Anything for Communism

I woke up this morning at 6:15 am in order to go to my internship at the school extra early. I got dressed, caught the 31 bus with our group of teachers, and arrived at the school in time for 7:00 am. The entirety of the student body was seated on small stools in the courtyard of the school and we sat on tiny stools between the lines of our students. It turns out that the ceremony was for the ninth graders to hand in their red neck scarves and receive their patches for their uniforms. This symbolizes their leaving of the junior program of something and their subsequent promotion to Ho Chi Minh's Youth Force (or something like that). It was communism at its best, really. They saluted, sang the national anthem as they raised the flags, and some students even performed songs and dances. The ceremony lasted for an hour and then I had to teach Will's students because he was temporarily transferred to another class. His students are more respectful of the teacher and listen a lot better. It was really refreshing and we were able to have some fun and play hangman and text twist for 45 minutes. At 8:45, the period ended and our group of teachers met our supervisor, Thuy, in the teacher's room. We walked across the street and had our usual late breakfast and talked about the Halloween party yet again. I had some iced coffee and iced coffee while trying to keep my cool and explain every single aspect of Halloween. It can be frustrating, trust me.

We then walked back across the street and found that our other supervisor, Huong, ha called us a taxi so that we might venture to the silk place. I rode on the back of Huong's xe-may and we took a short ride to the store. I picked out silver pants and a long piece of bright blue silk for the top. The teachers are having traditional Vietnamese dress made for us, which is very nice of them. After deciding on our pant and long shirt colors, we were taken into the back room of the store, which was inhabited by about five older women and their sewing machines. They told me which neck line would look best on me and then took my measurements. Our group didn't finish with this arduous and time-consuming task until about 11:30. I then took the bus back to the dorm with everybody. Most of us then went to our favorite place to eat and by the time I ate lunch and got back to my room, it was 12:30 pm. I worked on my next photography assignment for a bit and then went and got DiDi at 2:00. Jackie, DiDi and I took the 31 bus to Huan Kiem Lake and walked to our favorite coffee shop, Sago. We sat on the second floor and I posted some more pictures from this weekend and wrote some emails. At 5:45 we were all really hungry and walked down the block to this place that serves banana pancakes. Jackie and I each ordered three pancakes and I explained to our confused waitress in Vietnamese that we were fat Americans. It was a good laugh, for sure. The pancakes each came sliced into quarters and topped with sliced bananas and lots of chocolate syrup. They were amazingly delicious and I was stuffed full of goodness by the time we paid and left the restaurant at 6:30. We then took a little aimless walk around the Old Quarter and couldn't find turtles. I have to wait for the night market this Friday night to find some.

At 7:30 we waited a while for the 31 bus to show up and then the familiar yet mean money-collector on the bus was verbally fighting with some guy. It was a bit scary but entertaining nonetheless. Back at the dorm around 8:00 pm, I talked with some friends and then attempted to post this entry for today. Unfortunately, I decided not to visit the internet cafe and as a result the entry consisted solely of the first paragraph. Let's hope this one works!