The importance of taxis, teaching, and fishheads

Yesterday we thought it'd be a great idea to go clothes shopping at about 1:00pm. We walked across Vinh City, got a little lost, and were drenched in sweat - when I say drenched I am NOT exagerating - by the time we got to Intimex. Thank God that Intimex has AC! We walked in thinking we'd made it to the promised land and did some shopping as we dried off. I realized for the umpteenth time that I am NOT built like a Vietnamese woman. The shirts fit funny, the pants came up too high on my waist, in short, I will rely on custom made clothing while I am here. My own clothes are too big on me after only two weeks. It's all that sweating and walking and the healthy Vietnamese food. I did come away with a silk coin purse for 6000 Dong - $1=16100 Dong, you do the math. It's crazy cheap. We also found a place where we can get ao dai made (traditional Vietnamese clothing), so we're excited about that.

I observed a class that I will soon be teaching. They are in their early to mid twenties, like me, and it's a small listening and conversation class. One of the students is from Korea, and he's here teaching Tae Kwan Do, but that language barrier forces the students to speak to each other in English because it's their only common language. It was fun because at break, the only girl in the class turned to me and immediately started peppering me with questions: "How old are you? Where are you from? What do you think of Vietnam? Do you speak Vietnamese?" She taught me a little Vietnamese, including how to tell the xe om driver that I want to go to the supermarket. Things that would've been good to know earlier... LOL

The guy from Korea asked me where I was born (because I'm not so "all-American"), so I explained, though I'm not sure if he understood. I will have to bring a map to class next time.

After class, we went to dinner with one of Andrea's students. She is about fourteen years old and adorable. We ate at a little restaurant with low steel tables and blue plastic chairs. There was entirely too much seafood on the table, and I am seefooded out. Especially because the fish I picked up from the cummunal dish had its little mouth open and was totally staring at me. I was not in the mood for fishheads. All I really wanted was a bowlful of rice and rau muong (water spinach). After dinner, Thuy took us to her house, where we met her cousins, her baby brother, her mom, and her grandmother. Her mom is a shopkeeper, so I think I'll be frequenting her shop instead of going all the way out to the supermarket for things like tissues and pens. (The shop is just down the street from our place.) Thuy gave us a tour of her room, and showed us her cd collection (Fergie, Avril Lavigne, Justin Timberlake....) and her photo album. She told us all about Ho Chi Minh's family and showed us her English homework, which she said was quite boring.

After we left her house, we stopped at an icecream shop and got Kem (Kem is ice cream, and that's an important Vietnamese word to learn). After that we headed home where Eleisa saved our lives by making the AC work.

Today we had our first Vietnamese lesson. We went over the alphabet and dipthongs - there are entirely too many to keep track of - and about 8 different ways to say "you". And I thought Spanish was complicated with tú, vos, usted, vosotros, and ustedes! I will never complain about that again! LOL

Alright, that's it for now. I'll be back tomorrow...