If You're the Same Age as My Grandfather...

Last night I left the internet cafe at 7:45 and went back to the dorm in order to meet the girls. Brittany called the hotel where Oktoberfest was being held, but we were disappointed because they told us it was a buffet dinner and some draft beer. The beer part was devastating to the others in the group for reasons I have not yet discerned. We decided to try a new bar in this other hotel and caught the bus around the corner to get to Huan Kiem Lake. We walked around, took pictures, and finally found the hotel. It was 68,000 Vietnamese dong for a drink so we just bought pastries at the hotel's French food place. I had an amazingly cheap yet delicious chocolate croissant. We had another powwow and finally revised our plans to fit the usual mold of walking to Bia Hoi Junction. At about 9:00, we arrived at the junction to find some of the boys from our group lounging there already. Jackie and I immediately set off down the street to the cheap DVD/CD places. I found all the James Bond movies on five DVDs as well as some other tv show box sets. If anyone would like some tv box sets, I can surely purchase them and send them home! They're really cheap and I can find the ones of good quality. Jackie and I then returned to the junction and I spoke with a Brazilian guy and an Israeli guy. They were nice and very interested in my studies here.

At about 10:00 pm, the girls walked to Funky Monkey, this other bar and dance club. The dance floor was absolutely packed and I danced with our group and ordered my usual Coke. When the techno music began, we left Funky Monkey. Then DiDi, Tica, Brittany, and I decided to walk a few blocks to Dragonfly, our favorite bar and dance club. When we got there at about 11:30, we were the only ones on the dance floor. We ventured upstairs to the lounge and sat and talked. Tica and I are organizing a small group to go to some beach this weekend, since our large group has nothing planned with our professor. This is because our tour guide, Long, has a wife and she is due to give birth this weekend. At Dragonfly, I had yet another Coke and we had just decided to go to our other favorite hangout, Lighthouse, when we were informed that the cops were outside the bar. We couldn't go out just then because the bar was supposed to have already been shut down for the night. Instead, the four of us sat in the hookah room because it was air conditioned. We didn't smoke, though. After about 15 minutes, we were told that the cops had left and we caught xe-oms to Lighthouse. When we entered the bar at 12:00 am, we immediately noticed the ten or so men sitting at the bar, right across from an empty dance floor. The weird Belgian guy from Funky Monkey approached us again and we tried to be nice. We danced right in the middle of the dance floor for a while before catching xe-oms back to the dorm. Arriving at 1:00 am, I read in bed and was asleep by 1:30.

I woke up this morning at 8:00 and got ready for the day. I then went out and got egg sandwiches with Jill and we ate them as we walked to class. Class was, as usual, challenging because it's two hours of listening to a woman speak only in Vietnamese. Today we did a bunch of listening exercises. At least I am getting better at them!

After class ended at 11:00, I went back to the dorm to grab one of my recharged camera batteries and met Tica to walk to the internet cafe. There I had my xao bo, which is one of my favorite dishes ever. I emailed a bunch of people and posted the pictures for yesterday's blog.

I left the cafe at 1:00 pm and went back to the room in order to prepare myself for the guest lecturer for our "Vietnamese Life and Culture" class. From 2-3:00, this 91 year-old Vietnamese man gave us 3,000 years of Vietnamese History and Culture. He used the diagram of a tree and its branches and roots to help us to remember all of the different parts of Vietnam's history. It was a bit difficult to understand him, but I focused and it payed off. He mentioned the fact that the Vietnamese language uses pronouns that are assigned in relation to your own family members and this is able to create instant closeness between people. For instance, I would call a man that's as old as my own grandfather "ong." I thought this was a very interesting point--relating the usage of pronouns to family members--and then considered how nicely it fit in with Communism. There isn't a word for "I" or "me" in the Vietnamese language and this fits so well with the Communist mentality of equals and not encouraging individualism.

After his hour talk, a couple of us stayed after to speak with our professor about traveling this weekend. He advised us not to go to a beach, as we had previously made tentative plans to do so. Apparently the water is dirty and hazardous and it's a tourist trap. He also gave us some forms to fill out so he knows where we are all weekend and can check in with him every day. We then left the classroom and headed back to the dorm. It took a while to round up our small group of travelers to take the bus downtown and find a travel agency. At 4:00, we were sitting in the travel services place right on the lake and were looking over the options for tours for this weekend. As soon as I saw the two day and one night tour of the national park and wildlife preservation, I was sold. There are turtles, bears, flying squirrels, and many more animals. We also get to go on a night hike and find all of the nocturnal animals. We leave Saturday morning and come back on Sunday night. We'll be staying in a bungalow in the park on Saturday night and I am so excited!

After lots of decision-making and payment stuff, I booked the trip for $85.00 along with Monica, Brittany, Meggie, and Cathy. Brittany and I then left the tourist place at 5:30 and xe-omed it back to the dorm. I had just enough time to clean up and put on nicer clothes before Brittany, Sarah, Jill, and I took a taxi to our professor and his wife's house. They have a small apartment on the ninth floor and it even has a rooftop balcony! We had really good food and conversation, which just made me homesick because the night was so typical of a dinner party in the U.S. It was only interrupted by Becca arriving late with Will because Becca had been in a minor motorbike accident. She's a little scraped up and the muffler on the bike gave her a couple burns, but we cleaned her up and she's ok.

We ate and talked from 6:30-9:15 pm and then headed back to the dorm by taxi. I hung out for a bit in DiDi's room and then found that a few people were going out. I changed back into mesh shorts from my dressier clothes and met them in front of the dorm. Leah, Jackie, Brittany, and I took a taxi to this new place called "Le Pub" (original, I know). Our taxi driver got lost and pulled over to consult his map. He decided he didn't have enough light in the car and lit a match. By then I had figured out exactly where we were and where we needed to go, so we payed and got out to walk. We then saw Mike and Brian on a xe-om and they said "Le Pub" was basically empty and by then we were right in front of Funky Monkey, so we went in there instead. I sat and had a Coke and this Vietnamese waiter tried to get me to dance with him. I pretended to play hard to get (easier than it sounds) when I really just wanted him to leave me alone, really. Our group decided to go elsewhere at about 12:00 am because the bar was closing and the techno music was horrible anyways. Jackie and I took a xe-om back to the dorm and then I talked to DiDi, had a cute guy names Indigo kill a giant cockroach in our room, and have been wrestling with our shotty internet connection here in the hallway of our dorm. It's time to go to bed so I can get up really early and talk to Andy!

You know what time it is...