Knock On, Knock-Off

Scootering by lantern light in the Ancient City

Knock on wood (or pray to your being of choice), I do believe we have found a home.  It looks as though we'll be spending the year in a rice paddy!  Yippee!  What more could we ask for?  A contract perhaps.  The details are being negotiated by someone who actually speaks Vietnamese (a woman here at the hotel who is likely so sick of us that she will gladly do whatever it takes to get rid of us - including wrangling a house out of a friend).  Seriously, it was, as we were told it would be, a matter of talking to everyone, following every lead, and finally getting lucky.

The house sits in a "village" (small community) of rice paddies.  It's very quiet but only minutes off the main road, and only a five minute bike ride to where I will be teaching.  We'll be close to the kids' new friends and the market for fresh food (if we ever decide to start cooking again).  The house is brand new, which is good and bad.  It's good because everything will be sparkly clean for us.  It's bad because it's not quite finished, and we will be in the hotel for another two weeks.  We're excited to have cows, chickens, water buffalo and ducks for neighbors.  We asked about having laying hens at the house (chickens run everywhere here), and they said they would build us a coop (after having a good laugh at the foreigners who want chickens).  Brianna has fallen in love with quail eggs because they are so small and cute.  So perhaps quail will be among the pets living in our backyard too.  A few altars honoring ancestors add a little Vietnamese cultural flair to the house as well as the fish pond in the living room.  So knock on wood for us so that all goes smoothly, and we'll soon be posting photos of our new abode.  Then knock on wood one more time to ensure that the very nice woman who owns the house was accurate in her portrayal of the house during monsoon season, "The rice paddies will flood, but the house will stay dry."  I'm going to request one more altar specifically for the rain god.  Keeping him appeased will keep me sane.

Then, from knock on...to knock-offs...Foster picked up his new shoes today.  Handmade "Nike" basketball sneakers with Adidas soles.  They join the collection of knock-off products that we have started accumulating here in Vietnam.  They include fake Crocs, fake Oakley sun glasses, a photocopied Lonely Planet language book,  and a fake  Nike bike helmet.  The collection grows daily.

              

Air Jordans?  Hmmm...