Above is a photo of O & C being maniacs in the booth at Mellow Mushroom in Auburn, Alabama. I drove over to Auburn this morning from Atlanta – my dad and stepmother came down to Auburn from Minnesota yesterday so I came over to see them.

I’ve been home for about five days now and I’ve really been enjoying myself. I’m still not 100% acclimated to the time change – the two nights I’ve tried to sleep without taking a sleeping pill I’ve gotten about two hours of sleep each night. Hopefully that will change and I won’t return to Vietnam addicted to valium or whatever the hell it is that I’m taking.

It’s really nice to be home. I’ve enjoyed seeing my family and friends, and it’s really nice to just be able to enjoy the conveniences of being home. It feels so funny to just be able to walk into a store and ask for whatever it is that I’m looking for without going through a song and dance in bad Vietnamese or bad English, doing a pantomime routine, etc.

My perspective on being in the U.S. has definitely changed. It’s a weird feeling, but I kind of feel like I’m observing myself here from a distance – like I’m not really here. I know that sounds weird – I’ve thought about it and I think there are two things involved: (1) in my mind I’m committed to the idea of living in Vietnam for the forseeable future, and this is the first time I’ve ever been to the U.S. “on vacation” – just passing through, which is weird; and (2) everything here is just so extremely different from Vietnam that it’s just kind of shocking to go from Vietnam to here in the span of 25 hours – to just get on a plane in HCMC and then, 25 hours and a couple of flights later, to get off of a plane and be back in Atlanta, Georgia. It feels similar to how I felt when I first went over to Vietnam back in July.

Here are some random photos from my trip so far – all of them were taken with my iPhone, so the quality isn’t that great:

Here’s my beautiful niece, C, in the car on the way to my mom’s house last weekend:

Here are a few photos of my friends Will and Ashley and their house in Athens, Georgia the other night:

Earlier today we went out in the former woods behind my sister’s house and played around for about an hour. They have cleared the land back there to build a subdivision, so there were a lot of big hills to climb, mud to get into, etc. Before the land was cleared, O and I used to play a game called “Maniac” back there, which consisted of me running into the woods and hiding, and then running back out pretending to be “the Maniac” and chasing O around. (When he was younger, there was a fine line between him enjoying it and having fun and him really getting scared and crying.) Anyway, as soon as I got to Auburn today, O wanted to take me back into the former woods to show me that “the Maniac’s house is gone!” Here are a couple of photos:

Here is a photo of my grandmother, Cacak, who came down to Auburn from Minnesota with my father and stepmother:

Cacak is 83, and has been alternating living between my father in Minnesota and my uncle in Birmingham, Alabama for the past couple of years. Every time I see Cacak, she asks me if I’m dating anyone, and I always say that I haven’t found anyone as cool as my grandmother (her) yet. (Sometimes she asks me the same question again 20 minutes later – I just play along.) Today we went through that routine and then I walked out the front door to make a phone call. My sister later told me that after I walked out of the door, Cacak turned to my father and asked “Is he gay?” Cacak also told me earlier today that I “sure have grown a lot.” I’m 36 years old, and to my knowledge haven’t grown a whole lot in the past 20 or so years. Of course, a couple of years ago Cacak also asked me if I lived in a dormitory.

The best Cacak story I can think of happened a year or a year and a half ago. Cacak, my sister, her two kids O & C, and I went to eat lunch at a restaurant here in Auburn called McAlister’s Deli. We were eating at a table on the patio in front of the restaurant, and as a woman and her two or three year old son came walking by our table, the little boy stopped and started talking to O & C. He was telling us how he was going to soccer practice, etc., and we were telling him how awesome that was, etc. At one point the little boy said “My mommy and daddy are going to soccer practice with me” and Cacak, who to that point had not said anything at all, looked straight at the little boy and said “Do your mommy and daddy ever go into the bedroom and lock the door?” The boy’s poor mother’s eyes – and Anna’s and my eyes – all got about as big around as dinner plates and then we all busted out laughing. I have no idea where that came from, but it was hilarious. As we sat there laughing and apologizing to the woman, Cacak kept saying “Oh, hush!”

Here’s one last photo:

O asked me to take a picture of him and his Matchbox car and I thought it was so sweet I had to put it on the blog.

Hope you’re all doing well! Merry Christmas!