On Thursday morning, we woke up to a beautiful day in HaLong. HaLong is a bay east of Hanoi that has in it more than 3000 karst islands. People live on the water in homes that have front decks and they get all of their supplies via boat. The bay is dotted by boats laden with fruits and vegetables. The children are picked up by boat to get to school. Besides being interesting, it is very beautiful. We cruised on the bay and enjoyed a delicious lunch (kosher, of course) on deck.

We returned to Hanoi in the evening in time to take a night train to Lao Cai. We divided into 4 person cabins, all men and all women… two on the bottom bunks and two on the tops. Surprisingly, the train was modern and attractive and clean. I actually was able to get a good night’s sleep and there was the added treat of getting to know three really nice women!

In the pre-dawn hours we arrived in Lao Cai and then made our way by bus to Sapa. At the hotel, we had two rooms each for men and women to shower and change and after breakfast, we were ready to start a day in Sapa. Imagine a place that is very beautiful, almost looking like Switzerland (only without the snow) and then imagine it is so covered with clouds that you can only see a bit beyond the hand in front of you. Well, in fact, that was Sapa yesterday! It was only today that we saw how beautiful it is. Yesterday we were in a dreamscape. The clouds kept wafting by and every once in a while we would get a glimpse of the landscape and then it went back into hiding. We were able to drive to a village nearby called TaVan where we walked and slipped and slid along paths through the village. The village is inhabited by members of three different minority groups and has a regional school. Imagine my surprise when I walked into a classroom and a little girl asked me in English where I was from. When I answered “Israel” she said, “Shalom Chamuda!” (“Hello Cutie” in Hebrew). I couldn’t believe it! These children are living in a poor village in Vietnam, all the way north, close to the Chinese border. They speak English and have developed a repertoire of responses to tourists in Spanish, Italian, French, and Hebrew, among others!

Today we climbed a mountain that is a nature reserve. It was lush, full of flowers. The first cherry blossoms, harbingers of spring here, were on the trees. We heard beautiful music as we walked. Unlike yesterday which was cold and cloudy, today it was sunny and warm.

Tonight I am sitting in a lovely spot in the hotel with not only free computer access, but free tea being served to us!

We are pleasantly surprised by a couple of things here in Vietnam — at least so far. All of our rooms have had huge bigger-than-king-sized beds! and I have not yet come across an Asian toilet (those of you who have been to China with me know how very nice that is). All in all, so far, so good. Tomorrow we will tour in the area and then leave on a night train to Hanoi.

It’s not what I expected. It’s like no place I’ve ever been. And it is strange being in a place like Hanoi which was both forbidden and dangerous for Americans through a lot of my life.

We saw the Water Puppet Theater which is simply amazing. THe puppeteers stand behind a screen in waist deep water and from there on wands, they move the puppets to music and the puppets interact with each other– a man trying to catch fishh that are flopping around- people on boats passing each other , dancing animals! Amazing!

Today we went to the complex where Ho Chi Minh lived, worked, and now lies. It was quite an experience filing by his body, perfectly preserved. I can’t even identify my emotions about it, but it was very powerful. We saw where he lived, eschewing the palatial residence that had served the French rulers. He insisted on a spartan residence consisting of only three rooms.

We then went to the prison that the US pilots called “The Hanoi Hilton.” I can’t even imagine how anyone survived there. The conditions were brutal.

On our way today to HaLong, next to HaLong Bay, we rode through the countryside and stopped to buy some unbelievably sweet pineapple! What a treat!

I am certain there will be lots more to say about this adventure once I have a little time to process it. But it is, indeed, an adventure!

It’s been a busy time. There are ome things I can’t talk about and some I can.

Last night we went to a meeting about the trip we will be embarking on next week. We will be visiting Vietnam and Cambodia, and we were excited to hear details about the trip and are anticipating learning a lot!

When we arrived home, our friend who has been in Israel for the last 10 days or so returned to our house after a week or so of touring. He had been working at the Pentagon on 9/11 and so he had some interesting stories to tell about that day and what followed as well as his encounters in an official capacity with some of the people who run the US.

Today was the last class of the course I teach in basic counseling skills. I had the opportunity to tell my students for the final time that they need to always look at behaviors in context- that every behavior has some function. I see people being pathologized all of the time when in fact, they are doing the best they can in a difficult situation. That super-bright child who is unable to sit still in school– maybe he is bored out of his mind and that’s why he’s jumping out of his seat or annoying the child next to him. I am reminded of a story told to me by Jorge Colapinto, one of my professors when I was studying for my doctorate. He had a family referred to hi where the little girl was falling out of her classroom seat. She had been warned, punished, taken to the school counselor, and seen a number of social workers and therapists and still she kept falling out of her seat. Colapinto spoke with the family and while he was with them, he observed that the girl was small for her age. He asked her where she sat in the classroom. She said she sat in the back. He asked her how she was able to see the front of the room from there. She told him that every time she tried to see, she fell out of her seat!

In other news… the afghan that I made for Kinneret is almost finished. Today I washed out the dirt that got on it while I was making it. It is a white afghan with an embroidered cheerleader bear dressed in purple. Now I have to go back and change the afghan that I made that looks like it should be for a little boy. I used one color that I really don’t like and so I need to change it and change the border that contains the same color. This one is a bear who is a house painter.

Meanwhile, we are trying to gather three English speaking groups for trips to China this spring. One leaves March 24 and spends 17 days in China and Hong Kong. The second leaves on May 12 and spends 17 days in China, and the third is 11 days (9 net) in Shanghai, Suzhou, and Beijing). All three will be fabulous tours with delicious freshly prepared kosher meals.

And that’s what’s been going on with me in the last 24 hours.

In the olden days, our TRS-80 model 3, with two 5.25 floppy drives, 48 K, used to be able to access other people via bulletin boards. On our black screen the white letters and bit block graphics seemed like miracles to us. If something went wrong troubleshooting took a few minutes, maybe an hour, but it was clear that only a finite number of things could have gone wrong.

But now we literally have bells and whistles. We have colors and sounds and moives and flashing messages, even messages we don’t want to read and don’t pay attention to. We have the ability to instant message our familiy and frieds from around the world.

What we don’t have is the ability to use these wonderful things. Our wireless home network (two laptops, one desktop) is wonderful, acessible– it changed our life for the better, but at some point the router began to play tricks on us.

First the router would spontaneously stop working. We would unplug and replug it and after one or two or three times, it would work for a week or two, sometimes a month or two. After a while, it began to go out and reconnecting it involved plugging and unplugging it numerous times, running upstairs to redo the router, oming downstairs, starting to work, having the router shut off again, and then running back upstairs to unplug and replug and then the party began once again. The process would repeat more and more often and more and more times until finally we gave up and bought a new router.

Then we decided to set it up. I won’t bore you, but with my son Akiva and me working together, it still was a tedious job getting everything to work because there weren’t a finite number of things that could have gone wrong if, for reasons of sanity, I would define “finite” as a number less than 100. The problem could be with the router setup, the internet connection, the computer setup, the computer software, the interface between any of the above. Multiply it by three computers and add in three very very adorable but not so silent grandchildren and even though the process ended successfully, it still felt like some sort of ordeal.

As to the ending well…. we are now able to work on all of the computers, and best of all, I had an excuse to have pizza with Yehuda, Tamar, and Ayala, an unexpected treat. As we say in Hebrew, איזה ×›×£ What fun!!