We are in Hanoi and U.S. Embassy Appointment - We Get Ian's visa tomorrow! We might be able to come home early!

We arrived in Hanoi last night. Our flight was delayed an hour, which is tricky when you are already hanging out at the airport for hours with a baby. Good practice for the long ride home. Ian slept the whole flight (90 min), but awoke on landing and cried while we deplaned (attracted a lot of stares). Our plane had a camera on the front so you could watch takeoff & landing on a video screen. Well it was a bumpy landing and Sean and I both noticed the plane was sliding sideways a bit after landing (scary). But we all made it o.k. and we arrived at our hotel in Hanoi at about 10:30 PM. Our hotel is the Lucky Star (http://www.luckystarhotel.com/). Our room is pretty and quaint, a bit like a bed & breakfast with armoire, hardwood floors and wood furniture, with crown moldings and pretty pale creamy yellow paint. It is super clean with pretty tiled bathroom. Just a tiny window, but pretty big and very quiet because it is in the back of the building ($40 a night including breakfast and Internet is free here). There are three other families from our agency here (they got their babies Monday) and Ted & Trish , who adopted with us, are staying at another hotel.

This morning at 7:30 Cherie from our agency came for Ian's immigration paperwork we carried here from Ho Chi Minh City, and said our U.S. Embassy appointment would be this afternoon at 2:30. Then she said his visa would be ready tomorrow after 4. This all turned out to go as planned. So tomorrow after we get his visa we can come home! Of course, it depends on finding new flights and we wanted to maybe stay here a bit to see some things. But we hope to come home maybe in a few days! Wow! That is less than two work weeks! Our adoption process here is complete!

So I will post one picture....we all took a cyclo ride around Hanoi (we took two separate ones). Sean got this pic with me and Ian. The traffic is crazy and after awhile, you just pretend that you don't notice that you come so close to crashing so many times. The cyclos are mixed with a million mopeds, cars, buses, some going against traffic with bicycles weaving in and out of it all! Amazing, but hardly ever an accident!

We will be home soon!