Spent yesterday afternoon at pool with Jim and Heather, the couple next door to us. The kids played for ages with their daughter Scarlet, throwing rocks into the pool then seeing who could collect the most from the bottom - amazing how well they are swimming now. Turns out Jim used to work for ABC news in America and spent a lot of time covering wars both as an embedded journalist and independently so we had a really good chat about uni stuff - really interesting for me to actually talk to someone who has been there in the midst of many of the wars I've studied.
Later on we were invited to join Van and Loan, the owners of the resort, for dinner. Jim and Heather already had plans but Van and Loan have 3 kids so the kids were to eat together. Scarlet felt a bit left out so she ended up staying with my two and having dinner while her mum and dad went out. After the kids had dinner they went down to the family living room and watched films and played the x box. I think Vans kids got more out of that than mine as they are home schooled. They grew up in Florida but both parents are Vietnamese and decided to move and open the resort 2 years ago. The boys, Tom who is 13 and William, 11, clearly spend all their time being trained in hotel management and are very much small business men which is a real shame, they clearly don't interact with other children very often and when they do they really hold back and seem to be scared of enjoying themselves and just being kids. Van himself is a bit odd but nice enough. Loan is just lovely and littele Grace, who is 4, is a great little girl.
We had dinner on the roof with another couple joining us - pretentious American guy and his really odd and quite frightening Swiss wife! He made a big song and dance about letting the wine he had brought along 'breath then rest' then did the whole nose in glass followed by swirling it round his mouth and making over dramatic noises before declaring it was perfect. Turned out it was a bottle of fecking Jacobs Creek!!
Anyway it was a nice evening. The food was amazing and it was fun to spend a night with such a random mixture of people! The kids had a great time too..and for once we didn't have to spend any money!