Adventures in the Vietnam Countryside

Emily and I are please to be hosting our FIRST guest blogger – our friend Emilie! (Don’t get confused, one is spelled with an “ie” and one with a “y”. It’s not so hard!) We met Emilie six years ago when we all worked together. Emilie is currently in Vietnam, having just adopted a Vietnamese baby girl she named Ellie. They are waiting to get Ellie’s passport and all that read tape-y stuff done so they can get HOME! We wanted to share this post with you from Emilie’s own private blog. It is the tale of the day she finally got to meet her daughter, her first child, and the final stop on her journey to become a MOM. It was originally posted on her blog on Tuesday, September 11, 2007. We hope you’ll love her story as much as we did!
Take it away, Emilie!
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You would not BELIEVE the day we had yesterday. I would have posted sooner — I knew people were waiting for photos and news that Ellie was officially mine. But by the time we got back last night, all I wanted was to go to bed. Luckily, Ellie wanted to go to bed, too. 🙂

We left the hotel at 8:15 a.m. for what was supposed to be a two-and-a-half-hour trip out to the rural province where the orphanage is located. We figured we’d be at the orphanage by 11 at the latest, spend a couple of hours there, and then head into Viet Tri (the province capital) for the giving and receiving ceremony. We were supposed to be there at 2, do our thing, and then be back in Hanoi in time for dinner. Riiiiiiight.

We got stuck in traffic in Hanoi and didn’t even get out of town til nearly 9:30. As I’ve said, there are no traffic laws here, so when there’s a back-up, there’s nothing to bring an end to it. The drivers here know this, of course, so they do everything they can to get around the traffic jam, rather than just waiting patiently for it to work itself out. Our bus driver decided the best way around the mess was to do a U-turn in the middle of a four-lane street, manuever his way the wrong direction through traffic, backtrack over all the ground we had covered, pass the hotel AGAIN, and take a different route out of town. By the time we left Hanoi, we had been in the bus more than an hour and had covered about a mile.

We headed out into the countryside, and passed Ho Chi Minh’s mausoleum on the way out of town. The locals call him Uncle Ho. There’s a joke in there somewhere, but I’m going to stay away from it.

You don’t have to get very far out of Hanoi to see the poverty get exponentially worse. At first we were glued to the view out the bus windows — we couldn’t believe people lived this way. But after several hours of it, I hate to say it, we were sort of immune to it. You can only take in so much.

I lost count of all the cows we saw in the road, all the ox carts we passed, and all the motorcyclists we nearly killed. We also saw several water buffalo and some cebu — if you’re a Veggie Tales fan, you’ll know why that’s funny.

We drove and drove and drove. And drove and drove and drove. And drove. And drove and drove. And drove. The two-and-a-half-hour trip was going on four hours by this time. We finally arrived around 1 p.m., only to find that the road to the orphanage had been washed out by a rain storm the night before.

But have I mentioned that we had to go to the bathroom on the way? Needless to say there are no rest areas or truck stops in rural Vietnam — there aren’t even any real roads once you get outside the city. So we stopped at what I think was a gas station, which had what I think were supposed to be restrooms. Only the restrooms provided neither rest nor rooms — they just provided holes in the ground, over which one squats and . . . well, you get the picture. It was an experience I’m not eager to repeat anytime soon.

But I digress. We arrived at the entrance to the orphanage, and instead of the gravel road we were expecting, we found a washed-out mud hole. Our bus couldn’t begin to navigate such a mess, so our agency representative called the orphanage (yes, we had cell phone service in the absolute middle of Southeast Asian Nowhere. I have no idea how or why) and asked them to send their jeep down to get us. They informed us that the jeep could not navigate the mess, either. So we were stuck. Our only choices were to have the orphanage workers bring the babies out to us on the ever-present motorbikes, or walk up the road in ankle-deep mud for a half-mile or so.

We opted for the ankle-deep mud. We wanted to see where our kids had been living, we wanted to meet the caregivers, and we wanted to give the other kids the gifts we had brought. Oh, yeah, did I mention we were delivering four TVs? Our group had chipped in to buy something for the orphanage, and the gift consisted of four flat-screen TVs — one each for the older boys’ room and the older girls’ room, and two for the common areas. The TVs were stacked in the back of the bus, and they had to get up the orphanage somehow. We also had two full suitcases, numerous bags and packages, and all our diaper bags, etc.

So off we went up the road and through the mud. It sounds happy, like “over the river and through the woods.” Believe me when I say it was NOT happy. But I’d do it again 100 times if that’s what it took to get to Ellie. We got part of the way up the road and were met by orphanage staff on motorbikes — they loaded us up and took us the rest of the way up to the orphanage. I and several others were wearing dresses — riding a motorcycle was not on our agenda for the day. Some of the other riders took our bags and packages — you’d be surprised what they can balance on the back of a bike — and some workers actually walked all the way out to the bus and carried the TVs back. We were quite a parade.

We arrived at the orphanage, hosed our feet off out in the courtyard, and went in to meet our children. We didn’t know it when we arrived, but our children were the first ever to be adopted from this particular orphanage. The workers were new to the whole process — they had never before seen a bunch of foreigners come in and walk off with their kids. They clearly didn’t understand what was going on, and were quite upset by the whole thing. On top of it, the facility also holds several elderly people, who understood even less about what was going on than the workers did. When we approached the building, the older folks just started handing us babies — they didn’t understand that we were there to pick up specific babies that had been assigned to us. They just thought we were there to pick out the cutest ones for ourselves, and they all wanted us to take the ones they were holding.

We finally made it to the room where our kids were, and I finally got to meet Ellie! She’s beautiful, and has done amazingly well so far, considering that I’m a total stranger. She slept through the night last night — 9:30 p.m. to 5 a.m. — and went to bed tonight at 6:30. I thought she was just going to take a short nap, but she’s been out for nearly three hours now. Of course, we may be up in the middle of the night playing for a few hours, but that’s okay. 🙂

We hiked back out through the mud, and were again taken part of the way on motorbikes. Ellie seemed to enjoy her first ride, but I was less sure of myself, trying to balance a baby on the back of a bike.

At the foot of the mud pit, we hosed our feet off again in the barnyard of a local family who were kind enough to offer us their limited water supply. Remind me to show you the pictures I took of the pig, who was watching us all with skepticism.

We went back into Viet Tri for the Giving and Receiving ceremony, or the G&R, which some of my traveling companions pointed out stands for Guns ‘n’ Roses. That took an hour or so — it’s the official end of the Vietnamese adoption process. As far as they’re concerned, she’s all mine now. None of us looked much like we belonged at an official ceremony — mud, sweat and jet lag had combined to make us a pretty bedraggled lot. But I’ve never seen a happier bunch.

The babies did really well on the ride home — better than the parents, probably, who had had ENOUGH of the bus by then. We made it back to our room around 9 and were in bed by 9:30.

Today we applied for the babies’ passports, and with any luck will have our first of two appointments with the U.S. Embassy later this week. Next week includes a medical exam and the second embassy appointment, as well as getting Ellie’s visa. Then we’re free to come home! Can’t wait to see you all and introduce you to my daughter!