Look! A giant!

There hasn't been much posting going on lately due to some extenuating circumstances, mostly involving apartment misadventures and my starting volunteering this week, but I thought I could squeeze in a quick story while at the office (related to Christin's "friendly white guy" comment, actually). Last weekend we went to a temple and pagoda near Ho Tay (West Lake), in the northern part of Hanoi. They were both really impressive, especially the pagoda, which had an incredible tower with carved buddhas sitting in it and is the oldest pagoda in Hanoi. I'll post some pictures once I'm on my own computer with internet access. Anyway, we were walking around the grounds of the pagoda, and I noticed these two little Vietnamese kids looking at me and then running over to their father (which happens a lot, the kids are super cute and just stare at me and giggle). So I didn't think anything of it, until the father came over to me with a camera. I assummed they just wanted me to take a picture of them, but in fact they wanted a picture of me. So one person in the family took the picture while I posed with two little kids and their dad, and now I'm the giant white guy in a Vietnamese family photo. I don't know if they mistook me for someone famous or just thought I was funny-looking, but either way, it was pretty awesome. More to come later on the apartment disaster, my volunteer work, and hopefully Alison's first appearance on the blog.