Looooong Day

After taking a shower, reading for a bit, and falling asleep early, I awoke to my alarm at 6:30 am. I got dressed and packed my bag very quickly in order to begin the process of finalizing the photography project that's due tomorrow. At 7:00 I met our group of teachers in front of our dorm and we caught the 31 bus to school. Arriving on time at 7:30, I was told that I had to teach Will's class again. We talked about America and played Text Twist and hangman. They're much better at English than my class so it's refreshing to only have to explain things once. After teaching from 7:30 until 8:45, the drum sounded and our kids ran away. Our teaching group met again in the teacher's room and we waited for our supervisor to go across the street to go to lunch. She had initially wanted us to eat where the kids eat but they were just cleaning up in order to close. We headed to our usual breakfast spot and I had banh bao (see picture) and an iced coffee. We joked around a lot while trying to finalize some things for next week's Halloween party. At 11:00 the two boys went to go get fitted for shirts and pants (since they're not getting ao dai's like the women) and Jackie, Leah, Natalie, and I walked to the Old Quarter. We found this one street that has Halloween decorations and costumes (weird, right?) and Natalie bought some fairie wings for her costume. By 11:45 we were sitting in my favorite cafe next to the lake, Sago. We ordered drinks and talked a lot until the boys called and said they were walking over to meet us at the cafe. We waited for them and then figured we'd better order lunch there. I got another Coke and some fried rice with chicken and vegetables. It was decent, but I think I'll stick with the banana and chocolate syrup next time. We talked about politics and ate our lunch until about 1:00, when it was time to pay, leave, stop at an ATM, and walk back to the school. Unfortunately, I had to go searching for a bathroom at the school that was unlocked. Gotta love those filthy squat toilets all lined up with no dividers. :)

Our group met in front of the school at 1:30 along with our supervisor and four lovely mothers of some of our students. They were pretty, skinny, and had Land Rovers with drivers in tow. They were the Desperate Housewife types of Vietnam. We all loaded into their two vehicles and drove for twenty minutes before we reached another students' fathers' restaurant. On the drive, however, we inched through a clogged intersection where there was a gray van with a crack in one of the windows and a huge dent in the side along with a downed motorbike in the middle of the road. I had started praying even before I spotted the white bucket hat filled with blood and marred by tire treads. This is not a usual site, but it has been known to happen from time to time in any country. We finally reached the restaurant and spent the next hour trying to figure out which ladles, hot plates, and large pots we needed to borrow for the Halloween party. We need huge pots for the bobbing for apples station and other cooking supplies for the caramelizing apples station.

At 2:30, we finally left and drove for another half an hour to a gigantic supermarket called "Big C" that reminded me of a nicer Wal-Mart. I had attempted to go in a different van than Will, a fellow teacher, because he wouldn't stop swearing and saying inappropriate things. That made me feel very uncomfortable because these mothers of our students and our supervisor can understand English and it was very disrespectful. Of course, Will ended up changing vans when I did and we ended up in the same van again. I ended up spacing out for the entire ride and ignoring him. We finally arrived at supermarket, grabbed carts, and split up to search for the different supplies. We needed everything from 15 bags of caramel candies to face paint to over 200 choco-pies. We had two huge carts filled with sweets and fellow shoppers were beginning to stare more than they usually do. I was beginning to droop a bit towards the end because I can't stand shopping to begin with and we had so much to do for this Halloween party of epic proportions. We shopped from 3:00-4:00 pm and then sat down and the mothers treated us to some banana shakes and fresh bread. It was delicious and I then felt I had a bit more energy to stand around while they paid for all of the Halloween food and decorations. After packing the two cars and then moving some people around after a mix-up about drop-off sites, the six English teachers were finally ready to go back to our dorm in our designated van at 5:00 pm. I immediately fell asleep as our van made its way through deadly rush-hour traffic and I was woken up when we had arrived back at our dorm at 5:30. I spoke to DiDi for a few minutes before going to my room and talking to Jill. I then put my photo project on a cd for tomorrow (go to http://hws.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2019941&l=ca19c&id=32001827 to see the latest project) and packed up my laptop and some books to go to the internet cafe. I have been here at the cafe since about 6:30 and have already eaten one of my favorite dinners, my xao bo (the last picture for today), written emails, and wrote yet another postcard. I'm off to write a journal entry for class and then do some Vietnamese homework for tomorrow.