Could Have Been Better...

This morning I woke up at 6:30 and immediately knew it was not going to be a very good day. My throat hurt, both nostrils were blocked up, I was achy, and my head felt as if it weighed too much for my neck. I got ready for classes in sort of a daze and then tried for about 25 minutes to get my blog to post my latest entry. The wireless internet in our rooms here at the guest house is inconsistent and it wasn't letting me post any pictures either last night or this morning.

We left to get our usual breakfast at 7:30, except we got our eggs on a bun and got a strawberry smoothie instead of a coffee. It was definitely a good decision and a nice break from the bitter taste of the strong iced coffee. Vietnamese class did not go so well today. On top of the fact that I was a bit out of it, we got our tests back from last week. No one in our class did particularly well, when we heard that one other class got to ask questions and they all did really well. Someone reported this to our teacher and she promised to talk it over with the head of the program. Sure enough, she tracked us down in the building later on in the day and took the tests back in order to reconsider some of the questions. The rest of class was spent reviewing for our gigantic final tomorrow.

A few of us ventured out to find lunch after class ended at noon. We decided to get food to go from a restaurant right on the street about a block away from our classrooms. There, we met a nice Australian man who owned the restaurant. He told us that the space used to be filled with rats and exceptionally dirty until they took about six weeks over last Christmas and fixed it up. They then hired young women from the Mekong Delta area, in order to give them an alternative to prostitution. The waitresses treat each other like family and work at the restaurant in exchange for housing, food, and lessons on hygiene, etc. It's a really awesome idea and it seems to be working out great.

We walked back to the classroom building to eat lunch in the sunny stairwell and waited for our next class to start. Rylan Higgins, the leader of the semester abroad program we're currently involved in, gave a lecture from 1:30-3:00 pm for our "Vietnamese Life and Culture" class. It was about the middle class in Vietnam and I was thoroughly engrossed. He spoke of social actions that are unacceptable for the middle class and more acceptable for the lower class, and vice versa. He said that the people in the middle class do not squat (imagine how I sit sometimes) on the side of the road when eating, waiting, or selling something. The stools at restaurants tend to be higher and farther away from the ground in more middle class restaurants. It was interesting to know what's really going on behind the scenes in the social drama being played out in this country.

I walked back to the guest house and studied from 4-6 pm for the Vietnamese test tomorrow. Then Jackie, Leah and I called a place that delivers Italian food. I hung around and talked with them for a while before the food came. I had some spaghetti with olives and tomatoes thing that was very good. I came back to the room and studied for another hour before going on a quick bike ride with Mike. He's chosen to take most of his pictures for our photography class by the Saigon River. It was drizzling as we biked there and then started to pour when we parked our bikes. I took pictures from my squatting position (just to see what people would say) underneath a covered patio. We stayed for about 20 minutes before driving our bikes back to the guest house in blinding rain. It was really fun, though.

Back at the room at 9:15 pm, I dried off, sorted through today's pictures, and wrote this blog entry. I need to get rid of this illness before we fly to Hanoi on Saturday, though, so I'm going to bed. I'll post pictures in the morning, since it seems my computer and the internet are reenacting last night's foul behavior. Nighty Nighterson!