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Strategies & Market Trends : Galapagos Islands -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Libbyt who wrote (52040)	5/8/2004 11:11:11 PM
From: Peach	Respond to of 57110

Thank you, Libby! I was just reading about that Observatory last week.

To: Libbyt who wrote (52040)	5/9/2004 11:29:33 PM
From: PuddleGlum	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 57110

Libby, You've been awfully scarce lately, even after your return from an interesting trip. I hope that all is well. I had an interesting experience this weekend that I thought might be worth sharing: On Saturday evening my mother-in-law and I attended a Vietnamese wedding reception. We arrived right on time, which is generally not advisable at Vietnamese wedding receptions because most people arrive quite late. Much to my surprise, the bride remembered me quite well, even though I have seen her only twice before, and that only some six or eight years ago. As my mother-in-law is the Godmother of the bride’s mother we were seated at a table with the bride’s relatives. Having arrived “on time”, we were the first to be seated at our table. Not long thereafter an elderly Vietnamese woman sat down with us, and I promptly introduced myself. “Vietnamese”, she answered, meaning that I shouldn’t have introduced myself in English. As my French is somewhat better than my Vietnamese, and deeming that this woman was of an age where it was reasonably likely that she would understand French, I asked her in Vietnamese if she spoke French. No luck this time either, just a big goose egg. Moments later her husband joined us. He appeared to be well educated, so I asked him if he spoke French, to which he replied in the affirmative, but added that he had forgotten most of it. So, we attempted to carry on a conversation in French, but without much success, as he had indeed forgotten much and I have never been fluent in the language, and the band made it difficult to hear anything very well. So, after several abortive attempts to carry on a conversation, he and I just stopped trying to communicate. The bride and groom were presented, and an emcee introduced all the relatives (making up a solid portion of the 320 people present). The meal was served, and most of it was edible. I tried some cognac, but found it quite strong, as I am accustomed to an occasional beer or glass of wine, but not to any hard stuff. We were on about the sixth course of nine, about an hour or so into the meal, when the gentleman to my right, with whom I had attempted to converse earlier, turned to me and asked, “Do you speak English?” My jaw dropped, and I just groaned and nodded. Later, when I related the story to my mother-in-law (in French) she got a good laugh out of it, so I hope that you do, too. But maybe you just had to be there to appreciate it.