Some drama....

We've been back in Can Tho after our Lunar New Year's travel to Phu Quoc Island and Saigon. The kids have started at their new school (see the photo of tall white building with blue trim and big green windows) and they like it a lot, though it's a tough adjustment being the only foreigners there. Still, they come home in good moods and seem happy and have made a little friend there, Nali, who is half-German and half-Vietnamese and speaks all kinds of languages. Mark and I are a lot happier too since we have time to do our own work now. No more nanny, though we miss Trang. Still, it's better this way because Mark and I don't have to vacate the house all the time. I was getting tired of dragging my laptop all over the place in the heat and worried about its getting stolen. Speaking of stolen....

The big drama is that we were recently robbed. The short story is that the kids were at school and Mark and I were both upstairs working on our computers (see photo of our study). I had been running up and downstairs to get ready to go run some errands, and it turns out while we were both here, maybe in the space of 15 minutes, someone snuck in and stole my wallet, which was way in my purse at the rear of the house in our kitchen. The sticky point about all of this is that Mark had had some colleagues over earlier in the day, and we had forgotten to lock our outside gate when they left (though it was closed tightly). Anyway, someone made off with 700,000 dong and my Chase bank card. Big drama ensued and I had to go to the police station, which was pretty interesting (and good future writing material). The thing of it was: no one had any sympathy because our gate was unlocked. The sentiment seemed to be that it was almost OUR fault because the gate was unlocked--never mind that it was 1pm, we were both home, and we live on a very tiny dead end alley next to the chief of police! Now we're over it, though for a day or two we stewed and felt suspicious of everyone and everything.

We have a couple trips lined up in the near future. On March 11th, we go to northern (finally!) coastal Vietnam, to Danang and Hoi An, where Mark will be presenting a paper on American Studies with some of his colleagues from Can Tho U. Of course me and the kids have to join and make a vacation out of it! But for now, we're just enjoying being at home and doing our work. I've got the upstairs air conditioner blasting as I write this. Mark and I just swam laps at a big pool we found on the edge of town, and then stopped off at the market to buy fruits, and drove home with bike basketsful of mangoes, pomelos, baby bananas, and pineapple (cleaned and cut up into lovely decorative flower wheels). The fruit here is so plentiful and good and cheap that sometimes I just eat that and French bread. My new favorite drink is an avocado milkshake. So good....

We all send our love. Some of these pics are street scenes from our neighborhood, and others from our trip to the island of Phu Quoc and Saigon (should be pretty easy to tell which is which). Oh, and a great photo of Mark's new beach hairdoo...

Love to all. Spring break is coming!

Anne