Flight Overview & First Day from Parents' perspective!

Wow!  After 18.5 hours total flight and over 25 hours of travel time, we finally made it to our destination and can officially say hello from VietNam!

Dad Kinsinger--I kept a flight journal and I think I found the answer to your question, so this portion is for you: (question was "How can you lose a day/time on the way over to VietNam when you gain time flying west??")
CST Mon, Sept 8
12:35pm - departed the gate
"gained" 4 hours as we flew 9.5 hrs west toward the international date line
10pm - crossed the international date line -- time changed to 2pm of next day...lost 16 hrs
"gained" 2 more hours until arrival in Japan
Flying from Japan,
"gained" 2 hours before arriving in VietNam
Final tally: now 12 hours difference between Illinois and Vietnam, with VietNam being 12 hrs ahead. 
Make sense?

We arrived to our homestay at midnight.  Once we arrived, we were invited to sit down in the foyer, and asked what we wanted for a drink: lemon juice, green tea, or beer?  As we sipped (our lemon juice & green tea!!), we were welcomed by Binh (family homestay father), Hung (English name: Perfume, the family homestay mother), and Perfume's sister & brother who help with the homestay.  We learned that one of our rooms is under construction/repair, and so for 2 nights, we will be staying at her brother's hotel 1 block away.  So that is where we are now.  It is a "luxury" hotel, which means it is a bit larger, has an elevator, and they charge double for laundry, which gets charged per kilogram.  That's when you do not want a pile of jeans to wash!

For the first day, it went well overall.  We all learned some valuable lessons.  Two main ones were what James touched on: don't accept "handouts" and don't let them "help" because neither are free--they'll charge you an arm & a leg afterwards...it's a sales tactic here. One man very kindly offered to fix Joy's old Walmart shoe...he had it off her foot before she could get our attention.  Then, not knowing what to do, we watched him sew the front flap secure in 2 min. However, as we were simply going to say thank you, his reply was that we owed him 200,000 dong ($10)! Ooof!  I don't think so--that's way more than I make in the US per minute!  Grandma came to the rescue and told him as only a protective grandma can--that he could be thankful for the 40,000 dong($2) we gave him and next time he should ask before he touches one of us. So, yes, we were prepared for the next guy who attempted to go after James' shoe a little further on!

A nice surprise was to come across Korean icee popcicles.  I enjoyed my favorite--green melon.  Joy had a blast spending 3,000 dong for an orange popcicle...that would be about 23 cents.  We learned that the entire economy is picking up and improving for the Vietnamese people since we were here 12 years ago.  Those same popcicles were only 1,000 dong then, which was only a nickle a piece. The lower-income workers which were making $40/month are now making $150/month.  We learned this from Mrs. Thuy(twee)...the owner of the hotel we stayed at for all our previous trips to VietNam for the adoptions.  We were so glad to be able to see her today!!  We found our bearings and located the old hotel on our own. Now it is a small clothing shop.  Mrs. Thuy immediately recognized us and was so excited to see how the kids had grown.  We were thankful we found her today because she is leaving for Bangkok tomorrow.  She's not sure if she'll be back to VietNam before we have to leave. 

After we rested a bit in our room and cooled off, we went back to the homestay for supper.  It was our first evening meal as well as 3 others who arrived today and last night(twin brother & sister and their friend, all from England.)  Plus there is an older gentleman from Australia here on vacation.  So, Perfume made us a huge meal of traditional dishes, and Binh formally welcomed us and gave us information about VietNam.   The meal almost reminded me of France...in that it lasted over 2.5 hours.  We finally excused ourselves from the table at 10pm.  We don't know yet if this is normal or if it was a special welcoming meal. We do know that we loved breakfast and are looking forward to it again tomorrow!  Grandma had banana "pancakes," and the rest of us all had Pho("fu"-short u)--the traditional Vietnamese breakfast soup. 

A couple new words we have learned are "thank you" -- "cam on", and "please"--"lam on", and "this food is very good!"--"Mon on ngon!" ("g" pronounced as a "y".)   I'm not sure what goodnight is yet, so I'll just say it in English this time!  It's bedtime for us, though it's gotten noiser and the traffic has gotten busier out on the streets.  Night life is huge here...but it can't really be because it's cooler in the evenings, because it's not!  It's just as hot & humid at 10pm as it is at 2pm.  Only relief is sitting in front of a reluctant AC blowing as hard as it can. Our AC's "low" in America is higher power than the "high" here.  On an up-side, the internet is not quite so slow anymore...yeaaaaaa!!!  I can type entire sentences before the keyboard freezes up a little here and there.  So we might just have a chance at posting some pictures...

~ Wanda