COUNTDOWN (T minus 96 and counting)

And so the countdown continues as we are now only 4 days away from (Typhoon) Dawn's arrival in Hanoi... finally! This will be such a game changer in the best of ways. So looking forward to Thursday and heading to Hanoi for meetings and then picking up Dawn at the airport Thursday night!

So in the last 3 weeks work continues to progress, albeit slowly. I've had to learn a lot more patience and the necessity to hurry up and slooooooow way down. But progress nonetheless. Waiting for one more local government agreement to be signed off on before I can sign a lease on an office and hire on my assistant, so 

As far as missing home and family; so difficult at times. I miss the states, I miss Seattle; and I miss my family so damn much. And the kids have their own lives now and its hard to connect as often as I would like. I miss them so much and yes I miss Bubba, more than I thought I would, damn. And yes the food.. this place is Mexican food barren. But they do have decent barbeque and okay pizza and you can find burgers and fries but none of that is quite the same as back home. On the other hand, plenty of their own delicious food; still discovering wonderful dishes and great restaurants. And yes I do miss a few of my favorites TV shows that so far I can't figure out how to get streamed. Gotta figure that out. But we do get HBO and Cinemax (about a year behind in programming), FOX Sports and then there's BBC and CNN. Oh and some Premier League Futbol and some cartoons (Tom and Jerry are big here) as well.

Some highlights of the last couple of weeks...

I was fortunate enough to spend some time with my Kids Without Borders colleagues and friends Son and Judy Pham and their humanitarian group from Seattle. An amazing dinner in Hanoi and a wonderful morning with the group and our kids at the Hoa Phoung orphanage here in Hanoi. A truly humbling experience that makes you appreciate what you have and at the same time feel guilty for not giving back more. Oh yes, and they brought me my care package of Mt. Si coffee from my lovely bride; I found a coffee pot and now I'm enjoying fresh brewed good ole American (even better, Seattle) coffee. Ahhhh the difference the little guilty pleasures can make.

Had one day where the power was out after a night of thunder and hard rain, and a long morning of meetings I stepped out of the taxi in front of my house and i dropped my phone into a deep puddle of rain. Dead phone... After immediately consulting Facebook for expert advice I went to the market to get a bag of rice. As I stood laboring over the decision of which rice would be best, a very nice young (95 years young ) woman walked up and smiled (obviously flirting); and pointed to a particularly hearty and rich looking rice. How she knew that that particular strain of rice would work the best is beyond me. After a few hours in the rice... wallah, phone worked (and still does).
What a relief!

On that same day after all of my meetings and my phone trauma I was mentally exhausted but I had been invited to go see of all things a Venezuelan musical group perform at the Haiphong Opera House (beautiful venue). Wasn't going to go but I decided what the heck; I could seriously use some culture. Glad I went, great performance and I got to sit and chat with Venezuelan ambassador who turned out to be quite the character. 

And then to top it all off my first typhoon made its appearance this weekend. Super Typhoon Ramussen hit northern Vietnam after causing havoc in the Philippines, but by the time it got to us here it wasn't as bad as it could have been. After one scary night and day, and a lot of wind and rain, all is good.

Enjoy the related pics!