Please do keep checking back. The initial set-up weeks are on the boring side, but we expect some adventures to report on soon. Ilene is off on one now, and we've got a trip to the Mekong Delta this Sunday.
We've been establishing work routines and getting to know our neighborhood better. I'm getting used to the noise (or going deaf) and can usually sleep through the morning rush. This week, we had a couple days of uncharacteristic gloomy rainy days when the laundry wouldn't dry. That's over now -- the afternoon heat is killer.
The whole city seems to be holding its breath for or preparing for Tet. The park outside our building is the site of one of the many "flower festivals" in the week of Tet, and a little bit of progress is made each day stringing lights and building the decorations.
Ilene taught her first class on Monday and felt it was a good start. She's in Vung Tau now, a resort town on the coast a few hours southwest of here. It's a conference of all the Fulbright scholars currently in Vietnam. She returns tomorrow, and I'll try to get her to write a little about that. She's super busy. (In addition to everything else, she conducted an interview earlier this week via webcam with the committee at SCSU that will hopefully recommend her for promotion to full professor.)
A big chunk of our time is taken up with just holding together body, soul and home, like pioneers. Laundry and dishes and shopping and every other kind of housework needs to be done in small batches without letting anything build up. We only have 2 of any utensil. (Well, four chopsticks.) Slowly we acquire the the necessities and comforts there wasn't room for in the luggage allowance. Everything takes a little longer to accomplish because we don't know the routines here, then a little longer because we don't have the language skills to ask, then a little longer because everything takes a little longer here. The hunt for bottled water alone is something I have to concentrate on daily. Also chocolate.
