Christmas Day 2012

So this is the first Christmas I've spent without my children, thought it would have been worse but seems I survived the day!
We started with presents which included some sent from the girls to ensure we had a true Christmas day.  We had bon bons, shortbread, fruitmince tarts, a Christmas stocking, the Love Actually DVD (a christmas tradition with our family to watch at Christmas) and I got some new makeup which Hannah knows I like and might not have been able to get here.
We skyped into Mackay and Ray & Shirls where we usually have Christmas lunch and got to see all the Christmas goodies on the table...the fruit looked amazing.  We were able to source cherries and nectarines but not apricots or peaches, not to worry though we had plenty to eat!
For lunch we decided to go a little Aussie and we went to the Orphans Christmas at Hogs Breath.  What was strange was on the way there were kids in school uniforms walking around and mostly it was business as usual for a Tuesday.  Across the road from our house the painting and construction of a new Pizza shop continued and everyone was going about their usual business.

When we arrived at Hogs Breath we found a long table to share with anyone that didn't have people to have Christmas with and met some interesting people.  Had the usual turkey, ham, roast veg, plum pudding etc with free flowing beer and wine.  Nice lunch but unsure it was value for money? It's Christmas though so what does it matter :)

Believe it or not we ended up sitting next to 2 guys that live in Mackay, the 2 to my right...crazy!  They have an office over here for a shed company and they have Vietnamese draftsmen doing their plans, saving loads on costs of course.
After we finished lunch, around 3.30 we went on a mission to find candy canes for one of the girls that was coming to dinner.  We found a shop that had them on information from the lunch.  When we got to the shop they were sold out...we did, however, find that it was a great shop with loads of things we usually buy from the supermarket and things we haven't been able to find.  All at cheaper prices...successful effort for future grocery shopping.

The girls we invited for dinner arrived before we got home, embarrassing, but only minutes before so all was well.  Phil was really happy about having people for dinner since he knew  I'd be missing the girls on the day.  We had a really nice time.  There was Marie (far left) from NZ, an English teacher at RMIT, Sally in blue and Claire in orange are 2 of the other Drama teachers from Helen O Grady.  They were Christmas orphans and I was more than happy to adopt them!

                                                 
                                                  A cup of tea and shortbread to start.

                                   Drinks and cheese on the terrace then finally Christmas Dinner.

                                        We then made our own pavlova's.  Some were spectacular!        

                                           Others didn't feel theirs looked quite as fabulous???

                           But at the end of the night we all felt like this! As you should on Christmas day!

              We had a lovely day even though I didn't have my girls.  Hannah sent us pics all day long with what was happening with her and Jaimee in Melbourne so I felt like part of it.  Also the skype to Ray and Shirls included Whitney and Cameron so felt like we were also part of their day.
                                      Hope everyone else had a lovely Christmas day too!

Leanne's birthday

So I just wanted to make mention of how my birthday went down in another country.  It all started with the Caravelle Hotel, where I teach English to the staff presenting me with a bunch of flowers and singing Happy Birthday during my lesson a couple of days early.  Such a nice surprise and so unexpected!

I got to skype loads of the family at some point for my birthday which was really nice and spoke to my girls on the day.  I had to teach Drama on the morning of my birthday and got yet another bunch of flowers from the Drama group and the kids sang Happy Birthday to me.

When I arrived home a big bunch of flowers had also been delivered from the 3 girls for my birthday, it was nice to have something I could touch from them.  Hannah organised it from Australia and didn't want any help from Dad to make it happen.  Appreciated the effort and they were spectacular with silver sparkles over them as well.

We headed out in the afternoon to our favourite bakery for me to chose my birthday cake, prices are amazing and so impressive what they look like, tasted pretty yummy too.

We went to dinner at an Italian restaurant I have been wanting to try which was just amazing...Caio Bella, surprised with a complimentary glass of champagne, free bread, yummy meal then another surprise with a complimentary glass of lemoncello.  Probably would have been more excited had I been a drinker but it was still nice.  We wandered down he street to have a drink at Zanzibar another bar/restaurant in the area then home for cake.  

All in all had a lovely day, Phil tried VERY hard to make sure I wasn't sad and had a nice time, much appreciated xxxxxxxxx

The Dowler Christmas Letter 2012

Christmas 2012

                          

                 Our most recent family picture at Jaimee's 21st in August.

We assume everyone knows where we are....but just in case we forgot to mention it, we moved to Vietnam in August...still pinching ourselves every day.  At this stage we will be living in Ho Chi Minh City for the next two years.  Not sure after that, probably back to Australia, but let’s see where life takes us.

Phil is working as a lecturer at RMIT (Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology) at the South Saigon campus. RMIT started a campus in Vietnam about 10 years ago, it is now the world’s largest off-shore university. A very dynamic place to work, incredible facilities and so modern, everything you want in a university.  I have to remind myself I am overseas a few times every day. Apart from the 8 restaurants on campus for lunch and afternoon tea, an amazing gym and sporting facilities, I also must work sometimes. At the moment I am in the management faculty, lecturing in Entrepreneurship, possibly management and accounting next semester.  I never pictured myself as a university lecturer, a change in career, it’s never too late.

Leanne works as an English teacher in two locations. Firstly, at landmark hotel in Saigon the Caravelle teaching the staff.  It’s a five star hotel right in the middle of the city. During the Vietnam/American War (depends which side you were on) it was the location of the Australian and possibly the New Zealand Embassy’s.  It has a nice history. Leanne’s other English teaching job is teaching business English for a HR company.   On Saturdays she braves two groups of young children at drama classes, this has been a learning experience since she hasn’t had much to do with small children for a long time…maybe practicing to be a grandma?  All of the jobs have been very rewarding.

The girls have had an interesting year, after kicking us out of the country it is probably getting even better. The three of them packed their bags and headed to South America early in 2012. Whitney and Jaimee were away for nearly 3 months, Hannah a little over 6 weeks as she had to return to Uni.  After seeing Equador, Chile, Argentina, Brasil, Columbia and Bolivia it was time to head on home. Meeting up with host sister Carol in Brasil for Carnival, was a party to remember, and seeing Brenda in the USA and again in Bolivia was so nice.  Whitney and Jaimee had a chance to meet up with Hannah’s family, or Brenda’s family. They can fight over that one.

Cameron proposed to Whitney on her return. I would have thought he would have made a getaway after seeing Whitney off, but no, he wants to hang around a little longer.  So they are now onto wedding preparation mode. Wedding set for later in 2014. Such a shame, I am missing the dress, venue, ring, flowers, photographer selections,  I nearly cried when I realised I will be missing all of this.  Cameron don’t forget to keep sending the cheques to keep Leanne away.  

Hannah graduated from her first degree last week.  Bachelor of International Business, only one more year and she finishes her law degree. After almost 5 years of study, she is getting a little excited that it is coming to an end.  We are very proud of her, it is not easy living by yourself on a student income. 

Jaimee headed on down to live in Melbourne in August.  One of her navy friends, Will, offered to put her up at his mum’s house.  What a nice boy, they assure me it is not an issue, they have plenty of bedrooms. They do seem to hug each other a lot for friends…   Young people I don’t know.   She is working at an Autistic centre, appears that the work can be challenging at times. Together with moving, things have been a little bit unsettling but she has said she is really happy she moved down there. 

We have heard a lot from the host daughters this year.  Moe (Japan) started things off this year, getting married in Perth, and then Tokyo, Justine (France) had a baby son, I guess that means Leanne is a grandmother and I am the handsome Uncle, Laura (Germany) was then married and so too Kit (Malaysia). Unfortunately with us moving also we were unable to get and see most of the happenings.  Reiko (Japan) has moved to the USA in the last few weeks, Brenda (Bolivia) has stayed in the USA after graduating from uni mid- year. Marit (Norway) doesn’t know how to stay home, every time we look she is in another country kite surfing, Sigrid (Norway) has almost finished her studies after taking the last 2 years off after an accident. Mimi (Malaysia) moved to Indonesia to study medicine, Nabila (Malaysia) is enjoying her second year in Egypt studying medicine.

That seems to wrap us up in a few words.  We hope you have a great Christmas and New Year and aren’t too unhappy about not getting a real letter this year.

Christmas time in Vietnam

One of the most popular activities in HCMC for Christmas is to dress up in a Christmas outfit and get your picture taken in front of every decorated area you can find.  We went into the city last night and there must have been a million people in the city, you could hardly move in the streets with motorbikes and the streets were filled with people, all taking pictures.  This is one of the places with line ups last weekend, as you can see the decorations are often sponsored by companies.

 The decorations are amazing with the cost of labour and materials quite low the results are very impressive.

I sent some of these gorgeous hand made cut out Christmas Cards to the family...they are gorgeous.

A small shop decorated with REAL Gingerbread brick fronts, the mortar is icing..I watched them making this!  They had huge boxes of pieces of baked gingerbread.
                                     
I wanted to add the BBGV Christmas party episode to this post as well.  We had a great night with John & Cass at this party held by the British Business Group of Vietnam.  Apparently it heralds the start of the Christmas celebrations as a rule.  It was a 'Shaken but not Stirred' James Bond theme.
I have the link to the actual photo page you can click on below from BBGV, we are on page 3...
http://www.bbgv.org/events/photo-galleries/43-category/193-collection.html?start=42

                                                                      Nga and I

                                             The boys all ready to go ... guns and all.

                             The girls all lined up...I wasn't going without stockings!  Too old for that!

                                                                     John & Cass

                                                                  Us in character?

                                                      The name is Bond, James Bond!

                                        Phil trying to Sean Connery with the girls, Nga and Cass.

                                                                      Couple shot

                                                                 Just the 2 of us up close.

Teachers Day

So I forgot to let everyone know about Teachers Day in Vietnam.  Teachers are well respected here and on the 20th of November every year there is a Teachers Day.  Students buy gifts for teachers like flowers, cakes etc.  At RMIT there were special stalls set up to sell gifts for the teachers.  I received a lovely bunch of flowers from my students at the HR Company and Phil got a bunch from one of his students as well as a muffin.

Helen O Grady Drama Academy and City Smart the company that owns it had a celebration on the Monday night.  The night was unusual with a competition for best group photo, we were given a coloured star as we arrived and the colour gave us our group.  We had to do crazy photos.  There was a  sweets making competition that was made earlier but judged by a group of us on the night...loved an amazing sticky banana coconut concoction.  There was a buffet with salad, pizza, soup, chicken wings, fruit, Vietnamese sweets loads of things to try which was nice.
Following that there was a competition for King and Queen of the evening and everyone had to vote.   My teachers aid from Helen O Grady dragged Phil up to be in the running.  She then proceeded to hand out stickers to everyone to stick on their favourite guy.  Of course I voted for Phil but so did loads of others!  He ended up winning...crazy!  Here he is below with all of his stickers on during the proceedings.

 Below is Phil with his stickers (he has tickets on himself has a new meaning!) with Kim, Ms Claire and Tracey, 2 teachers assistants and the current program manager.

                             This is our group...Ms Claire, Dung (my TA), Kim, Tracey and me

So this is Christmas?

MERRY CHRISTMAS from Us!

So we have officially decorated our apartment as you can see with the HUGE Christmas tree behind our heads.  It cost $7.50 and is around 45cms tall :)  There are decorations going up all over the city and shops that have sprung up all over the city that are selling only Christmas decorations....more pictures to come soon once I take them.   Things are a little quieter around our household at Christmas this year.

Almost got me!

So it HAD to happen sometime....bag snatchers tried to grab my bag.  We have had warnings through RMIT that people need to repay their debts before TET, the new year over here.  In order to do that they may need to steal...doesn't seem like it would sit right with the Gods but anyway there it is.

Phil and I were walking back from dinner last night and we were in our busy street in an area where there is no more than a few inches to walk on the footpath between motor bikes and shop displays and people etc.  Anyway there was a motor bike in front of me with 2 guys on it, and I was trying to walk around it, I was at his front mud guard and the bike took off.  The guy on the back reached out and yanked at my bag.  It is an over the body style bag with a thick strap so he couldn't get it off me and they drove away. We were a bit shaken but ok and continued on our way home which was only 1 block away.

We proceeded to cross the road, which is a crazy busy one where you walk slowly dodging bikes as you go.  Phil was on high alert as he remembered that it is common for the offenders to turn around and give it a second try, he was on my left.  He was right!  (like always apparently???)  They came for us again in the middle of the road.  As they came Phil saw the guys arm go out and he lifted his left arm out and bashed the guys arm away from me, I felt it clip the edge of my glasses as he went.

So that was it!  We are still a bit shell shocked that it happened, even though we have been told loads of stories of other peoples misfortunes, much worse than our story.  I lady got knocked over at 11am in the city centre and had her bag snatched.  She damaged her hip and is still on crutches weeks later.

We were lucky but feel a little less trusting now which is sad.  We will still keep ourselves on alert and do all the things that are recommended to keep ourselves and our belongings safe but it is a very poor country and there are many people worse off than us so it may happen again.  Hopefully we will be prepared.

Lazing at the beach in Nha Trang

So Nha Trang is gorgeous and I would totally recommend EVERYONE go there to laze on the beach.  Having said that it's a little bit like Airlie Beach and there is also a touch of Hamilton Island so it may be a bit too familiar for some.  I guess I enjoyed sitting on the beach looking at the water.  We had breakfast both mornings of our weekend away looking at the water.
We met up with our friends Caroline and William who did the CELTA course with us last year.  They are very like minded as they are doing the same thing as us.  William landed a job through talking to a guy in a bar in HCMC.  He is a Civil engineer and he is now the project manager for a hotel and apartment complex being built on the waterfront in Nha Trang.  There is a lot of growth there and it seems very quickly.  Caroline said that weekly shops and restaurants are moving to bigger premises.  I hardly saw a Vietnamese person, felt like I wasn't in Vietnam which was weird.  There are loads of Russians there and menus and signs are all in Russian, as well as Vietnamese and English.  Apparently there was a Russian navy base there in the past and there are direct flights from Russia to Nha Trang, escaping from the winter....they are all bright red like the British tourists in Qld :)

                                               1st  Breakfast at the sailing club

       Relaxing on the lounges, $2 for the day, use of the pool, drink and food service to your bed.

 Just about to dunk in the mud baths.  Quite the experience, lots of water splashing afterwards. Skin felt amazing, no wrinkles!  Might need to go every day?

                                          Dinner with William and Caroline.

 The streets flooded while we were having a drink at the bar.  The water just couldn't get away.  The staff at the small shop with the yellow lights entertained us for ages trying to keep the water out of the shop.  Everytime a bus or large car came past it washed water into the shop.  The  water was completely gone the next morning.  Got 3 taxi's between the bar, the restaurant and the place we went for coffee.  Would have gotten wet feet otherwise...shortest taxi rides ever!

 Looking over to Nha Trang from Vinpearl a resort we went to for some time on Sunday by cable car.

 Drinks and lunch at Louisiane.  It's the same place we were lounging in front of on the beds.  They brew their own beer which apparently is quite good according to the other 3.  You can see the vats behind us.

Shot of the beach with a Vietnamese lady selling drinks.  They sell everything of course.  I guy sells you a lobster, around 6 huge prawns and BBQs them on the beach for you.  All for around $5 pp.

 In the water after our mud, there was a hot and cold pool.  Then you went back in a really hot tub.

 Here we are 'massaging our feet' on the water jets.  Also went into a grotto type area that shot water out and gave us a back massage, that was one of our favourite bits, didn't want to leave it.

               Caroline was a little bit terrified on the cable car, I was just supporting her with my face! :)

Time flies

So we have been here, or at least I have, for 3 months now.  It's crazy the time has gone so fast.  We have had some ups and downs of course and I thought I'd share some.  They say that some of the things in your life that can cause stress are
+Moving house
+Changing jobs

We didn't just move house we also moved countries didn't have a place to live locked in and lived in 1 place for a week, then another for 2 months then finally to here.  So 3 moves.
I have started 5 jobs altogether.  1st one was the Drama teaching which I was excited about but of course nervous about as well.  I do that Saturday mornings from 9.30 - 12.  2nd job was the English teaching job at the airport area.  3 mornings a week but it wasn't reliable and finally it finished 2 weeks ago.  3rd job was with a HR company teaching English for the staff, been there 3 times now, getting more comfortable and it's ongoing 2 afternoons a week.  4th job was a private tutoring job, the student was a Dr who was going to do the IELTS test and needed speaking practice, test tomorrow so he's all done.  5th job I start tomorrow 8 hours a week.  It's at the Caravelle Hotel, only the best known hotel in town so NO PRESSURE.  I will be teaching the staff English and they are studying for a TEOIC test.  They can lose their jobs if they are successful!

So that's jobs but then there are the usual ups and downs of change and we know the deal with this because of all of the exchange students we have had.  We know that you have culture shock, spent 1 day just crying.  I know that at around 6 weeks there is a down time, had a sad day a bit ago, not as bad as the culture shock day.  Then there is the last one at around now, have been a bit sad and feeling like my life is hard, it's hard work to start these jobs, can't I just hide inside my apartment that is safe and nice?  NO I have to move forward...still working on that.  I have just found that you have to be strong and keep working on your life here.
I now know where it buy bread and milk in my area.  I found a hairdresser and a nail place.  People say hello and are starting to remember us.  We have some friends to share our time with. Things are settling, I wouldn't say it's all been easy but if I remember what I have told the exchange students over and over, just give it time....that's what I need to do.

Phil just added HTFU....supportive as usual???? :)

          Elizabeth and Vicki, 2 American girls and that are part of the road forward...friends.  Went out for Roast dinner last Sunday night.

New friends, Izzy (just arrived from Melbourne volunteering for 1 yr) Thuy works at RMIT University with Phil...brunch this morning at a crepe restaurant with a view of the park.

Everyday life

So I just have added some random photos I have taken of everyday life  

Went past this restaurant and this baby pig was being cooked on the edge of the footpath.  Restaurant door was around the corner.

The lady on the bicycle is one of the recycling ladies.  They are seen at every construction site, and every street collecting whatever they can make money out of.  It ensures there IS recycling which is good.

Motorbike wash place

                                             The knife sharpening guy on the street

                                    This lady sits at the front of a clothes shop in front of a sewing machine.  People buy the pants and she zips the hems up in a sec.  Awning possibly needs some more support?

So there is no room in your house and you don't have a yard so kids play ball on the street.  Interesting when the ball goes onto the road which is right in front of them they just stop and don't go on the road.  They wait for the ball to roll back.  Clearly years of knowing the rules of not going on the street.

One day I came home and there were these flags put up in out alley?  There is a government building at the end of the street, must have been something going on?  Preschool on the left.

                                    How to keep food fresh...chicken under wire cage.  Saw a pig the same way one day, couldn't take a picture of it as it was too sad, same size cage, it couldn't move.  Guess it didn't last much longer.

This is out kitchen sink, I love the drying rack, everything is totally dry when I go back and it saves loads of space.