Continue reading “Books I Read about Thailand while in Thailand”
Yogurt Coffee
We have only just begun our exploration of the apparently vast world that is Vietnamese coffee. This is yogurt coffee!
(Also, after 35 years of shunning it, Brian is drinking coffee now. Crazy, right?)
List of Preschools
Here is a running list of the preschools Theo has attended on a temporary basis on our trip. We were happy with all of them. Some schools, like Cheeky Monkeys in Bali and Kiddee House in Chiang Mai seem to more frequently take children on a short-term basis. For others, we just lucked out because they had an empty slot in their program.
Preschool As We Travel
For a little more than four months, we have been enrolling Theo in local preschools as we travel. Thus far, he’s attended school in New Zealand, Indonesia, India, Thailand, and Vietnam.
We aren’t particularly worried about keeping up with the academic aspects of school. Theo is young and seems to be soaking up information from the wider world in a very sponge-like manner. Instead, we like that school gives him an opportunity to learn to socialize with people who aren’t us on a regular basis. Just as important to us, sending Theo to school gives us adults extra time to work and explore independently.
Shoe-free Playground
The nearest playground is two minutes walk from our apartment building’s front door. During dry weather, it buzzes with children from about 5 pm to 6 pm, as they burn off post-school energy. In wet weather, it’s almost empty.
It’s the first playground we’ve found where we’ve needed to remove our shoes before entering – presumably to keep the fake grass clean!
Working
“This is my laptop. I’m working. I’m doing Neo4j” – Theo
Egg Coffee
While Hanoi has many interesting coffee options, egg coffee is what I’ve heard about the most.
The first egg coffee I tried was just a little foamy syrup inside of some pretty typical coffee. Not bad, but not anything exciting either. However, the egg coffee pictured below, at The Hanoi Social Club, was excellent: rich, creamy, and slightly sweet on the top with strong coffee on the bottom.
Happy New Year Again – Celebrating Tet in Vietnam
Brian came down with the flu two days before we were scheduled to temporarily leave Hanoi for a two-night stay in the countryside. Luckily, he mostly recovered within those two days, and we departed on our car-train-car journey to our guesthouse as planned.
Theo’s favor (and presence in photos) is very much courted in Vietnam – not as intensely as in India, but close. On the train, a family with a child about Theo’s age gestured for him to come over, and he spent about an hour watching videos with the girl and eating various snacks the family plied upon him. (We eventually lured him back to us and re-implemented our comparatively draconian screen and snack policies, but the sight of him sitting with the girl was too cute to spoil at first.)
Continue reading “Happy New Year Again – Celebrating Tet in Vietnam”
Epic Battle
Where We’ve Been And Where We’re Going (Again)
I just booked our plane tickets back to the United States. Yikes.
We fly from Amsterdam to Chicago on August 19th. After a few days visiting my mom in Chicago, we’re going to drive, bus, or fly to Ohio.
And then, we plan to stay mostly in place for a while in Ohio – for at least a year, but almost certainly longer – so that Theo can go to school, make long-term friends, and develop a deeper relationship with his grandparents than facilitated by our weekly Skype sessions.
I admit that I feel melancholy. But I also feel silly about the melancholy, both because the end of the trip isn’t particularly close and because, even if it were, I can look forward to a very good life even when remaining relatively stationary.
So, tonight I’ll just let myself feel a little melancholy. Tomorrow I’ll remind myself of all the goods things to come.
Continue reading “Where We’ve Been And Where We’re Going (Again)”