Happiness to every body!!!!!!! ^_^

Soooooooo I haven’t written in a while. The days go by fast and I am always doing fun fun things. When I do find the time I’m still tired from jet lag. I’ll try and recount:

Monday: First four hour session of Vietnamese!!!!! It was intense. We move very fast. I think I have learned more Vietnamese in 5 days than I did in a whole term of Arabic at Union (granted it was somewhat of a joke). Vietnamese is hard but fun too. It has 6 tones, meaning each word must be said in the pitch that it needs to be or else it could mean something else. Depending on how you say “ma” is could mean ghost, rice seedling, tomb, but, horse or mother. Additionally there are a lot of sounds that we never make in English. All of this will require a lot of practice… but besides that Vietnamese is nice because all the words are one syllable and it has relatively simple grammar. It is also in the Latin alphabet, thanks to the French. Anyways I really like my teacher Co Thrinh (Co means teacher and Thrinh sounds like a cross between “chin” and “gin”). She is so great! She tells us dirty and politically incorrect riddles everyday before class. She is much more lively than the other teachers. She actually makes me want to be one… which is what I have been contemplating for a while. If I were a teacher, I would want to be like her, sans the politically incorrect riddles. I don’t know if I could get away with them. Later that evening most people were in the mood for some western food after mild tummy troubles. Alas, we found ourselves at Sheridan’s Irish Pub… I got risotto. Note to self: do not order an Italian dish at an Irish restaurant in Vietnam. It will probably not be very gastronomic.

Tuesday: Another language class, in which I almost cried in frustration. I was a little tired.


Wednesday: Had lunch with Van and My after 4 hours of Vietnamese… they showed us where we could eat lunch from the Lunch Lady (she was featured on Anthony Bordain). On the way we saw a little boy, probably around 8 years old, sitting at the side of the busy street, crying with his hands on his head. Nearby lay a metal serving tray and on the side of the street was a large pile of fried something; it was obvious that his day’s income had just been lost by the slip of a few fingers when a motorbike passed by too close. He worried about what his mom would say. A few of us gave him money… I gave him 20,000 dong (about a dollar) and we continued on. At a place nearby we had an interesting pink noodle soup complete with chicken skin, pepper pork sausage, a chunk of ham with the fat, a shrimp. Also My had us try sour meat. Sour meaning tasting sour. But I am pretty sure it was uncooked i.e. bad life choice. Not wanting to be impolite I took a teensy taste and still got a mouth full of hot pepper. Yum.


Thursday: I felt the repercussions of sour meat and interesting soup. I got a stomach ache, and, well, some other gastrointestinal complications. Alaina and I went to a very western café called Highland Coffee for some toast with butter and jam for dinner… something a bit more neutral. In Vietnamese class I learned how to spell my name in Vietnamese: “Ilaigio“ (without accents) !!!!!!!!!! And I also learned how to ask for my banh mi or muffin in the morning… or anything really…without any packaging (Meghan would be proud): Xin bo vao tay toi, Toi khong can hop (again without vietnamese accents).

Also, I have it so easy. I can eat 3 meals a day with snacks for like 100,000d or around $6. It's fun... except that I learned today that most construction workers only make around 35,000d a day. And this does not change with inflation. Not to mention every other Vietnamese person making lower and scraping for funds to feed their families.