Foghorn!

A rooster next to our stilted cabin cock-a-doodle-doo'ed this morning at 4:45 am. I had murderous thoughts aimed towards this particular rooster before deciding against getting out of my cot and mosquito netting to venture outside to the bathroom. I awoke for the second time to a large boat going right by our window and its loud foghorn. I was irritated until I realized that I was awakened in the exact same manner that Spongebob Squarepants is every morning! His alarm clock is a huge foghorn mounted at the head of his bed. The others surely weren't as excited about our wakeup as I was. I got up and dressed, packed, and went to spend more time with the people in the kitchen. I named some more food in Vietnamese and they even let me help them take the food on trays and set it out on the tables! We had a breakfast of bread and strawberry jelly with oranges and tiny bananas. There were no eggs served to us because of the Avian Flu possibly residing in the area.

At 8:30 we all set out in the blinding heat and humidity to walk around the island we had stayed on. We walked past all kinds of fruit trees as well as neighbors, dogs, and kids. I took a lot of pictures. At 9:00, we walked straight into our boat and I sat on the bow with ZeeZee again. We sang together as usual and then she asked me about my family and about Andy. That made me really homesick and sad, so after a while I stopped waving to the other boats and taking pictures and slept in the sun on the bow of the boat for half an hour. Good thing I had my 50 SPF sun block on! We arrived at the candy factory at 10:00 to see and take pictures of locals making popped rice (kind of like popped corn) as well as coconut taffy and rice paper. We tried all kinds of candy and they tasted so good!

At 10:45, we boarded our boat for the last time. I sat on the back of the boat this time, and it started to rain just as we pulled into our last dock. I put my stuff into the coach bus and ran back out into the rain to the unlit bathrooms. On that bus ride, I attempted to call Andy from Jill's cell phone. As soon as I entered his number and pressed send, the phone died and wouldn't turn back on. I pretended I felt o.k. but it was a bit upsetting.

I then did a bunch of reading and journal entries on the bus in order to stay up to date with my class work. We arrived at lunch at 11:45, and it was a very nice restaurant. We ate spring rolls, rice, vegetables, etc and Jill and I met a very nice woman from Australia in the bathroom.

We boarded the bus for the last time at 12:45 and we were back at the guest house at 2:45 pm. I immediately began uploading all of my 800 pictures to my computer and unpacked my backpack. At 4:00 I took a quick shower and it was exciting because the power didn't stay on for very long while I was soaping up.

I found Jackie and Leah in their room and we ventured out into the rain to find dinner. We tried a new restaurant down the road from our guest house, and it was a bit of a mess. Leah managed to spill her iced tea all over herself and then Jackie and I apparently ordered fried rice with no meat on it. We walked back to the guest house and I've been writing blog entries, listening to James Taylor and Trees on Fire and sorting through pictures ever since 6:30 pm. Jill and I have also been going through some flash cards for our Vietnamese language class. I'm pretty good at it if I see them, as some of you may know...

Well I've spent the past three hours or so writing about my amazing weekend, so do your part and comment! Please. :)