What a long strange trip it's been....

Greeting from the Great White North-

Wow, what a difference from 90 degrees and muggy Saigon! At one point on the bus ride to the beach one of the dad's and I were having fun trying to remember some quotes from the movie Good Morning, Vietnam. The only ones we could come up with were these..."it's hot, damn hot, it's hot enough in my shorts that i can cook things in them, a little crotch pot cooking. it's so hot i saw one of those little guys in the orange robes burst into flames, it's that hot!" And Robyn Williams doing a Walter Cronkite inpersonation..."The weather outside is hot and shitty, with a crappy heat wave coming down from the north with more hot and shitty tomorrow" We were cracking ourselves up. Anyone remember any others?

As I look out the window it's snowing buckets and blowing all over the place. Even the dogs don't want to venture out in this storm!

Yesterday I was pretty gassed so I thought I should wait a day until I was coherent enough to post my last thoughts on this amazing experience.

First off, if I haven't made it clear to her or to any of you, you need to know that my sister is a rock star. The patience and grace Cindy has shown throughout this journey speaks volumes to the strength of her character and the beauty of her spirit. I count myself lucky to have her as a sister and blessed to call her friend.

Secondly I wanted to add my sincere respect for Cindy and any family who is grown by the process of adoption. It's a world away, literally, from how my own family started, yet every bit as miraculous. I was humbled and honored to witness the birth of three families.

Thirdly, or C: If you have the means or the opportunity, travel abroad. It's been eye opening to see how alike and how different we are. Spending this time in Vietnam showed me what a small place this world can be.

That's it....no more preaching from me....it's hard not to wax philosophic when you are part of something so cool, so much bigger than yourself.

Any now for something completely different....
Jet lag, airport delays and Montezuma revenge.....yes I was the lucky recipient of all of these joys. Is it Montezuma's revenge when you have been traveling in Vietnam? Maybe it should be called Ho Chi Minh's Wrath or something like that. Suffice to say if you need to locate a ladies room in the LA airport, I'm your gal. There was a brookstone store in my terminal. It had one of those massaging chairs. I sat in that bad boy for the full 15 minute massage. When the salesclerk gave me the hairy eyeball I just said...."I've been traveling since 5:30 last night." (this is at 3:30 in the afternoon) She smiled nervously and said,"take all the time you need" and walked quickly away. I must have looked pretty strung out!

My flight was delayed out of LA and again out of Vegas. Brian was disappointed that i didn't try the slots in the Vegas airport. I suppose I should have. At that point I was just trying to stay conscious. I landed in Minneapolis at 1:30 am. By the time we collected my luggage and got home it was 2:30. Home safe and sound, what else could I ask for?

I pretty much dropped my bags, kissed the boys while they slept and fell into bed. Ben was in bed with me saying good morning at 7:30. God, I love him, it's good to be home.

It's hard for me to fathom that Cindy, Kate and the other families are still there. Seeing more sights (and eatting more amazing food!) with out me. There is still no word on the satus of their paperwork. The gang is heading up to Hanoi tomorrow. If you want to keep up with Cindy's journey, there is a link to her blog to the right.

Thanks again for all the kind thought and prayers. Please remember Cindy and the other families, say an extra prayer for them that they all come home soon.

Much love and gratitude,
peace-
sandy

OZ

As we pulled back into Ho Chi Minh city last night at the height of rush hour, my senses balked at the onslaught of chaos. After 5 days at the beach we were all Blissful Bamboo Villagers, Saigon seemed particularly insane.

I said out loud that we weren't in Kansas anymore....that got me thinking about this Journey. If Cindy is Dorothy she has been following the yellow brick road for 2 long years to get to Oz and find Toto...Trey.

For the final part of her odyssey to Oz she is joined by me. I figure I'm scarecrow since I keep finding myself wishing I had a brain. Kate would be the Tin Man, because she is all heart. There is no Cowardly Lion...on this trip we are all brave.

I think that Glenda that good witch would have to be Yen. She eased us in here and kept us on the right road. The crown for Wicked Witch Of the West would have to be worn right now by the department of the US Government that is holding up Trey's Visa and Cindy and Trey's return home.

How I wish that Cindy could just click heels three times and say, "there's no place like home" to find herself back in Minnesota. No paper work headaches and no 30 hours plane rides.

Short of that please keep Cindy and Trey in your prayers as I get ready to board a plane in Saigon for my 30 hour trip back to my family. As much as I can't wait to see my boys and Brian, it's breaking my heart to leave Cindy, Trey and Kate knowing their adventure well continue.

Let's hope they will all be following me soon.

Warm thoughts and safe travels.
peace-
scarecrow

Life's a Beach

Too cliche? I know, but I couldn't help myself. We are enjoying day 3 at the beach and it's been wonderful.The weather is hot and the breeze is very much appreciated. I'm feeling so relaxed and well fed that it's hard to be sharp and witty right now, but I still wanted to say hi....so here goes nothing....

Today I finally got up my nerve to buy some pearls on the beach, much to Cindy and Kate's relief...they were really getting tired of hearing about it! I have no idea if I bought real pearls or plastic, but the lady was sweet and kind, she put her hand to my face, clasped my hands and smiled at me.

I think that is what has struck me the most about being here. How kind and willing to smile the people are. Last night Kate and I were playing our championship cribbage game on the patio and a security guard walked up and stood watching us smiling. I was a little unnerved at first, until I realized that he was just rearranging the lantern on the walkway so that we could see the board better. (Go ahead, ask who won...no seriously you can ask...)

In the kite boarding store across the street the sales clerk was sweet and helpful. As we walked out the door she said, "You come back anytime, you have questions I'll help you!"

That coupled with the amazing progress Trey is making almost by the hour has me feeling extremely grateful and blessed. Never did I picture myself traveling to Vietnam, yet here I am. It's an experience that I'm profoundly grateful for. It's helped me to see how small our world really can be.

Sending love and warm wishes to you in your world,
peace-
sandy

Vietnam Paradise..........

After a five hour bus ride the three families made it safe and sound to the beach. It was surreal to watch the city fall away. The farther out we got the traffic thinned and the buildings became smaller with more spaces in between. By the time we neared the resort we were passing ox drawn carts and rice paddies.

The resort is out of a fairy tale. The staff is constantly smiling. They've wrapped red and green silk around the palm trees and draped white twinkle lights over the leaves, add to that jingles bells in Vietnamese and you have the seen set for a tropical Christmas.

We are staying in an octagon shaped thatched hut. It's rustic and cozy, but it has comfortable beds and air-conditioning. Color me happy. The details are so interesting, there is mosquito netting over the beds, a bucket of water outside the door to rinse your feet and locally woven blankets on the bed.

They say that the beach we are on is the kite boarding capital of Asia. It's still and quiet in the morning, but by afternoon the wind picks up and there are so many kites in the air that they look like a flock of birds. They offer free lessons, but I'm not sure I'm feeling brave enough, we'll see. We have a few more days to work up the nerve!

Trey is slowing developing a love for the water. The pools are cool which is wonderfully refreshing, but a little bit of a shock when you first get in.

We walked along the beach this morning and were approached by women selling pearls. I'm still trying to figure out if they are real pearls or fake, because they are a bargain! Real or not they are beautiful and the ladies selling them are very sweet. I have a sneaking suspicion that a couple of strands will find their way into my bag!

That's it for now...I'm off for another dip in the pool, even with the breeze of the ocean it's HOT!

Love to all of you in the great white north!

Scooter Nation

Before Cindy’s friend Katie arrived this afternoon we
decided to put Trey in the front pack and venture out
to the park we saw down the street.

We had to cross an extremely busy intersection to get
to there. I felt like the human version of Frogger.
The traffic never stops and stop lights are apparently
optional in Vietnam. So crossing the street is an
unnerving game of chicken. The trick is to start
walking and not stop.

I didn’t realize that I was holding my breath till we
got to the other side and I exhaled!

There are cars and trucks here, of course, but the
primary mode of transportation is a scooter. We’ve
seen families of 4 and 5 all on one scooter. Usually
the dad is driving, the mom is behind him holding an
infant in her arms with one or two toddlers perched on
the handlebars.

There are so many of them that sometimes the streets
overflow and they come up onto the sidewalk. The best
way I can think of to describe them is that when the
traffic starts up the scooters are like a tidal wave.
They pour forth and don’t stop, they just kind of flow
around any obstacles in their way.

The interesting thing is that no one ever seems to
mind. They honk all the time, but it’s to let other
drivers know where they are rather than to express
their displeasure at how anyone else is driving.

In addition to driving on the streets there are
scooters parked all over the sidewalks. Often I’ll see
men perched on them, or reclining back on one like
it’s a lazy boy. Last night I saw two men spread out
sleeping on a row of scooters.

Kate arrived safe and sound. Cindy has a little more
paperwork to complete and we leave tomorrow for the
beach for 6 days! We are going to a resort on the
South China Sea. We’ve reserved a bungalow on the
beach, it looks like paradise. Hopefully they have
internet connection, otherwise you may not hear from
me for awhile.

Till then, stay warm, I’ll be thinking of all of you
as I lounge on the beach!

Peace-
Sandy

Good Morning Vietnam Part II

I feel I would be gravely remiss if I didn’t devote at least one posting to the amazing food here. Because, as ya’ll know I’m all about the food.

The biggest treat for me so far is the fruit. They have amazing fruit here that you can’t get in the states. Right now I have two front runners vying for my affection. The first is a mango, not like the mangos we have at home, this is an uber mango. The taste is less peppery, more sweet and the texture is like sorbet, it literally melts in your mouth. My other favorite is the dragon fruit. A dragon fruit is the size of small nerf football and is hot pink with green thorns. The inside is milky white with thousands of tiny black seeds. It’s moist and sweet and wonderful. I’ve had it every single day since I’ve been here. We also tried a fruit call mung cow…I’m positive that I butchered the spelling, but that’s the gist of how it sounds. It looks like a small artichoke. You rub away the skin and eat the soft flesh inside. There are a lot of seeds, slightly bigger than watermelon seeds and puffed. The seeds are so pretty that I considered taking them home to see if I could make jewelry out of them! The taste was a combination of banana, pineapple and orange.

The oranges here are green with a more intense flavor than what we are used to. The watermelon and pineapple are amazing too. We also had a kind of grapefruit that is the size of a volley ball and green. The meat inside is pink and almost dry. The custom here is to eat fruit for dessert dipped in a combination of salt and chili powder. No I’m not kidding, don’t knock it till you try it, it rocks.

Other than the amazing fruit….of which I’ve left some out for lack of space…every meal has been an adventure. All of our meals in Ben Tre were family style with four courses. My favorites all involved fish. We had fried fish that you soaked in a fish stock flavored with strips of green mango (different than the one I mentioned above) The flavor was unlike anything I’ve ever had before. My other favorite was a fish ball stew with chrysanthemum greens. Now normally a dish with “fish balls” in the title wouldn’t trip my trigger, but Lord almighty I’ve never had the pleasure of eating a fish ball in Vietnam before. Delish.

If you were to poll our group the hands down favorite food is Pho…a kind of soup loaded with noodles, meat, seafood and I don’t know what, but it’s a little bit of heaven. Bliss in a bowl the size of your head.

Trey’s favorite is rice porridge. It looked pretty questionable to me…runny mushy rice soup. Darn if that bowl of gunk didn’t taste yummy too. I don’t know how they do it!

That’s all I have time to rave about, I’m getting hungry and it’s closing in on dinner time!

Wishing you all happy full tummies.
Peace-
Sandy

It's Official!

What a day!

Today was the giving and receiving ceremony. This is when the Vietnamese Government recognizes Cindy as Trey's mother and gives her custody of him.

The trappings are pretty much what you would expect, government officials in a dingy room, papperwork and a lot of signing of her name. As I sat there and watched I was overcome by the significance of the moment. One part of the journey Cindy has taken to start her family has finally ended and the next, much more important part has just begun.

What a lucky little boy.

I expected the 4 hour bus ride back to Saigon to be, to say it politely, well... LOUD...with a lot of crying babies. Wouldn't you know it, not one of those three babies made a peep. Each of them sat in their mothers arms and were content as can be. I swear, infants must have a built in radar and know when someone loves them.

Now we are back in Saigon. Our new hotel room is a suite, we had to make room for baby...who is at this very moment sprawled out sleeping in the middle of the biggest bed in the room. It's very nice. Even nicer since Cindy went down to the front desk to get some one to come fix the air conditioning. Turns out we didn't turn it on. Whoops!

I'm feeling a little spent, so I'll sign off. After Cindy downloads her pictures I'll post some more.
Thanks again for all your thoughts and prayers,

peace-
Sandy

Ben Tre

Wow, what a morning. We went to the orphanage and met Trey for the first time.

Every one was a little nervous and chatty on the ride over. When we pulled into the orphanage the van quickly got quiet.

I wish I was eloquent so that I could convey to you what it was like to be in that room when these families met their children for the first time. Words fail me, and that doesn't happen often. Cindy's face was a mixture of wonder and awe. All of the families had kind of a stunned look, like they couldn't quite believe that they were holding the child that they have been waiting years for. There was tears, hellos, hugs and more tears.

As one of the dads put it. You don't get to be part of a morning like that every day.

If I haven't mentioned it we are traveling with two other families. For one of the families it's their first child, for the other it's their second, and they have their 4 year old little girl with them. We are so fortunate to be on this journey with some really wonderful people. These babies are all so lucky and so loved.

We will head back to the orphanage this afternoon, and the giving and receiving ceremony is tomorrow.

I woke up this morning with a song in my head, it was "This is the day, your life is going to change..."

Good Morning Vietnam

As I sit at the computer in our hotel in Ho Chi Min City I'm listening to a funky ska-rap/techno-funk version of Hark the Herald Angels Sing. It's so evident that we aren't in Kansas anymore that it makes me smile.

We arrived on time, got our bags and cleared customs in no time flat. We were met by representatives from Children's Home Society and whisked right off to our hotel. First hurdle-get to Vietnam in one piece... check.

Cindy and I cleaned up and wandered out to explore. The funny part is that traffic is so crazy nuts with literally thousands of scooters dodging in and out of cars that we were too afraid to cross the street! So we walked in a big square. I felt like a NASCAR driver left turn left turn left turn left turn. I so don't get it.

When you first walk into our room you are hit with an overwhelming stench of poopy diaper. Then after just a minute it goes away. We noticed it again when we went out and came back in. We can't decide if the smell is just as you walk in or if our noses are just shutting down after 30 seconds of assault.

Tomorrow we will drive to Ben Tree to meet Trey for the first time. I'm not sure if I'll be able to post pictures or not, I'll try, at the very least I can post them when I get home, so stay tuned.

I'm off for more wandering and perhaps an early dinner. We are both pretty wiped after 30 hours of travel. How is it that a person can get so tired just sitting around?

OH....star spotter alert...Mike Farrell, aka BJ Hunnycut from Mash was on our flight from MSP to LAX. We let him be, though. No autographs. Now, I'm keeping my eyes open for Bradjolina...

peace-
Sandy

Sandy and Cind Made it to Taiwan.......

greeting from Taiwan-

what a change the airport in Taipei is from LAX. It's beautiful, clean and not crowded at all! Cindy and i were worried that the 15 hour flight form LA to Taipei would be murder, but it actually went by very quickly. the plane was new and super clean. each seat had it's own tv with a selection of movies an tv shows to watch as well as video games! I rocked at galaga and watched Darjeeling ldt and breakfast at Tiffany's.

now we have a few hours till our 4 hour flight to Saigon. it's finally feeling real for me. after a frantic week of focusing and getting the boys ready, brian ready and me ready to go i can finally stop to think about where exactly it is I'm going to. i can't wait to meet Cindy's son. Right now cindy is an equal mix of excited and nervous. so much of her life changes starting now. i feel so blessed and lucky to be a part of it.

modern technology is sick and you now have 2 blog sites to go to to peak in on our journey. many thanks for all the positive thoughts, warm wishes and prayers. Please keep them coming! We are only beginning.