Kindred Spirits, cute pics, and funny story:)

This is the Gainer Family... who came the same day as us, and hopefully we'll all be leaving the same day this next week! It has been a blessing to be in a totally different country with another family - but not just any family, but a family who has some much in common with ours; homeschool, faith, values, love for children (they've got a total of six now!), books, etc... Kayla has definitely looked up to nathan their 15 year old - he's been an older brother to her and has helped her adjust to very different foods and experiences. We've had all of our appointments togather. It wasn't planned... but must have known we needed each other... and our two Vietnamese sons needed each other too.

Now for some cute pics of Evan --then to the funny story of the day!

I think Evan is excited... what do you think? Really - kim has been teaching him to make these funny kind of faces... and it worked.

Evan wasn't a THUMB SUCKER... he was a two finger sucker - the first pic is from the very first day we met evan.

Here's the most recent picture of "two finger sucking" - but look in whose mouth the fingers lie! (i guess that's a good sign of bonding... I know that for myself, I only put my fingers in the mouths of people I only have the most complete trust:) )

Ok, this pictue wins the prize for the most stuff fit onto one bicycle! (yes, there is a bike under there... somewhere) This was actually in a museum, and all those things are fishing baskets/traps.

Ok, here's the funny story. We went to lunch today before visiting a museum... but it was close to 2pm, totally non lunch hour. We were in the area of the museum and just assumed we would be ablt to find somewhere to eat pretty easily... WRONG... either because the museum is in a part of town where there aren't many eating establishments, or because it was 2pm and they all shut down still the dinner rush, I don't know. what i do know is that there wasn't much around, so we had to do some walking. the first thing that looked like it would have eatable stuff, we walked into it sat down and through cave man style sign language signaled our intense desire to eat before starving to death. Kim went for the standard PHO (traditional VN soup), Kayla had lost her appetite just by the very different eating environment (she was hoping for a KFC or starbucks kind of place); But I was full of advernture and stuck to my guns - If I'm in Vietnam, i'm going to eat like the Vietnamese! I asked the lady to bring me something with rice and meat. I'm not sure exactly what we said, what she heard and vise versa... because by the end of the meal, we had two cups of strong VN coffee, three cups of tea, three main dishes, a bunch of side dishes, dessert, and a free round of Jasmine tea (compliments because of the National WOMEN'S day here in VN). By the way, the total bill came to only 60,000 VND (only $3.50 ) - the cheapest meal to date! I gave the young guy an extra $1.25 (20,000VND) and he tried to refuse it, but I insisted. So here's the funny part... here's my meal below... take a guess what it is:

YES, there's rice in there! Da! Yes, there's meat too... but do you know what kind? Well, that was the problem, I didn't. I thought I asked for something with beef in it, but who knows what she heard. I finally inquired, the curiosity was killing the cat. One of the ladies did speak a little english. I asked if there was chicken in it, because I thought for sure there was and ate all the stuff that looked and tasted like chicken. But when asked she said pretty plainly that there was not chicken... hmmm; I started to worry. How about beef... YES, there's beef. ok, i'm feeling a little better. THEN she said, "Feck hert" & she pointed to her heart....what? I didn't understand. She said it again, and then my wife said, "do you mean FOX HEART?" -- Yes, fox heart. Ok, my stomach just went to my heart, and something else's heart some how got into my stomach... all kim could do was laugh, saying my adventureous spirit finally got the bet of me!

Here's kayla enjoying some chocolate dessert later in the day.

Ok, for you who didn't believe the SNAKE WINE story from last week, here is the actual thing... A king cobra in a bottle - but this time he's got a scorpin! You won't see that in America!