For starters, I went to get my teeth cleaned, bracing for my crackpot hygienist’s usual attempt to find something wrong with my teeth. She never actually can, as I have impeccable oral hygiene (not even one cavity ever and I floss almost every day), but she always tries to come up with something. Usually it involves baking soda. Today, however, I won a moral victory. She actually said, “You do an excellent job” in reference to my gums. HA!

Also, I got paid. For the first time this whole summer. And when I went to deposit my check, the teller told me that I am doing a great job saving. I have good teeth and an aggressive savings plan!

Despite this event, I was still fuming over something dumb from earlier in the day when I went to spin class. Class was wicked hard, which was just what I needed. For the millionth time, my spin class teacher forgot my name, despite having known me for 2 years, and then decided to call me Marissa. He’s one of those instructors who likes to say something every 20 seconds to someone, usually something really ridiculous, and I kept forgetting to answer to my new name. He also makes up new places that I studied abroad every time. When class was over, the two people behind me asked, “Your name isn’t Marissa, is it? You poor thing. You’re so nice and he never gets your name right!” So my lack of name led to some really nice compliments.

I know that I have posted two posts in a row, but that is just what’s up tonight.

A little over 1 month post-Nam, I still have some really weird habits and oddities that haven’t gone away.

1. I still like to eat terrible, packaged, toxic, delicious snack foods like Hello Pandas

2. An obsession with doing laundry- now this is a really nontraditional one, I know, but in the long, lonely days of living in my little broken hotel room in Hoi An, my comforting nightly ritual was to do my laundry while watching the Victoria Secret fashion show channel. I always looked forward to it, and it became my favorite hobby. The laundry, not even the fashion show. I am actually that weird. And now that I have a machine, I can’t stop washing my clothes, just because I can. But I kind of miss the hand washing thing…it’s so satisfying to watch stuff get clean! I appreciate driers a lot more now, though.

3. I drive like a friggin ninja these days. I still actually hate driving, though.

4. Sometimes I calculate things in my head in dong (which, btw, I haven’t been able to exchange yet.)

5. My stomach is still terrible and I have awful skin for the first time in my life.

6. I can hear about or watch gruesome historical stuff and not feel the nauseating stab in the gut that I used to. It’s like VN desensitized me to my hyperactive sadness for history’s horrid injustices. They still make me really sad and angry in my mind, but they don’t give me violent reactions. Maybe this is a good thing? I can move past the immobility and horror and mobilize against it?

It’s also interesting how quickly I slipped back into old habits. I anticipated this months-long inner angst, raging against the American machine, but I don’t feel it. At all. I can’t decide if I’m upset with myself for that. I thought I was going to try to walk everywhere and never use AC and get mad at people for consuming stuff. But remembering how to drive was a snap (though I STILL HATE IT), I have constant impulses to buy stuff, I watch semi-mindless tv every night, and I sit for countless, stupid hours on facebook.

I do, at least, have a vast appreciation for all of the conveniences in my life. I get positively giddy every time I use a clean, flushing toilet. Being able to fluently communicate with the people around me still blows my mind. I can say whatever I want on the internet without fear of being thrown in jail. I can just hop in my car, go anywhere I want and get anything I want.

This past 4th of July really was the most patriotic of my life. I was at a baseball game in Dallas, and during the anthem, I actually got a little pang of emotion. Not because of all of the military hoopla going on in a canned patriotism kind of way, but because I really really love my country. Despite all of its problems, I love living here. I love my fellow country(wo)men. I don’t really know if I can ever live in another country again long term. I’m just so happy to be back here.

On that sentimental note, we now switch to the breaking news that I got my grade report in the mail today. I have progressed from a “novice” level Vietnamese speaker to “intermediate beginner.” So, basically, I still know jack shit about speaking Vietnamese!

Hen gap lai, y’all!

So while I’ve still got this blog and this captive audience, I’ll update a bit on my life post-Viet Nam (ain’t that a 70s flashback thing to say…) I took a couple of weeks off to relax, be massively jetlagged for 82 years, see my sister graduate high school, and, oh ya know, have my 21st birthday. Last weekend was huge and exhausting and everything that a joint graduation/21st birthday extravaganza should be. Friends, libations, dancing, music, too much Mexican food…

Now I’m on day 2 of my new internship that I already LOVE. My boss is a genuinely nice person, talkative, and laid back, and best of all, she seems to anticipate exactly everything that I wanted out of an internship. While I have worked on cleaning out the storage room and have done many of your usual intern tasks such as spreadsheet making and mailing stuff, I have also gotten to make a newsletter (which was actually very fun) and edit legal language into a bylaw revision.I have my very own office (well, it’s my own on the days that I’m there…another intern gets it 2 days a week) complete with an ancient paper shredder, two state of the art copy/scanner/fax machines, several boxes of stuffed animals, a desk with lots of weird old stuff in it, and a really rather nice computer. Every time my boss calls it my office, my heart skips a beat.

In fact, I had a rather surreal moment today when I realized that I was sitting in my office, in business casual attire, writing a real newsletter that will go out to the listserv, reading my friend’s wedding website. When did I grow up?

Due to lack of tshirts of the day now, I leave you with this scene of a canine casualty of GRE studying:

Poppy studied too hard for the GRE...

Just to catch everyone up, I’ve spent the last 2 days in Hoi An Beach Resort as a treat. My old hotel, while a drastic improvement from my first accommodations, had the power cut off every other day due to low water in the hydroelectric plants, and it made it really difficult to do work. I spent most of the last week in the Cham Island Diving Center café typing away feverishly. So I decided that I had worked hard enough and been careful enough with spending (even with the few too many things that I might have had tailored…) that I could splurge on two days at a resort. And by splurge I mean it costs about the same as a Holiday Inn in the U.S.

When I arrived, after a slight irritation over being charged for several bottles of water that I’m pretty sure I didn’t drink at the old hotel, I was utterly stunned. The resort overlooks a river on one side and the postcard-worthy beach on the other. There are purple and pink lotus flowers floating in a courtyard pond, and the doormen greet you with a huge smile. I talked a bit of Vietnamese to the receptionists, and next thing I knew, I had somehow been upgraded to the ocean view villa for the same price as the room I had booked. When the doorman led me to the room, my mouth literally fell open and I could not believe that this was where I was staying. The bathroom alone was the size of my old room, complete with a sparkly tub and a separate walk in shower. The bed was bigger than a king size, there was a flat screen tv, two couches, a desk, and a porch with ocean view. (And when I say ocean view, I mean the part of the ocean you can see over the wooden fence, past the pooping cat and the man watering the lawn, etc.—but a bit of a view nonetheless). It was far too much room for one person. I have to admit that I probably spent much more time enjoying the comforts of the room than the beach, but it was a very peaceful environment quite conducive to working on my paper (which is allllmost done!)

Yesterday I went around delivering thank you notes and saying good byes. They were all hard, but the most difficult one came at 9:00 last night when one of the tailor ladies, who is 8 months pregnant, showed up at my hotel, which is across town, after her 12 hour work shift, to bring me my dress, a small gift, and her email address. She was beaming, and I could not believe that she had gone so out of her way. The ladies at the shop had all held my hands and rubbed my back and pinched my cheeks when I had gone by earlier, but now with just the one, with her radiant kindness, it hit me how hard it is to leave. We walked out, arm in arm, with her insisting that I send her pictures, and me insisting that she send me pictures of her baby. She told me to say hi to my “mommy and daddy” for her. As we squeezed hands one last time and she walked away, I started to get choked up, and I think maybe she did a little bit too.

This morning I spent my last few hours at the hotel on the beach, saying my good byes to the ridiculously beautiful ocean. I spent about an hour meditating and reflecting on the last month…I have been challenged in so many ways and have learned how to be a better listener through interviews, how to be more patient and control my emotions, and how to communicate in difficult situations. I have also been thoroughly blessed with kindness upon kindness by utter strangers and people I’ve only known for a short time. I’ve had the chance to meet the most fascinating people from all over the world—a Danish tour guide, a Swedish truck driver, Laotian bankers, Canadian filmmakers, Irish accountants, Australian backpackers, German teachers, and some of the friendliest and most selfless Vietnamese people.

With one last glance at the ocean, I attempted to radiate kindness, compassion, and thankfulness to everyone around me and to the whole wide world. Thank you thank you thank you, a million times, Hoi An. This has been one of the best months of my life. And I promise, this is not good bye, but just hen gap lai.

1. While I was being measured to have something made at the tailor’s, one of the tailor ladies came up and repeatedly squeezed my butt for about 30 seconds. She then pronounced it “very little.”

2. I was interrogated by a 25 year old Vietnamese woman on what I think about “making the sex.”

I spend much of my days walking, going from place to place to talk to various people. I still visit the tailors everyday and have a new scuba instructor friend who spent most of her life on an island. My project advisors think I’m sort of an amusing irritation. I picture myself through their eyes as something like a cat sitting on its hind legs on a couch, stuffed into a sweater, yowling in an irritated way. (Maybe not an understandable visual, but in my head, it is something amusing and irritating.) I have found that men of a certain age do not take me seriously at all here, which can really impede my work at times. Most of the time I think they just don’t really know how to react to me. I follow all of the rules of politeness that I can muster, but I am just not capable of groveling at their patriarchal feet. Unable to place me in their world view, they then turn to thinking maybe I’m a dude and bring out the whiskey and cigarettes, which I also do not want. Then sometimes they hit on me, and when I don’t take to that either, they just sort of give up and tell me I’m strange.

I was particularly irritated when I told my project advisor—a man of a certain age— yesterday that I would like to interview some Vietnamese tourists but that I can’t communicate with them well enough to really do so. Instead of offering real help, he said, “Well you should have learned better Vietnamese then. When I taught Danish students they were fluent in a month.” Thanks, jackass.

I have this VIP pass of sorts that gets me into all the museums for free, and I guess word has gotten around the museum circuit because whenever I go somewhere someone will say, “Ah, it’s you!” or “Oh yes, I already know about you.” It’s kind of difficult to get answers about anything out of anyone because they just want to sell me tour packages everywhere I go, so I have to ask things a lot of different ways and do a lot of reading between the lines. Geez, the more I describe how my research is going the worse it sounds…I do have 36 pages of field notes, so it has to be going better than it seems.

In other news, I decided to go on a snorkeling trip the other day to save my sanity, and it was absolutely fabulous. I was a bit seasick on the boat ride out, probably compliments of my possible intestinally parasitic companions, but as soon as I hit the water, it all went away. I have never snorkeled before, so I was kind of nervous…A very nice, rather tattooed couple—1 French, 1 South African, living in Viet Nam and accompanied by 3 French and 1 Moroccan person and a 7 month old baby—helped me out at the beginning. I soon got the hang of breathing and spent about an hour paddling around the frigid water, looking at fish, starfish, sea cucumbers, crazy little jellyfish, and coral. It was one of the coolest things I’ve ever done.

When my lips started to turn blue, I finally headed for the boat, which took us to a private beach on Cham Island, where we had lunch and lounged in hammocks. The water was the most perfect blue I have ever seen, perfectly clear, and the sand was legitimately white. A few of us—the family of Americans and the 2 German girls—took a small boat over to another island to look around the very very sleepy fishing village. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more deserted town. Just as on the mainland, we were aggressively solicited to buy some drinks, and our Italian who speaks 4 languages guide kind of coerced into buying something to contribute to the island’s economy. It was interesting having a non-native guide. He loves the island and the people, that was obvious, but he also described things from a Western perspective. He showed us the whale temple and made it sound like the people still worship whales…I asked my scuba friend later, who is a native of the island and the guide’s employee, and she almost didn’t even know what I was talking about when I brought up such a temple. She said she vaguely remembers some fishing festivals as a child, but not much about whales.

We got back just in time to bask a little while longer in the waves before heading back to the mainland.

I spend my evenings probably looking kind of odd, eating alone in restaurants and cafes, in a town where everyone is here in a couple or a group. Sometimes I run into this really great Irish couple at a bar, and we talk for a few hours, but we don’t always cross paths. Another SIT student arrives tomorrow, so I can hopefully stop looking like an antisocial loner. I’m kind of ridiculously excited, actually, about having a buddy…It will be nice to be able to be places past 8:30 pm.

So that’s your update for now…Not really sure what I’m doing today. I’ve on call to go on a city tour if and when one pops up at a certain resort, and I’m waiting for a few interviews to be scheduled, so until then, it’s back to wandering around a bit.

Hyper-productive-saur is not pleased with this bump in the road. It also doesn’t help that it is Reunification Day/Feel Awkward About Being American Day and everything is shut down until Tuesday. What am I supposed to do, relax?? In my seafoam lair? And waste 4 perfectly good days of research? (Which I am really sick of right now. I do not enjoy doing speed research.)

I’m also pretty sure I have a parasite, which would explain the intestinal troubles of the entire last 3 months.

Ok, rant over. I’m going to snorkel in the Cham Islands before I leave here. That and moving to a hotel on Sunday are my only consolations currently.

One event of mention was our group’s outing to the Vietnamese National Symphony conducted by a Bostonian conductor at the opera house. In all honesty, I have heard better high school orchestras, but it was still such a great evening. They played a Rossini piece, a Faure, and then, to my great enjoyment, the New World Symphony. They even ended with a little Soussa march. I wore my ao dai again and ended up getting interviewed for some sort of local publication. Just this morning I got an email from the director saying she had found the article I was in. You can see the article in Vietnamese at http://vietnamnet.vn/vanhoa/201004/Thong-diep-Hoa-giai-va-Yeu-thuong-tu-am-nhac-vo-song-906002/. For some chuckles, here is a rough translation of my horribly misquoted quote:

In the audience there are elements in the presence of a beautiful girl in Vietnam long dress in purple. Ursula James, 20 – student accommodation from the U.S. show “Night Music is really great. Sounds great, interesting program. I play violin and I really love the orchestra’s string orchestra music today. My favorite work is the Symphony No. 9 by Dvorak. You ask why I wear a Vietnam long dress? I think this is a special occasion and I decided to wear it.”

I’ve been meaning to talk about this for a while, but writing about the symphony reminded me…Cell phone etiquette in Viet Nam is definitely not what I am used to. I find myself frequently appalled, actually, and I have to remind myself that I am the guest here. In almost every lecture we’ve had this semester– and there have been many– the lecturer’s phone has rung and they have stopped in mid-sentence to answer it. When I was at Alice in Wonderland, and in the symphony, a few people answered their phones and had loud conversations. In the symphony, a man actually ran over and hit the guy talking, but that’s the only time I’ve seen someone get irritated by a cell phone situation. Taxi drivers will answer their phones while swerving wildly through the streets. Our group has a few theories regarding the phone situation, and our latest hypothesis is that, since cell phones are such new technology in the quickly developing Vietnamese society that a) there isn’t really an etiquette code (yet?) and b) they are a conspicuous sign of affluence.

When it came time to check out, it was 150,000 more than I had set aside since I was paying for all 3 occupants of our room, as I was the last to leave. I paid a bit unhappily and then set off on what I knew would be a ridiculous travel experience. I got a taxi to the Vietnam Airlines mini-bus stop. No one else showed up for the hourly bus, so it was just me and some kind of odiferous guys at the stop for a while and then the driver and I in the front seat of a bus. He kept trying to ask me things that I didn’t understand in Vietnamese and would swerve practically off the road trying to have a conversation. Then he gave me some gum. And then we sat in silence and listened to the really terrible elevator music blasting from the radio. At least it was only 30,000 VND.

Check in at the airport went smoothly. My luggage managed to lose a couple kilos of weight somehow, and I totally didn’t have to pay any overweight fees, which was a surprise. Things quickly headed south, though, when I was told that my flight was actually cancelled. Then I got a new one, but it was an hour later. So I waited in the terminal for 3.5 hours with movies in Spanish and French dubbed over in Vietnamese blasting next to me. When it finally came time for my flight, it turns out that they had told us all the wrong terminal, so I had to dash over to a different one.

The plane was an eclectic mix of people. There was a giant family of French ex-pats on vacation from Kuala Lumpur, Australian and American teachers from Ha Noi, a washed-out hippie probably American guy in a sort of Indian guru outfit, a possibly German or Dutch or maybe even Australian family (extremely unplaceable accents, they had), and a few Vietnamese families.

When I landed in the tiny airport, I asked around for the bus that is supposed to take you to Hoi An from Da Nang, but I discovered that there is only a day bus 5 km from the airport that no taxi would take you to anyway. I told the security guy that I wanted to find something cheaper than the rip-off taxis and he actually offered to take me himself. I had to politely decline and surrender myself to the zealous taxi drivers outside. “Hello, my good friend!!!!” immediately grabbed all of my bags, flung them into his cab, and rapid-fired a million questions at me. I had a head-splitting migraine at this point, so I gave him mono-syllabic answers until he simply drove his over-priced taxi in silence. 320,000 dong later, I was dumped on the street where my homestay was supposed to exist. I was immediately greeted with cries of “Buy something please!” and “Only $1!” I trudged down the lane with my 2 suitcases, and eventually found #44.

My “homestay” is, as I kind of suspected it might be, a homestay business. It’s kind of like living in a budget hotel with a shared bathroom. I have a room right off the kitchen painted in what I suppose is sort of a peeling two-tone sea foam green, a big and actually pretty comfy bed with no blankets, a fan that blasts through the thin sheet to freeze me, a dusty armoire, and a table. The 4 decorative wall sconces are the only thing that keeps it from feeling like a serial killer’s lair. There is a crack in the ceiling where the light and sounds from the room upstairs come through, and there is a vent that channels in all of the sounds from the kitchen.

The owner at first seemed too busy to bother with me. She grudgingly offered me a free entrée in her restaurant. I had been told I would get a welcome meal, so I guess that’s what they meant. I had some stir fried noodles, which were reasonably good. I decided to treat myself to a mango smoothie, which turned out to be amazing actually. Probably the best mango smoothie I have had. It tasted exactly like an iced mango! Halfway through my meal, a man plops down into the chair next to me and says, “Hi! I am your father-in-law!” Well, ok then, Darth Vader. He asked me a few questions, I attempted to talk to him for a bit, the conversation fizzled, and he went inside. A few minutes later, I heard him singing to a baby that had suddenly appeared.

After I sat down on a stool in the kitchen and attempted to talk like an idiot in Vietnamese to the family, they seemed to really warm up to me. It was easy to tell despite language barriers that they are a very loving family. The owner became much less frazzled and even smiled at me. Improvements. They all soon dispersed, though, and I still don’t even know everyone’s name. I still had a headache and was exhausted from travel, so I decided to shower and go to bed early.

As I got in bed, it hit me that I’m really all alone here. It’s not heartache worthy, but it’s still a little pang of sadness. I really have no one to talk to right now. No one knows me. I read for a while to feel like someone was with me, however fictional.

I woke up this morning having slept for almost 12 hours, which I desperately needed. It’s Sunday, so things are a bit slower, though tourists are bustling everywhere. I took a walk down the long tourist street, and eventually settled on an open-air café that claimed to have Wifi. There are tourists everywhere, but I’m feeling too afraid to approach anyone. I need a more organic conversation-starter…I’m feeling very lost in general with my field work. My host family is too busy working to even talk to me right now. I am going to try to see if they will let me help with anything. Tomorrow I have a meeting with my project advisor’s assistant to talk about some logistics, so I guess I’m just in limbo until then…

I never know what will happen in a given day, so we’ll see how today turns out!

Last week in Ha Noi was pleasant overall. We had a lot of Western speakers, which, I have to admit, was nice, because we could ask much more nuanced questions and not worry about everything getting horribly lost in translation. However, every one of the speakers was also really, not sure how to put this, odd. I’m starting to get the feeling that spending too much time in Ha Noi makes people lose social skills.

Take for example, the man who essentially was recruiting us to apply for his volunteer organization. I could tell there was something strange about him, but I couldn’t quite place it. After lunch, we were walking back as a group, and I was telling him something about making connections in Viet Nam, since I had just randomly met a middle aged Australian physiotherapist working in my ISP location. He looked like he was listening until, out of nowhere, without even a nod in response to what I had said, he blurts, “You have nice blue eyes.” I sputtered out a “Thanks” and then things got really awkward and he turned off to a side street without saying good bye. That’s what I mean by odd.

A highlight of the week was attending the water puppet theater. I had seen this art before on the Amazing Race, but it looks very different in person. Water puppetry began as an entertainment for farmers during the wet season when the rice fields were flooded. The puppeteers were in the water behind a screen and manipulated intricate puppets on long wooden sticks. Musicians on the side of the pool (outside of the water obviously) sang, played, and provided dialogue. It was truly amazing to watch the puppets dance, walk, swim, hunt, do acrobatics, and—ahem—make babies. The latter was actually the coolest number, when two phoenixes courted and made a baby phoenix. The entire theater was full of Westerners, so I would be interested to know if Vietnamese people often attend, or if it has become more of a tourist attraction.

Speaking of tourist attractions, we spent the last few days in Ninh Binh province and Ha Long Bay! Ninh Binh was probably very interesting, but I guess I wasn’t in the greatest of moods for most of it. I hate to say it, but I’ve seen so many pagodas that they all just start to run together and lose their magic a bit. The temple in Ninh Binh was actually kind of unpleasant due to the sheer volume of visitors there for a festival weekend. There were times when we were literally shoulder to shoulder in narrow walkways, squishing three or more people abreast. Waiting in line is not really a popular concept in Ha Noi, whether it’s in a public bathroom or a pagoda, so it was a general free-for-all. I may or may not have lost my cool a few times with obnoxious bathroom attendants, vendors, and people who push in crowded situations this weekend…Fortunately the day was redeemed when we got a three hour paddle boat tour of the grottos of “the inland Ha Long.”

The next day, however, we go to the real Ha Long. For the last two days we were on our own personal boat in the Bay, one of the most beautiful places I have ever been. We lay on the upper deck of our small wooden ship for hours, watching the floating mountains loom mystically in the fog over the clean, emerald water. It was, essentially, perfect. We had several delicious meals, with more tofu for the vegetarian table than I have ever seen in one place. (I think they ran out eventually because our last meal on the boat had peanuts as the protein source…) We also had a birthday cake for all of the birthdays during ISP.

Our stop offs on the boat included a fishing village comprised of house boats and some giant caves. The village was really interesting. It has existed in essence for thousands of years but has only been banded together for about ten. It was one of the slicker tourist sites we’ve been to actually. The ladies who paddle you out from your cruise boat to the village are locals, and they scoop up trash as they go with nets (and every time they do it, the entire boat almost tips over). All of the villagers, including the babies, waved friendly hellos from the tiny floating houses and boats. At the tourist center, which was attached to the one room floating schoolhouse, there was also an aquaculture system and gift shop. There were no other tourists there when we were, but when I asked the local leader about the tourist traffic, he said that over 7,000 come every month. Not year, month! I also asked how the locals feel about that, and he insisted that they love it because it brings in revenue. These are exactly the kinds of questions I intend to look at during my independent research, but for the time being, there wasn’t much time or space to inquire further into the village’s state of mind.

Today we docked at some caves, which were large and glorious, but also kind of cheapened into a sort of Disney World vibe by the grainy music and cleanliness warnings being blasted over loudspeakers to the stream of Japanese and Chinese tour bus tourists. There was also graffiti on many of the cave walls, and fluorescent colored lights pointing out certain formations. They had comment boxes everywhere, and I really wanted to comment, but my group wouldn’t let me.

Just a few hours ago, we returned to Ha Noi. The only thing of note that has happened so far was a run-in with a very sketchy taxi driver. As soon as we got in, he started to drive away and claimed that his meter wasn’t working. We had specifically picked a cab with a meter. We’ve been here long enough to know that. But he still tried to pull a fast one on us. To make matters worse, he was driving in the wrong direction. All four of us very quickly started yelling at him to let us out, banging on the windows, haggling— a huge commotion. Somehow in the chaos we convinced him to give us a cheap price and to go the other way, but not without a lot of anger and attempting to escape the vehicle. All just to find a place to get some laundry done! Moral of the story is to only ever use MaiLinh Taxi because they are the only uniformly reliable company.

Oh, and one more thing of note was that we randomly ran into the SIT Mekong program students in the middle of Old Town on their two day northern excursion. All things considered, it was pretty random to find them on the street a thousand miles from their program site, even if it was the shopping district of a major city. I found out from them that one of their classmates will be doing their ISP in Hoi An, where I will be, for at least part of the time I will be there. I won’t be a lonely hermit after all!

Shirt of the week (because I am behind and sailors don’t wear shirts with slogans): Spoon, Mild but Wild.

My classmates have started to help me in collecting shirts of the day and even getting some pics, so hopefully I will have more soon!

All pictures from the last week can be found here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/ursulamjames/NorthernVN?authkey=Gv1sRgCJSj67fBsvKqzgE&feat=directlink

Here’s what I will say…There is no place quite like Ha Noi. You can definitely feel the weight of history here, and this seems to be the place from which most popular international visions of Viet Nam are formed. It is a beautiful city full of old buildings and misty lakes with much less traffic (though much crazier driving) than HCMC. The young people are boisterous and friendly. The older generation, however, carries that historical weight.  You can see wariness in the eyes of the middle aged and sheer exhaustion in the eyes of the elderly. Accents have a harder edge here, and movements are much quicker and sharper. Today we went to the Ho Chi Minh mausoleum. It’s one of those things I’ll have to tell you about when I’m home in the states. Google it for now.

On a completely different note, I have so far in one day here eaten the best Italian food I have ever had and found the coolest handmade clothing and accessories store. I also had several successful Vietnamese speaking incidents, which was refreshing.

This is completely out of order, but I have one thing to update from my last night in HCMC. I wore an ao dai (Vietnamese traditional dress) to our class banquet on Friday night and seemed to gain massive street cred from doing so. The walk to and from the restaurant was like a beauty pageant or something. I heard constant whispers, like a chain of dominoes of “ao dai, ao dai!” Several xe om drivers yelled “Beautiful!! Dep qua!!” Many people smiled, and I even got a thumbs up. As people that I knew walked into the restaurant, they would stop in mid-sentence and yell, “Oh my god!” It was very satisfying and super fun, but a bit embarrassing. I was unsure if it would be appreciated or not that I was attempting to wear traditional clothes, but it was definitely the former. I’m glad that I could carry it off without looking like a huge imposter/dork. It was kind of difficult to eat, though, as the ao dai seems to be largely designed for aesthetics and not really for eating or turning one’s head.

I have no tshirt of the day, but I have an odd experience of the day: We saw a man jump out of his Mercedes in the middle of the freeway and charge at a bush. We have absolutely no idea why he did so, but he just ran angrily at it, stuck his arms in it, and then stood there.

On that note, time to go continue my Viet Nam diet of rice, fruit, pizza, and ice cream.