One final post for now.... and THANK YOU!!

Well, so much for sleep…… :) We were kidding ourselves that somehow magically now that Zachary is home he would sleep like a champ through the night and we would all wake up refreshed. As it turned out, we were up many times with him, not sure why, perhaps the adjustment to an entirely new environment, is it too cold, too hot, too loud, not loud enough (!), too light, too dark, etc.??? On one hand, we got very little sleep; on the other hand, we got to spend more time with our son!! :) But, anyhow, nothing new, we are just parents!

But now that we are at home, we wanted to make one last post about this chapter of our wonderful journey picking up Zachary in Hanoi. It really is the culmination of such an amazing process and we cannot express how fortunate we have been to have had the fantastic support of PLAN, our friends, and our family. We will continue to post occasionally on this blog, but not with nearly the same consistency. We took over 4,000 pictures and 100’s of videos during our trip, which we hope to organize and make available soon, but in the meantime we have added a couple of new videos to the hosting-site (http://picasaweb.google.com/alyssahershman/Videos), and some pictures in this post. We are also going to excitedly be following any blogs of the families currently in Vietnam, or who will be there shortly. We are so happy for you all.

So, to summarize our last days in Hanoi... on Wednesday, 9/5/07, in Hanoi, Chad spent all day with Zachary at the hotel, while Alyssa spent the day with the Barans at Hoa Lu. Wednesday night was an early night for all of us once mommy came home.




We went back to the SOS on Thursday morning, 9/6/07, and had our final appointment with Dr. Soraya. She has been a great doctor and really took to Zachary. We were of course extremely relieved that she gave us the OK to fly on Friday!!!






During the day on Thursday, Chad took a final tour of the city with Thomas – who is a local resident that John and Jillian Weiss met while they were in Hanoi. They recommended meeting him for not only a tour of the important sites, but even better, some of the hidden gems. It was well worth it, because in spite of our attempts there were still a number of meaningful places to visit and history to learn. The tour included a drive around West Lake with stops at the Tran Quoc Pagoda, the One-Pillar Pagoda, the Ho Chi Minh Museum, the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum, Hun Tiep Lake (where the downed U.S. B-52 still remains), and an actual residence in the Old Quarter.






The tour of the residence was easily the best part of the trip. It started with a walk into a standard shop, but then continued out the back of the shop into an entirely different world. In this particular residence, about 80 people (all family to some extent) lived together, sharing certain common areas but each having a room or two as their private living quarters. Stairs and hallways wound around and up in many directions, with a surprising number of passageways and doors leading to other private areas Chad could not even go into. In Hanoi, almost all the real estate is thin and deep, but Chad learned why during his trip – apparently real estate is taxed by the width of the frontage, not overall area. Interesting. This particular residence also had a private coffee-shop on the top floor, which offered a great view of Lake Hoan Kiem.

When Chad returned from his tour, Alyssa took a final shopping trip with Lisa, while Quan and Zach played together by the pool. That evening, Chad made one last excursion around Hanoi – this time on the back of a motorbike during rush hour, with a video-camera in hand. A portion of the wild video is now on the hosting-site too for anybody that might be curious. Later that evening, we met the Barans for a final farewell dinner together at a local Vietnamese restaurant, then afterwards took some special pictures in Vietnam t-shirts to really remember our trip. :) Saying goodbye to them was more of a see-you-later, as they live just down the road in Medford. We spent the rest of Thursday packing and getting ready for our trip home on Friday morning.

The trip home was for all intents and purposes pretty standard. Flights from Hanoi-Hong Kong, Hong Kong-L.A., immigration and customs at L.A.X., then L.A.-Boston. As we mentioned in the previous post, even though we arrived at 2:30am in Boston, we were enthusiastically greeted, and Zach got many, many hugs and kisses. At that moment, we let out such a huge sigh of relief and joy – back in Boston with our son!!!!!!

We have thoroughly enjoyed keeping this blog and we hope you have enjoyed reading it and following us on this journey of love. Thank you, thank you, thank you!!

Live from the Frammy

It is about 5AM EST on 9/8/07!! We are home!!! Zach was a trooper the entire long trip. We were greeted at the airport at about 3:30AM by Zachary's grandparents Ray and Pauline, with surprise visitors his uncle Adam, aunt Sarah, Sophie and Reba too!!!! Zach is now looking forward to meeting the rest of his friends and family, especially his grandma Ros and uncle Bradley. Much more to follow (including pix, so cute, of Zach with Sophie and Reba already), but now.... we are looking forward to.... sleep! Love, Chad & Alyssa & Zach.

Daddy Time!!

Hello everyone! It is about 10AM here in Hanoi on Wednesday, 9/5/07. We have not left yet - on advice of the doctor we are seeing here, we postponed flying with Zachary until Friday, 9/7/07 -- which is at least one day earlier than our original departure date, and gets us back to Boston on Saturday morning.

Chad is on daddy duty today while Alyssa enjoys a day trip with the Barans to Hoa Lu, Vietnam's ancient capital, which is about a 2-hour drive from Hanoi. We are using the same tour company for this day-trip that we used for the day-trip to Halong Bay - Buffalo Tours (http://www.buffalotours.com/), and we requested the same excellent guide - Ahn. For those of you traveling to Vietnam, we are happy to recommend this company if you wish to take any excursions in, and around, Hanoi.

We sadly said goodbye to two more of our of travel-group PLAN families between yesterday and today. Jessica and Kai Zedler, along with their travel friends Sandy and Mary-anne, all from Wisconsin, left yesterday evening. Eric, Nicole, and Grace Neri, plus Nicole's parents, all from the S.F. Bay area, left this morning. As you can imagine, it has been a very emotional experience for us here, and while we are sad to say goodbye, we are so HAPPY for the friends we have made and that we will all be able to experience the lives of our children, who share such a unique bond, growing up together. Gladly, we are already talking about our first reunion!

Well, because Alyssa has our camera with her today, I do not have any new pix to include in this post, so I have chosen to include a classic shot from the day we first met Zach! Even though it was only about 2 weeks ago, we feel like he has been in our hearts and our lives forever.

Hoping for the best...

It is now just after midnight on Tuesday, 9/4/07. As of now, we are scheduled to leave Vietnam in less than 36 hours..... but there is a chance we may need to stay here longer until Zachary is strong enough to fly. You see, our little guy has had a rough couple of days... and he is still recovering..... Chad represented Team Hershman in Halong Bay on Monday while Alyssa nursed our baby back to health....

Chad took loads of pix and video at Halong Bay to share with Alyssa and Zach (he has also uploaded a couple of videos to the video-hosting site). It was a worthwhile trip he said - highlighted by a tour through the Thien Cung Grotto, considered by some to be the most beautiful of all the grottoes in Halong Bay -- or so it said when we googled it. :) Unfortunately, the videos from inside the grotto are a little difficult to see (and can't even really do the place justice), but maybe with some fancy editing we can make them more viewable in the future.

If at our appointment at SOS on Tuesday the doctor recommends against Zachary flying on Wednesday morning, we will attempt to reschedule our flights again - this time from Wednesday back to as late as Saturday (our original departure date)..... We will be hoping Zachary gets a positive recommendation for flying home on Wednesday morning (we are really looking forward to getting home)..... if we have to stay, we will make the best of our additional time here, seeing some sites we still haven't gotten to, plus Alyssa will get to take a day trip on Thursday (to Hoa Lu, the ancient capital - often referred to as "the Ha Long Bay on land") while Chad takes care of Zachary at the hotel......

We will know much more later this morning...... everybody cross your fingers that Zachary will be o.k. to fly!!! Thank you.

A whole lotta' nuttin'...

Well, this picture basically sums up our day today. :) With Zachary in full-blown recovery, we stayed around the hotel all day with him, mostly in the room, but we did take a few walks around the grounds. And, so, with not much else going on, we decided to test the self-timer function on our camera here on the reflexology path at the hotel. Wow!

Actually, we also took care of some business today, most importantly sussing out changing our return tickets from Saturday to Wednesday. We also rescheduled our Halong Bay trip to accommodate for the earlier flight, and picked up some new meds for Zachary. We know, very exciting stuff. :)

This evening while Alyssa napped with Zach, Chad took a walk with the Barans to a part of town we have not explored yet, a more southern part of the Hai Ba Trung District. There is a cool lake there called Thien Quang Lake, next to Thong Nhat Park, which looks to be the largest park in Hanoi.

Tomorrow is Vietnam National Day (sort of like Independence Day in the U.S.), the day when, in 1945, Vietnamese President Ho Chi Minh declared, right here in Hanoi's Ba Dinh Square, Veitnam's independence from France. So there are festivities scheduled throughout the City -- hopefully we will be able to venture out with Zach to check some of it out!