G&R Day!

It's here, G&R day! I can't believe it. We're so nervous. We've been up since about 2:30am. After dinner last night we packed the baby's bag since we'll be leaving so early this morning for his province. We had so much stuff that we had to use the duffel bag instead of his diaper bag! Can you tell we're first time parents or what??? We'll have breakfast at 5:30am and will leave the hotel at 6:00am. It's about a 2 hour drive to Thai Nguyen province. Our facilitator said that the ceremony will only last about 30 minutes so we should have plenty of time to get back to Hanoi and apply for Jackson's passport this afternoon. Then the wait starts. It should take about 1 week to get his passport then we can move on to the next step.

The food is good here at the hotel. The best we've had in VN so far. Last night Brad had fried rice with pork and I had mushroom & ham pizza. Both were really, really good. And they have Coke everywhere here. It sounds trivial but it's so nice to have something familiar.

I'm so nervous about not being able to comfort Jackson today. I know once we get back to our hotel and have time to get to know each other things will be just fine but I'm worried about today, in front of the officials at the ceremony. Hopefully, Jackson doesn't fuss too much so we don't look like complete idiots.

We're moving hotel rooms today. We were offered a bigger room. It's a twin room but they put the two twin beds together to make a king sized bed. We'll have much more floor space too to move around and to store all our luggage. While we are at the G&R, the staff here will move our things to the new room for us. They really spoil their guests here. When we first arrived here yesterday the staff met us at the front door and carried our bags to our room. I felt bad having them do that for us. They were each about 18 years old and weighed about 90 lbs. I felt like I should be carrying them and our bags! They are all very nice girls who speek good english.

The money here is crazy. We had to convert some yesterday to bring for our appointments today. It converted to three million dong. We're rich!! (For about three weeks anyway!)

The country (terrain, people, architecture) is so different here. I never imagined it would be like this. I would equate it to being just across the border in Mexico. Only no beggers and add about 1 million motorbikes.

Time for me to go. I want to try to rest again before having to get ready. I'm not able to log into blogger so I'm posting this via Mobile Post. Hopefully it works.

Raegan