Friday - week 2

Last real morning waking up at the hotel which is weird. I think I might actually miss the breakfast now, my eggs this morning were the best they've ever been. And, Andrew has even taught her how to make omelets which I find to be pretty impressive. She doesnt understand the idea of putting something in them so its just a scrambled egg in the shape of an omelet but its still good. We then boarded the bus as usual and went to UEF for our last day of classes and our exam!

Some highlights from our history class:
multiples of 9 are used when a number is bigger than 10
a lot of art is made with phallic symbols (fertility worshiping)
the cities are planned really poorly because of lack of experience
men have 7 souls (or via) while women have 9 - related to number of holes in the body

towards the end though, we ran out of time and were left to read a lot of the information on our own. its hard though without his help because he knew so much information on everything.

Then it was time for our final class where we learned the months and days of the week - they actually arent that hard if you can remember the numbers so that was a relief. We had a short break and then the exam. Phoung sat next to me because she wanted to see how much I knew and be there to help me. Turns out, I only needed her for a few of the Vietnamese to English translations. And i ended up getting a 10 on quiz along with everyone else. yayyy! For the oral section she gave me a few words I could add onto the pre-written conversation so that Ashley and I looked better. Overall our conversation went really well. Originally the teacher wanted us to memorize conversations but we convinced her to let us read from her written sheets.

We then had our final lunch at the canteen, the one thing that I definitely won't miss and filled out surveys for plus 3 and UEF. And then we were done for the day until our farewell dinner. So, Ashley, Elizabeth and I decided to go back to the market to buy some final gifts for people and for ourselves. We made a pact there that we wouldn't tell anyone how much we spent because lets just say, we weren't on top bartering game. The market was really hot, lunch hadnt been that satisfying and I had dong to spend - so I spent it. I bought a really pretty mug that has HCM city outlined on it, more DVD's (movies were only 50 cents!) and a stuffed animal elephant. Why? I don't know. I'd been passing them for days in the market and all of the different animals are a really pretty color so I bought one. The downside - they were a fixed price. Oh well. Its because the place i bought it from actually has 10 stalls in Ben Thanh and they're all fixed price; they also dont come up and ask, "what you want?" they let you come to them so they're different. I really like my elephant though. The tag even says, "made in Vietnam" not China so thats a plus. Best purchase of the day though was by Elizabeth who bought herself a little wooden tea set. She hadn't bought herself a souvenir yet so I convinced her it was worth it. Ashley bought 10 movies just because. We all were just going crazy with the dong at this point and eventually had to meet back up with Sarah and Julie to go back to the hotel. We also ran into Phoung and David who were shopping together. She had a really cute cat fan this time, instead of the frog. She said she has tons of different animals at her house. I'm so jealous. Anyway, David had arranged for us to have ice cream with some of the students at 4 so we had to go back to the hotel. Once there though, Julie and I were too tired to leave the room and missed out on the frozen yogurt. I was a little disappointed because everyone said how good it was but it probably would have been a lot for my stomach to handle. On the bright side though, I made a lot of headway on packing. I've decided to out all of the really heavy stuff (the DVD's and the mahjong set) in the little rolling carry on.

After getting overheated from packing because the air conditioning in our room isnt the same since we only have 1 key, I decided to shower and get ready for our farewell dinner. For some reason, i thought it would be a good idea to straighten my hair. We then loaded onto the bus at 6 for reallllyyyy long drive to dinner at "tourist village". I was starving. And the drive was never ending. (At this point i was really regretting not getting the frozen yogurt since lunch hadn't been good). Yet, eventually, we made it on and got onto a golf cart which drove us through this really cool, grassy area with lakes and swings and bridges until we got to our little hut that we were eating dinner under. Behind a sheet, a huge party was taking place. As we waited for dinner everyone walked around for a little until it started to rain. The place is huge though and really pretty. Apparently there are 2 more of them. In the bathroom, Ashley had a lizard in her stall. I then screamed when the toilet paper brushed my leg, thinking it was another lizard.

For dinner we had really good calamari and then some weird beef that you were supposed to wrap in the white papery material that tasted like a cotton ball. I just stuck with eating the beef - without the weird piece of fat that was rolled inside of it. Then came the seafood Pho. Just like the first night, a pot of boiling water was set in front of us on a flame and shrimp and vegetables were added in. I know understand that you then put the noodles in your bowl and the soup overtop of it to cook the noodles. It was soooo good. but also sooooo spicy. My lips were tingling by the time I was done but i just wanted to be full and it was good, so i kept adding more noodles to my bowl. We all loved the shrimp so Ms. Too ordered more for our soup which was really nice of her. No golf cart came to get us at the end of the meal but we had a nice stroll back to the van and Julie got to ride on the huge swing that she noticed on the ride out. We then boarded the bus for the last time which i found to be kind of sad actually.

Once back at the hotel, people packed and the boys left to go meet the UEF students at the karaoke club they'd been waiting at for an hour for us. Somehow they paid their bill first. We weren't so lucky. Julie and I had a lot of extra charges on ours for beer that we hadn't drank so she and Tin fought with them for about 45 minutes as Sarah, Elizabeth, Ashley, Andrew, David and I sat and waited. By the time she agreed to pay it was 11 but we felt that we had to make it the karaoke place. Tin told us it was an 8 minute walk and not worth a taxi. Just as we were walking outside, Phoung, who has a ten o'clock curfew walked in the door with gifts and cards for all of us! She gave me a pink bear fan! I love it. (I just wish i'd had it sooner to use haha). It was such a nice gift though because she knew how much I loved hers. The other girls got hair accessories and David, a long letter. Her note to me said how i was quiet but also sweet and very good at speaking Vietnamese when i wanted to. I loved the whole thing. Then, as she drove away and we walked outside, saying goodbye to Tin, the power went out. In all 2 weeks we've been here, we've heard so much mention of these blackouts but have never seen one until tonight. It was really weird./perfect timing.

We then set off walking with sarah's ipod for directions. The streets were dark and pretty creepy but we finally made it to the right street. Turns out we turned the wrong way though so we retraced our steps, looking for the right address. As Julie and I walked ahead of the group we all of a sudden heard screams behind us and turned around to see a motorbike speeding off and Andrew running after it for a few steps. It was long gone though. We ran over to find that Elizabeth's bag had been stolen off of her shoulder. Just like we'd been warned - one guy was driving, the other took her bag. It was really scary. Thinking about it now, we never should have gone walking at 11 15 at night in Vietnam but we'd all grown so comfortable with our surroundings and nothing had gone wrong up to this point. Luckily for Elizabeth the only things of value in her purse were 100 dong, 3 us dollars, her license, two credit cards and her camera. Sarah, Eizabeth, Andrew and Ashley went back to the hotel so that Elizabeth could call her parents and have them cancel her credit cards. And as for her camera, it was about to die and all but like 15 of her pictures had already been uploaded onto Justin's external hard drive. I just don't understand how people can do that though. I know people steal every day but it still seems so wrong. And with 4 hours left in the country too! It really just sucks because after such a fun 2 weeks, it left us all with a different image of Vietnam.

Anyway, Julie and I took David with us to the club just so the others would know where we were and what had happened. We didnt want the UEF kids to think we'd just ditched them. It was a short but scary walk after that. The guys were all shocked and angry they hadn't been there. We took a few group pictures and then got a taxi back to the hotel where the power was back on! They also had some gifts for us that they'd given the boys. I finished up with most of my packing and went to see Elizabeth and after that, we all just hung out in my room and passed around the hard drive so that everyone could upload pictures. The plan was to pull an all nighter but around 2 15 I lied down and everyone left to go to their own rooms.

I couldn't fall asleep though - i was too stressed over carrying 4 bags + a purse so I ended up laying there for like 20 minutes until Elizabeth came in and talked. I then continued packing and at 3, decided to shower so i could be clean for the long day of travel. Then, it was 3 40 and i woke up Julie to say bye, said bye to Andrew and began taking my luggage downstairs and loading it onto the bus along with Ashley, Elizabeth, Justin, Matt and Mike.