Vietnamese 1: Check!

I woke up this morning and felt even worse than I did yesterday. My head felt so heavy I could hardly stand up, and my throat was extremely scratchy. I didn't move far from my bed for about an hour. I talked to Katrina and Andy online and watched recommended Youtube videos while my roommate stressed over our upcoming final test in Vietnamese language class. I hesitantly got dressed, grabbed my backpack, and set out to get breakfast. Once I was up and walking around in order to talk with the locals and order my coffee and egg sandwich, I started to feel a bit better. We got to the classroom building at 8:00 and talked with the rest of the group in the lobby for about ten minutes. Our class reviewed some sentence structures, nouns and adjectives before we were given the written portion of the final exam. It included listening to our teacher and writing down the correct tones for the words, filling in antonyms for some adjectives, and making both questions and answers. Overall, I was extremely pleased with how it went.

After taking a 15 minute break around 10:00, our teachers taped some Chinese lanterns to places around our classroom building (the stairs, bathroom, other classrooms, etc.). Since it was raining this morning, our fieldtrip was moved inside. We had to partner up, blindfold one partner, and have the remaining person tell them the directions to the lantern in Vietnamese (aka go left, stop, turn around, it's on the left, etc.). It turned out to be extremely fun and we even got to keep the lanterns afterwards! Mine is a very colorful elephant that folds up to be really small. This is convenient, since our group flies to Hanoi tomorrow.

After the blindfold ordeal, we were ushered back to our classroom to finish our test. I spoke about my family (names, ages, jobs, places of work, etc.) for three whole minutes! I was surprised I knew so much after three weeks of class! Those three weeks were packed with 56 hours of class, though. Then the teacher, co Trinh, asked me a few questions about my family. I answered them all and felt really good as I went to sit down in the lobby so others in my class could take their oral exam.

A bunch of us said goodbye to our beloved teachers, but instead co Trinh said that it's her boyfriend's birthday today and invited us to his party. We gladly accepted and got directions from her.

Five of us then went down the street to the same place we had lunch yesterday. We sat down to eat this time, and we all ordered in Vietnamese. I ordered the same meal I did yesterday: pork and rice. It was good yet again. Why change something that works quite well? :)

At about 1:30, I came back to my room at the guest house. I brought my laptop over to Jackie and Leah's room and they helped me make some decisions and narrow down my options for my photography assignment due on Tuesday. I have so many pictures that I like and it's really hard to choose just three for each category! Then Leah and I watched a show on the Discovery Channel about buildings that have collapsed and killed hundreds of people. It was definitely not an upper. I went back to my room at about 5:00 and listened to Eric Whiteacre and played some computer games. It was raining really hard, so none of us wanted to go out and get food yet.

Brian, Jackie, and I went down the road to a brewery and ate dinner there from 7:00-8:00. I don't even like beer, but I tried Jackie's and it was so good that it didn't even taste like urine! I had fried rice with pineapple. It was also served in a pineapple, which was sweet. I finished eating and walked back to the guest house to find Jill lounging in the room. We talked for a while and then I got a couple people out of their rooms to go out.

ZeeZee and a few others and I walked for about ten minutes before reaching the birthday party, which was at a pool hall/bar called "Arena." Besides the big screen tv that was showing the international rugby tournament, there were plenty of new people to meet and I got to see co Trinh all dressed up and meet her boyfriend. (See picture posted above). He's from Canada and they met on Myspace! Her boyfriend, Steve, was organizing some type of pool tournament and I stepped up because I'm so competitive. I ended up coming in second place and I was happy about that.

We finished the tournament and ZeeZee and I walked back with a few others from our group. Back at the guest house, I showered and sorted through my pictures from today. Tomorrow afternoon, my whole group of 19 people flies to Hanoi for most of the remainder of the semester. I'll miss Saigon a lot, but there'll be lots of new pictures to be taken in Hanoi! Are you juiced or what?! :)