Preparation

Unlike my two prior Tets in Ha Nam, this year we spent the holiday at the Nguyen's new house (where we had the wedding). Huyen's family doesn't live in this house so it required some preparation on our part. This involved a few things:
1. Getting drinkable water. Su and I went to a neighbor's house and got water from her well and placed it in this large clay pot:


(PICTURE: All of the water we cooked with during the week came from this pot.)

2. We had to clean the house. This involved sweeping, mopping, dusting...and eventually burning the trash and leaves in the front courtyard

(PICTURE: This is the garbage collector in the village.)

3. We had to bring the TV from the house they live in and set it up in this house. It's very important for Su and my father-in-law to watch TV during the New Year. Yup, sounds just like America.

(PICTURE: Su rigged the antenna to that bamboo pole on their roof.)

During the course of the week, we also had to transport the refrigerator from the old house to the new house. Then on the actual New Year, I had to clean everything again. I washed and scrubbed windows and also -- this was my least favorite job -- scrapped the sap off the front steps which had fallen off the sapodilla tree.

Heading out...

(PICTURE: That bag weighs more than Huyen.)

In preparation for our week at Huyen's house, we had a lot to pack. Besides a week's worth of clothing, we had a ton of food and gifts to bring home. In no particle order, we had: wine, liquor, ten grapefruits (I had eaten more than a few the week before), candy and Sri Lankan tea. The total weight of the bag ended up being just about the same as Huyen.

On the morning that we left, about 75% of Hanoi was migrating out of town and back towards their family's hometown -- or as Vietnamese always say, "My countryside." Huyen and I took to the traffic very slowly since our bike was completed weighed down. I had offered to sit on the back with the bag on my shoulders but Huyen preferred being the passenger. However at some point Huyen started to yell at me on the highway. Between my sweater hood, helmet and traffic noise, I couldn't hear her. Finally I got the message (I couldn't ignore her hitting my shoulder) that her shoulder blades were about to break. We pulled off the highway into the shoulder and readjusted the bag. I ended up driving with my knees basically touching my chin so that the bag could rest on the space behind Huyen. The trip home took us about two hours which is nearly double the usual time it takes. But we got there safe and sound -- with the grapefruits in tact -- which is the most important thing.

The Year Of The Cat

(PICTURE: My worst nightmare.)

Happy year of the cat. There's no exclamation mark at the end of that first sentence for a reason -- I hate cats. Anyone who knows me well knows that I do not like cats. I'm sure this anti-feline attitude comes from when I was a teenager and often cat-sat my best friend Brad's cat when his family went off on winter holiday vacations. While his family was in Florida enjoying the sun, I was changing putrid cat litters and gagging at the smell of cat food. I've often made enemies with people after going into anti-cat rants so I'll stop the hating here.

According to the lunar calendar, this is the year of the cat. I'm hoping that despite that this will still be a great year for Huyen and me since we've got a lot of big things on our upcoming calendar. Over the next few days I'll recant some stories from my Tet spent at Huyen's house. Now though you should watch this fantastic youtube video about facts about cats that my sister sent me. Enjoy!

Grapefruits

(PICTURE: We bought grapefruit from this lady a couple of times during the week.)

Huyen has one uncle who lives outside of HCMC. During the week we drove about an hour to go see him and to have lunch with him. On the afternoon before we departed HCMC, he drove into the city to meet us and to give Tet gifts for their family. There were basically two gifts: 1) a few million VND in freshly printed money. This is the traditional gift for elderly family members and little children during Tet. 2) 19kgs of grapefruits. For those who are metric-moronic like me, that's 42lbs. Yes, he gave us 42lbs of grapefruits to fly back to Hanoi with!!!!

Due to the last minute interview warning from the US government, we had to buy tickets that were twice the price of normal tickets. The one advantage of this is that we were allowed to check baggage (on our flight down we couldn't check baggage). We took full advantage of this and checked our 42lbs of grapefruits.

Now you might be saying to yourself, "Don't you have grapefruits in Hanoi?" Well, yes we do. However, the southern grapefruits are unarguably juicier and more delicious. Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining at all about carrying 42lbs of grapefruits because a) I ended up eating about 20lbs of them b) It makes for a no brainer blog entry.

American War Atrocities Museum

(PICTURE: A quote from McNamara.)

While in HCMC, Huyen and I went to the American War Atrocities Museum. This was my second time at the museum. The first time I went I felt deeply ashamed to be an American. After having lived here for three years and being taken in by the graciousness and kindness of the people, that shame has reached new heights; I feel absolute disgust at what our country did in Vietnam.

In school, we don't really learn about the horrific things we did in Vietnam. Why is that? I would say that the vast majority of Americans have complete apathy when it comes to the mass murder and war crimes our country has been responsible for in Vietnam and in other places around the world. Personally, I think that America should build our own war crimes museum in Washington as acknowledgment of the evils we've done and as a reminder to never do them again.

Here's a few exhibits that struck me at the museum:

(PICTURE: Huyen's uncle is part of that three million and part of the 300,000 missing.)


(PICTURE: A good senator who was sadly in the minority.)


(PICTURE: Kerrey WON a bronze star for this massacre.)


(PICTURE: The city by Huyen's house. This is where my family and friends stayed the night before our wedding.)


(PICTURE: Why weren't members of our government charged with war crimes?)


(PICTURE: Does this look familiar? Did we learn any lessons from Vietnam?)

No Smoking On Government Property?

I don't know if I pee when I'm nervous or I just drank a lot of the free bottled water our taxes go to, but I couldn't stop peeing on the morning of our final visa interview. As soon as I entered the bathroom for the first time, I was struck by the unmistakably disgusting stench of cigarettes.

I hate the smell of cigarettes all the time but especially in non smoking area. Like all US government buildings, the consulate was a smoke free zone. Clearly someone/many people were jonesing for a cigarette and found their refuge in the men's bathroom. Each time I went in there, I held my nose and peed as fast as I could. It was during my fifth pee that I discovered the smoking culprit -- A US CONSULATE SECURITY GUARD!!! There were probably five hundred potential suspects that morning and of course the only one not caring about the no smoking sign was the guy employed by the consulate to protect the rules.

Final Visa Interview

(PICTURE: Huyen with her medical bag. The consulate is across the street.)

To prepare for the final interview, Huyen and I had to collect over 500 pages of documents. Yes, over 500 pages. This doesn't include the emails, phone records, blog entries, photos, etc. that I printed to prove that our relationship was legitimate. Putting together this many documents naturally made me nervous that we were missing something. Huyen started to fear that we didn't have enough pictures and TWICE went to a photoshop in HCMC to print more. Then the night before our interview she went threw all 100 pictures and put post-it notes on them to help her remember where and when we took them (they were already in chronological order based on the governments requirement). Furthermore, the day before the interview, we spent the whole afternoon practicing about 100 potential questions we found on a website about immigration interviews. In short, we were very very prepared.


(PICTURE: Our notebook.)

We arrived at the consulate two hours before our scheduled time on the morning of the interview. When we arrived, there were already about forty people waiting by the entrance of the consulate. Huyen thought this was a lot of people but I was surprised it wasn't more. After parking our motorbike across the street, we walked over to the consulate. As soon as we got on the sidewalk, a guard waved us to come towards him. He was standing at a side entrance and told us that we had to go through there. We both got really excited thinking that we had gotten the red carpet treatment and got to go through a special entrance. Well it turns out we had to join a huge line inside a waiting area. Once we were at the front of this line, we went back outside to join the short line we had passed earlier that morning.

Eventually it was our turn to go into the consulate. We had to check all of our belongings and then get a ticket from a window. The ticket had a number on it -- like at the butcher's section of a grocery store -- indicating when it was our turn. I would estimate that there were three hundred people at the consulate that morning. It took us about an hour to have our number called. We then went to a glass window where the person told us to take everything out of our notebook and to pass it under the glass. If this sounds familiar, it's because I already wrote about this nonsensical process a few months ago. We did as we were told and passed about three hundred pages of stuff under the window. The girl quickly through the stuff into a brown folder and instructed us to pay the visa fee ($404) and to wait for our number to be called again.

While waiting for the actual interview, we got to observe dozens of people have their interviews. It was such a strange process. A few of the more notable things I saw were:
1. A family of seven people having their interview at the same time. A relative of theirs in America is sponsoring all of them which is a pretty hefty endeavor considering what it takes to sponsor just one person.
2. A white guy from Ohio was trying to get a visa for his Vietnamese son. The guy's wife wasn't there and weirdly the kid did not look the least bit mixed. My guess was that the kid was from his wife's first marriage but who knows. The funny part was that the kid ran away during the interview, eventually causing the man to run away to find him.
3. A Vietnamese-American, pregnant southern girl was trying to get her Vietnamese husband/boyfriend into the states. After the interview didn't result in a green light, the girl all of a sudden became extra pregnant, practically going into labor in front of the window. Eventually I think he passed his interview but watching this girl act more pregnant was quite enjoyable.
4. A girl who came with a giant suitcase full of evidence. Her interview lasted about 25 minutes.
5. There were three other white American guys at the consulate trying to get their wives into the states. I was the only one whose wife though was probably within twenty years of his age. There was this one guy who I felt quite bad for as I'm pretty sure he couldn't speak Vietnamese and his wife couldn't speak English. The guy was also clearly in not so great health. Their interview lasted about twenty minutes and resulted in a passing grade. It was after this guy that Huyen and I got the call...

Huyen and I got up to the window and I asked the officer if I could participate in the interview. His answer was, "Hey why not? The more the merrier." Immediately I liked this guy. He then asked us some very basic questions including where we would live in America. Huyen answered that we would live with my parents and proceeded to show him a letter my parents had written stating this. The guy looked at the letter and jokingly said, "Do you think it would be cool to call your parents right now and wake them up to ask them about this?" I told him that I thought my parents would love to be included in the interview. The guy then asked to see some pictures. Huyen took out three piles of pictures and was about to pass them under the window when he said, "Yeah, that's good. Those three are enough." Huyen and I both sort of laughed and I said, "Really? Can't we show you more? She worked really hard preparing them." The guy laughed and then said, "Okay, congratulations!" And that was it. Huyen and I immediately gave each other a big hug and collected all of our stuff. In total, our interview lasted about three minutes. I would say this was fifteen minutes shorter than the next shortest interview that day.

So why was our interview so short? I've got a few theories:
1. I had applied from within Vietnam whereas everyone else I think had someone apply for them from America.
2. We had been sitting in view of the officer who interviewed us. I'm pretty sure he had seen us clowning around with each other for two + hours.
3. Huyen speaks English and did all of the answering.
4. The guy wanted to go to lunch since it was nearly noon by that point and we were at the end of the line.

Overall the whole process took us about five months from start to finish (not including getting legally married in Vietnam first which was another 2-3 months). The process was a pain in the butt but heck, HUYEN CAN NOW COME TO AMERICA!!!!!!

Just a couple more things:
1. Thank you mom and dad for cosponsoring Huyen. We couldn't have done this without you.
2. As I wrote the other day, Huyen will have to fly back to HCMC to pick up her visa and to get her second round of vaccinations.
3. Thank you Steve for all the help along the way. We were the only people who did this without a lawyer. We owe you a big dinner for the help!
4. Although we're now legally allowed to come to America, we're still a few months away from that. We've still got to finish out our jobs, pack up our stuff, travel the country and backpack our way to New Jersey. It's gonna be a fun few months before the big arrival!