A New Year Begins

It is always a little daunting to look at the first round of credit card bills after our summer. Rental cars, hotel rooms, and an entire year's worth of shopping! I made myself feel a little better with my first trip back to my regular spa. But (yes, the masseusse's name) made it all go away! Had a mango smoothie on the way home and didn't even think about those bills for the rest of Saturday.

Yes, we are back. After a whirlwind tour of the western United States and some solid time at the place we love most, we came back to our apartment with the air conditioning on for us and the refrigerator stocked. Pleasures of life in Vietnam.

Here are my favorite quotes of the summer:

#1 - Maeve (Out of the blue, listening to the XM movie station in the rental car.)

"Why do all of the movies we watch at home in Vietnam have shadows in front of the movie and the movies here don't?"

#2 Aunt Jen (Maeve aspires to make movies some day and likes listening to the music from movies to try to envision them. That's why we listened to XM radio movie station as much as she would let us. Then she grills you about what the movie is about and tries to connect it all. One night, Aunt Jen rode home with Charles and the girls. )

"You should have warned me! I had to explain Saturday Night Fever and Flashdance."

#3 (Maeve has been voariciously reading about mythology and is hooked. We were around the campfire and Sophie tried to get her hot dog off of the cooking stick, it stuck, and then launched free onto the ground. )

Maeve, " Sophie is hot dog Artemis!!!!!"

Indeed it was a fun summer. And it zoomed by us.

Before we left, we celebrated another important milestone in the Waugh family - Sophie's 5th birthday.

Maeve and Sophie are becoming seasoned travelers! It is still a brutally long trip, but they do such a great job and sleep plenty. Here they are in the Hong Kong Airport before we boarded our flight to LAX.

We got to spend lots of time at Grandma and Grandpa's hip new pad in San Diego. I had forgotten how hard jet lag can be on kids, so it was a bit of a tough week. Mission Beach won out as the best place to go.

Balboa Park was another hit. What an amazing place! Here, Maeve contemplates a reflecting pool.

And here she takes on the stage. So shy that one.

After Charles met us a week later after his class in Bangkok, we packed up a Town and Country and drove north to Oregon. Beautiful, beautiful driving! (And a pleasure to drive after not doing it all year.)

Here is one of our highlights of the trip, Crater Lake in Oregon.

It was the first time that the girls have actually stood in snow! So funny that they had their sandals on.

Their first snowball fight was a highlight of the trip. They had cold hands and feet as we were dressed for summer, but it was worth it.

We had a visit with our dear friends in Portland, Alan and Joanie. A trip to Powell's book store and some yard saleing (can that be a verb?) on a beautiful day made it a perfect visit.

Beautiful Maeve on the Oregon Coast.

We were lucky enough to stay in yurts 3 nights at Oregon State Parks. This was out first.

Here we had a yurt a 1 minute walk from the beach. A hot chocolate sunset.

The tide pools were awesome! Maeve and Sophie explore...

A tide pool wave.

Maeve wasn't too sure about the starfish...

Stars all around.

On the way back to San Diego from Oregon, we went through the Redwoods. Amazing and humbling those trees are. They are huge!

We stayed with my Aunt Wendy in Sebastapol, CA.

Sophie got a new do when we got back to San Diego.

Finally at the cabin. Charles makin' some of his famous biscuits.

Sisters on our favorite dock.

A quick trip to Mackinac Island to get our fudge fix for the year.

Reading with newly met cousin Sam. It's amazing how much we read without screens around at all. The girls, especially, rediscovered books in new ways. : )

Grandma offering a hammock push.

Welcomes to all. We got to see EVERYONE in my family at once as we celebrated my parents 50th wedding anniversary.

Swimming with the cousins. Does it get any better than that?

A spin in the old row boat.

The entire Riley crew. It was so good to see everybody!

Sophie back in San Diego, watching with Grandpa.

A new school year is underway! Sophie is in kindergarten and Maeve is in 2nd grade. They are both off to a great start with wonderful new teachers. I have a lovely new group of 5th graders.

Our favorite babysitter brought us t-shirts from her home country of Equador.

There were so many people I intended to call when I was in the states, but it was unbelievable how fast the days went and how full they were! Warmest greetings to all of our friends out there. You are not forgotten! Hopefully I will be better this year about blog updates. Tam Biet. And don't be a stranger!

7 Candles

Greetings my friends! It is certain the I will not win awards for my blogging frequency... I hope this entry will reach those of you who have long ago given up on the hope of an update!

We have weathered the holidays and the steamy Saigon winter. We have many friends here who have been through very hard times with parents, marriages, you name it. Life. It has been a doozy all around us. I am appreciative that we are healthy and well, and the tough times for those around me seem to be ebbing a bit.

As you can see, one of our new adaptations to Vietnamese life is our "whole family vehicle". We don't go far at all with all of us on it - I admit I test the shocks a bit - but zipping around on the scooter has improved Charles' quality of life in Phu My Hung.

Christmas was lovely. The first time I got to watch my beautiful daughters trim the tree and I just relaxed. We got prettier lights on the tree this year but still couldn't quite create the wonderful tree smell.

Check out all of the unique and life improving classes that happen right here in the Waugh apartment...

Proud Sophie. Life in EC4 still rocks.

Christmas vacation also brought us our first visitors! Alan and Joanie came from Oregon via Penom Penh and we had a wonderful visit. We made it downtown right before Christmas. What a scene! Thousands of people on motorbikes ride slowly through the lights in the city. It is quite spectacular.

We also went to the Cu Chi tunnels, where the Vietnamese hid in an extensive and elaborate tunnel system during the Vietnam War. Watching the video at the beginning of the tour was one of the first times I felt a little odd here. "These filthy devils dropped bombs on the Vietnamese people..." You get the idea. Seeing the actual tunnels and systems was interesting. We had a great personal guide. Sophie said "Cool booby traps. Let's see some more!" Charles fit into the small demo tunnel where you could pull the top over you and completely disappear.

Maeve eyes a tunnel. This little adventurer went an entire 100 meters underground with her dad in a tunnel made larger for tourists. Sophie, Alan, and Joanie were troopers and went the first 20 meters. I decided long before we moved to Vietnam that I would never, no way, unh-uh go in the tunnels and cheered all heartily from the surface.

We rounded out a day tour with a trip to the Cao Dai Temple, a fascinating, quiet, ethereal place. Cao Dai is a religion unique to Vietnam and is a combination of beliefs from many different religions. Maybe a little Unitarian like, although Victor Hugo is one of the worshipped in the Cao Dai religion so maybe not so much. Here's Sophie with the all seeing eye.

Alan is a wonderful photographer...

Maeve discovered that Sophie was famous at the breakfast table one morning. She was a little jealous. This ad for our school was in the local expat magazines.

We tried our hand at a little bowling. Maeve loved it. Sophie is still a little small to get the ball all of the way to the other end.

Chuc Mung Nam Muoi! Happy Tet and Lunar New Year. The biggest holiday of the year in Vietnam, many people visit temples to pray for their ancestors and ask for good fortune in the new year.Tet brought us the best fortune possible in the form of a visitor....

Grandma!!!!!!!!! We had a wonderful week with her and she got to see Vietnam at its most relaxed and beautiful.

Sophie isn't the only one around here who is flirting with fame. I got a call from a friend Richard (shown in the sound booth) on Friday night. "Would you like to dub a movie?" Well, what would you say? Of course I said sure and spent the next morning working until lunch dubbing the film that my colleague at school had already shot. Talk about difficult! Acting, but so that my words matched her lips and I sounded like she did when she acted the scenes. The movie is about an American exsoldier who returns to Vietnam to apologize for his atrocities. The producer is an older Vietnamese man who had made over 30 films. And although I cannot believe what I did was of this quality, this film is slotted to go to the Cannes film festival! You will notice that I have not released the name of this film yet. I reserve viewing rights when and if it really happens, and then I will give more info. Such opportunities are a perk of life as an expat. All things aside, it was a unique and once in a lifetime experience. I will not quit my day job.

Charles has made three trips to Tapei this year. At ten days a piece, it makes me proud of how well we have gotten on in his absense. The girls are getting more and more independent and helping more all of the time. Charles has enjoyed his trips, and is eager to complete his certification program next year. He has had a couple of classmates make their way through Saigon. It has been fun for him to meet new people from around Asia.

Lovely Miss Maeve turned 7 this week. Here she models a beautiful purse from Grandma.

For her birthday party, we invited girls from her class to join us at the spa. Here her friend gets her first ever manicure, beautiful little flowers and all.

Party friends. : ) (Taiwanese, Japanese, Dutch/Korean, and American)

Beautiful nails!

Birthday giggles.

Last week we had Learning Journeys at school. The basic idea is that it is a spring conference, but the child leads it - to show their parents what they have been doing at school and celebrating growth. We did something very similar at my last school, but the difference here is that 4-5 students take their parents through the classroom at a time. It was a unique experience, more than anything else because of the language. Kids were invited to speak with their parents in their first language. (So many parents are not as fluent as their kids in English.) At many points i the day there were four different languages being used. What was so cool was I did not know exactly what everyone was saying, but I knew what the kids were saying even when I didn't. I had helped them prepare in English. What was so wonderful is that the ease of language came back to these families in my presence. When we sit down for a conference and everything has to be translated there is little room for smiles and jokes and laughter. It is just a reality of translating. But in the room was joy, and celebration, smiles, and soft laughter. Students lead, and it taught me a great deal about what they have learned this year. It was completely delightful and one of the moments in international education I had looked forward to.

I also got to go to Sophie's learning journey. She was amazing! She had a map that guided her to all of the different stations. She is a smart little cookie and funny, funny, funny. I was impressed with what our little four year old could show us. And through all of the experience, I missed my colleagues at the Center because I thought about them so much - so many traces of their ideas and brilliance came to the surface. Maeve's learning journey is tomorrow afternoon.

Imagine if you were talking to a room of Asians, and you had to explain the word casserole. Yes casserole. I giggled at how hard it was after I read it is a book to my students and had to try to explain it. Go ahead, try it. Google image came to the rescue again. We browsed broccoli cheese casserole, and lentil casserole, and cheesy mac casserole. My students oooohed and ahhhed, and to the end looked at me like I was an alien.

Tam biet for now.