It's Saturday again, so time for a blog post. This week has been full of teaching and going out at night, as usual. DiDi and I also saw the movies "Rachel Getting Married" and "W." We supposed that the former film was going to be a light comedy but instead was a downer. In fact, my mom would enjoy it, as it focused on family dynamics and addiction. The latter movie, "W," did a lot to quell my residual anger at said President of the United States. In fact, some of my anger was replaced with pity, as the film portrayed Bush's life as a joke, a constant need to impress his father (who had put all his money on his other son, Jeb).



DiDi and I also went on a midnight adventure to find buoi (giant, sweet grapefruit) and beer. That happened to be Valentine's Day and we sat by the side of the road and watched all of the men walk by. That outing culminated in one of the fastest motorbike taxi rides I've ever taken. You can't ride/drive like that all the time. Well you can, but you won't live for very long.







This week at work two of my classes started a new unit. The unit focuses on playing outside and the necessary vocabulary involved such as: baseball, helmet, bat, basketball, soccer ball, glove, etc. They're doing pretty well with it. I also saw a little boy sneeze almost point blank into a little girls' eye. It was difficult not to laugh, but the little girl frowned and began to rub her eye furiously. She was OK; don't worry. My substitution job at this particular school ends after this upcoming Tuesday, which is sad. I've been put on the substitute teacher list for this school and its other six locations, however. That's good news. I also had a meeting with one of my bosses about getting teaching hours on the weekends. As of today I work Saturday and Sunday mornings. Yay...

Monday and Tuesday night brought DiDi and I to two tailors to pick up skirts and dresses. I had a dress and two skirts made in order to expand my wardrobe of work clothes, and DiDi had a dress made before the Tet holiday that she hadn't picked up yet. After being told on Saturday that I needed a floor-length black dress for the Thusday night performance at the opera house, I had one made and picked it up on Tuesday.

On Wednesday night I attended the dress rehearsal for the Thursday night performance of Puccini's Messa di Gloria, which I sang with the Ho Chi Minh City Symphony Orchestra. The dress rehearsal went well, although there is always an underlying current of the Vietnamese attitude of "That's good enough." That bugged me a bit in this instance because singing is one of the few things in my life that truly can be near perfect. The concert was Thursday night and went pretty well. I got to be backstage and onstage at the city's Opera House, which was just renovated. It's really nice and comes complete with a giant gold statue of Uncle Ho Chi Minh backstage. Five of my friends came to support me too, which was really nice of them. After the concert we took photos and then moved to the closest bar and talked for a few hours. It was a really good time and I'm lucky to have made such good friends here already.














Wednesday night brought a meeting with some friends about going to Hue next weekend. We'll be organizing and participating in a children's day for these impoverished kids in the mountains. There is an organization of Vietnamese people who grew up outside Vietnam (called viet-quieu) who have built these schools for the kids. I'm really excited to go and play with them all day. That night I had a quick dinner of fried rice in the backpacker's district. I was talking to two men, one from Chicago and one from Melbourne. They're really cool and the Aussie actually works for Lonely Planet, a chain of books for tourists. I got him to try the dried squid (like squid jerky) and the fetal duck eggs. Mostly he just took photos and I ate. :)

As always, I've been out taking photos in my spare time. Here are my favorites...


























Wear your helmet, even in the bathtub.


Got coconuts?







And now for the bone progression:







That's it for this week! Off to some karaoke tonight :) Miss you all. Watch your mailboxes and keep emailing...