Something miraculous happened this morning. For one small fleeting second, my ear cleared! haha. Wow, the world is LOUD! And I was only alone in the bathroom! And then, just like that, it was gone. Back to the solitary confines of my own voice in my own head.

I am agressively trying to clear my head. I'm doing a combo of steam, saline nose spray and pseudoephedrine and as soon as I can find some styrofoam cups, I'll be adding that to the daily regiment. With the combo of all of that, I can also do the "plug your nose and blow hard out of your nose" trick to pop my ears forcefully but I have a MEGA headache from it and it only works for a few seconds. STILL it is prrogress!!! I am going to clear this ear if it kills me!!! For people who live like this perpetually, I don't know how you can stand it! I feel this weird sort of total cut off from the world - like it is going on around me and I am alone inside my head and unable to communicate effectively with anyone. It is beyond frustrating.

At least there is no pain or other illness to deal with. That was truly miserable. but this ear thing - it has got to go. I want just a few days to really be able to hear Hanoi. I want the sights AND sounds!

In other health news, Noah had a rough night. His cough is getting perpetually worse. I finally broke out the cough meds and they worked great. I'm usually not a huge fan of meds but there is a time and a place and this seemed like both. His cough is mostly loose today and, otherwise, he seems fine (no fever, no loss of energy, no sleepiness despite the rough night).

Today we are changing our return flight tickets and doing some more shopping and hopefully visiting the Museum of Ethnology to see some of the ethnic minorities in Vietnam. Should be fun.