All I Need Now is a Conical Hat...

Last night I went out with Mike, Leah, and Meggie. After riding the 31 bus to the lake, we walked to Bia Hoi Junction and met Will and Becca there. I stopped at a few DVD/CD stores on the way in order to look for this bangin' collection of Disney classics. I didn't find it and walked to the junction. After ordering my Coke and also receiving the number of some guy from Czech (his idea, certainly not mine), I sat down and talked with my party people. After a while we decided to walk to Finnigan's pub and arrived there at about 10:30. We sat at one of the high tables in front of the bar and some British guys came over to speak to us. This one awkward one named Tom talked to Leah and I for quite a while. He's from Leeds and is here in Hanoi for a month or so. He was buying Leah drinks and all of that but I don't drink and I had already bought my own Coke so I declined his offers. At about midnight Leah and I wanted to go back to the dorm but we had to wait for Meggie because we didn't want her going home alone. After another 45 minutes of talking to Tom and chilling out, we finally left the bar and caught xe oms back to the dorm. We got back at 1:00 am, climbed the fence, and I fell asleep right away.

I woke up this morning right before my alarm went off at 8:00. I got dressed quickly and packed my backpack for today just as DiDi came into my room and asked to talk to me downstairs. I hurried up and grabbed my egg sandwich before going to talk to her for a few minutes. I walked to class and got there just before 9:00, even though only Brittany and Sarah ended up attending class with me today and they both came at 9:15. Our class was a bit rough because our teacher keeps telling us we're lazy and stupid and we keep trying to explain to her that we've only been speaking this language for seven weeks. We know an awful lot of things in Vietnamese for six weeks anyways. The three of us left the class frustrated and even a bit angry.

Jill met me outside and we walked around the corner to the closest bus stop. We waited for a while for the 31 bus to show up and then rode it all the way to the lake. I hurriedly sent two packages and one postcard in a mere 25 minutes! Then Jill and I walked a few streets over to "Le Pub," where I went the other night to buy my crazy propaganda t-shirts. I sat and waited while she tried on shirts and made decisions. At noon, we left the pub and walked to the corner in order to get xe oms back to the dorm. We needed to get there quickly in order to have lunch and get to photography class on time. We finally got the price we wanted and got our ride home after our driver got a bit lost and I had to give him the directions in Vietnamese.

After getting dropped off at the dorm I headed straight to my usual rice buffet and ate in ten minutes flat. I then went to my room, repacked my backpack, and headed to the next building over to our photo class. In the classroom, our professor had written our schedule on the board. I was scheduled to listen to an amazing NPR clip from 1:20-2:15. Five or so of us sat in a large room and listened intently to the professor's IPod as it played a long clip of this radio show called "Fresh Air." The interviewee was Paul Watson, a war photographer that was based in Somalia for some time. He described some of his harrowing tales of mob attacks and his haunting experience of photographing the body of an American soldier being dragged around the streets of Somalia. He even claims that the voice of the American soldier told him just before he took the famous picture that "If you take this picture, I will own you forever." Needless to say, he felt like taking that picture was contributing to the desecration of the soldier's body and he has needed psychiatric help. The stories were disturbing and I was interested only in that kind of way that people stop to look at accidents along the side of the road. At 2:15 I went back to my room and peeled and ate two apples that I had sitting around and sang really loud to the musical "Avenue Q." I went back to the classroom an hour later for my group photo critique. Tica, Dale, Sarah, and I sat in a room next to our classroom for 20 minutes as our professor finished another group's critique. At 3:50 our group went in for our critique and mine went pretty well. He liked most of my pictures and described my work as overall "very strong." For this class period he had printed his favorite student pictures thus far and laid them out on two tables. I had five while pictures in the collection of his favorites and that made me feel good.

At 4:25 pm our critique was over and I raced back to my room to grab my high heels in order to meet our supervisor at the tailor's. The female English teachers in our group- Jackie, Leah, Natalie, and I- grabbed a taxi and got to the silk and tailor's shop in about five minutes. We met our supervisor there and she took us to the back room, where there were the same five women at sewing machines. They handed us our ao dai's and we tried them on behind this hospital-like curtain off to one side of the room. I really like mine, actually, and it makes me look really nice. I then took pictures of this really cute little girl who was the daughter of one of the tailors. We spent an hour and a half in the back room of that tailor shop because the other girls' ao dai's had small alterations to be made. They did them on the spot and our supervisor paid for the ao dai's and we left. After thanking her profusely, we walked up past the lake and straight into the heart of the Old Quarter.

We walked for about half an hour before reaching the craft street and I then had to tell the woman selling paper that we were teachers and we should get a discount. It worked and we walked out of the store after 20 minutes with lots of pairs of scissors and many sheets of orange and black paper for our Halloween crafts at school tomorrow. We then walked all the way back a few blocks, waited for Jackie to buy some stuff for her costume, and continued on our way. We went up the other side of the lake and waited for a good 15 minutes for the 31 bus.

We got back to our dorm at 7:30 but I walked straight past the gate and immediately got dinner at my usual rice buffet again. Jackie and Leah ate with me and we talked until an older Vietnamese man sat down next to me. We began to talk and after only about five minutes he asked me where I lived and if I had a cell phone. I told the truth, which is that I didn't have a cell phone in Viet Nam. He asked how we were going to meet again and I told him we could meet right there at the restaurant. We can't meet every day like he requested, though. He then suggested we have a "cultural exchange" in my room and demanded that I take his number. I gave him the oldest line in the book, "I'll call you," and left in a hurry.

I then went back to the dorm and we modeled our ao dai's for our group in the hallway of our dorm. I had to model it some more for the others on my floor and then I sat down and ate half of an extremely tasty grapefruit while watching Scrubs, which reminded me of Andy since he loves that show. I then went next door to Sarah and Monica's room with my laptop in tow and I've been chillin here with Bryan, Sarah, Monica, and Brittany for the past hour or so. It's time to take a shower and go to bed early since I'm already starting to fade...