Suddenly "Ba" is best

First and foremost, we have moved to a new apartment in a different wing of our serviced apartment hotel. We are now on the third floor and the staff has assured me they have scoured the apartment for any signs of "mice" - the best thing is that we now have two tvs - one in our bedroom and one in the living area.

David is no longer persona non grata as far as Lan is concerned. Suddenly she is calling for her "Ba" and showing him everything. She picks things up and demands something that sounds like, "BA! Nine!" We have presumed this means something like, "Daddy! Say!" and then David says whatever the name of the thing is in English, and then she says it in Vietnamese, and then David tries to mimic what she said, and then she laughs likes a lunatic. She says something which I assume is, 'My Ba speaks Vietnamese really badly."

Her passport didn't come in today, which is depressing.

We went to the zoo with another Holt family - I am going to try to post photos at the photobucket site. The zoo was in a peaceful setting, but, the animals were in very old cages. The tigers were going completely nuts when we got there, pacing figure eights in their cages and growling and vocalizing. At first I thought they wanted to eat us, but, then we saw a pony approaching the cage area. I have no idea why the pony was loose in the zoo. The pony is certainly very lucky the cages were strong and well made, because those tigers were desperate to break out.

There were also a lot of loose rats in the zoo. Evidently, I cannot escape the curse of the rodents that is upon me.

Lan also chose the zoo to start testing us. She ran from us to see what we would do. It was disturbing, one because it does hurt our feelings for her to behave like she wants to be away from us, and two, because we had to chase after her, and we looked like we were kidnapping a Vietnamese child.

After the zoo, we went to dinner at a Chinese restaurant. I didn't think things were going to go very well - it was kind of a nice place with white tablecloths, and there appeared to be some kind of wedding party going on. The waitstaff killed a turtle right next to our table and then we watched as the thing struggled while they drained it's blood into a big glass and then they served the blood with vodka to a large group of people who were there for the wedding party. It had been such an emotional day for us (with the rat, with Lan running from us) I thought I was going to start to cry. I miss Gabe so much, and there is so much about this culture we don't understand, and we are so helpless linguistically.

Anyway, we ordered two beef dishes, and a fried shrimp dish for Lan, and then something called, 'pan fried sweet potato buds'.

Contemplate 'pan fried sweet potato buds' for a moment. Do you have a thought in your head of what it might be?

Yeah. Me too. Pan fried bits of sweet potato is what I thought.

Did you think 'collard greens'? Because, truly, the words 'collard greens' never crossed my mind when I ordered 'pan fried sweet potato buds' but 'collard greens' is surely what they looked like. I must have looked VERY DISAPPOINTED because the waitress brought the menu back over and pointed out 'pan fried sweet potato buds' and pointed to the greens. At the point I was just resigned to paying 15000 D (about .90) for something no one would eat, Lana lunged across the table, grabbed a huge handful of the greens in her fist, and SHOVED THEM INTO HER MOUTH. She followed this with a guilty look, like she expected she would be in trouble for eating them. I just pushed the plate toward her AND SHE ATE THE WHOLE PLATE. With gusto. She dipped them into the sauce they came with and she polished off an entire plate of 'pan fried sweet potato buds'. She also ate some of the fried shrimp. Fried shrimp and collard greens. That's my girl. (David and Tara (the other Holt mom who was with us) both tried the greens and pronounced them 'better' than collard greens, because they were less bitter. Being as I am not a fan of greens in any form (sorry Grandma), I didn't try them. My beef with vegetables was quite tasty, though.)

Well, it's about time to get this greens-loving-child to bed.

More tomorrow,
Gretchen