Oh So Fresh!

It had been a little stressful, but I must say that I was pretty proud of myself. Julie was back in the States and for five weeks I managed to keep myself and the girls fed, clean, and healthy. I had even managed to stay on top of the laundry. The one thing I couldn't figure out though was why my whites weren't getting as white as Julie usually gets them. My socks just seemed to be getting more and more grey with every wash no matter how much liquid detergent I poured in from the little blue bottle.

After five long weeks, my wife finally returned. I walked her through every step of what I had been doing.

That's when she pointed out that for five weeks I had been doing our laundry not with detergent but with fabric softener.

Nor matter how may times I washed my socks, they were just getting dirtier and dirtier. But it was the freshest smelling -and softest- dirt in Hong Kong.

I'm really glad to have my wife back.

-Jack

Old Quarter in Hanoi after dusk

Halong Bay, Northern Vietnam

Vietnam assorted pictures

The Mountains of Sapa, Northern Vietnam

Guten Tag

With apologies to my high school German teacher Frau Duvall, other than guten tag and auf wedersehn, I don’t remember anything from my four years of German. Oh, there is one other phrase I do remember –don’t ask me why I remember this of all things- Es Regnet und es regnet. It rains and it rains.

There were only four of us in our trekking group –well five, if you count our Vietnamese guide. The other two were a young couple from Germany. They spoke impeccable English. But once in a while, when they were talking between the two of them, they would speak in German. Occasionally, I would pick up a word or two that I recognized. Mostly just der, die and das.

Either I missed it or the guide book failed to mention it, but June is the rainy season in Northern Vietnam. The first day of our trek, it rained steadily and heavily.

Germans. Rain. Oooh, Ooooh. I know this. I caught up to our Germans, sidled up next to them, and proclaimed with all confidence, “Es regnet und es regnet.”

“Ah, sehr gut! You speak German.”

Why yes, yes I do.

Thank you, Mrs. Duvall.

-Jack

Terraced Rice Fields

I have a vivid memory of sitting in elementary school and looking at pictures of terraced rice patties in my social studies book. I remember thinking how cool they looked and how amazing it was that the farmers had transformed entire mountainsides into usable farm land. It seemed like an awful lot of work.

I remember sitting in that classroom over thirty years ago, getting lost in that picture, and thinking to myself that it would really be cool to go see those terraced rice patties one day.

That day came last week. Nate and I did a two-day trek through the hills of Northern Vietnam. We hiked across from them, uphill from them, downhill from them, and next to them. We even tromped through several of them which entailed walking across the top of the narrow clay walls that make up the patties.

As awe-inspiring as the pictures were in my social studies book, the rice patties of Northern Vietnam are even more impressive in person. Standing on a hillside and looking to your left and to your right and seeing an entire valley covered in the free-flowing organic shapes of the bright green rice fields is breath-taking.

-Jack