Talkative Tuesday

This morning I woke up at 8:00 am, got ready for the day, and checked my email. I got an egg sandwich and ate it while walking to class. Class went fairly well and I was back at the dorm by 11:00. Then Jackie, Leah, Meggie, and I walked down the street and had banh xeo for lunch (greens and cucumbers and some egg/meat concoction that you roll into rice paper) and then kept walking until we found the tailor that people in our group use. I brought a dress for them to copy in two different colors and we only know so much Vietnamese so it took us more than an hour to sort out which styles and colors we wanted and then get measured.

I went back to the dorm at 1:30 and got some small oranges from the ladies outside the dorm’s gate. After packing my backpack with my camera and Jill’s camera, I took the 31 bus to the lake and found Jill on the third floor of the big mall. She was working on her computer at Highland Coffee and I sat and had a coffee with her before going to the fifth floor to the grocery store there. I got Becca’s Froot Loops but couldn’t find Dial soap or salt with which to clean and soak my ear. I’ll continue with cleaning it twice a day and applying bacitracin all the time. I went back to find Jill, check my email on her computer, and then headed out to take pictures by the lake, since this is my new final photography assignment. As soon as I reached the lake across the street, I spotted my professor and his wife. This was so convenient because National Teacher Appreciation Day is next Tuesday and our final test in Vietnamese language class was just moved to Monday because of the holiday. The six English teachers, me included, must attend our last day of the internship and attend our school’s 90th anniversary celebration on the same day. We must move our final for Vietnamese and the professor charged me with this rescheduling project. I walked halfway around the lake before finding a 25 year-old Vietnamese guy who always tries to sell me books. He’s homeless, always high on something, and today I saw him with most of his head shaved and bloody, along with his face and arm. I rushed up to make sure he was ok and he said he was hit by a taxi a couple of days ago. I told him I was so sorry and he described his debacle, which was extra horrible since he doesn’t have any money for health care. I sat with him for a bit and then continued to walk around the lake.

I got a couple more photographs that I like and had almost completed a full lap around the lake when two Vietnamese guys my age asked to speak to me in English for their class. They were very surprised that I knew some Vietnamese and I pretended not to know so much so that they’d have to use their Vietnamese. It’s so much more important for them to know English than for me to know Vietnamese. We talked from 3:30-4:00 and I might come to their English class at their university on Saturday.

Continuing on, I began talking to three females and one male high school student in Vietnamese. I spoke to them for another half an hour before catching a cheap xe om back to the dorm at 4:30. I got back at the exact same time that DiDi did, and we cuddled until 5:00 pm, when I came to my room and began making a to do list for the upcoming week, when my classes will end and a couple short papers are due. I then listened to some music and played games until 6:45, when I hit up our rice buffet with Jackie and Leah. Upon returning to the dorm I hung out in DiDi’s room and then checked my email in the hallway. I’m about to go find some grapefruit with DiDi, so don’t wait up…