Flag Store!

My Saturday began very early at 6:30 am. I got dressed, had Jill clean my ear, made sure Will was awake, and left with Jill and Will to catch the 31 bus at 6:45. We got to the lake, walked along the eat side and took some morning pictures of everybody doing their exercises and then headed to Le Pub. I had an omelette with mushrooms and tomatoes along with a mango smoothie. I was able to talk with Andy over AIM for over an hour and that was amazing. I also talked to Katrina and Bridget, which was fun. At 10:00 am, Jill and I walked to the Highland Coffee at the big mall and had coffees and looked at photographs for our projects for a couple hours. Then Jackie, Leah, and Will showed up and I left with Jackie to do some errands at 12:30. After buying some t-shirts we took pictures while walking along the west of the lake and had some banana pancakes and iced coffees at Sago. It was a ten minute walk to the flag store (which was the focus of one of my final papers) and I was able to hook Jackie up with a cool Buddhist flag, introduce her to my friends there, and take cool pictures of three of the four generations of that family that run the store. I let the two year-old little boy play with my camera for a bit and then we said goodbye. We took more pictures on the way back and then went back to Highland Coffee, where Jill had been watching my laptop and doing her work. I uploaded some photos before we caught a taxi back to the dorm at 3:30. I was feeling odd so I took a short nap and woke up just before 4:30, when Jill’s coworkers/friends picked us up on their xe mays to go to their cousins’ house.

Yesterday Jill and I bought food to make them an American dinner. We arrived at their cousins’ house and immediately made “no bake” cookies and stuck them in the fridge to cool and set. We then made grilled cheese, minestrone soup, and macaroni and cheese. The six of us sat down to eat in the living room at 6:30 and it was so good. They enjoyed it as well. After dinner the girls turned on the t.v. and it was already on the Disney Channel. In fact, “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” was on and Jill and it was fun to watch with our friends. They noticed at 8:00 that Jill and I were drooping (and had eaten too much) and drove us back to the dorm on their xe mays. I then spent some time looking over my photos to complete my final portfolio since it’s due this Tuesday. DiDi entered the picture and asked me to accompany her to a party across the city with her new friend, Victor. At first, I said no because I was so homesick and DiDi left to call Brittany. I thought about it for a minute and remembered that I am in Viet Nam and shouldn’t be sitting in my room, feeling like that.

I ran downstairs and got DiDi and within five minutes we were sitting in a taxi with Victor. He’s from Ukraine and is very flirty with DiDi, so I was glad the darkness of the taxi hid the constant rolling of my eyes. We arrived at this really nice apartment and found a bunch of Ukrainians and Russians having some beer and wine and chilling out. It was so nice to be ignored, speak English, and feel like I was back in the states. Brittany arrived about a half hour into the visit and we chatted it up before finding a taxi back to the dorm at midnight. I wasn’t tired when I got back so I washed up and sat in bed, looking at pictures, until about 1:30 when I closed my computer and fell asleep.

P.S.- The last two photo in today's entry is of some members of the flag store family!