How is it October?

Now that I'm virtually retired, time doesn't fly by as fast.
The days blur together, but I fully realize that I've lived in Vietnam now for over FOUR MONTHS.
We are finally reaching a point in the year where my summer clothes aren't too hot. They are exactly right for the temperatures.

I've started to compare "today" with where we were at this point after moving to Beijing, rather than "this time last year". This time two years ago, we were full of excitement about our new home in Beijing. However, four months after we had moved there, we were desperately awaiting a legal return to work, and suffering cabin fever from being cramped in a tiny apartment with nowhere to go!

Four months after moving to Vietnam, we are in a larger space, with our own things to do, living almost as if we are retired! Mind you... 

...I've not furnished the house the way I envisioned it when we first moved in.
...We've STILL not yet begun cooking again.
...I know less about this city and language than I did with our move to Beijing.

Baby steps.

Life is good. I'm using a lot of my time for writing. I don't write about it much here, but I might start doing my #AccountaClub posts here, instead of in the comments on Bit2Read. Now that I'm boosting my daily word count, I just don't get into the blogosphere much, so I'll just blend this into a post to update my own blog.

If you're wondering, #AccountaClub is simply a place to set and check in on your goals. Every Friday, Isa-Lee Wolf at Bit2Read (linked above) writes a short post updating on how she's doing with her goals, and if you choose, you can do so as well, in the comments, or on your own blog. It is literally, a club for accountability. Most of us have writing goals amongst other goals, so if you have a goal and need to be held accountable, check it out!

In the spring, my writing goal was to meet a certain weekly word count. I've been increasing that number lately, and last week I wrote over 9,000 words. I don't know if that sounds high, but I'm inching up to at least 12,000 words per week.

So for me, my week was productive, even considering we're getting out more often to explore the area. For instance, on Friday we were on the road all day, riding the motorbike almost FOUR HOURS to a couple ancient historic sites. Here are a few pictures.

Hai Van Quan. A fortress between 2 arms of the sea.

North of Hai Van Quan... see that beach off to the left?

Outside a military museum in the "Forbidden City" in Hue, Vietnam.

 

Hue (pronounced like "way" with an H in front) is an ancient city. The old part of the city is sometimes called the "Forbidden City", or the "Imperial City", or "Purple City". North of Da Nang, it ended up taking us almost 4 hours on the motorbike. We stopped several times, including at Hai Van Quan, above - which literally means "The most impressive gate in the world" and when you see the setting, it kind of is...

I took this panorama shot to show the ocean on both sides of the gate. It protected both stretches of land north and south.

This will have to suffice for my summary of September. I'm trying to get around to read all of your updates, too. What were your goals, and did you meet them?