April - Sunshine and flowers

Here's a little family journal for our followers.  Please make notes of the changes in the name of our blog.  Previous it was gohavenadventure but is now thetravelingstevens to match our instagram. 

April was blissful as it looked.  Thank goodness for pictures or else I would not remember half of it.  For the Mormon friends this April was very fun because it was right on Easter.  General Conference happens while we’re asleep, so we had a regular sacrament meeting for Easter. Then the entire group got together for an egg hunt.  Reena and Brie loved being able to color some eggs. 

 Since it was also April Fool’s day, one of Thuan's cousins made false Easter eggs. They took nearly whole egg shells, filled them with jello, let them solidify and then peeled the shells. We also celebrated Thuan’s birthday. A lot of Thuan’s family came for that and a good time was had by all.

  

   

35 still feels good (ok I honestly still can't believe I'm that.  Dan had to remind me a few times that I'm not 34 anymore:|.  I'm teaching English and voice lessons on the side and teaching preschool music is not my day dream job but I chose this path because I believe that I can be a good music teacher for my kids when they're young.  I hope to open my own music school someday but for now my kids are my priority.

We had a few excursions around the area. First was a trip to Hoi An to see how silk worms do their thing, which the kids greatly enjoyed. They got to see silk caterpillar larvae, cocoons, a few of the resulting butterflies, but mostly cocoons soaked in water to loosen them up, and a spinning wheel to spin the threads together. The place we went to had some incredible silk embroidery. Some of them looked like a photo. We then went to a little garden to learn how they grow a bunch of the herbs used around here. This is similar to what we did at a rice paddy back in October. It was a lot of fun.

 

The best part about this garden was the fresh veggies and herbs we brought back home.  The amazing aroma filled our dinner plates with deliciousness that we would love to replicate every day if we could.  I even feature the salad in my instagram @thetravelingstevens

 

 

We found a market that is kinda like a Costco. You can get some stuff in bulk but other things not. For example, milk here is typically shelf stable and often has sugar and other ingredients. It’s easy to find that in one liter sizes. But to find regular refrigerator milk without sugar is hard enough (you need to show up at the grocery store the day of delivery and hope you’re one of the first) and often only sold in pints. The market we found has has lots of it in one liter sizes. It also has tuna in cans big enough to make sliced pineapple cans quiver in fear, but your two choices aren’t water or oil, it’s oil or spicy oil. The real bulk stuff is margarine, butter, and cheese. Have you ever seen a 20 pound block of margarine? Or a 20 pound block of cheddar? It’s huge and amazingly cheap given how much cheese normally costs around here.  

 Another trip we made was to a beach on Son Tra mountain. The beach is more secluded than the usual beaches we frequent, with some pretty big rocks, but still lots of sand. While the kids swam, Da jogged along the road that goes further around the mountain and saw some incredible views.

We decided to start going to the local library. We’ve been there far more times than it is open. They have weird days off, and also close in the middle of the day for nap time. Every time we go when it’s closed, either it’s just me so I can’t get the schedule from the security guard, or the guard tells Thuan the schedule for that day but he won’t say anything about other days. We’re getting it sorted out. As for closing for nap time; that’s a concept I can get behind in theory, but in practice I think I may be too American and just want stuff to be open when I expect it to be open. Places open early here, as opposed to opening around 9 or 10 am like I’m used to. Then they close around 11 or 11:30 for a couple of hours, right when I’m thinking it’s prime time for errand running.

 Did I mention that we got bikes and love riding around the neighborhood as our PE?  Best decision ever!

The girls have loved being in drama classes.  It's like they found their passion in life.  Ms. Valen is an American teacher from California and she does a great job at teaching and entertaining them that they look forward to their 2 hour block of theater each week.

We love all the new places we discover through driving around and the old places that we love like Sunworld.  Our 6 months pass was $25 per person for an amusement park nearly the size of Disneyland.  Never pass up an opportunity like that!

 My cousin came out from the countryside one morning and took me to a land auction event with tons of food and what an event it was!  I came with money to buy a piece of land but was not fast enough and did not come with enough.  We did end up buying a piece of land through my aunt which we hope to eventually sell and build a hostel and dormitory here.  The plan is in progress but just waiting for the rain to go away first.

Aside from having church in our own home what we also love a lot about living here is meeting all the expats and the LDS friends and digital nomads that come through Da Nang on vacations.  We've made so many long lasting friends.

But the biggest news is Thuan’s cousin Tiên’s baptism. Because of a holiday and days off we held it on a Monday, and it was decided that we’d have it in Tam Ky as it’s almost a halfway point between her family in Tien Phuoc and the group in Da Nang. We rented a villa with a private pool for the purpose. The AP missionaries – who had been teaching her through Skype – were allowed to fly down to Da Nang the night before. They stayed with us and it was great to have the missionaries in our home for the first time since we left Issaquah. After the flights had been booked, a lady from Da Nang reached out to the mission’s Facebook group and asked to learn more. Mayhaps a convenient coincidence, or perhaps the Lord working in wondrous ways. She got her first discussion the night the missionaries arrived.

The next morning we got on the train with the missionaries and the Halls. There were lots of chatty kids that wanted to practice their English on that 1.5 hour ride. When we arrived, we took a taxi out to Tien Phuoc where we had a service opportunity. For a couple of hours we moved dirt to help one of Thuan’s childhood friends build a house. The neighbors noticed the missionaries in their shirt and ties moving dirt, so after we were done the missionaries taught them a lesson. We then headed back into Tam Ky. Some other people from the group showed up and Tiên’s family showed up. The missionaries had asked Dan what his height was so they could bring a jumpsuit. There must have been something lost in converting from imperial to metric, because there was no way Dan was going to appropriately fit in the one they brought for him. He improvised by wearing the jumpsuit up to his waist and holding it on with a belt, then wearing hiswhite shirt. This meant Dan had no white shirt to change back into after the baptism so he just wore the t-shirt he’d worn for the rest of the day. Here’s the picture we're painting: he's in half a jumpsuit with a brown belt, 13 people from the Da Nang group (almost the whole group), more than half of which are dirty and sweaty from the service activity, 2 missionaries who are also dirty and sweaty, and 8 family members, in the living room of a rented villa about to have a baptism in a swimming pool that is only for that villa but not at all secluded from the rest of the resort and villas around so we’re all on display and it’s the first baptism in that town, possibly in all of central Vietnam. It was an amazing experience. After it was over, the missionaries talked to the family and a few said they might be interested in learning more.