Lost in Hanoi

Last night a pen pal of Trinity's from Hanoi met us at our hotel. She wanted to take us all on a tour. Jeff and I have not been up for many sight seeing adventures for many reasons. However, Trinity has wanted desperately to do some sight seeing, so we took her friend up on a short walk around the lake, a visit to a temple(by the lake) and dinner. Well, it was a long walk...cold rainy, and very, very, very crowded and this is an understatement. We ask her to call a taxi for us. No taxis show up. We decide to walk some more still no taxis big enough for a group of 10(imagine that). So, Hue(Trinity's friend decides to call some rickishaw drivers over to help us. After price negotiations and seating arrangement were met, we piled into 3 rickishaws and headed for a restaraunt. This is as close to death as I have ever been. Clay and I(Sherri) and Emily in one, Jeff,Eli,Brett, and Suzi in another, and Trinity,Erin, and Hue in the other. Clay and my rickishaw was 1st. We were in traffic busier than Chicago at rush hour and it was hard to tell which side of the street we were supposed to be on because everyone drove where ever the heck they wanted. At one point we were facing a bus head on and we were only about 30 foot away from it. We peddled across on coming traffic many times, finally we arrived at the restaraunt all in one piece. We got out of rickishaws soaking wet but thankful to be alive, but where was Jeff, Brett, Suzi, and Eli. Nowhere. Hue told us to go sit inside, (but it was an outside resteraunt. Ten minutes went by and still no Jeff. I felt it was getting time to pray or ...... I said a quick prayer for God to calm me down before I did something irrational. I stepped out in the street and there was Jeff, Brett and Suzi in their bright colored raincoats.(Thanks Grandma Beth) Jeff was very close to hijacking the rickishaw and peddling himself. However, in this city that would have been a worse move.
We are leaving Vietnam tomorrow morning at 11:05 am and will arrive home at approx. 9:40 pm Chicago time. We pray the weather doesn't present any problems. We are so ready to come home. We will post pictures when we get home. Love you all and see you soon. Thanks for praying it really helped.

Jeff and Sherri