I'm 27!!!

I turned 27 and I really do feel older. 26 was a crazy year. I moved to Vietnam all by myself, I started a "real job" and I've traveled all over Southeast Asia! Now it's time to stop just surviving and keeping up with life but really work on living on purpose! So I've made some pretty interesting life changes: (1) I am running a race in December in Cambodia so now I've started to run, swim, yoga. It's great because I go exercise with friends after work and I actually leave work at 5! (2) I've started oil painting! After my first successful attempt at oil painting I ordered a book that will help me develop my painting. (3) I've become a pescatarian! This is huge. I've been a ovo-lacto vegetarian since I was 4 and I decided that since I live in Vietnam I should start somewhere. So I've eaten tuna, grouper and one other fish I don't know the English name. But I haven't tried other sorts of seafood but who knows maybe... (My grandma is going to be so happy!!)

Here are some photos from my 27th birthday. My co-workers took me out to eat at Sen Chay (a Buddhist Veggie restaurant) and got me a really yummy cake.

Then my friends took me to the Deck, a really great restaurant in An Phu along the river. It was perfect to get out of the city and just hear the river go by instead of the motorbikes. The food was amazing!
My friend, Hong, made me an amazing carrot cake. The wind was a little strong so the lighting of the candles was a little crazy. However, I've always thought it was weird that we blow on the cake trying to blow out the candles and then serve it to everyone. So I'm glad that the wind blew out my candles. =)
I love my friends!! They've been such an encouragement to me while I've been in Vietnam.

The new digs

Just wanted to say a few about the new apt in general it is a really nice apt. We have a huge living area that we've decorated with lamps, carpets and some nice candles. (Pictures to come)

And except for the construction that is still going on in the apts next to ours we generally enjoy being here. After several complaints to the management we've almost successfully got a policy instated that the workers can only work from 9-11 am and from 2-5 pm Monday- Friday! I'm pretty proud of myself for pushing for this but me an my oversensitive noise issues couldn't

help but make this a big issue for the management. So no longer are we awakened by the pounding at 8 am on Saturday mornings. I'm convinced that if I looked in the classifieds in the Viet Nam Daily there would be a posting: Wanted: Banger/Pounder, must be willing to bang and pound on metal or concrete for 5-8 hours a day preferably at a constant pace without stopping!!

We become quite Vietnamese even though we are in a swanky new apt. We store our plastic bags in the dishwasher (we pay a dishwasher so no need to actually use the machine) and we dry our dishes in the oven (we have a toaster oven that we're more comfortable using)! Never knew that these appliances were such good storage areas!!

We are 20 floors up! We can see Diamond Plaza, Notre Dame Cathedral, Nguyen Hue Street, the huge Buu Dien (post office), the city communist buildings and the Siagon River just to name some of the sites (Pictures to come). One of the things I absolutely love about HCMC is that there is always a "Holy cow, I can't believe that is actually happening" moment just about every day here. So just the other day we opened the shades and saw men working without any safety belts just outside our windows. At least the one guy had on a motorbike helmet!