Year one: a gloriously caffeinated, Southeast Asian adventure

Today is our one year anniversary. One year since the best party ever. One year of being the Lewises. It’s been wonderful.

 
Since I’m still working on writing the tale of how we came to be married, I thought I’d share some of the awesome – and sometimes awesomely bad – things that have made up this past year.

• Living for one month in Jonathan’s apartment with all of our belongings piled inside
• Mini-moon in San Diego (with my brother and Jonathan’s friends)
• A trans-oceanic move in September
• Nineteen days living at the Thang Loi in Hanoi – home of the world’s hardest beds
• A weekend at Ha Long Bay for Air Mekong’s wing ceremony
• Thirteen days living in the dark dungeon that is Saigon’s Bong Sen Hotel
• Learning to live in a tiny hotel room together (which includes sitting in the bathroom if you want to stay up and read while the other sleeps)
• Apartment hunting the Vietnamese way, and eventually finding our first home together
• Me learning to be unemployed and financially dependent after five years as a flight attendant.
• Jonathan flying for the first privately owned airline in Vietnam and learning to fly the old-school way  – complete with language barriers, no dispatchers, and no national weather radars
• One permanently smelly refrigerator
• A month without coffee in the house (In Jonathan’s words “A terrible, terrible month.”)
• Learning to enjoy the security that comes with a life-long commitment
• A trip to Dalat and an Easy Rider day trip
• Realizing that when you’re married (and not flying four-day trips) it’s impossible to hide your crazy from your spouse
• Being the most white-trash-looking couple in Asia with Jonathan’s big, bad mustache and my yellow hair

• A rainy trip to quiet Con Dao Island
• Paying off all of our debt
• Eighteen house guests in six months
• Learning to live together and still give each other space
• Four trips to Phu Quoc Island – beaches, pepper farms, dirt roads, a miserable squid fishing trip, and airplane watching
• Thanksgiving in Thailand with the Trivetts
• Having my head buzzed in Thailand by a she-male (what lady boys become when they get old)

• My motorbike wreck (and a shoulder that still hurts 9 months later)
• Dragging two of our best friends to Vietnam to live with us
• Christmas in hot, sunny Saigon (and our mule, Jamie, bringing gifts from afar)
• Sunrise, sunset, and several days in between at Angkor Wat
• Watching Auburn win the BCS Championship at 8:30am
• Having our own motorbike and the freedom it brings
• Jonathan’s fun home science experiments
• Grace’s 30^th birthday
• Experiencing our first Tet  (Vietnamese new year)
• The acquisition of motorbike licenses (and me overcoming my fear of driving)
• Jonathan learning that it’s okay to get your hands dirty when you eat
• The Worst. Idea. Ever, Part 2 in Buon Ma Thuot
• Becoming an intern and being published in AsiaLife
• Enjoying Saigon’s phenomenal rainstorms/white outs. Even getting stuck in a few on the motorbike

• Weeks of bronchitis and miserable sickness
• Days in Mui Ne when we feared the beach would be washed away
• A broken coffee press (we have a solid steel spare now)
• Touring the Mekong Delta by boat
• Kuala Lumpur and Langkawi with Jonathan’s parents
• A visit to Jonathan’s cousins in Hong Kong
• Finding a tailor and having Joy’s wedding dress made in Vietnam
• Multiple trips involving weeks of separation as we cross the pond for training, Michal’s graduation, and Joy’s wedding
• A trip to Nha Trang for mud baths, beaches, great seafood, and snorkeling
• Pounds and pounds and pounds of Starbucks coffee (thanks, Peter)

Like I said, it’s been a great year. I can hardly wait to see what the next one has in store.

To all of you who have been married forever, is the first year really the hardest? To all of you, what’s your advice for making sure things just keep getting better?