Blowing This Pop Stand.

Yesterday, we made reservations for our return. We will be back in LA on July 10. It's been a little hairy getting to this point. Apparently, Vietnam is making it much harder to get visa extensions. Ours expired on May 7, and the school we work for had quite a difficult time getting us an extension to June 7. There was a lot of additional paperwork, including an 11 pm motorbike trip by our incredibly helpful landlady to the local police station to get a suddenly-required certificate. So we're taking a chance that we can actually get another extension until July 7, when we're due to leave Hanoi.

Everyone says we can get another month, and we know that if worse comes to worst, the usual fallback is to fly to Laos for the day, get a tourist visa there, then fly back. Everyone does this, but it's an expensive option that we hope to avoid.

We also got a scare when we called Continental to change our reservation. The agent told me (quite snippily) that there was no availability in July. After going round and round with her, I finally hung up in disgust, I called their international desk and got a far more helpful person. She worked for about half an hour and finally found us a flight back: Hanoi-Bangkok-Sydney-LA. No thanks.

But better than not going home at all, right? But just as I was about to capitulate, we were disconnected. I called back, got another helpful soul who found us a better flight: Hanoi-Seoul-Vancouver-LA. Still kind of ugly, so we decided to take it in stages. We have a friend in Seoul who went through the EFL training with us, so we will visit with him for two days, then fly on to Vancouver, spend a day there, then fly to LAX.

So that's it. In two months we'll be home. And the adventure will continue.

P.