No visa, no plane tickets, no place to live, no problem!

If you had told me back in April (or February or last November...) that we would not have plane tickets or a visa or a place to live at the beginning of August, I would've said you were crazy. But that is exactly the predicament we found ourselves in. Strangely, while it was mildly frustrating, we knew that everything would work out.

Housing was our first indication that we might have some problems.  Initially we went online and started looking at 5 bedroom houses in Hanoi.  They look great!  Some had swimming pools, some had yards, some had large patios.  But we weren't getting a large response when we contacted the realtors in Vietnam about the houses.  It turns out, none of the landlords in Vietnam want to rent to anyone for just four months.  And to be fair, from the beginning our contact at the U.S. Embassy in Hanoi kept telling us we should look at apartments.  We eventually found a really nice four-bedroom apartment in the Cau Giuy district about a mile from Libby's school, and we sent the deposit over on August 2.

Another issue was getting our visas.  We started that process as soon as we could, but we ran into a few roadblocks.  We knew that typically a visa is only for three months, but we thought since we were part of the Fulbright Program administered by IIE and the U.S. State Department, we would be okay to stay for four months. It wasn't that easy.  They needed copies of our passports.  Then a few weeks later, copies of birth certificates for the kids and the marriage license (?) for Libby and I.  And then in the beginning of August we learned that we would not be getting four month visas unless we submitted a lot of other paperwork and obtained a work permit.  But again, we kept plugging away, and now Libby will be able to pick up the visas at the Vietnamese Embassy when she goes to orientation in Washington, DC next week.

And finally, we kept being asked by family and friends, "When are you leaving?"  But we didn't know since we weren't able to purchase plane tickets.  We needed to get the visa situation worked out before Libby could get her ticket from Fulbright.  We were worried that as the date of our departure got closer, the tickets for the rest of us would get more expensive.  But yesterday we finally got clearance to buy the tickets, and they were quite reasonable -- in fact, it is cheaper to fly to Hanoi, Vietnam than to London, England!

So the name of this game so far has been patience.  In one of our first emails from Fulbright, they told us, "we know you want more information.  We know you might get frustrated.  But trust us.  Things are happening behind the scenes.  We want you to succeed.  We've been doing this for forty years, and it has worked out every time."  So far they have been right.