Movin' On Up!

Xin Chao from Vietnam!

Today is officially moving day and I am so excited to get settle down and out of this hotel! Although, I will miss the free breakfast every morning, I am ready to have a home! I am living with two other teachers Krystal, who I came to Ho Chi Minh with, and Darren, a math teacher at the high school. Our apartment is a gorgeous three bedroom, three bath room with the most incredible view of the city!

                  The view from our balcony!                   

                                                

Apparently I missed out on the 'wear green' memo!

Yesterday we signed our lease and did a little shopping for things like bedding and towels. I was pretty excited when I bought my sheets and saw that none of the sets came with a top sheet. I know a few other people who would appreciate that too! ;) We have a lot more shopping to do but we are going to wait until we get there and make some lists. It's a little intimidating going shopping, especially since we don't really know any Vietnamese. Figuring out prices also takes a little extra time, however my oh so kind math roommate taught me an easy way to convert prices; you move the decimal point over four spaces and divide by two. That gets you the approximate price in US dollars.

Besides apartment hunting I've just been having fun getting to know the other teachers and walking around the city a bit. I am loving the food, I have yet to be disappointed! I am happy to say I haven't seen 'Dog' on a menu yet, but I am sure that day will come soon enough. I'm up for trying most things, but I will be skipping the dog! A couple nights ago we went out and had some drinks in the backpackers area. Drinks were very cheap! We only paid about a dollar per beer and when you walk down the street everyone is sitting in really short chairs facing the street. There are also food vendors who walk up and down with carts of dried squid. It's a little different from going out back home, but we had a lot of fun! I have learned that there a lot of people who try to sell things to you on the street or while you are eating and they are very aggressive and never really listen the first four times you say no and shake your head. Yesterday a man on the street who was selling coconuts kept talking to us and eventually just opened two coconuts without giving us a second to say no. We were definitely ripped off, but we all wanted to try one so it wasn't so bad. 

Until next time,

Michelle

Journey to Vietnam!

Wow.. where to begin?? Getting to Vietnam has been a crazy, fun, stressful and an extremely long trip! I am so thankful I have had my awesome roommate Krystal by my side or don’t think I would have made it here with my sanity!

We started our journey in Des Moines and although it all went smoothly it was by far the saddest part of the trip. Saying goodbye has proven to be just as difficult as I suspected it would be! First, was saying goodbye to friends and extended family members on Monday night. I feel so blessed that so many people came to say goodbye and wish me well! It was so fun to see everyone one last time and I did a pretty good job of holding back the tears! (For the most part!) The goodbyes on Tuesday were much more difficult! It didn’t seem real that it was my last day in the states for a whole year (I will be back to visit next summer!)! So, many tears were shed before going to Des Moines and saying goodbye to my amazing family where even more tears were shed! From Des Moines we flew to Chicago and San Francisco without any trouble at all. We were so excited and giddy, we couldn’t wait to get on our 14-hour flight and get to Vietnam!

Dove's advice on the car ride to Des Moines, thanks Dove!

Hanging out at O'hare waiting for flight number two.

This is where our first bit of trouble comes into play. When we got to San Fran we realized that to get to the international terminal, we had to leave the secured area. To say the least we were less than excited to go through security again! However, we quickly found the international terminal, went through security, and found our gate. At this point we saw our flight was running about an hour behind. We weren’t panicking yet, we were just enjoying some last minute American food and wine. (I should also mention this about SFO, they have no fast food which ended up being a problem when all Krystal wanted as her last meal was McDonald’s.) 

Charging up our phones at midnight (West Coast time) super excited and super tired!

The lady who sold us our wine and snacks said we could drink it out in the open if we used coffee cups, pretty classy!

What I thought would be my last picture in America....

We were ready to board with about 10 minutes to go, when the ticket counter called Krystal’s name. At that point I began to panic a little wondering what on earth was wrong?! It was then that Krystal came and informed me that we would not be flying out Tuesday night due to the flooding in China. The lady at the counter informed us that the Hong Kong airport (where we were connecting through) was over crowded so we were not allowed to go. Instead we were rebooked through China Airlines (we were suppose to fly Cathay before) and we would be leaving 24 hours later connecting through Taiwan. If it weren’t for Krystal I might have had a mental brake down, but instead we laughed it off and headed back down to the ticketing counter to try and get a hotel. Of course in a town the size of San Francisco there were no hotels so we had to crash on some booth benches in the cafeteria. Definitely not a bed, but much better than the floor!

Waiting to see if we would get a hotel room??

All snuggled up on our make shift bed, a nice bench style booth in the food court.

When we woke up on Wednesday morning we had a few hours before the ticket counter opened up again so we kept busy by updating our families and riding around on the sky train. At 9:30 we were able to once again talk to the Cathay people and they gave us fake boarding passes and tickets to get into the first class lounge since they couldn’t get a hotel for us. We were definitely more than happy to have a place to spend our day, especially since they provided us with free drinks and food! The rest of the day was pretty relaxed and care free. I was also finally able to get a few hours of sleep.

Waking up Wednesday Morning

Fake boarding passes to get through security and "Golden Tickets" to the first class lounge!

Our lovely view all day... about the only good thing about SFO! 

Drinking Grey Goose and enjoying the best fruit tarts ever, happy :)

When 9:00 rolled around we headed to the ticketing counter for the third and (hopefully) final time. We collected our luggage from Cathay and went to get our boarding passes from China Airlines. The lady helping us all of a sudden asked for a letter of request for our landing Visas which is when I realized we had hit another bump in the road! I had emailed our HR person about a month ago and she had informed the immigration officers would have it and that I didn’t need anything. I thought that sounded odd at first, but I went along with it. So, when the China Airlines representative told us we couldn’t board the plane without those letters my heart sank! I thought we were finally on our way; the last thing I was expecting was another little set back! Luckily with the time difference it was easy to get a hold of the school and within ten minutes we had our letters and we were back in line to get our boarding passes.

After two more hours in the first class lounge we boarded the plane and left for Taipei, Taiwan. It was about a twelve-hour flight, which I slept the entire first half of. We were served delicious food and because of our long delay we were given seats in an exit row so we’d have lots of legroom! (Though, we both missed have something to put our feet on and curl up!) Everything went more than smoothly landing in Taipei and loading back up for Ho Chi Minh, and after about two hours of waiting we were on our way ‘home.’

Flying into Saigon was the craziest thing I have ever seen! The city seems to go on forever and ever. It was amazing! However being in the middle of it is even crazier! I know that getting used to everything is going to take some time. Going from small Monticello to this is unimaginable! Krystal and I went for a walk and there were just people everywhere! We had heard that some parts of Saigon don’t smell the best, which I have found to be unpleasantly true due to all the fish and food sitting out. Crossing the street is also a bit terrifying at first! There are car and motorbikes everywhere and they are all in a hurry!

Waiting for our ride with all of our luggage!

I am so excited to continue to explore and find my way around Ho Chi Minh! The food we tried yesterday was amazing and I can’t wait to try more new things! Today Krystal and I are searching for apartments. I am excited and nervous and just anxious to get going!

Thank you so much for all the encouragement and well wishes! I am so lucky to have such great people in my life! :) Sorry about the long post, but thanks for sticking in there and reading it!

With love,

Michelle

Denver!

Hi Friends,

Once again it's been way too long since I have blogged and I feel like I have so much to fill you in on! It is hard to believe how quickly this summer has flown by, I feel like it just started. I'd love to tell you about everything I have done this summer, but I'll keep this post dedicated to my Denver trip for fear if I don't limit myself I will write a short book!

In mid June Emily and I flew to Denver to spend a few days with Megan. It was such a fun trip! Plus, it was great to spend some time with Megan again. We got in on Thursday and of course went out for Mexican food and margaritas. I don't think we will ever find a Mexican restaurant like El Azteca, but it's still fun trying. Friday we spent shopping and walking around downtown. Denver is a gorgeous city, it was really fun walking around and exploring the city. One of my favorite parts of downtown were all these random pianos along the street. They were all painted differently and they were out for anyone to play. I absolutely loved them, and it was really cool when you walked by and people were playing music.

This man played the whole time we were eating lunch on Sunday.

Saturday was my favorite day in Denver. We drove about three hours west to the mountains and spent the day in Glenwood Springs. I absolutely loved driving through the mountains and as we got closer to Glendwood, the drive reminded me so much of New Zealand. It was gorgeous driving along the Colorado River and looking up at the mountains. We spend the morning as a small amusement park at the top of the mountains. Megan found it on Groupon and it was a fun way to spend the day. After riding rides for a few hours we went whitewater rafting and oh my goodness it was amazing! We spent about three hours on the river and it was a blast! Because there has been such little rain this year there weren't very many big rapids. The biggest rapids were done about a half hour into our trip, but we had a great tour guide who made the whole time a lot of fun. One of the most fun parts was 'riding the bull.' Alex, our tour guide, had us sit on the front of the raft and try to hold on to the rope as we went over rapids. Of course I volunteered to go first and didn't take into account how slippery the wet raft was. The second I tried to sit on the front, I fell off before even getting into the rapids! It was a little embarrassing, but I made up for it by being the only one to make it through a whole set of rapids without falling off and only holding on with one hand, YAY!

On Sunday the girls and I spent the morning downtown again at the Gay Pride Fest. We went to the parade for a while and it was super fun! There were so many fun floats and people in the parade.

This was my favorite group, a bunch of people with signs about the various family members they supported or whom supported them.

After the parade we walked abound and checked out other parts of the festival, however it was extremely hot and crowded so we headed for cooler air and mimosas! After lunch and a couple hours of relaxing we headed out to City Park for Jazz in the Park, which was yet another super fun night! I think about every person in Denver was at the park enjoying the music and nice weather. Everyone brought lots of food and many people were playing various games outside. We were rookies we didn't have the spread that many people surrounding us did, however there were quite a few yummy food vendors, including a really good cupcake place!

I was less then ready for Monday morning to come! I didn't want to go home and I definitely didn't want to say goodbye to one of my favorite people, Megan. It was a sobfest when she dropped us off at the airport and I said my last goodbye. Thank goodness for Skype, I will miss Meggie while I'm in Vietnam!!

Well it may have taken me a month, but now you know all about my fabulous trip to Denver! So I will sign off and leave you with a few more pictures from my great trip! 

 

One of the rides at Glenwood Cavern

 

 View from the mountains... amazing! 

 The wolfpack taking the last of the jello shots on the rooftop... our last night :(

 How amazing is the view from Megan's roof?? I could sit up there forever!

As always,

Michelle