Remembering Day 7

Our 2nd day with Jacob when we began to see to his little personality. It rained a little in the morning, so we decided to visit the Ethnology Museum. Brian wasn’t feeling well, but Marie and Zachary came with us. We left the hotel in a taxi that the hotel called for us. When we arrived at the museum, the driver said he would wait for us by the front gate. We told him we weren’t sure how long it would take us and he said not to worry, take our time; he would be waiting for us! We said OK and went in.

What a wonderful experience. Jacob was SO cute, walking around the exhibits. He drew a far amount of attention. I think it was the fact that he was so tiny and was walking all over the place! Of course, the 2 large Americans walking behind him made him fairly popular as well. There weren’t too many people in the museum, so people took note of us. Our biggest hope was to learn about the boys’ ethnic minorities. Jacob is Nung, Zachary is Tay. We saw a lot of different things.

An overloaded bicycle

Models of Traditional Homes

Even ones you can walk through

Throughout the 10 months we waited to travel for Jacob, we were VERY lucky to have received 5 sets of pictures of him. Every 2 months or so, we were sent another set of pictures of him. We were able to watch him grow and mature. Yes, it was hard in some ways to see the changes happen without us, but it was also SO good to see him and to know that he was doing OK. Once things we always said through was just how sad, or maybe just serious that he was. Also, was dressed in a pink sweater or other more “girlish” clothes. He also looked fairly warm, given the temperatures in SE Asia when they were taken. I looked forward to the day that I could give him a cool bath and dress him in some cooler, little boy clothes. This was the picture that I sent back to family and friends that showed these changes.

I even quickly made it my blog header!

The last set of pictures that we received around his 1st birthday showed him standing, holding onto his crib bars. We were expecting to find him walking when we got there and he was. I took video of it…

Once we were done walking around the outside of the museum with the home models and the other parts of the grounds, we went back to the main entrance to look for the taxi driver. He was there! He actually did wait for us. We heard that it was common for the better taxi company, Hanoi Taxi to wait, if you offer them some money to do so, but this driver offered on his own. We made sure he was rewarded for his kindness. It was nice to know there was a comfortable, AC'd, HONEST taxi driver waiting for us.

I will end this walk down Memory Lane with….

A cute family shot

A video of dear friends