Productive! Yay!

Last night I went to Finnigan's on xe oms with Brittany, Tica, Cathy, and Monica. We had to walk all the way through Bach Khoa (the dorms) in order to find a xe om driver who wasn't asking for an outrageous amount of dong. By 9:00 pm we were at the pub and talking, taking pictures, and playing pool with some of the boys from our group. Dale, Will, Bryan, and Tony let me play some pool with them and then I ended up being horrible last night. It was trivia night as well, so after a while I went to sit with Leah and Dale at the bar. They were really into it and I even helped out with a question or two. At midnight I left with Jackie and Meggie. As we exited the bar, xe om drivers approached us and asked for "boom boom," which is their word for intercourse. I called them pigs in Vietnamese and told them to go away. I will never miss these rude Vietnamese men. We walked away quickly and got two xe oms to go back to the dorm. They went the wrong way down the road and we quickly realized they had no clue where the heck they were going. When it dawned on them that our dorm was farther than they had initially thought, they dropped us back off at the same corner. We walked across the street and caught a taxi, which put us back at the dorm at 12:30 pm. I went back to my room, washed up, and crashed.

I woke up this morning to my alarm at 7:00 am. I spoke to Andy over instant messenger and he was a bit distracted by his friends. I got really jealous of his female friend Alex, but only because she gets to spend so much time with him. After 45 minutes, he had to go and I sat around and sang and played computer games so I could forget how upset and homesick I was. After starting my weekly journal for my peace studies internship, I went out and got the usual breakfast at about 9:30. I ate the egg sandwich and a few cumquats in my room and then finished my four-page journal entry. I sent it to my professor and did some more singing, since my roomie was out at her internship all day. At about 11:30 I came out of my room and went to see if anybody was awake yet. Nobody was awake, so I returned to my room and packed my bag for the day. At noon I was messaged by Jackie and we went with Leah to the rice buffet. We then hung around Dale and Oliver's room while I cuddled with DiDi.

Jackie and I left at 1:30, caught the 31 bus to the lake, and tried to find her a working ATM at the mall until almost 2:00. We then hit up the post office for an hour and I sent a big package of really cool stuff home. :) I helped Jackie send hers, too. After an hour of filling out forms, weighing the boxes, and trying to stay in the game ahead of about eight Vietnamese people, we left the post office.

This remind me of something that happened on Halloween that I forgot to mention in my blog. A very quick sequence of "pay it forward" events occurred. While I was on the bus with Monica and DiDi to the post office to mail more stuff, a little old woman boarded the bus. She handed the bus tickey guy a 500,000 dong bill (to pay for a 3,000 dong bus ticket) and he got angry and shook his head violently. She looked around for someone who had change and I gave her the money for the ticket, since she didn't have any smaller bills. She was grateful and I turned back around in my seat. 45 minutes later, I was in the post office and the lady behind the counter wanted to be able to make change easier with 2,000 more dong from me. I only had large bills until a boy my age entered the scene and gave me the extra bill. It was pretty sweet.

Back to today. Jackie and I left the post office at 3:00 and went to Phu Ta Hien (Ta Hien Street) in order to revisit my favorite dvd stores. I exchanged some that didn't work and got some more as well. Jackie had to go down the street to Viet Nam Airlines to inquire about flights to Cambodia. In the meantime, I went across the street to Bia Hoi and grabbed us Cokes. After ten minutes, she had her quote for the flights and we walked to the tourist center while calling Dale. He told us the address for Stop Cafe, where he was with Oliver and DiDi. We popped into the tourist center to check out a map and then walked ten minutes to the cafe. We chilled with them for about an hour and got hungry at 5:00 pm. We had been waiting to do to dinner at Sago and get our banana pancakes again, since we have the same rice buffet twice a day. We walked to Sago, sat down on the second floor couches, and were immediately asked a million questions by some good-looking guys from Johannesburg. We ate quickly, paid, and got a cheap xe om back to the dorm. Arriving at 6:00, we made some plans for tonight and I came up to my room. Jill wanted to go to the small market down the street and grab some dinner so I went with her to take pictures. She sat and ate some fried pocket thing with beef inside and then we wlaked around the block, which was a residential area. Back to the dorm at 7:00, I have been sitting here on my bed and typing this blog. I would go and shower now but the water isn't working here in our dorm today. Ohhhhh Viet Nam...