September Part i - A new school year 2017

Yay to the MR. who wrote his newsletters to his mom.  Now I attach the pictures with his words

I can’t hear you,
We got the girls started on home schooling this month. They are enjoying it, but Ronin and
Darion are taking a little getting used to having their sisters be here, but not be available to play.
Reena and Debrie are on time4learning and Khan Academy.  Ronin is on education.com and other preschool stuff Thuan has prepared for him.

 We try getting out to go to the beach for recess or do a food tour and seek out popular restaurants in town as well as cooking a new Vietnamese dish together.  Seafood is incredibly cheap here for an American.  We love that a lot because even though we've been living on the coast the last 9 years in Seattle, seafood was still never cheap enough to be in our diet regularly.  Fresh, but not cheap.  Here we get both fresh and very inexpensive.

 My great aunt Di Tho joins us during lunch and takes us to see the city often.  I give my family money and I tell them to bring me some goodies whenever they come so I don't have to take a Grab or Uber everywhere

 We went to the bookstore and toy store and Ronin found his favorite toy that he spent hours on

 Debrie will probably grow up to be a teacher.  She loves teaching her brother

 We make the kids eat one Vietnamese dish a day, sometimes, two.  Vietnamese food like these here are about $.75 to $1 each.  You can get your belly fed for that much!  Unfortunately we're not saving as much as we had hope because our children still want mac and cheese and cereal... and American food is almost double what it is in the States

 One of the best reasons for showing up in the Summer vs the rainy season (November to Decemeber - which we will miss yay!) is that in the summer the selections of fruits is plentiful.  This here is rambutan.  I LOVE TROPICAL FRUITS!!

 The boys and I try to go on walks while their dad and sisters work but it is really hot out.  We all have a beautiful golden tan by this point.

 There's a brand new mall with an ice skating rink, kids center, electronic and clothing stores, bookstores, toy stores, movie theater, and lots of restaurants that we like to go hang out as well

 We tried every kind of milk there is on the shelf and they're all gross.  We finally found DA LAT milk which is this fresh pasteurized milk that is a perfect match of the milk at home in the States.  We love it and feel like we could survive in Vietnam now.  It comes with a price though.  It's a lot more expensive than the yucky shelf life milk but worth the cost!

 Dan and I found ourselves very active in Vietnam.  We get frequent free babysitters from my family there so why not.  We go on jogs to the mountains and along the beach.  It's like we are on our honeymoon stage all over again. 

 We also found out that Da Nang has an amusement park!  SUNWORLD!  They have free sections that the public could go to and buy food and a few free rides to get the kids excited and to want more.  We've only been to the skirt of it because it's still too hot to get out earlier with the kids.  We will definitely get a family pass when we get back so we could go through the whole park.

 From the hubby's Newsletter:
Thuan and I have done some exploring on our own. We went to the Marble Mountains, which
are these little hills that just kind of jut out of the ground at the southern end of the city. There’s a few
caves (none of which are all that deep) that have had little buddhist pagodas built inside. Some of the
caves had bats hanging from the ceiling, giving a very Indiana Jones type vibe. We also went to Chua
Linh Ung. This buddhist temple area has a giant statue visible from miles away.

 After a long day with work and school, the girls and their dad (and Ronin) get to ride on the tandem bike along the beach.  Not a bad treat

 Night time does mean mosquito bites and that is the one thing I really do not like about Vietnam

 Ok the other thing I don't like about Vietnam is the size of their oven.  Maybe it's different in a house but their ovens are so small and I like baking a lot so that annoys me a bit.  But we still manage to have homemade fresh rolls so it's ok

 This is how we get around...by car or by bike (ok not really, the bike is just for fun).  If it's just me or Dan that needs to go somewhere, one of my cousins give us a ride on their motorbike

 Darion found a coconut on our walk and now he thinks whenever we go out we look for fallen coconuts

 We got on a boat that goes along Han River but after waiting for it to go for 15 minutes the kids got sleepy so we opted for another time and got our money back

One Saturday saw us in Hoi An for a boat ride to Cu Lao Cham, an island just off the coast of
Da Nang. While there we took a short motorcycle tour of the island, swam in a reef, and ate at a
restaurant. The next day Ronin had some weird rash on his arms and legs, but he didn’t complain of
being itchy. Many people said he must have been touched by a red squid. It went away after about a
week or so.

 Night Market and Lunar Autumn Moon Festival celebration

 Date Night and Electric car around town

 

We went swimming at the beach one night. This is a fine idea. We brought our phones and
some money. This is an ok idea. We left all of it in our beach bag. Still doing alright in the idea
department. We left the beach bag unattended while swimming. And our ideas have taken a dramatic
turn towards the stupid. We got lucky that only Thuan’s phone went missing. We are still not sure if it
was stolen or just fell out while we were getting out towels. If it just fell out, we feel like we would
have seen it. If it was stolen, why take only the one phone? We scoured the beach where we were but
found nothing. So we had to buy a new phone.

On the last day of the month Thuan and I left the kids with some cousins on her Mom’s side and
we took a train down to Tien My for an on-the-Dad’s-side cousin’s wedding reception. Many of you
will recall our wedding reception. It was like that, only hotter, more humid, louder, and had more farm animals as it was held out in the country. Karaoke is a very popular thing here, even for weddings. Most of the food was fantastic, especially the beef. I ate a bitter melon (not so fantastic) and was told that made me (Dan) Vietnamese

 My handsome cousin's wedding

Thuan
tries to keep them occupied while I’m working. We’ve got a few kinks to work out, but it’s going well
so far. Thuan’s cousin De (pronounced “Yay?”) decided to move in with us, which basically just means
he sleeps on our couch at night as he’s at school most of the day. Nonetheless, Ronin has taken a liking to him and calls him Uncle De. He and another cousin took most of us out to see the fire-breathing dragon bridge which happens every Saturday night, and then took us out to get che, a drink with various kinds of beans and tapioca. It’s cold, sweet and delicious.

We enrolled the girls in private ice
skating lessons so that they won’t forget what they’ve learned so far. The ten 1-hour long private
lessons for two are cheaper than the seven 30-minute long group lessons for one that they had in the
states. The girls can even understand most of what one of their instructors says, and a few things the
other says. While the girls are ice skating, we sometimes take the boys to a play area that has all sorts
of fun things like tunnels, arcades, bumper cars, and a small fire truck that takes them to a building
facade they get to spray water at. We took the kids to a park that had bumper cars, a little train that
moved amongst dinosaur statues, and a carousel. Just a little ways down from that is a place that has
little electric cars for small kids and Ronin was thrilled to drive one of those around.

Thuan met some Americans and they invited us over to their place. They are a young family
(twin girls around 5 and a little boy about Darion’s age) that have been here for four years. We had a
good dinner with them and learned a bit more about the expat groups here.