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

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

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

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

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…

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

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

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!