Clutter Birds

 Dear Mom,

Janet and I are taking care of many details, and I’m overwhelmed, but I’m imagining the many, many details that are being taken care of when a space rocket is about to launch. Intimidating! And then I think “yeah, but what if a family of raccoons had been living in the rocket for the last 9 years and you had to clean all their stuff out so the rocket could get ready to launch?”

We’ve been doing mostly the moving-out and cleaning-out bit lately, though we finally got two of the suitcases to exactly 49.5 pounds each yesterday. We’re not hoarders, but we’re not exactly lean-and-trim, either, when it comes to the shear amount of our STUFF around the house. We’re like some weird birds that gather fancy sticks and string for our nest but the nest-building instinct got stuck ON and our nest has gotten beyond fluffy. So we’re decluttering and packing and cleaning and fixing stuff, and soon (so soon) that part will all be over and new adventures await.

Today (Janet’s birthday!) one of our housemates moves in to the bedroom off the living room, and we’re in the south Airbnb bedroom until Wednesday, and then we fly out on Thursday bright and early. The other two housemates will move in after we go, and the three of them will caretake for our property while we’re away until late April.

We haven’t exactly resolved the Vietnam lodgings question, BUT our hearts are at rest about it. The realtors have shown us several options and we have been able to answer to our satisfaction the question about renting a house vs. an apartment: For the purposes of being able to offer hospitality and generally improved privacy, we’ll be spending a bit more than $1000/mo for a house in Danang. There’s one house we’re especially thinking about, about 7 minutes by motorbike north of Vincom. Lê Văn Duyệt, Nại Hiên Đông,

This morning it’s chilly here in Bend, and we’re trying to soak up the cold vibes. Soon, so very soon, the weather will be nothing but hot/humid!

Ah, I can tell that I’ve come to the end of this letter because I’ve begun to tell you about the weather. I dread the heat of September in Vietnam, but it’s still not a worthy topic for these letters (or you’d hear about the weather every-single-time.).

Love,

Tim

Lodgings ... we're looking ... hoping

We're officially hunting for housing now.  We have the same realtors who found us housing 10 years ago (Victoria/Sean and their team) looking again for housing that might match our criteria.

Hi Victoria and Team,
We hope you can find us a place in Son Tra somewhere between Hồ Xuân Hương in the south and Phạm Văn Đồng in the north

We are especially looking for a larger-than-average living area to offer hospitality. We hope we can find one where the living room and kitchen are good for hosting games and cooking-together.  Parking for motorbikes is important, too.

We especially like the older/established neighborhoods near the old Son Tra markets.  We don't need it to look glamorous or luxurious.  We do hope for AC in the living room/kitchen, even though that's unusual in most houses.  

If we can spend less than 25 million per month, that would be our target range.

Thanks!
Tim/Janet

----

And in our price range this is a pretty normal house (take a look):

https://www.dotproperty.com.vn/en/ads/3-bedroom-house-for-rent-in-khue-my-da-nang_4982247a3523-c2bf-ba22-eb4e-91d11089

There is not much room in the downstairs of these townhouses for hospitality, cooking together, etc.  And this is how 80-90% of all the city houses are designed... so we're hoping that we can find a house with an unusual layout. 

We really depend on the local realtor team to find actively listed (real) rentals and hammer out our rental contract, because most of the listings you'd find for yourself online are in the "bait and switch" category.  That happened to me last year for a one-week rental, and it was almost a disaster.  We were bringing some friends to visit Danang and I had to quickly scramble to find a place for us all ... it's a great story to tell you sometime, because what the enemy meant for evil, another power meant for Good.  And boy oh boy was the outcome good!

Right now at 25 million if we don't see lots of great options we might go up another notch.  (26.3M is $1000 USD, for context.)  There's a reasonable 2 bedroom apartment option at 19M, but the downside is that it can be inconvenient to host friends when you're in an apartment--they have to check in at the desk and there's no place for their motorbikes.  For not much more, we can have a lot more space in a house ... if we can find a suitable one.

Hoping for the best!  Glad if you'd hope with us!

Tim/Janet

Boring Excitement

Dear A,

We're REALLY looking forward to living in Vietnam again.  We are anticipating some things which we don't experience in the same way around here:

• warm evenings with friends and bubble tea on short plastic stools
• coffee shop English clubs
• shopping for household goods (now, where do they sell ____?)
• motorbiking around town
• slurpy noodles

And lots of the things I'm looking forward to are also things we do in Bend. We're looking forward to evenings of games and puzzles.  Hosting marriage workshops and helping people individually find freedom/peace/joy.  Cooking and eating with friends.  Using curiosity to encourage curiosity about matters of faith.

Nothing terribly exciting.  No news.  Just a daily surge of excitement about going, but it's boring because we've been excited all along already.

Love,

Tim

PS. 

I might have mentioned this already, but if you have an old PHONE you want to send with me (provided you've reset it to the factory login screen and it's not carrier-locked), I'll take it to Vietnam friends who would be grateful.  Cracked screens and useless batteries are NO PROBLEM to fix there, and the people I'm aiming to give them to won't be offended by old phones.  Or if you want to send me $$ to @thechaseplace, I'll fix up someone else's broken-screen phone and find a grateful recipient.  These are young people coming down to study in Da Nang from Vietnam's more remote/impoverished areas.