First Few Weeks - Part 2, Housing & Laundry

By Eric

Since arriving in Da Nang, we've been living in a hotel a not too far from the airport. For people without a bike or motorcycle, the location is great! Within a five minute walk in each direction, we can get to our school, a bakery, over a dozen restaurants, and at least five coffee shops.

Here's a little tour of the room we've been living in for the past 25 days.

And here's some more info on our daily life in Vietnam.
(We're hoping this changes when we get our new housing!)

Speaking of our new housing, we took a tour of our new place this afternoon! Some construction needs to happen before we move in. Hopefully we'll be giving you a video tour of our new home in about 10 days!

Meal Time

by Karissa

Eric met me after class one day, with my poncho, since it was pouring rain. It was supper time for us, so we decided to run to the nearest restaurant. It was a bit sketch, so we ran to the next one: Red. You've already heard a story about this place (the serenade).

Well, since that evening, we've been back to Red several times, have recommended it to friends and have met other friends there for dinner. This past Friday, Liz and Suz were up from Tam Ky so we asked them to eat supper with us at Red (we couldn't host since we're in a hotel without a kitchen). Eric and I ordered grilled beef (nuong bo) and a vegetable something (rau something). Liz ordered fried shrimp (chien tom). Essentially hers was popcorn/deep fried shrimp and it came with mayo. She generously shared with us. It was amazing! I could have eaten her entire order, but stopped myself at two.

We went back to Red last night. We ordered the fried shrimp because after having only two of the delicious treats, I wanted more. We also ordered a plate of rau something (a different something than last time). Anticipation ran high as we looked forward to the crispy shrimp.






This is not what Liz got when she ordered. Yes, these are a greeny-blue, rice crispies covered shrimp. The picture doesn't show the blue rice crispies. Food, besides jelly beans and gummy bears, should not be this color.



Oh, but look at the second picture, where I've taken a bit of the "chien tom", I don't see any shrimp inside, do you? It was gooey.

Gooey.

Getting Around

By Eric

As I said last time, we're seriously considering getting motorbike. When they talked about bikes and motorbikes at training, I didn't think I'd be too interested in getting one. Last time I was overseas, I walked or took a city bus just about everywhere I needed to go. Occasionally if I was in a hurry or if I didn't know the bus number I needed, I'd take a cab.

We found out pretty quickly that the same plan isn't going to work in Da Nang. First off, there are hardly any city buses. We've seen very few city buses and even fewer bus stops. I'm not sure if that's because the city is 'small' or if it's just a cultural difference. Whatever the reason, using buses to get around isn't going to work.

The option of walking isn't going to work well for us either. Why? It's ridiculously hot. Every day from about 9 am to 6 pm, it's a 90-90 day. 90 degrees or warmer with 90% humidity. We still tough it out and walk most places. But if it's more than 30 minutes away, it's better to call a cab. You can walk it, but then the next several hours are lost as you spend time recovering from the long, HOT walk. The Vietnamese people look at us like we're crazy when we're out walking around during the day. Some days, I wonder if they're right...

So yeah, we're starting to ask around and see what we can find out about the bicycle or used motorbike market.

There are a few things that concern me about putting some wheels underneath me. First off: traffic! It's kinda crazy. How crazy? Well, during the day, I hum the theme song of Frogger while crossing the street. And if I need to cross at night, I often find myself singing a little song from this Jerry Sienfeld routine.

I will say it's amazing what you can get used to within just a few weeks. Here's a video of Karissa showing you how it's done.

And some more footage of the organized chaos.

So yes, if we get a motorbike, we will take lessons and wear helmets!

First few weeks - part 1

by Eric

Just over two weeks ago, we arrived in Vietnam. Jet lag wasn't too bad. We had stayed up most of the night taking care of last minute business, packing, and weighing our suitcases. It was a mixture of taking care of stuff we had to do and making a preemptive strike against jet lag. Our days and nights were going to be messed up soon (there's 12 hours difference between Vietnam and the Midwest), so we figured starting the process half a day early wouldn't hurt.

It was three flights to get to DaNang, with a night in a Ho Chi Minh City hotel between flights two and three. We left the campus in Pasadena at 9 am Tuesday morning and we arrived in our hotel Thursday around 7 pm!

We had a week off before we started teaching. That gave us time to get over jet lag and to start exploring our new city. Each day we either went to a new place we had heard/read about or we just picked a direction and started walking! We've found some cool things: a market with fresh veggies, fish, and live frogs, a daycare, several restaurants and bakeries, three lakes, an amusement park, a mobile pet store, a park that would be the source of dozens of lawsuits in the states, and a mini-zoo.

We also found out another key thing about life here on our exploring walks: It's hot. Really hot. We've been toughing it out and walking most of the places we go, though our walks now usually happen either very early or very late in the day. But we've quickly found out why most people ride motorbikes or bicycles. We're seriously considering joining them and are looking in to our options. More on this hopefully soon...

In the meantime, here are some pictures!

This was the 3 year old room at the daycare. There was a whole lot of cuteness packed in that room!

Karissa looking lovely by lake #1

Big sky above lake #2

We're learning how to get around in the weather conditions here. Maybe someday we can be as awesome as this guy:

We're Here!

by Karissa

A few nights ago I was seranaded at supper, by a man on a guitar. Then he kissed my hand. It wasn't my husband, but Eric was there, sitting across the table from me. The guy also toasted Eric about 8 times. Every meal is an experience...

I had just finished my first demo lesson (they want to make sure we're good teachers) and it had started raining. Eric met me at school and we quickly walked to the first restaurant on our way from the school. It was busy, but it was mostly men patrons and there was a lot of cigarette smoke in the air. We went to the next restaurant (these restaurants open up onto the street, much like a store in a mall opens up to the main hallway). This restaurant is called Red. There were chairs that were normal height at tables with tablecloths. Nice! Of course, the fanciness would mean the prices are a bit higher, but eating at a food stand wasn't much of an option when it's raining out.

The friendly man who seranaded me was another guest at the restaurant, there with two of his musical buddies and one of their lady friends. They were singing a bit and playing guitar before he came over. He brought over a Tiger (seen everywhere here!) beer, poured some into Eric's cup and started toasting him. "Uh.... America!" (toast) "Uh, aaah, uh, number one!" (toast) This went on until either he ran out of things he could toast about in English or the bottle was empty. I'm not sure. I got one toast near the end. I think it was to marriage or something. I wasn't quick enough to toast him lower on his cup than he on mine, which is polite. Then he sang a song with several verses, his friend tapping the guitar with the beat. Each verse ended with "Vietnam... America!" (the only English part of the song).

The beer was done. The toasts were complete. The song was over. And the friendly man went back to his table. Eric and I smiled and talked about it for a bit, finished our veggie appetizer (probably the only time we've ever had a plate of steamed veggies as an appetizer!) and entree of grilled steak (yum!) We asked for the bill (we act this out buy either writing something in the air or pretending to write something on our hand--sometimes one works, sometimes the other works). We got our bill... and to our surprise and, yes we giggled, the beer that we had been toasted with had been put on our bill.

A Full Month and a Crazy Week

by Eric

Training is done! We have our final commissioning service Sunday morning, but other than that, it's time to pack up and get ready for Vietnam! We fly out Tuesday morning.

It's been a wild month. The first few weeks of training are designed to be intense. Someone referred to it as the 'Toothpaste Time'... What comes out when you get squeezed?
Our schedule was intense:
7:30 Breakfast
8:00 Discussion groups about the day's topic
9:00 TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) Training
10:30 Continuation of TEFL stuff, but split into regional groups to learn about teaching in Vietnam
12:00 Lunch and a break
1:30 Large group session on the other aspects of life overseas. Team dynamics, dealing with emotions, conflict, depression, etc.
2:30 Language and culture. Preparing for the specifics of life in Vietnam and learning some language cornerstones and survival phrases for our first few weeks.
4:00 Practicum prep. Four nights a week, we teach a group of Chinese Americans. We find out who is teaching in the afternoon and then those who are teaching have about an hour and a half to get a lesson prepared
5:30 Supper
6:15 Leave for practicum
9:15 Get back debrief with your city/team
10:00 Done for the day. (Unless we have homework)

Things slowed down a bit in the third week, and most people had a less eventful week four. But we're not like most people...

This last week had a lot of surprise twists and turns for Karissa and me. We started the week figuring we'd be teaching in Ho Chi Minh City at an English center and that there would be another team of two in the city with us. Unfortunately our school backed out on the contract and our director had to start checking out other options for us. For the next day or two, it looked like we may be teaching at a high school/middle school in HCMC. But once we started finding out more details about the school and the teaching schedule, that option started to look less and less appealing. After that, there was the potential of working at a school in a sister-city of HCMC. But our director isn't familiar with the school and agreeing to work at a school and live in a place you've never seen isn't a wise thing to do. Currently, our in country director is pursuing a fairly solid lead in a different city where we have teachers serving.

So yeah, it's been a challenging week. It's tricky. I feel okay when things are unknown, but it's been hard to deal with the changes. As things were unfolding, I'd let myself think "We're probably going to be teaching in _____." The first change was a bummer because we really liked the situation we had in HCMC. But you roll with it and you pick out the positives of the new situation and think "This won't be so bad. In fact, I kinda like this." Then the situation changes again. And it's a bummer again because you had just found things you liked about that possibility. So again, you look at the next possibility, find the positives, and think "This won't be so bad..." And then it changes again.

The best thing is that the changing situation has kept us dependent on Him. We've joked saying, 'I thought we were flexible before!' With all the changes, it has been an emotionally draining week. But we still have a peace about the whole situation. We're not sure where we're going to end up, but we know He has a plan for us! We know we'll keep doing our best to follow that plan. And we know we're flying out on Tuesday!

Road Trippin

by Eric

We're wrapping up week three of training. It's been crazy busy. (Hence the lack of blog posts and Facebook activity...) I'll chat more about training in the next post. First, some news about our trip to the West.

It's hard to believe that four weeks ago we were packing up the last things in the house and trying to get everything to fit in the car. Our goal was to get on the road around 8 on Friday morning, but even with an early start on the day, that just wasn't going to happen. We kept moving stuff to the car, the storage pile, or to the garbage can until the house was pretty well cleared out. We didn't get the floor vacuumed, the cupboards wiped down, or the fridge cleaned out. But thankfully we had forgiving landlords!

It was awesome that we were able to visit some of Karissa's siblings along the way to training! The first few days were spent in Denver with Marilyda, Steve, and Ryker.














We played at a place cleverly named 'Frog Park'.





There was a spinning pole thing. Karissa may have gone one too many revolutions...




She recovered well and was able to have several in depth conversations with Ryker. I believe in this picture they were discussing total depravity and the perseverance of the saints.


We left Denver on Monday morning and drove to Salt Lake City. Our hotel in SLC had a mini-water park, so we hung out there and even played a game of water basketball.

The next day's drive was from SLC to Reno, Nevada. The GPS gave us about four commands during the whole 8 hour trip. Leave the parking lot, turn on the interstate...next turn in 504 miles... Doh. Reno was fun. We didn't see any shows or do any gambling, but we did check out the downtown casinos and enjoyed an awesome buffet. That night we saw some fire dancers in the park. Cool. But definitely strange!

The next day we arrived in California. We visited Karissa's college roommate Rosie in San Jose and spent a night in the biggest suite I've ever seen!

From there it was on to Modesto to visit Derrick, Ruth, Noah, and the new arrival Gavin. Ruth was very gracious to let us crash at their place despite GIVING BIRTH just 4 days earlier! We did our best to be helpful, watching one of the kids when needed and helping Derrick pack things up for their upcoming move.







Noah and I bonded over a breakfast of Cheerios and fresh fruit. We also spent time playing with him in the pool, and playing with his cars and train.





Gavin spent most of his time being cuddly and adorable. (while also keeping up the newborn's full time job of sleeping, eating, and pooping).


And finally on Saturday we drove down from Modesto to Pasadena for the start of training. Google told us our trip had about 37 hours of drive time. The trip ended up being a great chance to hang out with some awesome people and to catch our breath before the sprint of training started.