Fish Sauce

yesterday we said goodbye to the kids we've been working with. (see previous post)

lucys been saying some pretty funny things about leaving like...

when i was crying leaving Baby Orphanage ......"don't worry, when we go home Mumma Ange you can play with all my friends like Olivia and Gloria and Ella and Isis, Glorias house is really nice"

when saying goodbye to Tien and Kien "back in New Zealand you can find a little boy the same same to cuddle"

Lucy can't wait to "play with her friends". i hope she unlearns the instatutionalised orphanage behaviour that shes learnt here pretty fast..... and can play nice ..... (orphanage kid don't play nice!)(actually they don't really play much, more just snatch, grab, hoard, )

see you guys soon
ps for the first few days -i think we'll be a bit down and missing the kids we've left behind here, combined with jetlag and a 3yr old. It might be a wee bit of a adjustment period.

semms like everyones busy around here. We went to Hoi An for the weekend and the whole trip there there a fields filled with people havesting rice and laying it out to dry (often on the side of the road) . Then they sometimes burn whats left in the field.

Anyway we've started feeling quite at home here, (i'm actually a bit scared i've become a little too atached to vietnam....and it'll be hard to leave)
Here are some of the things i love (and not so love) .....

[*]first has got to be the kids ..i adore them (can't believe NZlander can't adopt from vietnam 'cos i would so do it....... )
i've caught myself thinking about how i'm going to handle being away from them ..... and when would we be able to came back and see them again

[*]seeing 3 brothers get adopted (to one family in America) and leaving two older brothers behind in the orphanage. It was also hard to watch thier biological mother come and say goodbye....

[*]trying to hold back tears everytime a new baby comes to the orphanage, this week a 3day old boy got dropped off

[*]frequant powercuts that last sometimes all day..... the main worry in this is that you cant power electric fans, but the tiled floors of the house are nice a cool to lie on.

[*] the fact that it's about twice the temprature of Wellington 32+c (i like it hot)

[*] traveling about on a scooter as a family on the crazy vietnamese roads. After a bit you begin to understand the unspoken rules in the chaos -like cars will not stop for you, its okay to go against the stream of traffic, peep your horn lots and there are no clear rules on who to give way to at intersections you just go...

[*]Vietnamese coffees actually really good (once you get used to the sweetened condensed milk)
[*]and liking that everything is cheap. ie coffee is 6000dong or 47cents NZ,

[*]sleeping on a woven grass mat .... ive decided this is the way to go nice and cool

[*]having clothes made by tailors hhhhmmm i now have some yummy winter clothes to take home (seeing i threw out heaps of cruddy old clothes before we left.)

[*]purchasing a small mountain of fabrics for my business. Im so excited!! (my spring summer stocks going to be great!! )

[*] using crazy ingredients to make kiwi/western foods......like anzac bikkys.
I couldn't find oats but found some dry cereal drink mix (kind of like instant porriage) but with sugar, milk powder, wheat, rye etc ...
so i bought that and a block of french butter (yep imported from france), some flour mix , and wallah!, we had anzac bikkys on anzac day and so did the orphanage kids..... yum

[*]vietnamese food is so good, favorites being green papaya salad, fresh rice paper rolls, mi quang (some noddle soup) ooohhh and the grilled eggplant with peanuts.

this week Wednesday and Thursday are public holidays so we are taking a sleeper bus down to Nha Trang (10hrs)
planning on coming back Sat or Sun. Then because there are huge amounts of volunteers next month so we are taking a week of to travel up north to Hanoi, Halong bay, then Sapa and some hill tribe villages.