1:00 PM Appointment

Last night Bryan and I went on his xe-may to go get helmets and after the third store I fell in love with the one in the picture. It also happens to fit my head perfectly which is a plus. We then went to the Old Quarter and stumbled upon this great cafe. It's had cheap yet good food and we sat on the balcony which overlooks a quieter intersection. We talked for a long time, ate crepes, drank iced coffee, and finally went back to the dorm before the gate closed at midnight. I took a quick shower, read in bed, and then crashed.

I woke up this morning at 8:15 and decided to get another 15 minutes of sleep. Well I just rolled over and hoped I would make it class in time. This miraculously worked, however, and I woke up again at 8:40, got dressed, fetched my egg sandwich, and even made it to class early. Class went alright and she taught us a lot of new vocabulary concerning time and classroom stuff, etc. We left at 11:00 and I went straight to the usual lunch spot and got take-out. My friend there made me promise I'd bring the Coke bottles back to her restaurant, though, and I told them I'd be back with them at 1:00 pm. After planning for the Halloween party as well as today's class period with Jackie and the other teachers in our group, I returned all of our Coke bottles to the restaurant and bought some apples and grapes outside our dorm.

I then got my helmet and jumped onto Will's xe-may at 1:15. We headed towards our school and planned a stop at this amazing bakery. I got this apple turnover thing and it was amazing. We then drove around the lake and finally arrived at school a bit early. We talked with some students before all gathering in the big meeting room from 2-3:00. We taught them three Halloween songs and then acted out the story "Hansel and Gretel" before recruiting some of the students to be the characters and act it out. They had a lot of fun when they weren't being yelled at for talking while we were. We then split up into our classes, which took a while because Jackie and I couldn't find which classroom we were supposed to be teaching in. We wandered around with our students for about 15 minutes before someone finally pointed us all in the right direction. Jackie and I then played Text Twist with them, which they now love. That picture of them all raising their hand is when we asked who had words made from the seven letters we gave them. It's nice to share the love of Text Twist. The picture of the guy banging the huge drum is constantly entertaining to me because that is their “bell” between class periods. That guy just stands on the steps of the courtyard in the middle of the school and bangs on the huge red drum. It never gets old, although it was pretty scary the first few times it happened.

Jackie and I had the students unscramble some sentences and then worked on agreement of verb tenses. After teaching from 3:15-4:30, the kids were dismissed and I got back onto Will's xe-may. We got home by 5:00 pm and I packed up my laptop and headed over to the internet cafe. I've ordered dinner (my xao bo as usual), answered emails, and posted lots of pictures to previous blog entries. Yesterday's entry as well as the extra pictures from the weekend trip to the national park now have pictures that accompany the text. Make sure to look at them! About ten minutes ago, the little boy I have almost adopted came into the internet cafe and I gave him an apple. He didn't take it for a while, since he wanted money instead. I reminded him that his sister took a banana from me last night and he grudgingly took it. Everything's an experiment here.

Ok time to go back to the dorm and see what people are doing tonight...