February2018 TET- Year of the dog

Oh my heavens I don't think I've been this late to recording our history, like ever! Thankfully when I'm slow, my other better half was somehow so good at recording it.  I guess that's how it works when you're husband and wife.  When I was really good at blogging and vlogging he wasn't very good at writing those newsletters but his mom has been happy with him being somewhat on time lately at sending her those newsletters.  So unless you're following my instagram or Facebook, you're not getting February news until now :*.  So here goes the newsletter from Mr. Daniel and here are the pictures to go with them.  Pictures first and then if you want to know the details, newsletters to follow.

February was a much anticipated month because my mom and dad were coming into town.  Had to think about what I wanted most from America.  We were starting to settle into the new place.  I was still unsure about living in the high rise.  Zen Diamond was a dream.  Everything so so posh.  The sauna was absolutely amazing and the kids enjoyed the pool and we loved getting smoothie inside the bar.  Inside the high rise was a preschool called the Cohas preschool, a Japanese inspired preschool with everything posh you can imagine for a preschool.  I had like 20 rooms and the kids are divided into age groups and they had a gym, a cafeteria, a play ground.  Darion and I toured it and he didn't want to leave.  The teachers wanted me to teach English there and the pay was actually relatively high, even for many areas in the States.  I was getting paid about $40 for 40 minutes of voice lessons in the States and here it is half of that but I know places in the States where voice teachers were getting paid close to that.   But they wanted hours of teaching.  It's an all day preschool and I didn't want to do that.  I'm here to tour Vietnam.  I don't want to work that many hours especially since I'm already teaching English online with VIPKID.

The weather was a bit cloudy and rainy which reminded us of home and Reena loved it.  She loved anything that looks like Seattle.

We loved the Marble Mountain, especially to get some energy out

My Parents Arrival
  The day came when my parents arrived and much anticipation was had among ourselves.  They brought so much goodies and we were so grateful.  The sent us a huge box of goodies from the States and it cost them $50 just for sending back in October and then now they brought us 2 suitcases full.  I felt so incredibly grateful for such sweet kind hearted parents.  Yeah we felt the love.

It was fun to go places with them and the kids love having them around

They also made church more full.  We rented a meeting room across the street from our place because it was way cheaper.  It was $15 for 2 hours vs. $60 that was for the conference room inside Zen Diamond Suites where we lived.  It was fun for the kids to walk across the street for church.

There were not a lot of kids inside our building so we often went over to my great aunt's house to hang out with the neighborhood kids there.  Reena and Debrie were showing off their gymnastics skills at the playground and the kids there loved it.

We also crashed many street/block parties which happened like every few days near the Lunar New Year.  Tet is a very fun time in Vietnam.  So much hussle bustle

The boys have become each other's best friends since we left for Vietnam.  Darion is picking up on the talking and talks a lot more than we could understand.  His new thing is "I want gorgeous" referring to the gel that his daddy puts on his hair.  I caught him and his brother trying to put on daddy's hair gel and asking each other "do you want gorgeous?"

Debrie is progressing nicely with her piano teacher.  I'm so grateful that lessons are $20/month.  In Seattle it's $30/for a half hour and once a week. I think other places outside of Seattle is maybe about $20/hr but nothing is $20 for a month for twice a week.  I do have to come as a translator but I'm hardly ever needed. 

Some of my favorite things about Zen's is the balcony, the amenities, the luxury of having house cleaning every 2 days. 

We scored on the deal of the year for Da Nang's Amusement Park.  $25 per person for a 6 months membership.  Oh boy!! I believe there are 6 roller coasters, tons of little rides, and an awesome indoor play area with blasters and games to waste a whole day.  Check it out!  https://danangwonders.sunworld.vn/?lang=en
 We think it's better than Disneyland because....PRICE and NO LINES!!!
The same group that made this place also made this mountain community Bana Hills that we went to last August and October

One of the things we really love about living in Vietnam is all the family get togethers...something we really were deprived of living in Seattle.  We had cousins that Reena and Debrie dearly miss but it was usually about once or twice a month we see them.  Here, family gatherings is an almost every day deal.

Church is really fun as well.  It's more like a bible study group.  I snuck (sneaked? whatev) a picture here of the boys about to bless the Sacrament and all looking at the phones to sing. 

I get more spa treatments here than in the States because it's so much cheaper here. Picture above was from a spa room inside Fivitel Da Nang.  http://fivitel.com.vn/vn

One of the main things to do in preparation for the big Lunar New Year also known as Tet is to visit the garden where all the flowers, kumquats, and daisies, sunflowers, and other Tet flowers bloom to their fullest and sold.  What a sight!

The streets are filled with these flowers and every few blocks you could stop and buy them

Visiting Tam Ky, Tien Phong, Tien My, Tien Phuoc
As busy as the streets were the markets were even crazier.  My aunts don't sleep for days prepping food to be sold at the market.  The girls chimed in to help lighten the load.  Here they are filling bags up with peanuts grown locally.

Our first time in Quang Nam province was the amazing memorial site of the Mother of Vietnam.  Me Thu, was named mother of Vietnam because she had 9 sons, her husband, a son in law and 2 grandsons and each died as soldiers in the war that dragged on for 30 years fighting the French, then the Civil War where America was involved.  Heart breaks and all she lived 'til she was 106.  It was a humbling site to see.  Her pains and sorrows, and sacrifice so great.

We checked out a private villa at Tam Thanh Beach.  Check it out!  http://www.tamthanhbeachresort.com/

It was so beautiful and had a playground and a beautiful pool for the kids to play in.  Ronin got a fever though and unfortunately didn't feel up to playing much.  Thankfully it was just a 24 hour fever. 

 

The games that come with the New Year is what really brings memories back for me.  I grew up playing these Tom Cua Bau Ca Ga Nai games.   Here's a wiki page on what it is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bầu_cua_cá_cọp

 

 We used treats instead of money to bet

And Karaoke of course.  ALL DAY LONG....We brought our friends the Halls along to celebrate the New Year with us.  They had a great time and we all ate 'til we couldn't squeeze another grain of rice inside our tummy anymore.

And ate some more

                                                And more...from house to house

And we get less and less money and red envelopes of money to give to the kids that show up

We had a lot of fun until Dan got bit by a dog at my cousin's house...More on that later. 

            And we dragged our kids around from village to village 'til they whined and fussed, all except my sweet happy Roro who all the villager women drooled over his little curls and dimple.

We came back to the city and realized that the party really was in the countryside.  That's where people go for the Tet Holidays to visit friends and families.  The shops were all closed in the city.  It was rather quite boring.  We did some touristy things like visit a Caodaist temple and then begged our families in the countryside to come visit us.  By the way here is a wiki article on the religions in Vietnam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Vietnam

And after some begging, yay my littlest cousin came out to visit me!  She looks so much like her mommy's mini so she doesn't look like me but it is said that I look a lot like her dad, my uncle.

                                                                     My daddy

People came, people left.  We managed to squeeze everyone in in our little suites.  Dan had to go back to work.  Kids had to go back to school. 

My parents had to go back to the States.  I cried of course.  It was sad but we'll see each other again.  They are coming back to pick us up and we could go back with them.

Dan...oh Daniel...he had to make it extra sad by getting sick.  He got a bad fever, making me and everyone else around feared that it might have been an infection from the dog bite, even worse...Rabies! Urgh!  I don't even like to talk about the experience because it makes me feel yucky inside.  Long story short, how's that?  We rushed him to the emergency room.  He spent 2 days in the hospital because he couldn't swallow a thing and was monitored closely with iv fluids.  Turned out it was just a really bad case of tonsillitis.  Phew!  Glad that's over and the bill came out to be $114...so no we didn't use our insurance!!  Why do we even pay $600/month for insurance???!!!!  I don't know.  Ask the Mr. because he thinks we need to have international insurance just in case we need it for when we travel to an expensive country like Hong Kong, which happens only twice now.  

But just in case..

So with all the family visits and the sicknesses, I wanted something bigger than what Zen's was.  Zen's was just a treat but let's be honest we need something closer to home. I recalled looking up villas and western houses and communities and thought, maybe it could work but chickened out about being on the ground level due to mosquitoes.  But space seemed to be so important right now that I didn't care.  I took the kids to the community, while Dan was still in the hospital and they said "mom this feels like home" so I signed the contract.

I let them played and it was smiles all around

So Home Sweet Home it was.  Dan was discharged from the hospital and came straight home to the new home and didn't have to do a single packing or unpacking.  Happy Ending Yay!!!!!  And he managed to write his mom a family Newsletter!!!  Happy reading!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

February 2018

Year of the Dog,

We went grocery shopping, which is to say, groceries were delivered to us, which is to say, Thuan’s parents arrived and brought with them a fresh supply of western goods. I don’t think they brought anything that we couldn’t get here, but what they did bring was cheaper as they were coming anyway. While we were grateful for the Crisco, Nutella, breakfast cereals, fruit bats, and orangutans, they really came for Tet, which is the Asian new year. It’s kind of a big deal.

The western world thinks the new year is an event only because it’s tacked on to the end of the Christmas holiday. Two holidays combined make almost as much hoopla as Tet. Banks and grocery stores shut down for over a week. The burger joint was closed for two. For a couple of days, the only people working at all were hotel employees and taxi drivers and they both get paid more for it. Banquets, not just meals, are everywhere. Turn the corner and you see another house or street packed with relatives and friends and neighbors. And they eat and eat and bring out more food to eat and you wonder why they aren’t monstrous blobs of fatty human flesh and you’re about to fall off your stool and roll home on your belly but you can’t because you’re being propped up by stacks of egg rolls on your right and mounds of deep fried sticky rice on your left and you begin to think that if this is the way you’re going to go then it was a decent ride and by golly another bite of squid would be delicious and one more bowl of soup was never prophesied as the start of the apocalypse anyway so why not. Then the kids get up to play and be active while the adults crank up the volume of the nearest suddenly materialized speakers to levels they were never designed to achieve and start singing the great karaoke hits. This goes on for a few hours, everyone goes to bed, and the next day, would you believe, someone else is having a party so let’s go. Flowers decorate everything and kumquat trees show up in every home and place of business just like Christmas trees. And that is Tet, but was not all of Tet for our purposes cause we’re not there yet and Thuan’s parents just arrived and stayed with us for a week and a half before going down to Tien Phuoc where all their family is and where the bulk of their Tet celebrations were held.

We stayed in Da Nang and had a couple of these feasts with some family here. A couple of days before the new year we went down to Tien Phuoc as well, and had a Tet/birthday celebration for a cousin. That night we stayed at a hotel on the beach near Tam Ky so that the kids would have a nicer and quieter place to sleep. Ronin came down with a high fever in the middle of the night so we gave him some Vietnamese fever reducer but then he threw up. We learned that you need to eat before taking it or that happens. The next day we just hung out at the resort while he recovered and stayed another night. That brings us to our Lunar New Year which we spent the majority of in Tien Phong where Thuan grew up. We picked up our friends, the Halls, at the train station. We played games, ate and ate, and sang Karaoke out in the rice paddies. Night came and we headed in to Tien Ky and stayed at a hostel. In the morning, while at a pseudo-relative’s house, I got bit by their dog and chased it down, but it’s bad form to kill your almost-relative’s dog’s so I refrained. It wasn’t deep, but it did bleed. I got my wounds dressed and we headed to another Tet celebration in Tien My. Some were concerned about Rabies, others were very apologetic, and some said it was good luck because we were celebrating the beginning of the year of the dog. I told Thuan that once you show symptoms of rabies, death is guaranteed within two weeks. Despite being true, it was not the kind of information that engenders a feeling of “good luck”.

The kids enjoyed going to Asia Park Sun World. We got Darion on a roller coaster and learned that he’s got a strong grip. He did not want to go on it again, but Ronin and the girls loved it. They’ve done a fair amount of swimming, though the water is still a little cold. We’ve been trying to get them out of the house more but being in the middle of the city makes it difficult. There is a park not too far away, but to get there you have to go through a really crowded market street. Thuan’s parents came back to visit us for a bit, but then headed to Can Tho to see the floating market and then went back to the states from there.

A week after the dog bite, I got a sore throat that quickly turned into tonsillitis. Thank goodness Reena did, too. You may think that’s cruel, but Reena wasn’t bitten by a dog, so that she got a sore throat relieved a lot of Thuan’s worry that mine was due to rabies. Thankfully, Reena’s wasn’t as bad as mine. I ended up going to the emergency room and getting antibiotics whereas Reena just stayed in bed and got rest. The next day, after my throat got worse, I went back to the hospital, but this time they insisted that I stay. I spent two nights there and finally the antibiotics and IV rehydration started doing something. Thuan didn’t want anyone to go into the room that I had been sleeping in at our house, nor into the room that Reena was in, which left Thuan, Debrie, Ronin and Darion to sleep and live in the living room/kitchen for a few days. That was the last straw. While I was wasting away in the hospital, she found a house to rent and signed a contract, then rushed to help me sign out and pay the enormous hospital bill of $114, then rushed back to our place to move out as our contract was ending that day or being automatically renewed for another month. We got out of Dodge and are now in a house with 4 rooms, a clothes washer, and is a block away from the park and is quite a bit cheaper than where we were. Of course, now we have to pay for water, electricity and garbage pick up, and we’re responsible for cleaning, but overall I think we made the right decision.

We did. I did not. This is when we learned that the dog that bit me was starting to show signs of rabies. For future reference, don’t be dumb. If you get bit, just start the rabies vaccine. It wasn’t too late for me to start, so I did. The shot is about $35 each here, so it really was dumb not to have done so earlier, and they aren’t painful either. Turns out, the dog was not paralyzed in the leg, but was limping and closing it’s eye because it might have been hit by a vehicle. I regret to say that, as of this writing nearly two months later, the dog is alive and well. I have voiced my willingness to eat it. The owners laughed. I’m not sure they know I’m serious. The next time we see them, I may bring seasonings.

Love, Us