Farmer's Daughter!

(PICTURE: I should have picked up one of these translators ages ago.)

In order to submit the I-130 package to the United States Immigration office, I have needed to get many documents translated. It's been really interesting to read the translated version of some of Huyen's and my documents. My favorite thing so far has been Huyen's birth certificate which lists her parents' occupations as "Farmers." You know what that means: I married the farmer's daughter!

The day after getting our marriage license, I went to the translation office to have it translated since the license was the final document we needed to begin immigration. I showed up at the office before it was open and had to wait a few minutes for some of the staff. Finally someone showed up and took me into the office where it didn't take me long to realize that NOBODY SPOKE ENGLISH! Sure, the translator was not one of the people I talked to but you would have thought that the people working in that office would have picked up a couple of words of English here and there. That said, you would have thought I'd have picked up a lot more Vietnamese than I have. Touche, Ben. Touche.

11,471

(PICTURE: This about sums things up. My back is hurting already.)

After getting our marriage license, I was finally able to fill in all the missing sections of our I-130 packet for US Immigration (Step 1 for Huyen getting her green card). For the first time in my life, I checked "Married" on an application. This got me thinking: How many days had I been "Single"?

I typed into google, "How many days have I been living" and there was a link to a Days Alive Calculator. After punching in my birthday, I learned that I'd been alive for 11,474 days. Since I did this search on Day #3 of marriage, that meant I had been single for 11,471 days. Not a bad run!

We're Married!!!!!...Legally.

It's official: Huyen and I are legally married! After months of dealing with the Ha Nam justice department, we've finally gotten our marriage license.

Fittingly, the closest I came to snapping was on the afternoon of the 20th. For the 100th time, I asked Huyen to call the Ha Nam office and ask them what the delay was since they were legally a month over the time limit to process our marriage paperwork. While on the phone with Huyen, I almost lost it telling her to demand an answer from the office. Two minutes later Huyen called me back and said, "I canceled our marriage." I naturally said, "Thank god. I knew this was a huge mistake," and then she happily said, "Kidding! Our license is ready!".

The next afternoon we drove to Ha Nam and had our very romantic legal ceremony. Basically we were brought up to a conference room and the guy who interviewed us stood in front of us and talked a lot in Vietnamese. When he finished speaking Huyen said, "He wants to know if you still want to get married." I smiled -- not knowing if Huyen was tricking me into something dastardly since I couldn't understand a word the guy said except my name -- and replied that I did. The man then had us sign two copies of the wedding license and then put our names into the Ha Nam wedding registry.

After we took our first wedding picture with the man who married us (see top picture). Some people say that marriage is like a prison. Well, my first wedding photo sure felt like a mug shot.

As I've written on here in the past, getting the license was a formality for us to begin immigration processing to the United States. Huyen and I consider our actually wedding to be 12/19 when we celebrate at her family's house.

Plastic Glove

(PICTURE: Would you like a glove with your Coke?)

This story just happened to me and it is disgusting, odd and downright unexplainable.

Huyen and I were sitting outside, under an overhang, eating dinner. I had just finished my last bite of grilled buffalo and had saved a sip of coke to wash it down with. As I lifted the glass of Coke to my lips, something landed right on the rim of the glass. I moved the glass away from my face and saw a plastic glove. How the glove got there was a mystery. I immediately looked up but there was the overhang above us. I looked around me, but nobody seemed to be in possession of any gloves or have the motive to throw one at me. As I looked around in confusion I thought that maybe it was the wind. However, there wasn't even a lick of a breeze. This is one of those things in life that just doesn't have an answer.

I've eaten a lot of weird things in my life but nearly putting a used plastic glove into my mouth would have topped them all.

Trivia Question: What is this?

Trivia Question: What is this thing that I'm cleaning?


A) A medieval torture device commonly referred to as "The Rack"

B) A Vietnamese sled for the rare Sapa snowfall

C) Su's dorm room mattress

The Answer: C

They Grow Up So Fast

It seems like just last week that Huyen's brother Su was sharing a bed with me. Okay, it was actually last week. For about a week before Su began university, he was back at my place co-starring in my personal version of "Perfect Strangers." The last time Su stayed at my house, Huyen and Su shared a bed while I slept on the floor. We tried this arrangement for one night but I woke up the next morning with a bunch of mosquito bites on my feet (those bastards never show their face until I'm sleeping without a mosquito net!). Fearing Dengue, I told Su and Huyen that for now on the three of us would share my bed. Anyway, once I reclaimed eight inches on my bed the three of us began to reenact our own version of "Three's Company." Okay, enough of the old sitcom references.

After a few days of cohabitation, Su was admitted into his university's dorm. In a case of perfect timing, Su had to return to Ha Nam the day he was scheduled to move in. This meant that Huyen, Huong and I got to move Su into his dorm...sans Su. I can assure you that I was the only non-Vietnamese person in the dorm that day. I got plenty of stares and one brave freshman even asked me, "Are you studying at Transportation University?" As much as I would love to go back to university, there's no chance in hell I would be willing to stay in this dorm:


(PICTURE: Huyen cleaning Su's bed. Huong checking out the other freshmen.)

Poison Peanuts

At every bia hoi, there are plates or packs of peanuts on the tables. I love peanuts so this is always one of my favorite things about going to bia hois. There's something especially fun about breaking open peanut shells and throwing them on the floor.

As I mentioned in the last blog, on Saturday night my friends and I went to a bia hoi. While eating and drinking we went through about eight plates of peanuts. On about the third plate, after I cracked open the shell, I started to notice that some of the peanuts had a stem of sorts attached to the nut. This seemed odd to me so I would toss those peanuts on the ground. However, once or twice I would eat a peanut that had only a small "stem" that I could knock off with my finger.

Well, about halfway through dinner, our friend Minh showed up. He saw me opening up a shell and immediately noticed a peanut with a stem. Minh's English is not good but he did manage to say, "No eat. Bad for health. Poison." I said, "Poison?" Minh said, "Yes. Poison. Bad for health."

Needless to say, I stopped eating any peanut that looked like it even remotely could have a stem. However, the fact that I had eaten a couple already totally bugged me out and made me extremely paranoid. It is for this reason that I'm pretty sure I woke up wide awake at 2:30 AM after having bizarre nightmares. So lesson learned: Do Not Eat Peanuts With Weird Looking Stems Attached To The Nut!