Last night Kelly, Mia, Scott, Tammy, and myself went out to dinner and then went over to see the water puppet show.  Here Kelly, Mia and I are standing in front of the theater.  They say that the Hanoi water puppets are better, but since we were in HCMC, we figured we would give them a shot.

The theater was only a short walk from our hotel and it was a nice evening.  Tickets were pretty expensive ($4/person), so we had to get there early to make sure we got a seat.  Once seated, every one looked like they couldn’t WAIT for the performance to begin!

The show was pretty good.  I mean, my brother-in-law Chris would have had a stroke sitting there for 50 minutes, but it was interesting.  Water puppets date back to the 11th Century.  Puppeteers stand waist deep in the brackish water behind the green curtain you see in the middle of this picture touching the water.

Then, they control puppets that are on long polls from behind the curtain. 

While it seems a little strange just talking about it here, it really is amazing what these people can do with some sticks!  They had stories of Navy quests:

And of a large boat race:

There is a live band that plays the music and narrates all the voices.  The guy in the blue was the main male voice and the lady next to him was the main female voice.

At the very end, the puppeteers came out and took a bow for the crowd.

Mia seemed to enjoy the show!

While it was very interesting, the down side was the the entire thing was in Vietnamese!  You did get a program that was written in English, so at least you knew what each scene was (sort of), but a lot of the time you were just watching the puppets without a clue to what was really going on.  However, it was defiantly worth coming to see once.

This morning we met with Mr. Heip and received a bunch of paperwork.  Probably one of the most exciting things that he brought was Mia’s Vietnamese passport, which puts us one step closer to leaving.  He also provided us a sealed medical report that we have to provide to the US Government and a large booklet that had all of Mia’s information in it.  That was really interesting.  It had copies of the ID cards of Mia’s parents along with pictures of each of them, copies of her abandonment paperwork, the orphanage acceptance letter, the Adoption Decree from the province were she lived in Vietnam, etc.  Just a ton of stuff that was really neat to look through.  We also received immunization records and all of her medical records up to this point, including a chest xray. 

While it is still very doubtful that we will get an INS interview tomorrow, we are still blindly hoping that it happens.  Everyone who is back home with their adoptive child is laughing at this statement.  They know how crazy that would be!  But, we can dream, can’t we?  Wednesday is probably a better chance.  Even if we don’t get our interview until Thursday morning, we MAY still be able to turn everything around and get out of Vietnam by Friday evening.  We could go to Hanoi Thursday afternoon, have all our papers filed then, and meet with the US Agency for Mia’s Visa on Friday morning, which they issue by 4PM Friday afternoon.  Then, we could get to the airport and get the heck out of dodge.  That’s the plan right now.  We would LOVE to get out of here before the weekend!

After Mr. Heip left, we decided that a good, healthy lunch was in order.  So we went out and had ice cream!  Kelly, Mia, Tammy, Fayth, and Tammy’s mom all enjoyed our selves.

We had seen this nice little shop by the Saigon Tax Center that gave you ice cream in a coconut and thought today seemed like the perfect time to try it out.  Notice Fayth doing the splits.  That girl is the most limber thing!

This afternoon, after nap, we may go over to the War Remnant Museum.  I haven’t quite received my fill of how evil America is with its concentration camps and child torture, so I thought we might go hear about it some more!

Have a great day! We love all of you and all the support you give us by reading this blog.

Cameron