surprise performances and "when is your wedding?"

Sunday: Woke up for 8 am and went to Hanoi Open University, the place Alaina and I will be interning at. There we attended the ALOHA (English Club) women’s day celebration. Apparently whenever Vietnamese get together, they sing. And so do their guests. So being the guests of honor we were informed minutes before the start of the presentation that we were required to get up and perform some songs. All eyes on us and not having any choice in the matter Alaina and I got up and sang the chorus to the “I Just Can’t Wait to be King” from The Lion King, “Under The Sea” from The Little Mermaid and “Oops! I Did It Again” by Britney Spears. I’m not sure if they thought it was funny or just pathetic, but they laughed and clapped when we were finished. Then the whole 2.5 hour program proceeded, with 2-3 songs performed between each woman day feature. Twice we got up to answer the same questions, but asked in different forms, like “How do you feel about women’s day?” or “how do you feel about a day dedicated to woman?”.

Monday: Today I attended my first Vietnamese class in Hanoi, where we practiced talking about our future wedding and husbands. No joke. The teacher kept asking us— for an hour— when will you get a boyfriend? (I don’t know) Why don’t you have a boyfriend? (I don’t know) When will you have your wedding? (After I have a boyfriend) What will he be like? Handsome, rich or intelligent? (Ummm…)
Later for the VNLC course all of us went to the Vietnam National Fine Arts Museum.
Afterwards Cathy, Brittany, Kelly and I went to “Olympia Gym” to sign up so that we could work out on occasion. We walked in and although it was dirty and old (what isn’t, though?) it was also hilarious. Huge muscle men posters plastered the walls and techno music blasted from the floor above. The first floor seemed to be the men’s muscle building floor, and the second was the cardio/aerobic class are, which was all women. Working out in… bikinis? Yes, bikinis. Even leopard print ones. They were also all doing outdated calisthenics. We climbed to the last floor to find some actual treadmills and one elliptical machine— and a woman wearing all spandex and a marble-colored thong leotard over it. Fabulous!