Paterfamilias and I have returned from our trip to Vietnam. We are still recovering from jet lag and the challenges of dealing with the impenetrable language [they use the same alphabet as we do but not the same pronunciation of the letters], the different culture [this was our first trip to a country not dominated by Western language and thought], the traffic [hundreds of thousands of motorbikes; no traffic lights!] and the climate [hot and hotter in the south, though it was winter].
While we were there, we decided we would share the trip with our Grands. Almost every hotel we stayed at--from the shabby place in the Mekong Delta to the spiffy hotel in Ho Chi Minh City [Saigon] to the business-like hotel in Hanoi--had a computer with access to the Internet. So every evening before we went out to dinner we sat down at the computer and distilled the day for our Grands--filtering the day's activities to focus on what a 6-, 7- and 8-year old would find interesting.
So, we gave them our rules for crossing the streets [if there's a Vietnamese person crossing, go with them. If not, wade into the traffic and walk across it at a stately, measured pace; do not look at the traffic--it will terrify you and make you stop in your tracks and that would be a dangerous thing to do.] We told them how hard it was to speak VIetnamese [Nguyen is pronounced Win; Thu is pronounced Toe; Thuy is pronounced Twee--and that doesn't account for having one of 8 accents on the vowel]. We told them how sweet and friendly the children were [When we were bike riding in rural Mekong Delta, kids would run over and call out, "Hallo, Hallo." One little boy jumped on his bike, rode over to us and called out, "Hallo, Hallo. Good Afternoon," and rode away laughing merrily.] We would describe an ancient temple or tomb we saw and give them Internet links to it. When we moved from city to city, we encouraged them to get their maps out and follow our progress from the south of the country to the north and then over to Cambodia.
One of the wonderful things about emailing about the country and culture we were experiencing was getting an occasional email back--either a question from one of the Grands or a comment from one of our grown children to the effect of how much they were enjoying the reports and the details. In our last email, the day we were leaving to fly back home, one of the Grands is reported to have said, "Oh no. They're coming home. Does this mean no more emails?"
Bottom line:The feeling of inclusion with our children and their children while we were far from home was beyond wonderful. We were still connected.
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