Our apartment

My desk and 'living room' area

Our kitchen/bedroom

Caleb's desk and bookshelf

Loft-where Caleb sleeps. I sawed, planed, sanded, and nailed some timbers and extended up the railing so that Caleb won't fall over it. It looks ugly but I think it's functional. Our bed is right underneath the loft, and the stove is behind the camera.

This is the original faucet that came with the apartment. The knob is actually just a screw that opens and closes the water pipe underneath. Caleb had a hard time turning it, and I had a hard time fitting my hands underneath the spout.

So I biked into town, looked for a shop, bought this new faucet for 75,000, brought it home, borrowed a pair of pliers from our teammate, and installed it. It works better now.

We've moved into our little 'apartment' on campus a little over two weeks now. All the major cleaning and fixing are done, and we're starting to feel a bit more settled in. We have been very blessed by the availability of internet connection, good food, and, most of all, electricity and water. We have not lost electricity at all the past two weeks, which, we hear, is very unusual. So, we're certainly not complaining. Here are some pictures of our dwelling two weeks after.

First visit with students

During our first week here, our team was already invited to a lunch by two students of Karen's. We enjoyed a delicious feast on the floor of their room where both of them cook, eat, sleep, and study. There were so much leftovers too.

Team pictures

Here are a couple pictures of Team Vietnam and Team Da Lat this year. Note our Da Lat "team mascot," the humongous lizard hung above us...

New school year

After spending last week moving in, cleaning, and settling down, we decided to get started with the new school year with Caleb. Here he is at his desk, and we made a schedule together. Andy will start teaching next Monday. He's been assigned three speaking classes so far for the first year students. And we hear the teaching schedule changes every week!

Vietnamese cherries

Caleb found a new favorite fruit--Vietnamese cherries. They don't taste like cherries, more like star fruits.

Caleb's new teammate

Caleb met his new teammate Isaiah in Hanoi and they are together here in Dalat. Here are a couple pictures of the happy couple. Isaiah is a little camera shy so we couldn't get him to look our way while he rode with Caleb on our team leader Karen's motorbike.

Blogger and Facebook

Just a note that I've finally started utilizing Facebook and any new post on our blog will automatically show up under Notes in my Facebook. Thanks to the Shetterly's our teammates from whom I got the tip!