I'm still pretty sick. My ears are killing me. Bad infection. I'm taking Cipro which I am fairly sure won't really help but it is all I have. Additionally Addison's ears are bugging her and it is making her miserable. She is still a happy miserable but it is no fun, particularly the sleep portion of the day.

On an up note, my throat is getting better and my glands aren't so painful and my head doesn't hurt. But that could be the cobo of the antibiotics, the cold meds and the pain relievers I am popping like candy. Or maybe not, who knows? I'll take any progress I can get. But I will tell you - not hearing pretty well sucks too. It is annoying. And I fear the flight home if things do not improve.

In other news - we had our Embassy appointment today and it went wonderfully. We also got Addison's passport photo taken and now we wait for her passport to be issued. This can take up to 7 working days so we won't see anything until the end of next week, at least. After that, we will need to take her for her visa physical and then we can schedule our final visa interview. We can leave for home the day or so after, as long as the visa is issued. So we are hoping to head for home around November 17, the date our tickets are issued. That sure would make things easy! So cross fingers that all goes as planned and we can stick to that schedule. Although, to be honest, I'm in no hurry to leave at all. I feel like we haven't really even started our trip yet. Hopefully I will feel up to doing some touristy things in the next few days.

Tomorrow afternoon we go to see the water puppet show. We are very excited although we'll see how my health holds up tomorrow. Today we stopped into a silk shop and ordered two custom ao dai for Addy. Those will be delivered on Friday. I can't wait! She will look adorable :-) Shopping still left on my list:

Some Vietnamese children’s books

Pearls J

A Buddha

Silk yarn

Possibly a custom made mei-tai carrier

Some silk fabric

The boys want to check out the video games, of course. And we just have to walk around and see what we can see.

Oh – one more thing. A few of you repeatedly ask about the food. Haha. It is great, of course. Mostly we have food delivered because we haven’t gone out much yet thanks to my being so under the weather. Today our agency took us for ice cream and that was soooo good. Our hotel has a great breakfast buffet and I usually eat Vietnamese for breakfast (pho or fried rice and tropical juice). For lunch/dinner we usually order in from the Tamarind because it is a menu we have on hand and they know us and it is easy. But we are sick to death fo the Tamarind, although it is VERY good (particularly the spring rolls). So today we ordered in Thai and omg, it is possibly some of the best (and spiciest) Thai I have had (and I’m a bit of a connoisseur). So as we get out more, I’ll talk more about the food. There are some amazing Italian places (with homemade pasta) and French places I want to try and of course the trad’l Vietnemese. Maybe we’ll even hit up the Dog Meat District (yes that is a place within view of our hotel – over 60 specializing restaurants) although according to the Lonely Planet guide, it is bad luck to go during the first half of the lunar month and since I have no clue what part of which lunar month it is, I’m not sure we should. Still I think it would be awesome to do it so maybe we will. :-P