I've wanted to visit Vietnam ever since reading Dragon House by John Shors when I was in middle school, so Dan and I are spending our last winter free before medical school to go on this adventure together. While we're off on the far side of the world, we wanted to make sure you have a fun way to know that we're alive and well! It will be a joyful season when we see you again, but until then, know we love you and are thinking of you across the miles!
Blue skies,
Emma & Dan
Feb 23, 2025
About a week from today we are headed back to the States! Like our dear friend Eileen said, we will indeed bid a fond farewell to the friends we have made here and to the sometimes-strange but often so very wonderful differences of living life in Southeast Asia.
The past several weeks were certainly a mixed bag- we went on a 6 hour round trip motorcycle adventure to Ninh Binh which was the capital of Vietnam in the 10th century, we've been volunteering with a wonderful group of kids, we moved to an AirBnB that was right above a dessert shop for a short time that was on Truch Bac island (the island we had pizza on!), got hit with a serious bout of food poisoning that physically leveled us, we moved to our final place here, we've been preparing for the dahlia tuber shipping season, preparing for moving later this year to start medical school, we had a wonderful Valentine's day, and now our thoughts are on how to finish our time here well.
At the beginning of the month, we took off for Ninh Binh - a 3 hour ride south of Hanoi by motorbike. We packed up our backpacks and found our way there. It was wonderful to see the countryside after staying in the city for so long - the most interesting sights on the way were the rice fields and the large cemeteries that have above-ground tombs. Once in Ninh Binh, we went to the top of a mountain that used to be a lookout post to see if the Mongolian army was invading, we were fed several delicious meals from our hosts, and walked through the valley of jagged limestone mountains under the night sky.
I think that Vietnam will forever remind us of the beginning of our marriage - the trial by fire where we came and had to problem solve together in a place we had never been. with many unfamiliar cultural ideas, in a language neither of us understand. It's been a chance to learn more about what marriage is for at this part of our lives, how it makes us want to be better people, how it teaches us to control and sacrifice our own desires and why that is a good thing, and how we can depend on each other.
At our wedding, we ended our vows with this: "I promise to be faithful to you and you alone, to make you the sole object of my desire, my only partner, the one to whom I give my life. I promise to choose to pursue you and to serve you in health and in sickness; from youth to old age; as the sun rises on our life together until it sets; when the road is easy; and when the way is rough, or until death do us part."
On the way back from Ninh Binh, we sat together at a cemetery on the far side of the world from where we made that vow to each other. My family has always made it a point to spend time in cemeteries. On family vacations around the country we would walk through gravesites, and whenever we go to Glenwood Springs in Colorado we make the hike up to a cemetery deep in the Rockies full of the memories of people who lived in a time of outlaws and gunfights of the untamed West. Having always loved this with my family, Dan and I have now too taken many walks through cemeteries together, and the memento mori "remember you must die" of visiting those places makes for a good time to consider when we will keep that final vow, though God willing it may be a long long time from now.
With a black tomb towering over us inscribed in a language we could not read, I traced my hands along the designs that had been intricately hand-carved into the stone. Below our feet, the recently poured concrete over the grave had already begun to crack as weeds pushed their way up from the earth below.
We spent a long time there talking about what really lasts when we're gone.
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Not long after our trip there, we had food poisoning that emptied us out!! Dan has nicknamed our bout of illness as "Exploding Butt Disease." I'll say no more than that, but after a slow reintroduction to being able to stomach much more than bananas and crackers, we're back to full strength and finished up the last of our kickboxing training here on Friday!
On Valentines Day, Dan took me to a restaurant that was ran by a man who had lived on the street as a child and has now grown up to become an entrepreneur. He brought us the meal himself and showed us the best way to eat it - picking up some of the fresh herbs from one bowl, rice noodles from another, and meat from the last for the ideal balance of the flavors. (I've gotten very used to eating all of my meals with chopsticks here). We went to Little Bowl, a dessert shop that specializes in the vietnamese dessert soup, che, and we had a delicious mix of flavored rice jellies, caramel flan, and fruity boba and tapioca pearls. We went to the top of the Lotte tower (the second tallest building in Hanoi) and went to the glass floor lookout over the city. The motorbikes from so far up became a sea of twinkling Christmas lights! It was a special day here, and although we will be far away from the skyscrapers and little cafes of Hanoi next Valentine's day, I'm looking forward to all the life that will happen between now and then.
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I can hear the sounds of the busy street below as I type, and we're going on the last grocery run of our stay here this evening! (It will be nice to be able to be literate again at a grocery store when we get back to the states, but I will miss the huge variety of fresh fruit and vegetables!). While part of me never wants to leave Vietnam, I know it's best to welcome good change with open arms instead of grasping to stay somewhere you were never meant to be forever. As the winter starts coming to a close, our life back home beckons - sooner than we think we will be planting a field of dahlias again!
Until then, we're still alive! We're looking forward to catching up soon!
Blue skies,
Emma 🤟
Feb 1, 2025
Its February! Day four of the Tết holiday. According to a friend of ours, its traditional to spend the first Day of Tet with your father's side of the family, and then the second day with your mother's side of the family. The third day is more typically spent with both friends and family. On day 3, our friend likes to go the oldest university in Hanoi, the Văn Miếu, which was founded in 1070 by Emperor Lý Thánh Tông. She described how it's joyful to get to share parts of Vietnamese culture, like the clothing, with someone who is excited to learn more and she generously extended the offer to take me out to find an Áo dài that I could wear with her on the third day of Tết. We went to a seamstress who had a little sewing shop right next to her home who makes dresses and she let me step in and look closer at her sewing machines (Mike Kelly if you're reading this check out that Toyota machine and her serger!). We spent yesterday together there, and you can see me standing in front of a large drum at the university in one of the photos! It meant a lot to me to get to share in this holiday with her and she spent some time talking about why she does certain things during Tet, as well as why she stopped doing things she used to. She explained how she began to think more about whether or not she was doing something just for the sake of tradition or because her family expectations of her and began to carefully consider what was right or wrong to do.
Motorbiking around the city continues to be a joy, and since there was much less traffic while most residents of the city left to visit family outside the city, I got a chance to drive on a few streets in our neighborhood! We've been working at coffee shops, and found one with an especially beautiful view over Tay Ho (West Lake). Also, it's blooming season for dahlias here in Vietnam - so as we've been preparing for to return back to the states to ship and plant dahlia tubers, we're getting to enjoy seeing them here!
We have about a month left before we head back home and bring our stories and pictures and recipes back with us to share with friends and family.
A quick update this week, but know that we're still alive and well!
Jan 21, 2025
We are in the leadup now to the season of Tết, the lunar new year celebration. The lunar new year itself is on Jan 29, 2025, however we can feel that the city is becoming more busy, decorations are up all around the city, and shops are selling special food that will be gifted/eaten for Tết! In a similar way that most everyone gets a christmas tree, its typical for Vietnamese people in the North to get a kumquat tree (Kumquats are used in lots of dishes here and you can get kumquat juice from a lot of the shops as well!)
Since the last update, we started training in kickboxing! We have a wonderful instructor, Việt Yên, who has been teaching me the basics and working with Dan to sharpen his skills.
I've been thinking about what it means to be more comfortable with discomfort and the importance of being able to stay in control and mentally sharp when I feel mentally or physically at my limit - something I am thinking a lot about while looking ahead to the start of medical school in 6 months!
We have made a group of friends here that welcomed us into joining their bible study and we were talking about how its not a good thing to get angry during Kickboxing. I've noticed that when I get angry or too fatigued, I begin to get sloppy, lose technique, and run the risk of getting hurt. More than the physical challenge, it's been a mental exercise in learning how to stay focused and have presence of mind when there is a clear challenge in front of me. I have found myself asking God for strength and focus when training has been physically or mentally difficult, something I believe I will need to practice during medical school so that when the lives of real people are potentially in my hands, I have a firm foundation to go to when I know I've hit a point where my own failures and weaknesses threaten to stop me from keeping on. This has been good practice in learning how I am not as strong or as sharp as I want to be by myself, and how I need to ask for His help with that humility to do the things I have been called to do.
I've also been thinking about the difference between the kind of physical pain that results in damage versus the feeling of discomfort, and I realize that I used to not operate as if there was not a difference between the two. I would avoid doing something because I was afraid of hurting in any way. While I've been running or kickboxing here, I've been thinking about how uncomfortable I am - how its hard to breathe, or the stitch in my side, or how I'm chafing in less-than-ideal places.... But this, like most other things that are initially very uncomfortable, require some practice before I have been able to step back mentally, and acknowledge that I'm uncomfortable but that I understand why I'm doing what I'm doing well enough to see how it's important to keep going. I've been learning how to separate the two in my mind. The feeling of great physical pain as the result of an injury is not the same as the feeling of discomfort when I'm doing something difficult that I know is good for either me or for others that I care about. While a few weeks of practice, as well as the practicalities of my life don't point toward me becoming the next MMA champion 😆, it's more than anything been giving me a better sense of how training in something that like can teach the kind of discipline required to consistently do challenging things for the right reason.
This is a special time that is preparing us for the storms ahead, and reminding us how to stay calm and focused on the right things when they do! Lots of excitement for Tết that I'll share next, but until then we're still alive!
January 6, 2025
It's the New Year! Happy 2025 all.
This past week was full of lots of good work, learning, and a trip to a couple islands!
The photos go in reverse order, with most recent being the Truch Bach Island! If you look at the map of Hanoi below, you can see the Hồ Tây (West Lake) that lies North of the city center and west of the Sông Hồng (Red River). The Truch Bach Lake was a man-made separation from Hồ Tây used in the 17th century for the purposes of fishing and an addition to a royal pleasure palace (the palace is long gone now - the island seems now to host hotels, restaurants, coffee shops, and two temples. Its less busy here even though it's directly connected to the city by bridge).
This past Saturday, we went to Bãi Giữa (Banana Island). We have been seeing this island all week as we motorbike over the Long Bien Bridge on our way to our motorbike lesson spot... more on that in a bit. Getting there is only about a 20 minute walk from our place in the Old Quarter, but once you're there, it's a totally different atmosphere. It is an agricultural island, full of banana trees, houseboats, many different kinds of improvised houses, and many different carefully laid out crops. The island itself was beautiful, but the evidence of how flooding leads to temporary/unstable housing was evident - it was a contrast after a couple weeks in the city to have a house made out of tarps and other materials that in the US in the same view as the Hanoi skyscrapers in the background. (Ask us in person next time you see us about the other surprises of Banana Island 😂😅.)
On New Year's Eve we went to Long Waits Jazz Club, where they had a Louis Armstrong concert and a countdown to midnight. Fun fact! In Vietnam its very popular to play Happy New Year by ABBA at midnight on New Years (our cooking class instructor told us this and she was proved right! They played that at the Jazz club after the countdown.)
You'll see a few photos in that roll of the market we like to go to across the street, and of a typical fruit/veggie stall that you could find in the city. Vietnamese food is cooked with lots of fresh vegetables, herbs, and there is an abundance of fruit here! (My new favorites include the Rambutan (Chôm chôm - or "hairy cherry") and the longan (Nhãn Lồng - or "dragon's eye").
Finally, this was a special week because Dan has been teaching me how to ride a motorbike! He has been patiently giving me lessons in an alley outside of the city. It's a gravelly road where we have so far seen two fires, several dogs, and chickens and Dan has been using leaves as my road obstacles for practicing obstacles avoidance drills. (Not quite the same environment as his lessons in an empty parking lot with orange traffic cones - but we have improvised.) This has been a good shared mission this week, but I know how far I have to go! Dan has been riding for years, and thank God for that when we're on the crowded city streets of Hanoi! He's been great navigating the very different traffic laws here.
In the meantime, I've been working on looking for medical school scholarships, Dan's working on an exciting new Dahlia project, and I'm taking an online course about How to Read the Bible. Unlike a lot of classes with a similar title that might just be about what resources to use or what order to read the books in, this class spends a lot of time talking about the condition of the heart, as well as why it actually practically matters to be someone who reads the word of God - what changes actually happen in your life. The first several classes make reference to the Parable of the Sower:
(Matthew 13:3-9) "3 Then he (Jesus) told them many things in parables, saying: “A farmer went out to sow his seed. 4 As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. 5 Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. 6 But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. 7 Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants. 8 Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop—a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown. 9 Whoever has ears, let them hear.”
The teacher of my class described how this is the principle Parable (word picture) to understand how people approach the Bible. The seed that falls on the path (like someone whose heart is either unwilling or uninterested to even hear scripture, or has actively acted against hearing it) is someone whose heart is not currently in a condition to have any growth from what scripture has to say. That would describe my heart for many of the recent years in my life until it was softened after my grandpa died.
The "seed that falls on rocky places" represents someone who may be willing to hear the word - may be willing to read the verse of the day or hear a pastor say a few verses on a Sunday, but when they face any real difficulty/anxiety/depression, they don't have enough understanding/deep enough roots to know how to look to God through his word or have any desire to.
The "seed that falls among the thorns" is still able to grow - it has some depth and wants to do the right thing- but the cares and desires of the world come in like thorns and take up too much painful space in your heart to allow the Word to be alive and grow. This feels more applicable to my life right now - while I'm still working on weeding out many things in my heart that I have let grow- it's easy to get distracted and caught up in the world, both with the good parts and difficult parts of life - and to let my eyes be pulled away from focus on living a life focused on what is true and what matters the most.
Finally he describes the seed that falls on good soil that produces a crop - and this represents a receptive heart, one that is willing to be taught, desires to find the truth, and is now in a good atmosphere of growing and thriving. This is the condition of the heart that my teacher has been encouraging us to seek. He said that all of this is for a specific goal - the goal of reading/studying the bible "is to learn the original meaning, then determine the significance of the truth found there in order to apply it." Reading scripture isn't just a formality or a leisurely past time, its supposed to be done with the goal of real heart change and a real, good change, to live life better. With the fruits of that being love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control. He illustrates in other lectures about how having a receptive heart practically matters because it's what allows good life change.
This class has been a good part of our 'time out of time' here in Vietnam - time to study and understand. I still have a lot to learn, but it's been good to start this study with a mind afresh and to hold a mirror up to the condition of my own heart.
Thank you to everyone who helped give us this time and is wishing the best for us while we are here! We hope you have had a good first week of the new year and in the meantime... we're still alive!
-E
December 25, 2024
Chúc Giáng Sinh Vui Vẻ! (Merry Christmas!)
We're rounding out the end of week one in Vietnam on Christmas Day! Some highlights from this week:
We happened to find ourselves at a "One Commune One Product" food festival - we tried takoyaki (Fried octopus balls), Bánh xèo (Crispy rice pancake with a seafood filling), Thịt nướng (grilled pork skewer), and Bánh bò (sweet honey sponge cake).
We went to a couple Atlas Obscura spots in Hanoi - Including Cafe Phố cổ (where Dan enjoyed his first cup of Vietnamese coffee, which is made with sweetened condensed milk), Train Street, and Phở Xào Bà Thanh Béo (Which had amazing stir fried pho - served to us in typical Hanoi street food style: on tiny plastic chairs and tables on the sidewalk - while the meal itself was also being made right there on the sidewalk).
We joined in with the locals at an outdoor exercise park nearby early one morning (See Dan on one of the machines)
Took a cooking class at Thom Culinary, where our instructor taught us a lot about how to shop at outdoor markets, answered the many questions we've been wondering about Vietnamese culture, and taught us about the ingredients we were working with and some of the philosophy behind Vietnamese cooking. (She also put on music in the background during the class, which was an eclectic mix of ABBA, 1970's classics, and Christmas music - A cooking class in Vietnam is one of the last places in the world that I expected to hear Dancing Queen - but such is the wonder of ABBA's universal appeal😄).
We've walked a good deal of the city now and are starting to get our bearings. Every street we turn down is full of activity - motorbikes full of anything you can imagine, endless tiny shops (Dan mentioned that he finally understands what the concept of a "hole in the wall" place really means), paintings, market stalls full of fresh fruit and vegetables and meat (that was probably slaughtered that morning on the sidewalk), tiny singing birds in cages, colorful flowers.... the list goes on.
We read before coming here that Vietnam is a country full of contradiction - and this has rang true. The streets seem wildly full and chaotic and yet everyone moves in a sort of weaving flow together, Cathedrals tower over the city while most shops have small ancestral altars visible, a street vendor carrying goods on a bamboo shoulder pole basket walks past a crowd of people enjoying overpriced milk teas... We have talked a lot about what it means to learn a new culture, how to respectfully approach the ways we are similar and the ways we are different, and the value in not idolizing travel itself but in appreciating the lessons that being a stranger in a faraway place has for us for this season of life.
We hope you all have a wonderful Christmas - thank you to our families, who, because of the gifts of Skype and Facetime, we can still see on this special day even when we are a world away! We love you! We're still alive! 🎄♥️ - E & D
Dec 21, 2024
Xin chào! It's the evening of day 2 in Hanoi - We have seen a lot and learned a lot already! We are pretty confident now in how to cross the very busy streets (the motorbikes and cars don't stop for pedestrians, they just weave around us like a game of frogger!). The food has been delicious, people have been overall kind and helpful, and the city is full of a tremendous amount of new experiences.
A few highlights:
We visited the Dong Xuan market today, which was a building full of more stalls, items, and people than any building either of us has ever been in - the photos below don't do it justice. I loved walking through the wonderfully colorful fabric section. (We have yet to successfully haggle, but we did buy some Quả Roi (Rose apples) and mangoes. No luck finding laundry detergent yet.)
Long Bien Bridge - which was destroyed and rebuilt several times during the war with the US (The US stopped bombing it when the vietnamese bagen using American POWs to rebuild).
The "most beautiful street in Hanoi", P. Phan Dinh Phung, which is lined with dracontomelum trees on either side that form a tree tunnel. This took us to Ba Dinh Square, the site where Ho Chi Minh declared independence in 1945 from France, and the mausoleum where his preserved body currently lies. This was a secured area, full of military personnel and lots of very intentional messaging about Vietnamese strength, the honorable character of Ho Chi Minh, and the humiliation of the US defeat.
Dan tried a cream puff from Beard Papas full of a sweet corn cream that was very tasty, we have seen just an incredible amount of variety and quantity of things piled on the backs of motorbikes, with anything from a cage full of live chickens to nearly 100 bouquets of flowers (see photo below).
We experienced lots more than that today, but jet lag is hitting hard, so that's enough for now to say that we're still alive and looking forward to what tomorrow brings!
Tạm biệt!
-E :)
Dec 19, 2024
Touchdown in Japan! (After our 13 hour flight - of which the highlight was a warm chocolate chip cookie...) One more flight and we'll be in Hanoi.
Dec 8, 2024
T-Minus 10 days until takeoff! Stay tuned for our first updates then... in the meantime we're out in Colorado enjoying time with my family until they send us off!
-E