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Nessa

@vanessa.vun

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📍 Bay Area → Sacramento
🌸 Restarting life at 38. Figuring it out in public.
💃🏻 Food, hobbies, & adventures.

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I’m 38, divorced, single, unemployed, selling my house, and I just moved to a new city.

So… what happens when everything that used to define your life gets stripped away?

I thought taking a sabbatical would feel like freedom immediately.

Instead, the first few weeks were just… chaos. Packing, downsizing, selling things, moving, unpacking, sitting with layered grief.

And now that things are finally getting quiet, I’m realizing something:

When you’re left with nothing to distract you, you have to ask yourself… who are you?

Not your job. Not your marriage. Not your house. Not your relationship status. Not your friends. Not your family. Not your home town.

Who are you when all of that gets stripped away?

I’m realizing that for me, the answer has to be something deeper than my circumstances.

I’ve spent so much of my life building identities around the things I do and the roles I have: my career, being a wife, being a homeowner, being someone people can depend on.

And suddenly, a lot of those things are gone or changing.

I don’t know what my next career will be (business owner?). I don’t know where I’ll ultimately settle. I don’t know what my future relationships will look like. I don’t even know exactly what this sabbatical is going to become.

But maybe that’s the point.

When you don’t know what your life is going to look like next, you need something that doesn’t change every time your circumstances do.

An anchor.

For me, that’s God.

I may not know what’s next, but I can still know who I am and whose I am.

Maybe that’s what this season is teaching me: that when everything external gets stripped away, I’m still here. I’m still His. God is still here.

And maybe that’s enough to start from.

#sabbatical #startingover #rebuildinglife #womenintheir30s #trustingod by @vanessa.vun

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a month ago

Wanna meet my kayaking date?

They’re sweet, kind and cute.

The Lake Natoma Ponds is such a beautiful spot to view wildlife up close or afar if you’re scared like me. 😆

This is a great date spot.

📍Sacramento State Aquatic Center
1901 Hazel Ave, Gold River, CA 95670

$15/hour for a single kayak per person
-15 minutes for picking up and dropping off the kayak

Bonus: ate at a Korean spot after and then got strawberry matcha at Bober Tea (Rancho Cordova). 🍓🍵

#sacramentostateaquaticcenter #kayaking #sacramentoadventures #dating #solodate taken in Sacramento State Aquatic Center by @vanessa.vun

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2 days ago

Somewhere between preparing for the future and realizing life is finite, I’m learning to actually live in the present. 🥹

#LifeReflections #Mortality #LivingIntentionally #Turning39 #PersonalGrowth taken in Sacramento, California by @vanessa.vun

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3 days ago

Foodie influencers: 💕🤭 nom nom

Me: 👹👹👹

I don’t eat pretty like foodie influencers because I like to eat, eat, eat.

It’s my first time trying out Sushiro… out of all places in the world… in Beijing at Xidan Joy City. 🌆

Sushiro is Japan’s largest selling conveyor belt sushi chain and has over 500 locations in Japan as well as international branches across South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand, China, Indonesia, and Malaysia.

AND APPARENTLY they’ll open their first USA location in New York City this year at 667 8th Avenue, New York, NY 10036 (near Times Square).

I don’t have super refined taste but I thought the quality was good! I don’t usually eat too much but the quality to me was so good I ate SO MUCH.

Hopefully the quality is the same everywhere. 👀🤷🏻‍♀️

Welcome @sushiro_america in the USA!!! 🇺🇸

#sushiro #sushirobeijing #sushi #conveyorbeltsushi #foodie taken in Beijing, China by @vanessa.vun

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4 days ago

Yap update

#sabbatical #funemployed #lifetransitions #startingover #lifestyle by @vanessa.vun

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8 days ago

It IS crazy how all roads lead to riding a toboggan down the Great Wall. 🎢🏎️

Back in August I went YOLO and booked a solo trip to Beijing the next month to celebrate my birthday.

I wanted to see the mother effing GREAT WALL.

The viral toboggan ride from Tower 6 at the Mutianyu southern part of the Great Wall was something I had to try.

Of course, the best time to do it is early in the morning to beat the crowd.

But I went on Klook and purchased a package that included a tour bus pick up then drop off and an English-Chinese tour guide to talk about the history of the wall.

This means we’d get to the wall late morning with everyone else. 🤷🏻‍♀️ oh well

I spent 1.5 hours waiting to ride the chair lift, 1 hour exploring towers 6 to 1 and then 1.5 hours waiting to ride the toboggan down.

NO REGRETS AT ALL. The experience was still pretty fun.

This is probably one of my favorite memories of my sabbatical.

#sabbaticaltravels #tobogganride #mutianyu #greatwallofchina #beijing taken in Mutianyu, Great Wall by @vanessa.vun

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10 days ago

You guys I feel ill 🤣🫪😵‍💫…

…it’s the price I’m willing to pay when traveling overseas to have fun. 🤣

But no lie I am looking up tickets for my next trip to Asia. Hong Kong? China again but Chongqing? Thailand? Vietnam?

How do you guys deal with jet lag?

#travel #jetlag by @vanessa.vun

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13 days ago

The soft girl next door / cdrama kdrama female lead theme with @one_oftwelve 🧡🍑

I picked this theme as my second choice because I wanted to enhance my natural ✨soft girl vibes✨

I trusted the studio to deliver and they DELIVERED 💐🌼

#chinaphotostudio #oneoftwelvestudio #chinaphotoshoot #softgirlera #lovergirl by @vanessa.vun

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14 days ago

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14 days ago

I went to Nanluoguxiang, an alleyway with tons of vendors. My goal was to hit up 3 viral spots in the area:
🐑 Sheep matcha (IG trend)
🍜 Jensen Huang zhajiangmian (“大佬同款” aka “the big boss’s same style” on XHS)
🥛 Milk-skin yogurt (aka “new Beijing yogurt”)

Feel free to copy-paste the store names in English below into Amap (Chinese map app) so you can navigate to them! I spent WAY too much time trying to copy the Chinese store names from Instagram and the internet so I could actually find them IRL on Amap. 😂

On the way, my bike caught my skirt and nearly ripped it off. I digress. 💀

First stop: 🐑 Lu Huahangshen Coffee
aka Dew Drop Inn Coffee, for the viral Sheep Matcha with the cute foam drawing. I also got the pistachio cake. I spent half my time admiring the drawing because drinking it would be the end of the sheep/lambs. 🥹

Next: 🍜 Fangzhuanchang No.69 Noodles with Soy Bean Paste
The restaurant that NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang visited earlier this year, making its “大佬同款” (“same style as the big boss”) zhajiangmian a viral XHS recommendation. The restaurant is also Michelin-recommended, and the zhajiangmian is only around $5.37. The wait was 30 min for me as a solo diner because I got to fill an empty single spot at a shared table.

Then: 🥛 Unis Yuansuan Milk Station
This is where I got the viral new Beijing milk-skin yogurt. It’s a bit different from the traditional “Old Beijing yogurt,” which I have yet to try. At this point I was SO full that I couldn’t eat or drink anything else for a while. I had to pass on 🍡 tanghulu (candied fruit skewers) and other Beijing snacks. 🥲

#chinaeats #Beijing #travel #foodie #zhajiangmian taken in 北京南锣鼓巷 Nanluoguxiang Alley, Beijing by @vanessa.vun

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15 days ago

For my 39th birthday, I am spoiling myself ✨🫶

@one_oftwelve is a studio I tried this time in Beijing with a modern theme, showing off my ✨soft, cute side✨ and my hidden femme fatale / alter ego. 😎

I wanna thank my team at the studio. Thank you each person for their role in making me feel adored, supported and guided. The photographer had amazing attention to detail!

I also love that they call me “bao bei” or “baby”. They sure know how to make a 35+ year old lady like me feel like a baby girl. 🤣

#chinaphotography #chinaphotoshoot #china #portraitphotography #birthdayphotography by @vanessa.vun

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16 days ago

I left my $160k tech job, moved to a new city and then flew to Beijing just because.

🏃🏻‍♀️ Jogged around the Temple of Heaven
🚶🏻‍♀️ Walked 8 miles until my knee quit
🇨🇳 Navigated Beijing without knowing Chinese
📱 Learned to survive using Chinese apps
🍜 Ordered random dinners on Meituan every night
📸 Paid for an unnecessarily expensive photoshoot
📦 Bought things on Taobao and shipped them to my hotel

So naturally, I danced on the Great Wall.

Things are great 😂

#sabbatical #lifetransitions #beijing #mutianyugreatwall #teachmehowtodougie taken in Mutianyu, Great Wall by @vanessa.vun

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17 days ago