Day 3-Sunday

First, Happy Mother's day to everyone!!!

Today was made the 2.5 hour trip out to the orphanage. It was very long and bumpy! It was interesting seeing how people lived outside of the city. It's really amazing how simple the Vietnamese live. There were tons and tons of shops and houses all along the way. There were many, many cows and water buffalo's roaming the streets the whole way. Apparently, water buffalo are similar to cats in that they wonder around and then are able to find their own way home!!!

Also, land is VERY expensive in Vietnam. You will notice that most houses are very small, but several stories. This is because of the price of land. In Hanoi, a 40sq meter (430sq ft) piece of land will go for 200-300 US DOLLARS! That the land by itself, not including the house. So they have to build 3-5 stories just have enough room. Out side of Hanoi in the smaller cities it would go for about 100 USD for the land. Still really expensive when you consider that the average income in Vietnam is 300 USD per year! On top of all that, you have to pay for the land upfront, no loans!

Anyway, here are some pictures from our drive:

After the orphanage visit we stopped for lunch at an Authentic Vietnamese place. It was definitely an experience, I'm really glad we went!

This is a picture of the actual building that ate at.

This is what was originally brought out to the table. I forgot to get a picture, but a little later they brought plates of fish.

Apparently you take all this stuff and make kind of like a taco with it out of rice paper. (The bus driver showed us!) Mark wouldn't try it, but I was all about it, as you can see. He made fun of me for eating paper... I guess some of us are more adventurous than others!

This was a type of soup that you put with rice. I loved that the fish still had its fins! It wasn't terrible, although not sure I would eat it on my own.

And last, but not least, we do have baby pictures!

We stopped at a big orphanage first because that's where one of the babies were. The orphanage itself was kind of nice. By nice, I just mean clean and well taken care of. We were taken into this room that was filled with babies on bamboo mats with mosquito netting surrounding them. We didn't see many older children, as I assume that school was in session.

There were these two little boys that just broke my heart though. They were probably both around 5 years old. I assume that one of them never got adopted because he had club hands. The first thing that he did when I walked in was slowly walk over to me and put his arms around me and hugged me! It totally broke my heart. He was smiling ear to ear and didn't want to let go of me!!! The other boy was very quiet and reserved, he just kind of watched what was going on.

After that, we traveled another 15 minutes to the smaller orphanage and met Chloe! She was just so much more beautiful and precious in real life than you can imagine looking at her pictures! I can't even describe how it felt to see her in person for the first time. She is definitely a tiny little thing. Most of the other babies from our group were younger than her, but she was the smallest. The baby from the other orphanage was the only one smaller than her. But she is just the cutest thing, and she looks very healthy. She didn't cry the whole time! She was very awake and alert and looked like a genuinely happy baby.

You could tell that her nannies really cared about the babies. We asked one of the nannies if we could take her picture with Chloe and you should have seen her face light up!

We found out how to pronounce her vietnamese name. It's kind of hard to write, as vietnamese is a tonal language, but here goes. Luong = Lu ah.

I know you guys have been waiting, so here goes!

Mark is a little squinty eyed in the picture, so I'm sure he's going to be thrilled that I posted this, but I thought it was a cute picture of her... :)

Here's a picture of Chloe with one of her nannies.

And finally, the first family portrait!

I think today will be a day filled with sightseeing and shopping. I'll post more later...hope everyone's having a great day!