Vietnam first impressions

Well here we are. Our heads are still spinning a bit, but we're beginning to get settled in. If you'd like to see our entire online photo album with pictures from the last few days, go here.

And now a quick run-down of the details for you, in case you're interested:

We took off from LAX at 10:20 PM for a marathon 15 hour flight to Hong Kong. We got to watch in very slow motion on the little map as our plane flew north all the way to Alaska (we waved as we flew over Washington), curved over the north Pacific, and came sailing down over Japan, Korea and finally into Hong Kong. "Fun" is about the last word we would use to describe that part of the trip.

Hong Kong airport was quiet when we got there, so Steven took a nap in the corner while waiting for the connection to Vietnam. It came soon enough and, after our 15 hour trip, the 2 hour hop to Vietnam flew by. We were greeted at the airport by David, our country director, who loaded us into a taxi for the drive into town.

First impressions of Vietnam consisted of the smell--a hard-to-define mix of diesel, food, humid air and a few other things. We also marveled at all the scooters--some carrying entire trees, some carrying cages full of pigs, some just carrying people--that make up the majority of traffic here. Our driver laid on his horn and drove through the crowds of mopeds as they parted before him, Red Sea-style.

We got settled in to our apartment for a little while, then went right out to lunch with a number of folks from our team here in Vietnam. They were all great people, though neither of us remember much from lunch since we were only partially conscious. Right after lunch, a couple from our team around our age took us out on the town. Though Joelle had been to Vietnam before, Steven had a chance to experience his first Vietnam bus ride and first Vietnamese coffee. By the time we were done with our first tour, we were both ready to collapse. It had been around 48 hours since our last good night's sleep. We stumbled back home and crashed. Of course it still took Steven another 2 hours to actually fall asleep, thanks to the Vietnamese coffee.

Though we're still getting tired around 8 PM and getting up around 4 AM, we're slowly adjusting. Yesterday Susan, our Personnel Director, showed us around town a bit more and explained how language school would work for us. We start lessons tomorrow, which should be dang interesting. We'll let you know how it goes.

There's so much more to tell, but it'll have to wait. We leave you now with this fantastic time lapse video of Hanoi traffic on a lazy Sunday afternoon: