maybe now we're friends...

There is a roadside stand where Erica and I sometimes get something to drink. The woman who works there is very sweet and sometimes we exchange a few poorly pronounced words in Vietnamese. Well, actually, she is soft spoken, and doesn't make any mistakes that I am aware of, so the mispronounced words might be a little one-sided.

One night while Erica was teaching, I went to have tea and the woman's daughter was there. The girl (I think her name is Hung, or something like that) brought over her English notebook to show me. She didn't speak to me in English, and looked confused when I tried Veitnamese, but I thought that we shared an unspoken friendship.

Every day when we walk past, the woman (usually wearing a huge floppy hat for the sun) waves and flashes an infectious smile in our direction. Sometimes Em (prefix for someone younger) Hung is there and I wave enthusiastically at her. On almost every occasion, she refuses to even look up at me. Once, she looked up and acted like she had never seen me. Another time, I ran up waving and saying her name and those around laughed when she ran off giggling and shy. I think these stories make me sound like a creep, but I've SEEN her eyes light up when we walk up, and I've seen her smile when I walk away, even if she ignored me when I tried to talk with her.

Tonight, Em Hung was inside and I saw her and waved. She smiled and acted shy. So I pulled out Erica's camera and took a picture of her. Her first reaction was this:

She ran back inside and I saw her pull out a comb and comb her hair. Then she peeked out again.

Slowly, she made her way outside, smiling the whole way.

Here she is next to her mother. She giggled the whole time. See! I knew she liked me...

When she was finally outside and not standing next to her mother, she acted like she had been waiting her entire life for this modeling opportunity.

I have the feeling that she'll still be shy the next time i wave, but I enjoyed our (lengthy) photo shoot. We'd like to get to know her mother more too. Baby Steps.