You know you're celebrating Christmas in Vietnam when...

You know you're celebrating Christmas in Vietnam when...

• the refrigerator you bought for Christmas is adorned with a massive sticker of the not-so-well-known superhero, Mr. CoolPack.
• one of the main selling points of said refrigerator is that it can "stay cold all day when the power cuts out."

• finding a real, honest-to-goodness turkey breast at the supermarket is one of the highlights of the holiday.
• the only thing around that smells remotely like an evergreen tree is the scented candle someone gave you from the States.

• Christmas breakfast consists of eggs, bacon, Swedish tea ring and fresh mangoes, guava and dragonfruit.
• your visitors from "freezing" Hanoi go swimming on Christmas Day. In the ocean.

It's been a great Christmas--there were 13 of us who got together to celebrate. Seven friends with our organization came down from Hanoi to spend the holiday with us--a family of five (the Breedens) and a retired couple (the Davenports) spent about five days here enjoying the warmer weather, ocean views and quiet life of Quy Nhon. Since this city can feel a bit isolated at times--especially during the holidays--it was a blessing to have such fun people to share a few days with.

A few days after Christmas we decided to give a belated gift to the vendors of Cho Khu 2, the market where Joelle usually shops. These ladies have gotten to know Joelle over the past couple of years and--as Vietnamese women are prone to do--asked her repeatedly when she was going to have a baby. After all their asking, they were thrilled last year to learn that Joelle was pregnant, and even more excited when she returned this year without the belly. But where was the baby?? After several solo visits to the market, Joelle felt that a riot was imminent if she didn't bring Micah soon.

Yesterday, they got their first chance to meet Micah, in all his cute foreignness. The resulting chaos is chronicled on this video, which I shot while Joelle fielded questions and fended off pinching fingers. So, for a glimpse into Vietnamese market culture and the excitement surrounding babies here, watch below. (For those reading this on Facebook, you need to click the underlined title of the video, which takes you to the page where you can watch it).

Micah's Market Adventure from Steven Shetterly on Vimeo.

That's so METRO of you (and other stories from our first two weeks back)

Since our time back in Vietnam thus far has been fairly chaotic, this is going to be a hodgepodge of snapshots from what we've experienced.

Snapshot 1: It's Tuesday, this must be Quy Nhon...
So until recently, Micah hadn't slept in the same place for more than a couple of nights ever since leaving Washington: the plane, a hotel in Saigon, the first hotel we stayed at in Quy Nhon, our apartment, a different hotel where we had a retreat with our teammates, and now back at our apartment. The poor kid has no idea where he is going to be from day to day. We've finally settled back into our apartment for the next month or so (until we head to Thailand for our winter conference), so that should provide him a little stability. He really does take most things in stride, and although he's been poked and squeezed and tugged at and sniffed (yes, sniffed) by more people than we can count since coming back, he almost always has a big, dimpled smile for new folks that he meets. Kind of irresistibly cute, really.


Snapshot 2: That's so METRO of you
Honestly--and perhaps sadly--one of the things we were excited about upon returning to Quy Nhon is the fact that METRO has arrived. What is METRO, you ask? Well, to Westerners like us you could say it's a little slice of paradise.

First, some context. Imagine, if you will, living in a city of a quarter million people where practically the only baked goods available are little loaves of French bread and little rolls with cheese and mystery meat baked into them. Imagine a place where ice cream comes in flavors like "Taro Root," and tastes like they forgot to add the cream. Where the only condiments you can put on a sandwich are mustard, mayo and ketchup (if you're lucky). Where you have to bike a mile and a half across town in hopes that the one bakery in town where they sell cheddar cheese won't be out of stock (again). Where the only two breakfast cereals readily available are corn flakes and something called "Honey Stars" which tastes like sweetened, ground-up drywall. It comes to this: The Vietnamese do a wonderful job of cooking Vietnamese food. In general, they could care less about Western food and thus they don't stock any of it in their stores.

It makes a lot of sense, but for those of us who like a bit more variety in our diets, we're kind of out of luck. Selection is limited, and tends to be scattered in stores across town, so that if you want to make burritos for dinner you end up biking six miles and visiting four different places for all the ingredients. A good way to keep in shape, for sure, but a little disheartening as well.

Enter: The Game Changer. METRO is a German-owned company (we think) that tends to sell things wholesale to businesses. Think Costco. This October, they opened METRO Quy Nhon, and eating will never be the same again. We visited it for the first time this past week with our teammates and I think I walked through the whole place with a dazed smile on my face, whimpering under my breath in shock. It's as though Santa Claus himself opened a warehouse and stocked it with stuff just for me.

Australian ice cream. (Mint chocolate chip, even!) Salmon. Washington apples. Whipping cream. Massive blocks of New Zealand cheddar. Balsamic vinegar. Hershey's and Dove chocolate (all of which are locked in individual cases with electronic alarms). Multigrain bread. Shall I go on? Dried cranberries. A dozen different kinds of cereal, including All Bran (hello, bran muffins!). Hot chocolate. Tons of colored paper and office supplies for teaching. Tasteful Christmas decorations. Barbecue sauce.

We truly have no idea who in Quy Nhon will buy most of these products, other than the 15 or so foreigners who live here, but man is it fun to see all of that goodness in one place.

So then, what will this do to all the mom-and-pop businesses that you find on every street within the city? My guess is: Not much. We, for example, will still buy our fruit and veggies and meat at the local market. It's fresher, cheaper and very relational (really, how many mega-grocery store checkers pat your butt and tell you that you look more beautiful today than the last time you were in? This is the kind of personalized service Joelle gets--for free!--when she goes to visit the local market ladies) Presumably, most Vietnamese realize this as well and only the ones drawn to the "modern" (expensive) way of living will be tempted to buy lower-quality produce at higher prices. But if we get a hankering for rocky road ice cream or a vinaigrette salad dressing or (heaven forbid) Hershey's dark chocolate, it's nice to know where we can find it now.


Snapshot 3: Meet the Rowleys
One big change since last year is that our teammates are new. Our good friends and teammates of the past two years, Jill and Jason Fizzard (and their two girls Ella and Madeline), have accepted a position with our organization's leadership in Hanoi and are relocating there.

Our new teammates, Jeremy and Laura Rowley and their son Isaiah arrived in September and by all accounts have done a great job of getting settled into teaching and daily life here in Quy Nhon. We feel kind of bad that they were here for three months without us, but they seem to be doing swimmingly. The Rowleys are from Manitoba and, like us, prefer the quieter, slower pace of life in Quy Nhon to the hustle and bustle of the bigger cities. They also like the outdoors, coffee and U2. We should get along just fine. :)

Home and thankful

It's about time we got this blog thingy started back up again, don't you think?

After six great months back in the States, we've returned to Quy Nhon as a family of three. It's good to be back.

As I type this from the Seagull Hotel, our son Micah (cutest little guy in the WORLD) is snoozing in his travel bed and Joelle is across the street at the university doing some apartment cleaning before we move in. We'll be tag-teaming the apartment today while the other one looks after the little guy.


Micah was a joy to travel with; although we were a bit worried about how much plane-sitting, taxi-riding and hotel-sleeping he could endure it turns out he's just as happy a kid at 35,000 feet as he is at sea level. With the exception of a couple of short cranky spells, he was all smiles and giggles (or snoring) the whole way across the Pacific.

As expected, Micah--being the cute, chubby white baby that he is--has drawn plenty of attention on this side of the world. Everyone from waitresses to hotel workers to flight attendants have wanted to pick him up, squeeze his feet and make funny faces at him. We've been told that for some reason it's not culturally appropriate in Vietnam to call people's babies "cute" or "lovely" or any such thing, but that rule has been broken with impunity when it comes to Micah. The stardom hasn't gotten to his head just yet--he seems to be just going with the flow, for the most part.

Joelle has already received her first unsolicited piece of advice on parenting as well--the kid needs to wear a hat, according to the lady cleaning the floor in the Saigon restaurant where we ate breakfast yesterday. When we explained to her that we had walked all of 30 feet (across the street from our hotel to the restaurant) she seemed to accept that.

Around Quy Nhon the weather has been downright chilly--all the way down into the low 70s, if you can believe it. We were reminded just how different people's perception of temperature here is on the ride into the city from the airport--a little boy was riding his tricycle alongside the road while wearing a full-face ski mask. Winter's icy grip seems to be loosening, though, as the next few days are supposed to be up in the low 80s with sunshine.

All told, we're glad to be back. It was hard to leave family and friends behind in the States, but we both sense that this is where we're supposed to be. And although it's a bit more complicated than before, it's a lot of fun doing it all as a family of three.