I sat down to do an update on our blog and realized that my husband
already beat me in writing about August. So to help me catch up here is
his writing on the month.
A couple of vlogs here if you don't have the time to read:
https://youtu.be/OgQV9aA-GWI
https://youtu.be/ym0Ol5ydRdw
https://youtu.be/q1G_e_rHq3E
August 2017
G’day Mate,
As you’ll recall, we ended July in Waikiki. We started August going to visit the Polynesian
Cultural Center. We enjoyed it a lot. At one point, we thought we’d lost Ronin while watching a presentation about Fiji. We turned around and found him, pants around his ankles, peeing in the bush next to a little hut out in the open. We’re glad that the other people who saw him thought it was funny; we were embarrassed enough as it was. We got on the bus that took us to the temple and just as we were leaving Thuan saw a friend that she hadn’t seen in years. There was only just enough time to shout hellos at each other. The show at the end was amazing, but we’re kinda glad Ronin fell asleep before the fire dance so that he wouldn’t try repeating what he saw.
We took the next day easy and went to the zoo and swam at the beach. The most exciting display at the zoo was an aquaponics setup. It was otherwise hot so the post-nap-post-zoo swimming was greatly enjoyed. That night Darion had a bit of a fever and I found myself walking to a drug store at 2 in the morning. A few hours of sleep and we were heading to the airport. We left Hawaii early Thursday morning in the summer, and after a relatively uneventful flight (ha ha, he said while nervously twitching) of only 10 hours, we arrived in Sydney on Friday mid-afternoon in the dead of winter which felt like a lovely Seattle summer day. We crossed the international dateline, which made it Friday, at about the same time we crossed the equator, which made it the winter.
We took the next couple of days to just relax. Saturday we did nothing. On Sunday we had to take a bus, a train, and walk half a kilometre to get to church. The boys enjoyed nursery, the girls enjoyed primary, and Thuan was asked to perform a solo in Relief Society for the following week. She was flattered and graciously accepted the offer. Over the next week, we saw memorials, downtown Sydney, the kids played at a cool little park in Darling Harbour near Circular Quay, saw the Sydney Opera House, and Ronin started throwing up. Thankfully it didn’t happen that much, and only lasted a few days. I took the girls by bus, train, and ferry to Taronga Zoo to see some Koalas, Kangaroos, and Tasmanian Devils, amongst many other things. It’s a cool zoo, but we didn’t get to see the platypus because it was hiding. By Saturday Ronin had been better for a day so we went to Coogee Beach and walked along the shore. We wanted to walk all the way to Bondi Beach, but little legs got tired more quickly than we expected. So hopped on a bus to get some pizza, do a little shopping, and headed home on the train.
Then I got brave; I got a rental car. They asked if I wanted a stick. Driving on the wrong side of the road is weird enough. While the clutch would still be on the left side of the pedals, I didn’t feel comfortable enough shifting with my left hand while worrying about which side of the road I was supposed to be on. I picked it up in the morning on Sunday. There was some pretty heavy traffic on the way and I heard the bus driver say, “Only in Australia. Hmph!” This pleased me. He’s wrong – very wrong – but for some reason it made me happy to hear it. We went to church, Thuan sang her song, and we were all invited to a family’s house for some delicious crepes with freshly squozen ;) lemon and sugar instead of syrup. Y’all got to try that. The next day we drove to the Temple and ate dinner and ice cream at Bondi Beach. After dinner, I dropped the family off at the airport, picked up our luggage at the AirBnB we had been staying at, dropped that off at the Airport with Thuan and the family, then took the car back. There was only one time where I almost turned on to a street the wrong way. Then the fun of air travel came back to us with all the delicacy of mac truck.
In sum total, there may have been a single good night worth of sleep, but it was spread out amongst us all. What is the point of dimming the lights for people to sleep if you’re just going to make announcements every 30 minutes? And why are we turning on all of the lights to announce that we’ll be starting the descent in an hour? Just land. We’ll all be very wide awake when your pilot slams into the ground like it owes him money. A scheduled ten hour layover is not complete without an additional three hour delay, but we got vouchers for some food so long as we were willing to leave the secure area, necessitating going back through security again. Which we were. Finally, the flight came and 3
A couple of vlogs here if you don't have the time to read:
https://youtu.be/OgQV9aA-GWI
https://youtu.be/ym0Ol5ydRdw
https://youtu.be/q1G_e_rHq3E
August 2017
G’day Mate,
As you’ll recall, we ended July in Waikiki. We started August going to visit the Polynesian
Cultural Center. We enjoyed it a lot. At one point, we thought we’d lost Ronin while watching a presentation about Fiji. We turned around and found him, pants around his ankles, peeing in the bush next to a little hut out in the open. We’re glad that the other people who saw him thought it was funny; we were embarrassed enough as it was. We got on the bus that took us to the temple and just as we were leaving Thuan saw a friend that she hadn’t seen in years. There was only just enough time to shout hellos at each other. The show at the end was amazing, but we’re kinda glad Ronin fell asleep before the fire dance so that he wouldn’t try repeating what he saw.
We took the next day easy and went to the zoo and swam at the beach. The most exciting display at the zoo was an aquaponics setup. It was otherwise hot so the post-nap-post-zoo swimming was greatly enjoyed. That night Darion had a bit of a fever and I found myself walking to a drug store at 2 in the morning. A few hours of sleep and we were heading to the airport. We left Hawaii early Thursday morning in the summer, and after a relatively uneventful flight (ha ha, he said while nervously twitching) of only 10 hours, we arrived in Sydney on Friday mid-afternoon in the dead of winter which felt like a lovely Seattle summer day. We crossed the international dateline, which made it Friday, at about the same time we crossed the equator, which made it the winter.
We took the next couple of days to just relax. Saturday we did nothing. On Sunday we had to take a bus, a train, and walk half a kilometre to get to church. The boys enjoyed nursery, the girls enjoyed primary, and Thuan was asked to perform a solo in Relief Society for the following week. She was flattered and graciously accepted the offer. Over the next week, we saw memorials, downtown Sydney, the kids played at a cool little park in Darling Harbour near Circular Quay, saw the Sydney Opera House, and Ronin started throwing up. Thankfully it didn’t happen that much, and only lasted a few days. I took the girls by bus, train, and ferry to Taronga Zoo to see some Koalas, Kangaroos, and Tasmanian Devils, amongst many other things. It’s a cool zoo, but we didn’t get to see the platypus because it was hiding. By Saturday Ronin had been better for a day so we went to Coogee Beach and walked along the shore. We wanted to walk all the way to Bondi Beach, but little legs got tired more quickly than we expected. So hopped on a bus to get some pizza, do a little shopping, and headed home on the train.
Then I got brave; I got a rental car. They asked if I wanted a stick. Driving on the wrong side of the road is weird enough. While the clutch would still be on the left side of the pedals, I didn’t feel comfortable enough shifting with my left hand while worrying about which side of the road I was supposed to be on. I picked it up in the morning on Sunday. There was some pretty heavy traffic on the way and I heard the bus driver say, “Only in Australia. Hmph!” This pleased me. He’s wrong – very wrong – but for some reason it made me happy to hear it. We went to church, Thuan sang her song, and we were all invited to a family’s house for some delicious crepes with freshly squozen ;) lemon and sugar instead of syrup. Y’all got to try that. The next day we drove to the Temple and ate dinner and ice cream at Bondi Beach. After dinner, I dropped the family off at the airport, picked up our luggage at the AirBnB we had been staying at, dropped that off at the Airport with Thuan and the family, then took the car back. There was only one time where I almost turned on to a street the wrong way. Then the fun of air travel came back to us with all the delicacy of mac truck.
In sum total, there may have been a single good night worth of sleep, but it was spread out amongst us all. What is the point of dimming the lights for people to sleep if you’re just going to make announcements every 30 minutes? And why are we turning on all of the lights to announce that we’ll be starting the descent in an hour? Just land. We’ll all be very wide awake when your pilot slams into the ground like it owes him money. A scheduled ten hour layover is not complete without an additional three hour delay, but we got vouchers for some food so long as we were willing to leave the secure area, necessitating going back through security again. Which we were. Finally, the flight came and 3
hours and some really-fun-if-you-like-roller-coasters-or-scary-if-you-don’t-like-falling-from-forty-
thousand-feet turbulence later, we landed in Vietnam.
Most of Thuan’s extended family was there to greet us at the airport. It was hot, we were all tired, and, for the first time on this trip, we were in a land where we didn’t know the language (though Australia almost reached that hurdle). Some of the kids mysteriously got headaches and didn’t want to talk to anyone. Some water, paracetamol, rest, and air conditioning did the trick nicely. We headed to our two bedroom apartment that we will call home for the next little while. We’ve had a really fun time adjusting.
Sweats on (literally), suitcases packed and ready to go again. Another 8 hour flight with a 6 hr layover. I mean you've got to give it to us for winning the most adventurous and awesome family of 2017. No bragging here, just the pure truth haha
We spent sometime visiting families and friends in the area
The rooms were pretty good size and the kiddos get the kind bed and there is a futon. We were surprisingly not cramped. Definitely miss my big house but this experience is way better than any big house or mansion you could buy.
We’re a block away from the white sandy beach, a short taxi drive (or long walk) from a mall that has a market with American-ish groceries, an ice rink, and a movie theater. Thuan’s great aunt is some bigwig in a tourism company of some kind and gets us access to a lot of pools on the top floors of some hotels. We’ve been to a few. It’s interesting to swim outdoors 18 floors up.
Bana Hills Sun World
With family around, we have baby sitters. Thuan and I spent our 14th anniversary at Bana Hills. The story goes that French people lived there for a time. To get there, you take a 5 kilometer cable car up into the mountains. Supposedly some parts are original French. However, the rest is this weird made up French Renaissance, with Russian performers in Bavarian outfits yodeling amidst Buddhist temples. But hey, transportation and buffet are part of your $40/person ticket and I got to spend the time with my lovely wife. I have no complaints.
The buffet at Bana Hills was so amazing. I think I would go back just for this!
We spent a few days in Tien Phuoc and Tien Phong, where Thuan grew up. Since we were last here a new highway was built. The speed limit on most of it is ~50 mph, though some sections go up to 60. The taxi-van we took down had other occupants that were concerned about taking that road because they had never driven so fast. We laughed; they survived.
We spent a few days camping (that's how the kids look at it because the houses are no longer fancy pants)
We met up with my friend from Kindergarten! We treated her family to breakfast and showered her kids with new clothes.
The church is now recognized here, and there’s a mission even. But there are only five or six branches in the country. Two are in Hanoi, a couple in Saigon, and one more covers the rest of the whole country. That’s the one we are in, and we are possibly the only members within a few hundred miles or so. The mission president, President Hassell, is the branch president, and we meet by calling into a conference call, that apparently can only be joined from a phone inside Vietnam. We had not yet set up our phones to work, and were planning on just making a long distance call through Google Voice. That didn’t work, so we had to get a new sim card after church had already started. We missed a good bit of it and then forgot to put our phone on mute so everyone could hear Thuan trying to translate for most of the meeting until they asked us to mute the phone. The next week went better. We dress up for church, but even so, since you don’t wear shoes in the house, it’s the first time I have ever passed the sacrament barefoot. We listen to sacrament meeting, and are getting into the habit of having a primary lesson afterward for the girls and nursery with the boys so they aren’t hindering the primary lesson. We are going to start incorporating a little primary lesson into nursery as Ronin is a Sunbeam, and we plan on attempting a sharing time style portion. Our assigned temple is Hong Kong, a five hour flight away. Thuan’s family is interested in hearing more. One of her cousins is planning on applying to BYU-H in a few months. It’s our job to bring her up to speed on English.
And now we’re here and things should start quieting down a bit as we figure out what the new normal is. Thuan is in heaven, and while I’m truly happy to be here for lots of different reasons, I always expected heaven to have sanitary drinking water more readily available. During our time in Hawaii and Australia I took time off of work, but I’m back into it. We’re gearing up to get the girls started on homeschooling. The boys are having a great time, but don’t like the hotel staff ladies always wanting to pinch their cheeks and give them kisses. We love and will miss you all while we’re here, so please feel free to drop by. We’re not even completely half way around the world.
Love, Us
Most of Thuan’s extended family was there to greet us at the airport. It was hot, we were all tired, and, for the first time on this trip, we were in a land where we didn’t know the language (though Australia almost reached that hurdle). Some of the kids mysteriously got headaches and didn’t want to talk to anyone. Some water, paracetamol, rest, and air conditioning did the trick nicely. We headed to our two bedroom apartment that we will call home for the next little while. We’ve had a really fun time adjusting.
Sweats on (literally), suitcases packed and ready to go again. Another 8 hour flight with a 6 hr layover. I mean you've got to give it to us for winning the most adventurous and awesome family of 2017. No bragging here, just the pure truth haha
So exciting!!!
We’re a block away from the white sandy beach, a short taxi drive (or long walk) from a mall that has a market with American-ish groceries, an ice rink, and a movie theater. Thuan’s great aunt is some bigwig in a tourism company of some kind and gets us access to a lot of pools on the top floors of some hotels. We’ve been to a few. It’s interesting to swim outdoors 18 floors up.
With family around, we have baby sitters. Thuan and I spent our 14th anniversary at Bana Hills. The story goes that French people lived there for a time. To get there, you take a 5 kilometer cable car up into the mountains. Supposedly some parts are original French. However, the rest is this weird made up French Renaissance, with Russian performers in Bavarian outfits yodeling amidst Buddhist temples. But hey, transportation and buffet are part of your $40/person ticket and I got to spend the time with my lovely wife. I have no complaints.
We spent a few days in Tien Phuoc and Tien Phong, where Thuan grew up. Since we were last here a new highway was built. The speed limit on most of it is ~50 mph, though some sections go up to 60. The taxi-van we took down had other occupants that were concerned about taking that road because they had never driven so fast. We laughed; they survived.
The church is now recognized here, and there’s a mission even. But there are only five or six branches in the country. Two are in Hanoi, a couple in Saigon, and one more covers the rest of the whole country. That’s the one we are in, and we are possibly the only members within a few hundred miles or so. The mission president, President Hassell, is the branch president, and we meet by calling into a conference call, that apparently can only be joined from a phone inside Vietnam. We had not yet set up our phones to work, and were planning on just making a long distance call through Google Voice. That didn’t work, so we had to get a new sim card after church had already started. We missed a good bit of it and then forgot to put our phone on mute so everyone could hear Thuan trying to translate for most of the meeting until they asked us to mute the phone. The next week went better. We dress up for church, but even so, since you don’t wear shoes in the house, it’s the first time I have ever passed the sacrament barefoot. We listen to sacrament meeting, and are getting into the habit of having a primary lesson afterward for the girls and nursery with the boys so they aren’t hindering the primary lesson. We are going to start incorporating a little primary lesson into nursery as Ronin is a Sunbeam, and we plan on attempting a sharing time style portion. Our assigned temple is Hong Kong, a five hour flight away. Thuan’s family is interested in hearing more. One of her cousins is planning on applying to BYU-H in a few months. It’s our job to bring her up to speed on English.
And now we’re here and things should start quieting down a bit as we figure out what the new normal is. Thuan is in heaven, and while I’m truly happy to be here for lots of different reasons, I always expected heaven to have sanitary drinking water more readily available. During our time in Hawaii and Australia I took time off of work, but I’m back into it. We’re gearing up to get the girls started on homeschooling. The boys are having a great time, but don’t like the hotel staff ladies always wanting to pinch their cheeks and give them kisses. We love and will miss you all while we’re here, so please feel free to drop by. We’re not even completely half way around the world.
Love, Us
The girls started ice skating and started learning Vietnamese with cousins
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