Success?

I had dinner with a friend at a restaurant called "La". It is near to the Cathedral. Nice Western food although a bit pricey for Ha Noi's standards. My friend is an American. Given that both of us had learned the Vietnamese language, we decided that it would be good if we tried to banter with the staff at the restaurant in their language.

At the end of the dinner, my friend asked the staff who had been serving our table whether she could guess which country I was from.

After a while, she said to him (in my presence) that she believed that I was an overseas Vietnamese, who had returned to the country!

Amazing. She thought I was a Viet Kuy (overseas Vietnamese)! My language has clearly improved, which means I actually did concentrate during my class and was not sleeping (well, at least most of the time lah).

On our way back in the taxi, my friend thought it would be fun again to test out our Vietnamese. And again to our surprise, the driver turned around and asked whether I was a Viet Kuy!

Haha. Enough boasting!

Ok. Now I got to work on the appearance per se to pass completely as a Vietnamese.

On a more serious side, I still have a long way to go before I reach some level of fluency (if I can ever do that in the first place) in the language.

Well, I have around six more months to go. Guess I will have to work really hard.

Very hard.

Geez. Not going to be fun.

But no one ever said it was going to be.

On a very happy note, one more day to going home.

To see family and friends again.

To be able to hold the children as well as to hug me wife.

Priceless. Blessed.

And I thank God each day I think of all of you.

See you soon.