Well, my sore throat went away...along with my voice! It's bad enough getting around with my badly-accented Vietnamese, but being virtually dumb/mute is much worse. Especially since I'm the voice for both me and Toli much of the time! And it's not even the sexy Kirstie Alley/Candace Bergen kind of hoarseness I get when I've been talking a lot. Oh no, I make this annoying sort of squeak when I open my mouth. Squeak squeak!
Anyway, I've kind of been avoiding doing shoutouts since I used to find them annoying, but now that I have my own log, I can't resist saying hi to my running commenters!
Bibi - I miss you baby! If only you were here to translate my squeaky sounds into something intelligible. Of course, knowing you, you'd just laugh your butt off.
H - Yes indeed, Howard *is* cool. How is the missus doing?
Cindy - Sydney! Woo-hoo! It must be autumn there or something? I'm surprised you found the time to take a vacation long enough to go down under, but if anyone deserves a vacation, it's hardworking you. Hug Scott for us - you two would have a blast here.
We had a neat little surprise this morning. Ong Tai (the older grampa-ey uncle of the bride Toli befriended) stopped by this morning to invite us to lunch. It turned out, though, that lunch was actually a celebratory meal (I have no idea how to correctly translate this) in honor of his own deceased uncle. In Vietnam, they honor the anniversary of a loved one's death, particularly the third year following. So we had the opportunity to bow at his family altar and share a meal with his family. Again, everyone made a big fuss over Toli, particularly a cousin of Ong Tai's who works as an English translator and spoke nearly perfect accentless English. Let me say, it was a *terrible* time to be a squeaky semi-mute, but I was glad to see so many people interested in talking to Toli.
Oh - and during the lunch, I looked down to see a little calico kitten cross under the table! I squeaked so much over it that the owner offered to let me take her home and raise her, and I very well may have if it didn't involve transporting an animal overseas.
We're more than halfway through our stay here in Hanoi - I can't believe how quickly it's gone by!
Posted by Christine at March 20, 2004 09:11 AM