Here’s just kind of a general update about my life over here and how it’s going. I’m feeling “bloggy” today – and also I have come to realize that about 90% of my communication with my family and friends occurs through this blog now. I don’t email with people as much as I did when I was back in the states, as basically everything I am up to over here is on this blog and there’s just not much to add. Anyway, here goes:

1. Housing: Still in the guesthouse. Hoping to move out soon when Tim’s current roommate finds a new place.

2. Motorbike: I guess I have kind of gotten in the swing of the whole traffic insanity thing because I’ve started actually enjoying driving my motorbike here. Part of it has to do with my having developed a feel for the “flow” of traffic here – I’m not quaking with fear everytime I crank the thing up. Part of it is also, I think, that motorcycles are generally just kind of fun to ride. You always hear that they’re fun to ride and that you have a feeling of freedom, etc. I’ve always thought that people who rode them in the states were idiots (Mitch!) – because even if you’re the safest motorcycle driver in the history of mankind (and Mitch I know you’re not), if some other idiot in a car or truck, etc., hits you, you’re pretty much cooked. But anyway, the point is I’ve started to enjoy riding my moto over here.

I’m still working on the getting angry in traffic situation but I’m actually making progress. Every day I have numerous dumbass things happen to me – people bump into me, a girl ran over my right foot the other day, people are constantly cutting me off, etc. – that I would be well within my rights to get angry about. But I just try to tell myself that none of it is directed at me – that’s just how they drive, and even if I left Vietnam today, they’d still be driving around like that. It has nothing to do with me. Also, I finally figured that if I was going to get really angry every time something messed up happens in traffic here, I might as well just work myself up into a blind rage every time I leave somewhere and stay in that rage until I arrive at my destination – because that would be the end result anyway.

Also, the moto is incredibly cheap. I fill it up once about every week to ten days and it costs 30,000 dong, which is about $1.88 or something in U.S. dollars. You can park anywhere for 2,000 dong (about 12 cents USD). And whether you park in there for 5 minutes or all day, it’s 2,000 dong. As someone who can remember paying $20 a day to park in Seattle, 12 cents for all day is pretty compelling. I also bought a year’s worth of insurance for – get this – 60,000 dong, which is less than $4 USD. So it’s just damn cheap.

3. Vietnamese: I think it’s continuing to go pretty well. I have periods where I feel like I’m getting a lot better at it – but those are usually followed by periods where I think I don’t know what the hell I’m doing and I will never learn this damn language. I am starting to be able to understand a little more when I overhear Vietnamese people talking – not a ton, but a little, which I could never do at all until recently. I dropped my private class so I am down to three sessions of the group class per week now. I need to start studying more outside of class on my own – but it’s tough to make myself do it. I’m not going to force it, but I think it will come with time.

4. Health: I just got over a bad cold that apparently half of Saigon has passed around, so I’m feeling pretty good right now. It’s funny how when you get over being sick you feel (or at least I feel) like I had forgotten how good it feels to just feel normal! Anyway, I think my health is actually improving. I am still having some pretty intense acupuncture and visceral massage three times per week, and I think it is slowly but surely helping. It sucks – and I dread it because it really hurts – and it’s expensive, etc., but I’m going to keep doing it because for the first time in a long time I am feeling some slight but continuing improvement. Dropping the personal Vietnamese class allows me to go to a yoga class on Tuesdays and Thursdays. So far I’ve been about 5 times total, but nowhere near as regularly as I plan on going. There are also a couple of weekend classes, so my goal is to go to yoga three times per week. It’s just one of those things that feels like it’s really good for you – even though I find it hard to do while I’m actually doing it. I’ve been doing a little aerobic stuff – not as much as I was doing before because yoga has taken the place of some of that, but I’ve been swimming and running here and there. The triathlon we were going to do in Thailand in December turned out to be only a full triathlon – not a sprint-distance triathlon as we were led to believe – so we’re not going to be doing that after all.

5. Meditation: Tim and I still have our “meditation bet” in place – $100 per day for every missed day. So far, since the first week of September when we started this, I’ve only missed one day. So I owed Tim $100 for a while, but he recently missed a day as well so we’re even. I really think the meditation helps in a lot of ways. I am really realizing what an angry person I really am and how much stress I carry around with me on a daily basis. I don’t know where the anger I have comes from – but it’s a real problem and I need to get a handle on it because it definitely affects the quality of my life. Whenever Tim and I talk about this, he says “You don’t seem angry at all. You seem like one of the least angry people I know.” I guess that’s good – but it probably means that I just keep it bottled up inside me because it’s definitely there. I wrote before on this blog that my fear was that all I had done was moved from Atlanta over here and that I was going to continue to be angry – just about different things. And I’ve found that to be exactly what has happened – and not necessarily even about different things. A lot of them are the same things – poor drivers, inconsiderate people, etc. The same stuff I used to rant about in Atlanta, I rant about here – at least I internally rant because apparently I don’t seem angry. So I’m cognizant of it – and I think the meditation helps with that. And hopefully I can move beyond just being cognizant of it to actually improving it. I think enacting real change – I mean real, fundamental change – in your life versus just always talking about changing certain things about yourself, just wishing you were different, etc. – is one of the hardest things you can do. And that’s exactly what I’m trying to do over here. So it’s tough.

6. Work: I’m still working with Tim right now, kind of helping him out with his existing businesses. We’re still trying to figure out some other options for us to pursue together, but it’s going a little slower than we anticipated. Part of that is due to factors outside of our control – we thought we had some investors lined up to buy a property in Cambodia to convert into high-end apartments, but the investors’ timeline turned out to be slower than we expected. I still think that will happen – just not sure when. Part of it is also because Tim’s existing businesses are busier than usual right now – which is great for him but means that he doesn’t really have the time to devote to trying to figure out new opportunities. But a large part of it – and maybe the majority of it – is that, as I’m probably repeating ad nauseum here, I am really focused on improving my health over here. That’s not just some kind of copout – that really is my priority, and fortunately I’ve got enough money saved up and it’s cheap enough here that I can live over here for a while without having too much income coming in. So work is not really my focus right now. I am confident that in time, and especially as I learn to speak better Vietnamese, I’ll have no trouble making enough money to stay over here for as long as I want to, so it’s really just not that big of an issue for me right now and I mention it here only to be comprehensive about what’s going on in my life.

7. Volunteer Work: I liked to do some volunteer work from time to time in the U.S., and since I’ve been over here I’ve been looking for something I could do as a volunteer. I don’t want to be someone who just comes over here and exploits this country because it’s a cheap place to live, etc. (I mean, there are a lot of other, far worse ways to exploit this country – trust me – but I’m definitely not into that and I really don’t want to exploit it in any way at all. If you read the history of this place, it’s certainly been exploited enough in the past.) I really want to feel like I’m helping out or giving back or whatever you want to call it. So anyway, I finally found a place called the Green Bamboo Shelter, which is a shelter for homeless street kids – to try to help them get on the right track. I’m meeting with the volunteer coordinator for lunch tomorrow, the idea being that I will volunteer to teach English at the shelter for a couple of hours each weekend amd do whatever else I can to help out. So I’m very excited about that and hopefully it will be a good fit, etc.

8. Homesickness: I still don’t feel too homesick over here. I miss my family and I miss my friends – but so much has changed for the better in my life compared to my situation back in Atlanta that it’s just hard to get too despondent about it. That being said, I am getting more and more excited about visiting the U.S. for 12 days in December. It’s not really that far off now and I’m really looking forward to it. But I feel confident that, at the end of that trip, I’ll be ready to come back over here. It’s finally started to feel like I live here now – that I’m not just passing through. I really like it here, and I don’t think I’ve made a decision in my life in a long time that I feel was as good a decision as the one to come over here. Who knows how long I’ll stay, etc., but for now it just feels like the right thing for me to be doing.

Okay, I’ve rambled on enough and that’s more than anyone probably cares to know about my life. But if anyone has any questions about anything else, feel free to email me, etc.