All I want for Christmas.....

...is a Vietnamese passport for Jonah. It looks like my wish will be granted.

Today I went to apply for Jonah's Vietnamese passport. He needs the passport before we can get his medical exam. He needs the medical exam and his passport before we can fly up to Hanoi to complete the Visa application process with the US consulate.

The government office is only a few blocks from the hotel that we are staying at, so we walked over to the office. Please note, that when I say walked, I mean that I took my life into my own hands crossing the street. I know I have not posted any good traffic shots yet, but I will do that soon so you can all get an idea of what I am talking about. In fact, I think we need to video it.

Our adoption agency is all over what we need to do to complete various parts of the process, however, they have been doing the passport applications up in Hanoi with the past few families. Now that the visa application process has changed slightly, there is not as much need for us to rush up to Hanoi, so we are staying in the south longer. When we handed in our applications for the passports, the official did not like how the agency had filled out all the paper work....even though it was the way they requested it up in Hanoi. So we had to return to the Hotel and do a little art project, cutting and pasting passport photos onto different forms and making additional copies. We returned at 11:15am and they were already closed for lunch. Government offices in Vietname typically close for lunch for two hours. We returned at 1:15 and were able to submit the applications. When you submit the application, they give you a date that you can come and pick up the passport. Ours is Christmas Day.

This was a little disappointing. Normally, the passport application is supposed to take 5 business days...this is more like 9. Also, we cannot progress any further with any of the steps of our adoption until this has been completed and the passport is in hand. So we will be returning at 6:30am on Christmas day to pick up Jonah's passport. The disappointing part is that this makes it practically impossible for us to finish the entire process in time for our planned departure date. As a result, Betsy and Bea will probably have to stay in Vietnam longer and Olivia and I will come home on the scheduled date of December 29th.

The silver lining to this is that we have nothing to do for 12 days but wait....and we have decided to do our waiting at a beach resort called Bamboo village in a beautiful part of of Southern Vietnam. We are going to leave on Saturday and stay down there for a week. This should be a great way to just spend time together bonding as a new family It is a little stressful being in the city because you cannot really get outside much since it is so crowded and it gets really old hanging out in a hotel room. We will still have time to enjoy more of the sights in HCMC after we return on Saturday and before we head up to Hanoi.

Jonah is getting more and more comfortable with his surroundings...me included. Although, there are certain things that freak him out. One of them being elevators. He has never had occasion to be in a cramped space like that and I think it is a little scary. He LOVES watermelon and ate a lot of that at breakfast this morning. We got more smiles out of him tonight than we have since we met him which was an encouraging step forward, although he remains extremely hard to impress. He still has his freak out moments, but we are definitely making process.

I would like to close this post with some excerpts from an article in the Saigon Times entitled Advices for traveling with Children.

"You need to tell them things would excite their curiosity, such as fairy tales that are connected to the attractions; this will keep them entertain and cheerful when touring".

And my personal favorite:

"To be aware of the formulation of bad habits such as eating too much junk foods and peeing at solemn places is also important".

I have to run and follow up with Olivia on these ideas.