I’m back…greetings from Ho Chi Minh City!

The last few days have been spent trying to get our bearings as we help H settle into his new home which will be our home too from time to time.

We live in a housing estate, the Thu Doc Gardens, close to where H works but far from everything else. The kids and I like to joke that it’s like being in the VBB - Viet Big Brother House We have a Vietnamese helper who comes in to clean, wash and iron. Eventually, we will have to bring a Pinay helper here. The language barrier makes it so darn hard to communicate and you will not believe the amount of sign language that I have had to do over the last couple of days. The Viet phrase book is my constant companion at home as I try to give “Yim” directions.

Thank God H’s officemate just lives down the road from us and he has an excellent “valet”, a young man, names Itoy, who keeps house for him and cooks excellent meals. Cooking has never been my strong point so you can imagine what a relief Itoy has been for all of us.

Tomorrow we shall do grocery and supplies shopping as we are still in the process of completing our stuff at home. The house is fully furnished already — not quite to my liking– but hey, who are we to complain. However, we still need the small, essential stuff. It’s like starting over again really, pretty stressful some days - not being mobile and the communication problem pretty much aggravates it, but I guess this is what you could call a midlife adventure. I was soooooo bushed on our first day here that two days later I can still feel my muscles creak. From all the moves I have made — Hongkong, Korea, and now Vietnam, this seems to be the most challenging so far.

It’s a good thing that H has his officemate N, to help him adjust and keep him company. At least he will have company after we go. It’s quiet where we are. A totally different life that will ceratainly take getting used to. The men spend six days a week at work and they are in an industry that is so fast moving and growing that it is an exciting place for them to be. The challenge really is for the family members who get left behind at home. When h is at work, we’re pretty much left on our own - your day is what you make it, really

We have no wi-fi connection yet at home and so the kids and I are in N’s house, riding on the wi-fi from the private high school beside his house Hopefully, when we return here in May, our connection will be up.

In my next post I will hopefully have more pictures of us adjusting to our lives here. It’s a very safe country with helpful, industrious people all around. The adventure has just begun.