When I opened the mailbox and saw the return address of U.S. Government Official Mail my heart did a momentary, panicked stop. What now?! Then I opened, saw my tattered birth certificate and realized that my key to leaving this place was inside. Oh yes, it was my passport! I’m unnecessarily excited, but after all the hassle to get the filing done, it’s nice to see that it was all worth it; I have a passport for the first time in my life.
The kids were hoping theirs were hiding within the mailbox, too, but since we filed a day later for them, I’m expecting that theirs will be at least one day behind. Perhaps a bit more, though, given all the divorce papers that had to be sent along with each application.
On the learning front, I found a super deal on Colloquial Vietnamese through Amazon (and a local seller, to boot). $13.99 for the cassettes and the book; the book alone cost $45 at my college. So now I have two copies of the book (I’d thought I was buying the cassettes only), but hopefully can send one over to K for him to use. A friend of mine bought us another “learning Vietnamese” book that came with a CD. Man, hearing it sure does make a difference in pronunciation. Of course, we’re probably not even understandable at this point, but we’re trying.
