Sickly Sunday

Since our internet is so bad here in Hanoi, I'm a day behind in my blog. That's frustrating. I woke up on Sunday morning at 6:30 am after close to six hours of sleep. ZeeZee, Jill, and a couple other people went to the food market a couple of blocks away from the dorm. It was a bit difficult, since my voice was pretty much shot. I ordered eggs on a baguette and they were impressed with my Vietnamese. They wanted me to take their pictures and show them on my digital camera and I relented. We then walked around the market and saw all the raw meat and semi-dead animals being prepared to be sold. I even saw a bucket of frogs and they were all tied together. Some of them were dead and being dragged around by the live ones. Others were trying to hard to be untied and free from the mass that their internal organs were no longer internal. There aren't any animal rights people here.

We stayed there for an hour or so and then I came back to one of the small street stands and got an iced coffee. I also befriended the lady that owns the stand and she talked to us in Vietnamese. I then went back to the room and went to bed from about 9-11:30. I woke up in time for lunch and we had a buffet-style where we point to the item and they add it to the rice. I headed back to the dorm and hung out with Leah and Jackie in their room. Leah had accidentally busted a lock off their closet and I tried to put it back together. Then I went back to my room and Jill was reading so I slept for an hour and a half more.

I still wasn't feeling that well when I woke up from my nap, so I drank an entire nalgene bottle full of clean water. Then our whole group gathered in front of the dorm and we met our long-term tour guide, Long. He explained a few things and then led us out into the big city of Hanoi. We walked for two and a half hours before we climbed five flights of stairs to sit on the roof of this restaurant. I took a lot of pictures of children and dogs and people in the city and I was very tired. We ordered drinks on the roof and took pictures of the sunset before going back down to the street and walking another half an hour to a restaurant. They food was amazing and we had rice, duck, pork, and fruit. I had a lot of fun at my table with Bryan, Kathy, Leah, and Brittany. In the middle of dessert, another table called me over and told me to speak in German with the owner of the establishment. We finished our dinner and talked for a long time before we left the restaurant at 8:45 pm to catch taxis. We all piled into the cars and took a ten minute ride through traffic, since it was the Mid-Autumn Festival, to the water puppets show. The group quickly got tickets and headed to our seats. It felt weird to be in such a large tourist trap, despite the puppets actually being a Vietnamese art. It was formed in the rice paddies during the rainy season. AKA they had so many puddles that they started to make an art of it. The speakers said everything in three languages-English, French, and of course Vietnamese. I wasn't sure what to expect but the band on the side of the stage was pretty amazing and then the semi-scary looking puppets appeared and danced/spoke/lived on the surface of the watery stage. I've posted the video so you have some idea of what I'm talking about.

The show included dragons swimming around and breathing real fire and sparks at each other as well as small children puppets swimming around. It lasted for about 45 minutes and I can't say I stayed awake for every minute of it. After it was over at 10:00, a bunch of s caught taxis and came back to the dorm. I immediately set out to find internet in our dorm, since a bunch of people on the floor below us said they had it in their rooms. The internet was shoddy and I couldn't even get my browser to open any web pages. It was insanely frustrating and by then I had no voice left again. I walked down the hall to ZeeZee's room because she usually has internet. She was washing her clothes in the sink and hanging them up to dry. I sat on her bed and got pretty upset because I was so homesick and I couldn't talk to anybody or post anything on the internet. After talking to ZeeZee for about an hour, I went back to my room and cleaned up and went to bed at about 12:30 am.