March 1, 2012

Our friend Jack Swickard, a Vietnam vet who is on the Board of Directors of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Angel Fire, New Mexico with Ron, is in Saigon escorting U.S. Congressman Steve Pearce (R) 2nd District New Mexico and his interpreter. We invited them to dinner at Ngoc Sùòng restaurant for Friday night along with another Fulbright scholar who is teaching here in Saigon. His name is Ram and he's the Professor of Engineering at New Mexico State in Los Cruses, New Mexico. He also brought his wife, Khuyen who is Vietnamese, and their daughter FiFi.  It's a beautiful restaurant where we took Carie and her mother a few weeks ago. It's not far from here, but it's rather hard to find - even in a taxi. We got there early and even though we had a reservation for 9, we wanted to check it out before they all arrived plus decide what we should order. As Ron was explaining to the waiter what dishes we were planning for the table, I reached across him and knocked over my red wine all over Ron's pants! Geeze. Once he recovered and cleaned up, he got a call on his cell phone that Jack and the Congressman were lost. He walked outside and found them at the corner, escorted them in and got another call from Ram saying he was lost too. By the time everyone finally got there, we ordered sugar shrimp, clams Rockefeller, Coconut shrimp, and mussels in a wonderful sauce.

Congressman Pearce is very interested in Ron's projects, in the Vietnam Memorial, and very interesting to talk to. He's up for re-election in the fall.

On Saturday we were walking to the front of the apartment building to get a taxi for the Co Op Market, when a couple and their daughter from Russia whom we had met previously invited us to go with them to the Metro. They have a driver available to them whenever, so we took them up on the free ride. The Metro is like Sam's Club, or Cosco. It's huge, selling everything imaginable from fresh produce and live fish to motorbikes and TVs. We needed a lot of groceries because we've been out-of-town, so our basket was quite full when we checked out. We need to go back soon though, because we were sort of in a hurry so as to not hold up our friends and their driver.

Sunday, after our Vietnamese language lesson with Carie, another friend of ours - Ted Englemann from Denver, Colorado is in Saigon and came to our apartment to visit. He's friends of the Vietnam Center in Lubbock and has participated in several symposiums. He's a Vietnam vet and professional photographer. He's written a book on victims of PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.  Carie is also a great photographer, so the evening was very interesting. We took him to dinner here at the apartments and hope to see him again soon.

Today is Thursday and Ron has gone back to work. When he left I said "Be careful crossing the streets." I sounded just like his mother must have when he was in 1st grade!