Visiting Vietnam

We're going to visit Vietnam. This is the first time for my daughter and I, but unfortunately dear husband cannot take enough time off to go. It's amazing that it's taken me almost 40 years to go while she's only going to be 5. This will also be the first time my dad will have been back since he left as a teenager, so long ago. Mom went back last year by herself, and now wants us to all go but unfortunately my sister can't make it this time.

Drama Girl

This was such a dramatic picture I had to post it.

Ordering off the Internet - Vietnamese site

There are of course bookstores that sell vietnamese books on the internet. When I found this site Vinabook.com, I had to make an order. The only problem is that it is hard to decide on books online, especially when you're barely reading as I am. Google translate helps, but sometimes the translations leave much to be desired. It would be so much easier if I could just look at the books. Also, the shipping costs are pretty high, since books weigh a lot. The good thing is that the books are so much cheaper. So even with the high shipping, which essentially doubled the cost of the books, they were still cheaper than the bilingual books I was buying from Amazon. The other problem was that to make the shipping reasonable, I didn't use air mail but ship mail, so it took a while(maybe a month or so) before I received the books. You need to plan ahead at that rate!

Vietnamese Videos and piracy

I found a set of Vietnamese videos teaching the alphabet in cute songs. There are 2 videos covering A to R, and there should be one more for the remainder of the alphabet. I emailed the makers of the video set to ask about the last video. Their response was that there was so much copying of their videos that they were busy suing the stores and didn't have time or money to invest in new productions. Apparently the stores were copying and selling the videos in bulk. There were some things I didn't like about the videos in that they were not exclusively in Vietnamese, but they would throw English translations of the songs in some segments. Not only that, their English translations were not the best translations. I would rather teach one language well, than have two mixed up languages. But the amount of learning video is very limited, I haven't even seen any made in Vietnam. I guess it's not as common for kids to learn from videos as it is here in the US.

Ordering off the Internet - American sites

I'm finding bilingual books at a site called www.Asiaforkids.com. They have a bunch of stuff for most Asian cultures, not just books, but dolls, videos and all sorts of cultural things to help kids learn about their culture.

Some of the books can be found cheaper at Amazon, but they are a nice resource for finding a lot of stuff in one location.

Sing and Learn - Vietnamese

I bought this before baby was even born. I've been playing the music from this book. There are a lot of cute tunes, some very traditional ones that I'd never heard but my parents remembered singing.

A sample song can be found at the asiaforkids site.

Baby is Born!

Yes, I now have a baby girl. This was a lovely home birth, pretty easy for me, but the midwives were a different story. Apparently I am much too calm, so the midwife didn't think I was as far along as I was. Plus with monday morning traffic, and her living as far away as she does, she barely got to my house before the baby was born. At least her assistant was here already.