* only 156 days to go! *


so i'm 17 1/2 weeks now... and things are finally starting to get interesting! yesterday was a momentous day because i finally feel truly pregnant. first, i was (finally) offered a seat on the mtr!! i was wondering if that day will ever come.... it was very exciting, since we were on our way to tung chung to see more flats. i think we may have found it, even if it is a little out of our budget. it's just beautiful, and the landlord has already agreed to go down a lot for us.

the other thing is that i have definitively begun to feel the baby kicking!! i've felt some flutters before, but i couldn't be sure whether it was the baby or just bad gas or my bowels hard at work... but yesterday i could actually feel the baby pushing hard against one side of my stomach and kicking all day. it's a bit weird at first because you're not sure what it is, but exciting all the same. now the baby seems that much more real.

there are many finallys because the first few months go by so slowly, and it felt like the longest 17 weeks ever. but hopefully things will go a bit faster and christmas comes soon!

i would put a picture up but we keep forgetting to take one. but i guess my stomach is starting to look more like a pregnant belly rather than a beer belly.

* one night in ho chi minh *
life down under is great - gorgeous weather, great food, pavlova, chilled out life - but after 2 weeks i was missing my cat way too much. so i was glad to go home, even if i wasn't really looking forward to the heat.

but because we were cheap and dirt broke, we flew vietnam air to australia instead of qantas or cathay, as most others did. and man, did we get what we paid for.

our return flight from sydney to hong kong had a 3-hour layover in ho chi minh city, but the flight from sydney was delayed about 4 hours, and so we ended up missing our connecting flight to hk. the whole process could only be described as excruciating pain, since none of the VA staff could give us any answers or clear directions about what was happening. we finally got put up at a hotel for the night and caught a flight the next morning, arriving in HK at about 2pm.

problem is, i had a prenatal appointment at tsan yuk at 3:30 (and because it's a public hospital, all appointments are computer generated for you and you have no choice in dates or flexibility), we had to go straight from the airport to the hospital. i think it was an act of God that we actually made it just in time :)

in ho chi minh city, it took the airline AGES to process about 20 people who had to stay overnight, and by the time we got the hotel (called 'first hotel') all we had time for was a quick dinner and then to bed, because we had to leave at 8am the next morning to catch our flight.

we did, however, manage to squeeze in a foot massage at the airport before we boarded our flight. that foot massage was the best thing about flying vietnam air. for $18usd, you really get the star treatment: warm neck and eye pillows, 30 minute massage including hot rocks, and they even help you put your socks back on! you don't get that with cathay!

anyway, i'm so glad to be home, and mojo seems to be happy we're home too. now i gotta figure out what to do with myself for the next 6 months....