, French, and German (as well as Vietnamese and her own dialect). Ping and the other girls didn't quite believe that we were here to adopt babies. We told them we'd come back to visit in a few years.

Hao told us that in the last five years, much of Sa Pa has been developed with WTO money. We've read that the trend to commercialize in Sa Pa will undoubtedly continue as there are plans for a fancy hotel complex in the works. You can also see the influence of the French, as Sa Pa was once a place filled with French villas. Hao also told us that when the Chinese invaded in 1979, many of the villas were destroyed, but the feeling remains.

The last event of our Sa Pa trip was Hao's wedding feast. He'd been married just a few days before, and his wife was one of the cooks at our hotel. So, we joined them for a wedding feast in the hotel restaurant. This was real Vietnamese food, with water bottles of home made rice wine on the table, along with sticky rice, bamboo soup, and a whole roasted chicken, head and all. The vegetables contained the rest of the chicken -- stomach, heart, eggs (and Katie was brave and ate one of the eggs, which looked much like a yolk). It was a good final meal before our trip back down to Lao Cai and the night train back to Hanoi.

We do have to tell you about the mini-bus ride back down the mountain.

When the bus pulled up at our hotel, I thought there was no way all nine of us, with our luggage, were getting on that jammed full bus, but we did -- with much negotiating by Martin and the driver. After what felt like a treacherous u-turn atop the mountain, our bus driver stopped again at another hotel and we groaned collectively. In total, 24 passengers plus the driver and lots of luggage were crammed onto a bus intended to hold no more than half that number.

We arrived back in Hanoi tired, but excited that Lisa heard -- just as the train was leaving the station -- that she would be meeting her baby the next day. This time, we knew what to expect on the train ride home, or rather to our temporary home in Hanoi. Martin did try to negotiate with the hotel (without our knowledge) for the Tiffany-lamped first class cars, but we all seemed to like the adventurous feel to the "steerage" cars. We are Irish, after all!

What we did on what was supposed to be the day before

2007-03-21T16:42:00.000-06:00

I'm up early at 3:30 AM on Thursday--even earlier than my usual Chicago wake-up. We went to bed with no word about today, and at this point it seems unlikely that today is the day.

Peggy went to bed last night saying that she's all right with the delay, and I believe her.

As many of you know--and as I said at the start of the blog--the journey here to some degree began with the death of our premature infant son, Declan, three summers ago. It is hard, after that, not to worry always that something will go wrong.

But even with this delay, when Peggy was watching Lisa with her baby, I think she realizes that this is really going to happen.

We're so ready for this. At the same time, we have all the many worries--some silly, some serious, some real, some false--that anybody would have in our situation. Will we be good parents? Will we know how to take care of the baby? Will the babies be healthy? And then the fun questions: What will they be like? What will happen next?

We still have to tell you about Sa Pa. But that is an entry in itself.

Let me tell you about yesterday, which was supposed to be the "day before." We're so happy that other adoptive families seem to be following the blog. The blogs we read before were so helpful to us. On the one hand, maybe, you don't want to read about other people's experiences because you don't want to spoil the surprises. But even the things we knew about before we got here were still surprises. And maybe some of the practical stuff we're trying to narrate will be helpful.

Here's a picture from yesterday, which today becomes, unfortunately, all packed up and nowhere to go. We each have a baby backpack with two changes of clothes. We have six bottles to bring along. We have a container of formula and a two-liter bottle of water to mix with it. We will ask to keep the cloths Luc and Maisie are wearing from the orphanage, so we have some cloths to exchange--with some extras.

Then there are a dozen or so diapers for the G&R day and drive, and the diaper stuff--wipes (yes, we found them here finally). Finally, some toiler paper; we are told that in case we have to stop, the facilities along the road will be very basic.

Then we have a big duffle, where we have packed our two baby Bjorns. But mainly it is filled with the gifts. People have heard about the gifts. The Vietnam TravelTalk Yahoo group has been discussing them this week. There is an official list--including the people here in Vietnam, including World Child staff, who help with the adoption, and including the caregivers at the orphanage, with special cards for the primary caregivers. We basically made up small goody bags for the caregivers, in little party sacks. We've been told they really like American lotions and chocolate; we added chapstick and a few notecards. We spent some time yesterday assembling all that, filling bags.

We also have gifts for the birth mothers, who we will meet at the G&R. For us there are two, but no fathers, and from what we understand right now, the mothers are young and unwed. We bought gold necklaces with heart pendants for them. It was the hardest and saddest gift to buy. We give them so little and they will give us so much--and give up so much themselves. We've read at least one other blog that describes what seems to be the sadness of these mothers at the ceremony. We've talked about this here in our roup, and Marci says that she knows she will cry about this at the ceremony.

We also wanted to bring things for the other children at this orphanage, which includes older children. I wrote a note to a friend at the Chicago Marathon, and he supplied a bunch of Chicago Marathon baseball caps. We bought some bags of small chocolates, for them, as well. When Peggy's class raised money for the orphanage cribs, they had a bit more left, so her class will also "sponsor" a child at the orphanage. These are gifts for that child, who we hope to meet, to share with friends.

Just so you know, after seeing what Lisa brought to Thai Nguyen and seeing the luggage Marci brought from the U.S., we feel like we haven't been generous enough. Remember that big luggage pile at the airport? Apparently a lot of it was gifts for the orphanage--in our luggage, too, thankfully. We were just a little bit less ambitious in terms of what we thought we could carry here and to Lang Son. Marci and Lisa just didn't seem to care about that because they had things they wanted to give to the orphanages.

Of course, our gifts are fine--and we like the idea of Vietnamese boys and girls running around with Chicago Marathon hats. We weren't really trying to make up the deficit--and we really had planned this ahead of time, in conversation with Jenny from World Child--but yesterday we also bought some Vietnamese books to take to the orphanage. Apparently the Harry Potter collection in Vietnamese was a big hit there back when the first families came in October.

Which brings us to our other activity yesterday: shopping. We took three excursions, actually, over the course of the day.

First was a journey to "baby street," the street of store stalls where vendors sell baby goods--cloths, diapers, towels and layette, and all the basics. Yes, they have babies in Vietnam, and those parents need everything that we need. We were told correctly that you can get basically everything you need here when you arrive, with the exception of bottle liners for the American style drop in bottles. To be honest, I wasn't paying close attention, but I suspect you can even find that stuff (I'll check again on the next trip). The labels on these items are a bit confusing, of course, but many of them have English as well as Vietnamese. What's more, the packaging and brand names are often what we recognize. I suppose this raises the possibility of terrible disaster--you think you've bought diaper rash cream but it turns out you ware putting something else on your baby. But the point here is that you don't have to bring everything from home. What's more, it is not expensive.

Nearby to baby street, which I think is called Lan Ong street, by the way, is a street of vendors selling strollers. This isn't really stroller street, because these stores also have toys--many of them rolling toys--and other baby equipment, like the bouncers and saucers. We have not made the stroller plunge yet, but the price we were quoted was 300,000 dong--about $20 US. Peggy can't quite imagine trying to push a baby stroller across a street in Hanoi; we barely make it across alive ourselves. My idea is that we can carry the babies down to the lake, and then push them in the stroller there. We spend a lot of time walking around the lake, it seems--three times around yesterday, even. But we've held off on that purchase, in part because we would have to buy two of them. And since we didn't buy, we didn't take the next step--negotiating the price. We are terrible at this, but it is what you are supposed to do. We said the price was 300,000 dong--but it isn't. We are supposed to offer another price--as much as 50 percent off. The vendor will then counter. If we can get to 75 percent of the first price, we are doing well. Above that, the owner wins.

Suffice it to say, we seldom win. We seldom even negotiate. Maybe for the big item, like a stroller, we might try to get a few dollars off. But it just seems to us like we have the money, and the Vietnamese, for the most part, don't. Saving two dollars on a stroller is not a big deal to us--but for them it is probably a full meal on a family table. As you can see, we are feeling some American guilt as we walk around with a wallet full of money. This hit home for us more on the trip to Sa Pa. We will write about that, if you are interested, when we get the chance.

But in the meanwhile, we are shopping in Hanoi. We had also set out in the morning, in fact, to look for "baby cots." That's what the Vietnamese call cribs, apparently, as one of our internet adoptive friends, Meg, told us before we left. Our hotel charges $10 a night for a baby cot. We will probably need two, but we are still wondering if the babies can share one. But an alternative to the hotel charge would be to buy a crib. The question: Do the Vietnamese use "pac'n play" cribs/playpens? Peggy's sisten Kathy suggested we just bring one of hers and just leave it behind when we return. We were trying to pack light at the time. We didn't see any pac'n play cribs--or any baby cots at all--on baby street or in the stroller stores.

But as I have thought about it, I think we might go back there and try again. This time we'll ask, "Baby cots?" Maybe they have it in the back? We just figure that we will need a crib for ten days or so, and if we can get something for less than 150,000 dong, we come out ahead. The thought has also been that maybe we could leave it behind somehow for another family.

Just so you know, in our group we've been joking about the low-cost alternatives. The hotel rooms here at the Hong Ngoc don't really have dressers (another small detail), otherwise a dresser drawer might be a baby cot? We've also made Moses jokes that involve using baskets, which we presume we could find on basket street or wicker or ratan street somewhere.

At the same time, the babies have been sleeping on floor mats. I think we all want to get them into cribs as soon as we can.

I've been at this a while now. Just so you know, it is now 5:00 AM, our originally scheduled departure time for Lang Son--before the mysterious delay.

Where were we? Shopping....

To finish our excursion to baby street, let me admit that I got us a bit lost on the way--not lost, exactly, but our route was a bit round-about. The good thing is that no one can make fun of me for not asking for directions on the street, because we wouldn't understand the answer.

Our second excursion of the day was with Marci and her daughter, Katie. We forgot to bring pictures of the babies to give the caregivers, but I have them on a flash drive and we went out to print them at a photo store. Marci, meanwhile, brought a big camera lens with her for her digital Nikon, thinking she wanted to shoot a lot of the scenery. Problem is, that lens isn't so good at close quarters taking pictures of the events of people, as she discovered in Sa Pa. So she wanted to buy another lens for close quarters.

We walked the circumfrance of Hoan Kiem Lake, again, visiting ten different camera and photo shops. I was able to get my prints ordered. Marci had a harder time. No one even sold lenses separately for her camera. Finally, near the end of the trip around, she found a guy with just one small case of cameras on the sidewalk who was willing to sell her a 35-70 zoom off a camera. He wanted $100. Marci tried to negotiate. I think she suggested $80. He just laughed, shook his head, and really $100. "Already low," he said, waving a flat hand. "Not $120." We told him we might be back.

That's another part of the negotiating instructins we've been given. You don't tell them you are going to get a better price somewhere else, American style. "Don't say that," Martin told us when I discussed negotiating skills with him. I think it is rude, maybe? You just say, you might come back later. Everyone knows what that means.

It turns out we didn't come back, though. Almost all the way around the lake, we found a store full of used and new cameras and lenses. Marci even negotiated. The first price was $150. She got it for $140--a 50-55mm macro lens, I think, with a big wide angle option.

After the camera store we stopped at Intimex, the grocery store. We'd already been there to buy formula and some other things, including a giant bottle of water. We decided to get a smaller bottle to take to Lang Son, and we needed a container to take some formula from the big can. Marci needed a few things, too.

The strange part was that the power had apparently gone out. We're not sure whether it was the block, or the store building, or the area. Our hotel had had an outtage in the morning, too. The Intimex store didn't close. Instead, the cashiers had account books out and they hand wrote down the items and the prices, then used calculators to total. We stood in line, in the dark, for a long time.

Our final excursion was coupled with dinner at a Pho restaurant. We went to a chain restaurant by the lake, Pho 24, with 24 different kinds of noodles, meat, and soup. I ate my first bowl of Pho at Sa Pa, for breakfast. Peggy and I each got a big bowl, she got a smoothie drink, and I got a Halida Vietnamese beer for 99 dong total--about $7 US. The food came in three minutes, so this is basically Vietnamese fast food--cheap and fast! It is also way better than McDonalds.

After our Pho, we investigated a big building at the bottom of the lake which we had passed a bunch of times. It had a scrolling marquis, which said some things in Vietnamese, but also, "Welcome to the Plaza." There were lots of lights. And inside we found the Mall.

The bottom floors had fancy shops, Pierre Cardin, luggage, cosmetics. But on the fourth floor, up a series of escalators (there is also an elevator), we found a combination grocery store/department store. We don't even know what it is called--maybe the Citimart? It wasn't mentioned in our Rough Guide to Vietnam. Basically, it is a Super Walmart, without the size and variety. It was a really a combination between an old IGA or A&P and a Woolworth's, for those of you who remember.

Peggy was surprisingly at home. In our instructions about what to bring from those who had come before, we had been told that we would probably want to bring our own baby cloths. But there were a lot of cloths on baby street. And here in the Plaza Citmart, there were a lot of cloths and they were really, really cheap. They do make a lot of American baby cloths in Vietnam for export, it seems, and some of them apparently end up staying here. They had Mickey Mouse things and Winnie the pooh. We have drawers full of baby cloths back home in Chicago, but of course Peggy started looking through these things. I pointed out that it was cheap, yes, but it is not Gap or Old Navy or even Target cloths. "But these cloths are Vietnamese," she insisted, "and so are the babies. We could have brought them home in Vietnamese cloths!"

That seems a good place to end this. We bought only a few things--like two matching hats with cat faces and whiskers, each for 12,000 dong (less than a dollar). We saw all the baby products we brought from home, including Johnson's baby shampoo, diapers, and baby wipes. They had baby tubs, and we might return for one those. You get the idea...

Now all we need are the babies!

Still trying to be patient

2007-03-21T08:39:00.000-06:00

It's Wednesday night, and we got back from Sa Pa at 5:00 AM this morning. We spent the day doing small final things to prepare for G&R day--but with a little bit of doubt hanging in the air.

We have lots to tell about Sa Pa. It was an amazing trip.

But first, where we are: On the train last night in Lao Chai, Martin got a call from the World Child office. The Thai Nguyen orphanage group, with our new friend Lisa, would be going to get their babies on Wednesday, not Friday as originally planned. That was great news for all of us. Martin said he hoped to have good news for the rest of us, soon--confirmation of our Thursday appointments in Lang Son for our G&Rs.

What?, you ask. You thought it was all confirmed for Thursday. We did, too. But apparently things can be a little bit fluid in Lang Son province.

Nancy, another World Child staff member, came by at 2:00 today to pick up Lisa and newly arrived Karrie, along with another family we have not yet met, and they drove off to Thai Nguyen in the World Child baby van. At 8:00 tonight they returned with their babies. We just returned from Lisa's room. Her daughter is wonderful--laughing, smiling, and gurgling. Lisa is so happy, we can tell.

The word from Nancy at 8:00 was that they were still hoping for word about tomorrow. Last night's call came late, as well.

So we're still waiting. And while we are enjoying Hanoi and doing pretty well with the waiting, we really are anxious for it to be over.

On various errands today we walked around Hoan Kiem Lake in the Old Quarter of Hanoi at least twice. Here's a photo of Ed with a ceeramic wall picture of the famous mythic turtle of the lake, which provided a magic sword that the boy emperor Ly Thai To used to defeat the enemies of Vietnam around 1000 AD.

Here's another picture of Ed at the Cathedral today near our hotel.

We still hope to get the call tonight that tells us to be ready at 5:00 AM tomorrow for the trip to Lang Son.

Walking in the streets of Hanoi can be dangerous

2007-03-18T06:59:00.000-06:00

We spent our first day in Hanoi walking the streets--and dodging the motorscooters. It was quiet when we went out the first time at 9 AM for a walk around Hoan Kiem Lake. It was busier at 11 when we walked back down to the lake to stroll the aisles at Intimex, a supermarket store. Yes, they have diapers, baby clothes, and other basic essentials--but they do not seem to have baby wipes, for which we must continue to search. At 1 PM we went out again and bought tickets for the 2:45 show at the water puppet theatre, an acclaimed marianette show with, well, water puppets, which reenacts the story of the boy emperor who defends Hanoi from invaders using a magical sword given to him by a water turtle from the Hanoi lake. Then he returns it, something like the King Arthur legend. Before the show we had time to kill, so we took a walk around the lake again, this time passing by the famous prison where the Vietnam government kept American POWs, including now Senator John McCain.

Finally, tonight at 6:30 we went out to find a recommended Italian restaurant called the Mediterranean. We got lost, partly because the city was dark and the traffic was insane. Gangs of motorbikes, seemingly hell bent on scaring pedestrians to the sidewalks, screamed about the city--chased, it seems, by taxis.

It took us 25 minutes of walking to find the restaurant, but only 5 minutes to get back to the hotel. There we met Martin, and we began the trip to Sa Pa, as we now know it is spelled, which begins on the 10 PM night train from the Hanoi stationj.

We don't know if we will have internet in Sa Pa. If not, you won't hear from us again until Wednesday.

Hanoi at night

2007-03-17T18:25:00.000-06:00

So we're here in Hanoi! After sleeping for a few hours, I found myself awake at 4:00 AM or--my usual wake up time in Chicago. Of course, in Chicago right now it is 4:00 PM. I'm sitting here in a pair of Hong Ngoc hotel slippers and my Hong Ngoc terry robe, writing on the internet. So far, so good.

The photo (we're having trouble with photos, give us some time) shows us with the entourage. Three families of the five who will be in Hanoi with us traveled on the same flight from Chicago. During our first conversation with Lisa in O'Hare, she commented on how light Peggy and I seemed to have packed. We didn't think so at all--two 50 lb/22 kilo bags to check, a 25-lb/11 kilo roller carry-on, and then each of us with a personal bag (mine was heavy). But when we got to Hanoi and saw what they brought, we understood. To be fair, Marci's group is four--two kids and her mother. Still, as we were waiting with World Child's Martin, who met us at the airport, he said the taxi arranged by the hotel would carry 16 people. He did a doubletake, I think, when he saw all the luggage.

Of course it was fine, in the end. Somehow the taxi-driver managed to fit it all into his van. We don't have a picture of that.

Martin is as nice and already as helpful as advertised by the other families who have met him previously. He said he recognized me when we walked out of the customs area--and then he also remembered Peggy's face, from our applications. He remembered that I was an English teacher--and we reminded him that Peggy is, too. He asked what we thought of his English. It is good, we told him, and Peggy said, "And it is way better than our Vietnamese."

What else should we tell you? Korean Air, by the way, was great. The 747 flight was staffed by a group of maybe as many as 12 flight attendants--tall and slim, attractive, impeccably dressed in uniforms that included scarfs ribbons in their identically arranged hair, perfectly mannered and helpful. For fourteen hours they zoomed up and down the aisles--two good meals, coffee, tea, juice and water trays (lots of juice and water trays).

I didn't even read. The small screen on the back of the seat in front of us carried a selection of thirty or so movies. I watched three: first, the crazy Robin Williams political movie "Man of the Year," then a kind of depressing relationships movie with Zach Braff called "The Last Kiss,"and then a nutty thriller with Denzel Washington "Deja Vu." None of the movies were very good but they passed the fourteen hours. I slept some, too. I also listened to some music from the airline collection, including the Strokes and the Flaming Lips, both of which I liked a lot. Oh and Peggy and I played our travel Scrabble--I won but it was really, really close and came down to the last word.

The only hiccup of the trip came in the Seoul airport when we set ourselves up at gate 23 to wait for the 6:55 PM boarding call for flight 683 to Hanoi. We settled in at about 6:15 or so for the wait. I feel asleep as Peggy expressed concern about where the other families were waiting. I woke up at 7:00 or so, with Peggy a little bit more worried. The line for the gate was really long as they called for boarding at gate 23. I told her we should wait another minute until the line got shorter, but something didn't seem right. Peggy walked up to the gate and came back with the information that the flight boarding at gate 23 did not seem to be flight 683. Uh, oh. We loaded up our things and the gate attendants at gate 22 took a look at our boarding passes. "Gate 24," they told us. Uh-oh. It was 7:10 and as we hurried toward the gate we heard, "Final boarding call for flight 683." We started running. Of course we made the flight and even had a few minutes to get settled before it pushed away. It was not even really a close call.

It's 5:00 AM or so, and now even Peggy is awake. Martin comes by at 8:00 tonight to take us to the train to Sapa. Peggy is having some second thoughts. She's worried that another night of sleep travel will mess us up. But it is supposed to be an amazing place, and we're going.

We don't have much else planned for today, but I have suggested to Peggy that maybe we could take a run around the lake this morning!

We got to O'Hare very early, of course, and had almost three hours to kill there--with no coffee available once we passed through airport security. We met a woman on our flight from Ottawa, Canada, who is travelling from Ho Chi Minh City to Hanoi for her holiday. She's booked on the same flight home with us. She sat with us for a little while at the Welly's cafe in Seoul during our three hour layover, where I drank an Erdiner Weisbier out of a large glass and Peggy couldn't finish her small but potent bottle of Korean green tea, which is a lot different than the Sobe, Arizona, Lipton, or Snapple green teas we get at home. We were worried when we first got to the cafe because we didn't have Korean money. I had my credit card out when I realized that prices were listed in dollars everywhere, and you can just pay with good old American money for anything you want in the Incheon Seoul airport. Our other impress there: It is a giant mall, with designer goods in duty free shops up and down the airport halls. And they are big airport halls.

We have a longer layover of 5 hours on the return, and we looked into some of our options, including the travelers lounge where you can rent a room for six hours for $60 bucks or so. We'll see how things are when we get there. One thing we do know: There won't be any Weisbier at the Welly's on the return.

That brings us to Hanoi. The drive in the luggage-packed taxi van was about an hour from the airport. It was dark at 11:00 PM when we were driving, but near the airport the landscape seemed to be developing as a buisness/industrial kind of area. We saw a big Canon plant, a brewery, and some other factory and warehouse buildings under construction. There was a lot of road construction. The taxi driver drove slowly and carefully, it seemed. Closer to Hanoi and once in the city we were struck with how old the basic buildings and other infrastructure seemed to be. But it also seems very alive, even late on Saturday night. We drove by a cyclo scooter with a giant load on the back. "Flowers for the flower market," Martin told us, and later we drove by the flower market. It reminded me of pictures of old Maxwell Street--a street of plastic and canvas tents and huts with lights glowing and small movements of people. The streets got smaller and smaller as we entered the center of the city and the old quarter.

The Hong Ngoc is just another store front type building, somewhat taller perhaps, on a small street. We wouldn't even have noticed it if the van hadn't stopped. They had staff waiting for us when we arrived. We had a key and two young men brought our luggage up. I gave them each a dollar, and Peggy thought they were laughing as we closed the door. I don't know if it wasn't enough, if a single dollar seemed silly, if we should have given them dong, or if we weren't supposed to tip them at all? Somehow they got our room number on the tags of the luggage for the others, and they came by twice more trying to deliver more luggage. They were nice and friendly each time, so maybe I did okay with them...

So we leave tomorrow from our home at 8 AM…

2007-03-15T22:42:00.000-06:00

Now it is just about time to go to bed after a busy day. We’ve really had the travel stuff under control for days. We were basically packed two days ago, with finishing touches yesterday.

A small crisis came last night. We confirmed with our travel coordinator from World Child that we were supposed to get new letters of employment, updating those in our dossier, for the U.S. embassy. That one slipped by us. But we sent the emails out to our employers. Peggy got hers first thing in the morning. I didn’t get mine until late in the afternoon, which made me a little bit nervous. But in the end it was pretty simple and painless to take care of it. We’re glad that was the only crisis—except for the five minutes or so when I forgot my passport was in the travel backpack and couldn’t find it.

Among my jobs today was installing the two baby car seats in Peggy’s car, which will pick us up at the airport in three weeks or so. Yes, I left it until 10:30 PM the night before we traveled. Peggy was pretty good about that one, although I could tell she was a little bit anxious.

Tonight I also had to make a final decision about books to bring for the long trip. Peggy has a bunch of books to read for her University of Chicago classes when she returns, so she is choosing from among those. Right now it is Theodore Dreiser’s Sister Carrie for her Chicago literature class, and she’s taking at least one more of her class books. What I need is one of those books one can’t put down. The most recent one I’ve had like that was Kenny Moore’s biography of Bill Bowerman, the legendary Oregon track coach, which my cross country boys gave me last fall and which I read in a few days. But I don’t have that kind of book handy, I don’t think. I heard the Chinese writer Anchee Min on NPR this week while she was visiting Chicago, and I liked her Wild Ginger. So I will probably take her Becoming Madame Mao. Then Peggy pulled out a book of short stories by Adam Haslett, You are not a stranger here. I also have a big collection of Andre Dubus stories handy. Finally, we bought a few books by Vietnamese writers or about travelers to Vietnam. I read Dana Sachs’s The House on Dream Street back in January. But we have a few more we bought at the same time. I’ll let you know later my final choices.

Otherwise today was my last track practice. I sent the boys off to the Chicago Catholic League indoor championship meet on Sunday with a video update for the season. Then as they filed out of the room each of the 50 boys gave me hug. As someone I told said, “That’s kind of a big deal for teenage boys, isn’t it?” It was parent teacher conferences today, and when I bumped into one parent and told her, she said, “My son did that? He doesn’t even hug us.”

The last bit of news isn’t the best, but we will make the best of it. We heard yesterday that our G&R date had been moved from Monday to Wednesday. Today we were told it has been moved to Thursday. It means more waiting, of course. Our travel agent, Todd Gallinek, who had heard the news from our fellow World Child traveling families, called to say we had a small window tonight to postpone our flight to next week. We decided just to fly. Later tonight we heard from Jenny at World Child. Our Vietnam guide Martin is trying to arrange a short two-night trip to Sappa, in the northern mountains. It will be relatively inexpensive, and it includes a train ride and a visit to what I suppose is a Shangri La-type ethnic village—not a trip we could take with the babies. So we told Jenny we are flying and we are in on the Sappa trip. We will classify this as making lemonade.

Among other things, as we considered whether to postpone our travel, it did strike me that it wouldn’t have been quite right to show up at practice tomorrow after all those man-hugs.

I suspect you won’t hear from us again until we are using the internet in our Hanoi hotel room.

Filling the time

2007-03-09T08:02:00.000-06:00

So our initial blogmania subsided, and it has been a week since we have posted here.

Maybe we’ve just been busy doing various things.

One milestone, almost a formal adoption event, was a travel preparation phone call with Jenny from World Child International. She seems to be the liaison between the U.S. staff and the Vietnamese guides. When we were doing our dossier preparation and paperchasing, we had to send our materials to the Vietnamese consulate in San Francisco for authentication. In the package to them we included a Fedex envelope which sent the material on to Jenny for translation and transmittal to Hanoi. The first time Peggy addressed a package, she just wrote “Jenny” and the address. “Don’t we need a last name?” I asked. Apparently not, Peggy said, “They told me to just write ‘Jenny.’ The consulate people must know her.” Now we know her last name, however. She emailed us a 30-page travel preparation book and reviewed it with us by phone. The good news is that there weren’t many surprises for us. We’d already been pretty well prepared from our own research and emails and phone conversations with the helpful families who did the travel already. We’re still mulling the travel insurance issue. We’ve settled on the Hong Ngoc Hotel in Hanoi, cheaper than the other alternative offered by World Child, the Melia. They want us to use hotels that they choose, partly for security and safety, and partly because it is easier for them if the group of families traveling is in one place.

Have we talked about those families? We’ve made internet contact—another way to spend some time. There seem to be four families total traveling on this trip. Three of us will share the same Korean Air flight from Chicago! We used the same travel agent, Todd Gallinek, and so all that work that finally led us to Korean Air turned out to be worthwhile for all of us.

On the weekend we made a big shopping trip to Target, buying the baby things and personal items for our travel and for our return. You’ve been to Target. You don’t need the details. Suffice it to say we left after spending more time and money there than we expected to spend. And we bought diapers and wipes.

On Sunday night we were hosts for a dinner party of ten friends, and we cooked Vietnamese—or at least our version of it, from our cookbook: Into the Vietnamese Kitchen: Treasured foodways, modern flavors by Andrea Nguyen. Peggy made the Fresh Asparagus and Crab Soup (Sup Mang Tay Cua). I did the big entrees: Panfried Rice Noodles with Beef and Vegetables (Pho Xao Don) and Chicken Sir-fried with Lemongrass and Chile (Ga Xao Xa Ot). We’ve been cooking various recipes from the cookbook and from the internet for a while during the wait. But this is the first time we cooked Vietnamese for anyone else. Actually, we don’t often entertain—and seldom anyone other than big family gatherings. So this adoption thing has already been good for us as we try new things to do. To some degree we invited friends over to tell them that we won’t be seeing them for a while as we switch to baby mode. We owe a special thanks to Kelly and Jeff, who brought their last growler of Hopslam, a scarce beer from our favorite brewery Bell’s, located in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

Peggy has continued to work, of course. Last night her 40 seventh-graders and the other 80 taught by her colleagues Charlotte and Anne (who ate our Vietnamese dinner) gathered with parents at the second annual “Interview Project” reception. All the seventh-graders at the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools have to pick someone to interview—someone very different from themselves—and they transcribe and present their interview stories in presentations and posters. Then they invite the interviewees and the parents of the interviewers to an evening gathering. I probably should let Peggy tell the story, but the group of interviewees included Peggy’s former student, Mollie Stone, a music director at the Chicago Children’s Choir. At the reception, a group of seventh-grade choir members asked if Mollie could direct them right then and there, and they performed some South African songs for the group. For the second year in a row the crowd included LeAlan Jones, author and voice of the radio program "Ghetto Life 101" and a book, Our America, about growing up as an African-American boy on the South Side of Chicago. He signed many copies of his book for the students, which they read for the class and which is full of interviews that the students use as models for their own interviews.

The event was also kind of a send-off for Peggy, perhaps, who will turn her class over to Sam, who has been working with her as a student teacher since January, when we leave next week. By the way, Sam came to our dinner, too! And he will house sit for us while we’re gone. Did I mention that Sam’s father was Peggy’s English teacher years ago at Saint Ignatius—or that when Sam’s father retired, I took his job at Ignatius? Strange how things come together.

On my side, the days are pretty much occupied with coaching the Ignatius track team. It is one of those laws that the amount of time you spend doing something expands to the amount of time you have available. So I am basically a full-time track coach. It is at least a six-day-a-week commitment, with practices from 3-6 each weekday and a meet on weekends. This coming weekend we actually have track meets on Saturday and Sunday. And tonight I will be the starter for the University High meet at the University of Chicago. We ran there last week with our Ignatius team, and they asked me to help again, tonight.

There are still lots of other small odds and ends to do for our trip preparation. I did the emails and phone calls to the University of Chicago’s pediatric adoption clinic, and we have an appointment when we return. They were also helpful as we prepare for some possible health issues when we get Luc and Maisie, including the dreaded scabies, which is a common problem.

Last night while Peggy was at her reception I picked up several more bags of clothes and toys from friends Diane and Kevin, who have two boys; so we got more boys clothes, which we needed for Luc. I sorted through them, picked out the suitable sized-clothes for Luc’s age, and washed them in Dreft. Yes, I have my own sorting hat.

I wasted some time on one project. We have an old laptop computer that we will take to Vietnam. It will be fine. But I tried to set up the internet telephone service Skype on the computer. It is running Windows 98, an old program, and Skype wants something newer. At least that’s why I think it doesn’t work well. We already have a cell phone, email, and our blog, so we probably will be fine without internet telephone service.

See what I mean about tasks expanding to fill the space available?

When I started writing this, I looked at the date of the last post and at the date of this post. Now it also occurs to me that looking ahead, we will be heading to ORD in a week for a flight about this time next Friday!

One last note: I forgot to tell you that our passports came back to us from the San Francisco consulate with Vietnam visas pasted into them. And our tickets came via Fedex. So we are good to go, with tickets and visas in hand.

--Written by Ed (obviously)

Living in the Material World

2007-03-02T09:29:00.000-06:00

We now have a second dresser to store all of those sorted clothes, and thanks to my sister Kathy (and her friends), we now have pretty much everything we could ever need for bringing two babies home.

It is strange how much stuff one seems to need for babies; that such tiny creatures could require so many material things is amazing. Of course, what they need most of all is the love that we'll give them. And we have plenty of that. Seems like they should somehow cosmically be aware of our growing attachment to them via the photographs that our agency sends us.

On this snowy day, it is hard to imagine that we'll be on our way to a tropical world in only two weeks!

The Sorting Hat

2007-02-28T20:17:00.000-06:00

Of all the things one has to do as a parent, sorting baby clothes of all shapes and sizes, not to mention gender affiliations, has to be at the top of the drudgery list, especially when one doesn't have the actual company of the babies for whom all of these clothes are being sorted.

But, nonetheless that is what I found myself doing tonight. My sister, Kathy, would be proud of my efforts at organization. We have several outfits for each of them, including "dress-up" outfits for the G & R ceremony and for our embassy appointments.

It's a good thing too, since we now have finalized our flight arrangements, and we'll be flying Korean Air non-stop to Seoul, Korea from Chicago and then on to Hanoi from Seoul. It seems like a much better arrangement than flying to San Francisco first, and it will be much easier on the return trip to have only one change of planes. We have confirmed bassinets on the return trip, but alas, no foot rests. We'll have to make do with the extra relaxation afforded us by the moments of sleeping babies.

We fly out of Chicago around noon on March 16th and our G&R is scheduled for the 19th so we'll just miss meeting Maisie and Luc on St. Patty's Day; we even have an outfit for each of them with green shamrocks, but they will have to wear them after the fact. Hey, if Tet goes on for weeks, why not celebrate St. Patrick's Day for a few extras as well?

Things we didn’t know we would ever need to know

2007-02-27T22:30:00.000-06:00

One of the strangest aspects of this whole adoption marathon, journey, adventure, or whatever you want to call it: I know too much now about all kinds of strange things involving international adoption and travel, and a few other things, as well, that I never thought I would ever need to know.

Take cell phones. Our US Cellular phone would not work in Vietnam, I discovered. Too bad I just renewed the plan and bought a new phone. As our brother-in-law Tom, who works for Motorola, explained, the international standard is GSM technology. He explained that I would have to buy another phone if I wanted it to work in Vietnam. To buy the correct phone, I would also have to find out what bands they use in Vietnam. There are six band wavelengths for cell phones, and different countries use different bands. What's more, different phones are equipped with different bandwiths, as well. Tri-bands are good, with three different bands. Quad bands are better, with four. But among the three or four you have to have the right one. For Vietnam, the main bandwith turns out to be primarily 900, and so I would have to buy a GSM phone that worked on that band. It is also important to get an unlocked phone. Yes, he said, I could buy one from Ebay, as long as I could trust the phone would have the right band. Three days later I had in my hands a phone that I bought on Ebay for $50. Then I purchased a SIM card, basically a computer chip which makes the phone work and buys the phone access to a Vietnamese mobile network, for $70. With their confirmation email the company that sold me the card, Cellular Abroad, offered a $10 discount if I put a link to Cellular Abroad on my web page. That was actually the impetus to set up this blog. By the way, we could have simply purchased a phone and SIM card for Vietnam from Cellular Abroad or another vendor, for a bit more money. It remains to be seen, of course, whether our phone will actually work in Vietnam. With the more expensive phone package we might be a little bit more certain that it would work, but if we'd done that I would not know as much about cell phones.

Presumably we now have a phone number in Vietnam and a phone that will work. Incoming calls are free for us, but you will have to pay your American rates if you call.

Tonight we talked through our options on the phone (our home phone) and on email with Todd Gallinek, a travel agent in Boulder, Colorado who has specialized in adoption travel for ten years or so. On Travelocity I found various itineraries that would cost in the $3,000 range for the two of us. There were seemingly lots of flights from Chicago to Tokyo or Hong Kong, then a connection to Hanoi. Our agency said to book a return for a three-week stay, but it is important to buy an open ticket that would allow for changes in case the process takes longer than three weeks—or perhaps, if it is shorter. Todd seemed impressed with some of the options out of Chicago, except for the open-ended return. If you buy the ticket online, he noted, there’s no one at Travelocity who is going to help you make the changes you might need to make—and the airlines won’t be very helpful if you bought the ticket at Travelocity. Itineraries that piece together flights from different airlines are also dangerous because if you have to make a change and pay penalties, you might have to pay penalties to each airline. Still, I found some trips on Korean Air that seemed to work for us, especially because they flew Chicago to Seoul, then Seoul to Hanoi, in about 20 hours or so. Todd said he would check on those flights for us.

In the meantime, he put together a package on Eva Air, apparently one of his favorites. We’d fly Chicago to San Francisco, then San Francisco to Taipei, then Taipei to Hanoi. With the layovers, it would be about 27 hours total, and we would fly coach. But the return trip—the one with the two babies—held the jewels. On the long Taipei to San Francisco leg, we would fly Evergreen class, which gives us a foot rest, a head rest, and a personal television. Many of the airlines offer baby bassinettes for the long flights, which are apparently sling-like hammocks where the babies can sleep, but many simply note the request and you find out for sure if you can get one once you arrive to check in at the flight. Eva, however, confirms the bassinettes with your reservation, and he would call them first thing tomorrow morning.

We will be traveling, remember, with two five-month-olds. Confirmed bassinettes and foot rests sound like a very good feature to us.

Yes, Todd agreed, flying direct to Asia from Chicago, without a West Coast stop, might be a good thing. Korean Air is not a carrier he’s worked with, but he was willing to give them a try. He’d check into our options for changing the return, if necessary, on Korean Air. He thought he should be able to get the same fare that I was quoted on Travelocity. And while he was pretty sure they would have the bassinettes, he would check whether they would confirm the bassinettes.

I suspect we will be flying Eva.

Finally, of course, we’ve also learned a lot about international adoption—practical matters, like negotiating the process with the Department of Homeland Security and the Immigration Services, as well as philosophical and ethical matters, like why so many Americans choose to adopt from China, Vietnam, and Russia. A discussion on Paula Zahn’s evening news forum program on CNN in January created an uproar in the internet adoption community when a panelist complained that people who were adopting from China and Asia wanted high achieving, motivated, cute, porcelain doll babies, rather than darker skinned babies available through domestic programs. In fact, however, domestic adoptions, while worthwhile and rewarding, are also fraught with complications and uncertainty. Birth mothers and fathers can reclaim their children even after the adoption has been in place for years. International adoptions are much more secure, particularly so when the babies have been adopted as orphans.

Which is not to say there aren't things to think about when it comes to Americans traveling the globe to adopt babies from poorer countries. On the one hand, our adoption adventure is a remarkable testimony to the smallness of our new world, where a camera can take a picture of Maisie and Luc and we can get the pictures over the internet that day or the next. On the other hand, we are told that immediately upon leaving the airport in Hanoi we will be confronted with the poverty of Vietnam--and we will therefore have to confront our own privilege.

We have only just begun to learn about what it will mean to be adoptive parents. We have been to classes at the Family Resource Center in Chicago where we have learned about matters of attachment and developmental delays for babies after institutionalization.

We now know a lot about all kinds of things that I never thought I would know. And of course it still isn’t half of what we will know in a couple months—or even after we return from our trip in April.

A real date

2007-02-27T13:41:00.000-06:00

Peggy got the call today from World Child while at work. Our G&R will be March 19 or 20. They want us in Hanoi by March 18. We should plan on a three-week stay.

Peggy and I took a walk to the Kinko's Fedex and put our visa applications in the mail.

I just sent our passport names and spellings to the travel agency!

We'll try to fly out on March 15th.

A tentative date for travel

2007-02-27T07:41:00.000-06:00

We now have a tentative date for travel: Monday, March 12. It is not a for certain date, but we will send off a visa application today asking for entry to Vietnam starting on March 12. We've been told not to book a flight yet. But we will have a more certain date soon.

We might be meeting Luc and Maisie on Saint Patrick's Day!

Responding to another email on the Yahoo Vietnam Travel Group last night, I mentioned that we'd been given a tentative travel date. I got two emails back right away from other World Child clients who are waiting for travel dates to go to Lang Son. All of us were told we would hear something "after Tet." Well, Tet ended on February 25--so all of us translate "after Tet" into February 26, of course. And for us it was. Quite possibly, though, these are the people we will travel with in two weeks.

Our pictures of Maisie and Luc

2007-02-25T09:11:00.000-06:00

Where are they, you might be asking? We know that many adopting parents post their referral pictures on blogs and web pages when they get them. But it is our understanding that technically we are not supposed to do this. We do not yet have legal responsibility for the babies.

We’ve sent photos to family and friends by direct email. We can send them to you if you email us.

The pictures mean a lot to us right now because they are all that we have. Last night we were coming home from an evening out and we listened to The Cure song about “Pictures of You.” We forgive them for selling it for that commercial.

It won’t be long now before we won’t be having as many evenings out. And we will have our own pictures of Maisie and Luc to post here, then, too.

Final Stage of Waiting

2007-02-25T08:48:00.000-06:00

Well, it is early Sunday morning, February 25th. The waiting has had many stages since November, when we got our first pictures of Luc and his medical information. The last weeks, in particular, have had some ups and downs.

Most recently things have been pretty relaxed. Peggy has tried to keep busy with work. She’s also writing many draft pages of her master’s thesis which she must complete by mid-May when we return. She will have a one-quarter leave from her job to finish her program at the University of Chicago, which will include taking two classes. I’m never as busy and productive as Peggy. Thinking we would travel in January, I took the semester on leave from my teaching job at Saint Ignatius—although I am still coaching our track team now in the afternoons and will continue to do so when we return. That’s been my busy work. There have been some things to do for the adoption, but I’ve also been using the time to do various things that I’ve put off or thought about doing—including digging into the backs of some closets.

I still have more of that to do, and less time to do it in now, as we’re about to hit another stage. The lunar new year Tet holidays are over in northern Vietnam, and we are told that the government officials in Lang Son province go back to work tomorrow—or maybe even today. As early as the next few days, we hope to get a date for our Giving and Receiving Ceremony. That is the official event in which the babies are given over to their adoptive parents, attended by government officials and, in some cases, by the birth parents. We will leave that ceremony with the babies in our care. All the other paperwork follows, and all the following appointments with the U.S. embassy get scheduled around the “G&R” date.

Once we get our G&R date, we also book our flights and hotels, and the ball really starts rolling. It can happen very fast, apparently, and the last days can be a rush. It is a strange thing to hope for, right now, that we could in fact be traveling to Vietnam in just over a week—without having made any travel arrangements whatsoever. It could happen that fast, and we want that to happen. Yes, all you planners who book ahead for lower fares must be asking, this makes the travel costs an issue. But we have made contact with a travel agent. His name is Todd Gallinek and I think he works out of Boulder, Colorado, where he specializes in adoption travel. He can get us something reasonable in terms of fares, with an all-important open-ended with no penalty return ticket, since we will travel to Hanoi without a firm date for our return. We found him through internet contacts and email groups about adoption from Vietnam. That’s been one of my preoccupations—reading emails and blogs from people who have already made the trip. If you are interested, here’s the address of another blog: http://www.avalinh.blogspot.com/.

The waiting has given us time to get comfortable with these kinds of details—including starting this blog. We’ve collected some packing lists from our internet friends, along with lots of helpful information about what to expect in Hanoi when we get there. We know what we can buy there (diapers, formula, umbrella strollers), and what we cannot buy there (bottle liners, clothes). We’ve had phone calls and emails full of advice from people who have already made the trip, like the Connors-Kos family who gave us the pictures of Lang Son on our blog. A parent of one of my students, a former flight attendant on international routes, even, gave us detailed suggestions for taking care of the babies during the flight in case of distress. It is about a two-day travel trip door to door, with most of that, of course, on a jet full of people. Our sense is that as difficult as this will be, the euphoria of completing the adoption carries people along pretty well as an extra resource. Either that or it is so terrible people don’t talk about it.

We received a fourth set of pictures of Luc and Maisie last week, the best ones yet. When Sherrell Goolsby from World Child International, our adoption agency (http://www.worldchild.org/home.htm ), sent the pictures, she gushed about how cute and healthy they appear to be. Out of thoughtfulness for us, she noted that one picture seems to show that Luc’s head is slightly flattened, but added that this is not an uncommon thing and easily treatable when we get Luc home. I wrote her back that we’ve been through international adoption classes at the Family Resource Center in Chicago (http://www.f-r-c.org/) as part of our home study process, so we are familiar with developmental and health issues for babies in orphanages. As we understand the set up in Luc and Maisie’s orphanage in Lang Son, the babies sleep on floor mats. The pictures seem to show Luc and Maisie on their mats.

In fact, World Child has a foundation project (http://www.worldchild.org/holiday.htm) to raise money in order to provide stainless steel cribs for that orphanage. And here is one of the best stories about our wait: Peggy’s students in the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools’ 7th grade organized several fund raising events, including a buy roses for your special friend event for Valentine’s Day, to collect money to buy the cribs. Peggy just sent a check off toWorld Child for $500, which will provide two cribs, and one family contributed a crib on their own.

So our waiting has been productive in many ways. But we expect it to be over soon, replaced by hectic—even insane—activity. We have visa applications ready. We’re making plans about what books to bring for the flight—and we’ve backed up the music from Peggy’s Ipod on the computer so that we still have it if we lose the Ipod. We’re reading our “Rough Guide to Vietnam Travel,” and other books about Vietnam. I just found this morning a very recent article about Hanoi in the New York Times Travel Guide, http://travel.nytimes.com/2007/02/18/travel/18hanoi.html. We will have some time to do things in Hanoi as we wait for paperwork to process. We’ve looked at maps of Hanoi and learned that we can probably go for a jog around Ho Hoan Kiem, or the Lake of the Returned Sword, which is near our likely hotel site in Hanoi’s Old Quarter. We discovered that the lake used to be called “Luc Thuy,” or green waters, and so we connect the lake to Luc’s name.

The waiting time has also allowed us some time to look back and reflect. We have talked about the loss of our infant son, Declan, now two and a half years ago, the event that really brought us to this adoption process. Our photos of Declan now share a wall with photos of Maisie and Luc. Soon Maisie and Luc will be here sleeping in the room that was going to be Declan’s room.

Right now, where it is night time in Lang Son, they are probably asleep on their mats.

Waiting

2007-02-08T12:51:00.000-06:00

So now we wait. And wait.

We have had a referral for Luc since November and one for Maisie since December. There was some kind of paperwork snafu that delayed us--then the Tet holidays. We've been told to expect travel around March 1. But all we can do now is wait for our Giving & Receiving date. We just received our third set of pictures. Born on October 10 and 11, Luc and Maisie will soon be four months old.

Sometimes we wonder if they, at least, already know each other in the orphanage in Lang Son.