the new "familiar"

We just got back from a quick trip down to Sapa, Vietnam. Many people in Sapa spoke English, but of course we also found ourselves in situations where nobody did. Naturally, we attempted our Mandarin on the Vietnamese people...didn't work so well. Just because they share a border with China, doesn't mean they all have to share languages. We laughed at ourselves as we continually thanked people, said hello and tried to get prices in Mandarin. After just about five months of living here in China, we actually feel like we're getting along really well with our language and communication. And although we really enjoyed the incredible time we had in Sapa (see photos...there was much to enjoy!), as we made the walk back across the bridge to the Chinese side, we felt a huge amount of excitement to get back where people could understand us. It was definitely good to be back where things are familiar...almost immediately got hit by a big gob of spit, the bus we wanted to take was broken down so we had to wait 2 hours for the next one and lots of people were staring and calling us 'foreigners'...home sweet home.