Last night in Hanoi

Well, everything is packed up and ready to go tomorrow morning. The driver is coming to pick us up at 7:45AM for our 10AM flight. We have a 4hr layover in Hong Kong before our direct flight (from hell) to JFK. We are really worried that the kids will start throwing some of their marathon tantrums on the way home.

Today we did a little more shopping and sightseeing, but it rained in the afternoon, so we mostly stuck around the hotel, packing, going to the playroom and the mall in the lower level. Gianna was talking A LOT. She was even singing and clapping her hands, helping me pack up the suitcases. Maybe she knows she's going to her new home in America? So long Hanoi! I'm moving on to bigger and better things! We went to dinner tonight and she ate potato soup--her first American food. Well, not counting M&M's which she now craves like heroin. I played puppets with my prawn heads using a George Bush voice. She loved Mr. Prawn and the prawn family. Too bad the waitress had to take them away.

Hang gave us Gianna's passport, birth certificate, and a large sealed envelope with her immigration papers. Gianna is a US citizen as soon as we touch down on US soil, but the immigration officers at JFK have the authority to let us into the country. It was nice getting to know Gianna's birth country, but I am ready to get home. Some things I'll miss are the communist music that they blare throughout the day from the lake (why doesn't the US broadcast God Bless America over loudspeakers 3-4 times a day to remind us to be patriotic?), walking around the lake, bargaining for everything, breakfast with the other families, and fresh tropical fruit. Some things we will not miss: motorbike exhaust, raw sewage on the sidewalks, stifling humidity, and people haggling me to buy ripped-off tour books. Also, I don't want to eat noodles or rice again for a long time ;-)