I'm heading to the night market in a little bit, but figured I would steal some time to jot down a couple things about my week. Saturday afternoon the sun came out, giving me a lovely day to enjoy walking around Ha Noi. Holly and myself went to a famous nem cua place (crab spring rolls) and then headed towards the lake to get some shoes and clothes. Shopping for clothes is a bit troublesome, do to my busty physique and the very strange Ha Noi "style". A majority of the clothes are more befitting of a 13 year old girl, yet are worn by women (and occasionally men) of all ages. Thus, finding myself some clothes that don't look too absurd has proven a bit difficult, so shopping for clothes is usually not too successful. This evening I will go to the night market where they have "everything", and I should be able to find some things that are a little bit more "relatable".
The weather today was lovely as well, so a couple friends and I walked to one of the best bun cha places in town. All the street spots were taken so we headed upstairs into a tiny room with closed windows and slow-moving fans. Needless to say, eating chiles and sitting in a very hot room got a little sweaty... but this is Viet Nam so sweat is always to be expected. We had a huge meal of meat "dumplings", pho noodles, spring rolls, and greens, mixing them all together in a bowl along with Viet Nam's trademark fish sauce... absolutely delicious! Being able to make some quality bun cha is the next Vietnamese dish on my 'to do' list.
We capped the day off by playing cards on my floor for far too long, but cards are a big thing here, and wasting hours away is pretty common. Flip and I taught our Vietnamese friends how to play a favorite college card game, which they enjoyed so much that it resulted in the long stay on my floor.
Rain is supposed to start up tomorrow and continue through the next week, which will be quite the unwelcome change after experiencing such lovely weather. Since I don't have to dress nicely for school because all the students are gone, riding in the rain is not such an awful prospect for tomorrow morning... since trying to keep nice clothes dry is nearly impossible.
Well! Time for the night market!
-sending tons of love out to my family friends

Food, Furniture, Football

Sunday rolled around and I made myself quite the busy lady; finally took the time to head to furniture street. The furniture gets cheaper as you drive down the street, so my friend and I drove a nice ways along before stopping to get a bedside table. We loaded the wooden cabinet between ourselves on the motorbike, and drove down the street that was in a pretty awful condition. Traveling with large things on bikes is part of the Viet Nam experience, so I felt pretty satisfied. After dropping off the lovely new cabinet at my house, I headed to the market to replenish my spring roll supplies. After frying and rolling about 30 spring rolls, we brought them over to Flip's house for a pre-soccer meal. After enjoying my rapidly improving spring rolls, we walked towards the Hanoi Football Stadium to watch two Vietnamese teams play. There were an absurd amount of people, as well as two large bands and many, many banners. Giant drums were being banged from beginning to end, and then some. We had a lovely time, even though neither of the teams scored; it was a very scrappy game, and over six players were carried off the field in stretchers. The young med boys running to and fro seemed to be working harder than the soccer players themselves. The most intense part of the game was trying to leave. The road was mobbed, and since the concept of space here is almost non-existent, the pushing and shoving got pretty incredible. After making it around the corner, we finally managed to break free and get to our bikes. Definitely a very accomplished Sunday.

The Talent Show at SIS was, um, a good effort. All the little kids sitting under the hot sun for 3 hours made behavior take a turn for the worse... the 10 different girls singing dated Whitney or Celine Dion songs didn't help the case either. The most enjoyable part of the show BY FAR were the five 5th graders doing a hip hop dance. They even had an "mc" to pump up the audience with things like, "Yo Yo! We poppin' hip hop. Check this out Yo, Go!" (this is an 11yr old Vietnamese boy with a "gangster" hat and necklace, mind you). The dancers were considerably good, with one boy pulling out some incredible Michael Jackson moves, along with poppin' and lockin'. Unfortunately my camera died, but I probably wouldn't have been able to hold the camera steady due to my consistent laughter.

There is no school for the rest of April for some King's Birthday, so my weekend starts tomorrow. Although the kids are off for another week, I have to go to school every day, since I am new and not able to use my leave days yet (or some other sort of absurd reason). So I have to go to the school and sit around for a week. I plan on doing some extensive classroom cleaning, and putting a lot of time to into my list of potential Architecture Graduate Schools. I'm not too bitter, because at least I'm getting paid for not doing too much, and that is never a cause for complain.

Word of the day: ridiculous

I just had to take a moment to jot down some ridiculous things I have seen lately before I forget all about them. I tend to run into something ridiculous at least once a day, and it's getting pretty difficult trying to remember them all.

1.) Obama Obama Karaoke.
--> It's awesome that they love Obama here, and it's even more awesome that he gets a Karaoke bar in his name. Better yet, they use it twice, so that really is somethin'.

2.) Flip's new apartment located behind the Hanoi School of Music
--> My friend Flip lives right behind the dormitories for the Music University, so every time I go to visit, I hear people singing opera or people playing the trumpet/piano/guitar/accordian (you name it). He says it is not nearly as entertaining when they start practicing at 5am...

3.) 3 people on a motorbike doing wheelies
--> Driving in Hanoi is scary enough, but three men on a motorbike doing a wheelie, that is just plain ridiculous. The guy on the back was almost brushing the pavement with his head... !!!!

4.) The Vietnamese concept of "yours and mine"
--> Culturally, it is incredibly different than America. A very accurate example of this is how my cleaning lady just takes my bicycle, or my towels, or my sandals. It's nothing I can get upset about because everybody here just shares everything. It doesn't do too much harm, I just have to keep an eye out to see where my things have been moved to.

5.) My tofu lady at the market
--> I have gotten into the habit of getting fresh tofu from a lovely old lady down the street in the market. She is super interested in America and asks me lots of questions every time I visit (although I can't understand too much of it... I heavily rely on the 'smile and nod'). Two large chunks of tofu cost me 3,000 dong... or 15 cents. Now is that ridiculous or what?

Gosh, I have so many more absurd things that happen daily, but they are becoming so common place that they don't even strike me as ridiculous anymore. My students are getting back to class in a minute so I have to go, but I shall put some thought into some things that may strike people from back home as absolutely strange. Until then-

Stuck In The Mud

I had been looking forward to Friday all week; My friends Lien and Rueben rented a "party boat" to celebrate their birthdays and sail along the Red River. The boat had a dance floor on the rooftop, a hookah lounge, and a bar. I was a little skeptical about the success of actually floating, since the Red River is pretty much mud at this point. But we all boarded the boat nonetheless. When it came time to shove off, it took about 20 minutes to break away from all the mud at shore. Since the river was so low, the boat pretty much found an area where it could float, and stuck to it (pun intended)- When it came time to sail back, the boat was utterly and completely stuck. There were so many people on board that it was too heavy to get back to shore, so that is when the problem-solving began. Over the music, the sound of an antique boat engine could be heard. A tiny, wooden fishing boat pulled up alongside and about 10 considerably intoxicated people jumped in. It didn't look in the least bit safe so I opted to wait on the bigger boat, waving to my friends as they departed on the rickety thing below. After the tiny boat made three trips, the cruise boat was light enough to lift from the mud and take us back to the dock. Despite all the mud, it was a wonderful time.
I arose early on Saturday and went with Son to the market down the street. I guess there aren't too many white people who shop at the market, so all the Vietnamese ladies were very interested in my presence. As I would be trying to purchase some tofu or eggs, the ladies would question Son about me. Usually I am by myself and have to try to answer the questions alone, which tends to make shopping at the market a very long-winded experience. This time, I had Son to field the questions and managed to get out of the market relatively quickly; instead of me pointing to items and attempting to communicate how much I wanted, Son simply asked and received... really need to start studying Vietnamese names for vegetables.
I bought all the ingredients to make vegetable spring rolls, and, upon getting back to my place, set to work. A large mess and an hour later, I was sitting down to eat my own spring rolls, which were an incredible success! I can't wait to come home and cook them for everybody in the states... they are so delicious! I actually rolled them a lot better than Son, which was probably my proudest moment of the day.
I spent Saturday evening visiting my friend Flip's new apartment. It came fully furnished, and I couldn't help but envy the oversized pots and vases he had scattered around the house. I have been inspired to spend a couple of my hard-earned dollars on some decor. So, that's my plan for Sunday.... work week starts tomorrow (ugh). We have a school talent show this week which I am greatly looking forward to. We have some hilarious 5th graders that do "street dancing", and some of them are rather impressive. Definitely bringing my camera...

Traditional Cooking

So I arose bright and early on a relatively rainy Saturday to meet up with some of the Singapore International staff for a cooking class. It was really great to hang with some teachers outside of school, since we are all usually pretty well-behaved in class. Some of the ladies had incredibly interesting lives (ranging from speaking fluent Arabic to having a husband who is an underwater doctor...) and were so much fun to cook with. There were some hysterical cucumber jokes from the principal of a kindergarten, and I was really happy to have had the opportunity to see the less professional side of my coworkers.
We had a lovely introduction to Vietnamese cooking, then were told to get into separate cyclos for a trip to the market. I was very dismayed at this request, since I have been avoiding a cyclo ride since I first set foot in Vietnam over 2 years ago. Opting out of the ride wasn't exactly an option, so I boarded a cyclo after much hesitation. There were 9 of us, each in our own cyclo, causing traffic and looking like a huge pack of tourists. I was feeling rather embarrassed, since being on a cyclo is the most efficient way to brand yourself as a naive tourist. After communicating to my very old cyclo driver (I felt I should be peddling him around) that I studied Architecture in the USA, he gave me a little Architecture tour in Vietnamese; I understood maybe 10% of it (mostly just the words "French", "building", and "very beautiful")but it was a nice effort on his part nonetheless.
After the mortifying cyclo trip, we got back to the restaurant and were given a chef's jacket along with a ridiculous hat. Many absurd pictures were taken at this point, and I will do my best to get my hands on a few to chronicle just how hysterical we all looked. I successfully learned how to make banana flower salad and a very famous Vietnamese sauce that is used with mostly everything (ranging from salad to spring rolls). After the salad, we made some tofu vegetable spring rolls fried with breadcrumbs (which is actually the Southern version of a spring roll) that were so incredibly delicious. After botching 2 spring rolls I finally managed to get the hang of rolling, and ended up with a nice amount of some perfect looking rolls. I brought home some leftovers to show off to my Vietnamese friends that I actually COULD roll them. After being splattered with burning hot oil, we moved on to a tofu vegetable medley, followed by sauteed shrimp with cashew nuts. These dishes proved a bit harder, but once I had the opportunity to try them all, found I had done a pretty good job. The cooking class gave us some wonderful recipe sheets and I absolutely plan on trying some of the dishes in my own kitchen. I will surely write a post regarding any successful cooking, so keep an eye out for that.
I spent my Easter with Son, who was very excited to try my deviled eggs. Although they lacked paprika, they still turned out very nice, and since he ate a good amount of them, I rightfully assumed he enjoyed them. I got a little nostalgic eating my deviled eggs, thinking of my family, and reflecting on how far away I am. It's strange how something as small as a piece of food can bring forth so many memories. I didn't get any candy, so I'm thinking I will go to the store and buy myself some today just because, well, I love candy. It was one of my student's birthdays this morning and he brought in some chocolates, so I technically got my chocolate fix already. Jellybeans would be nice, but I am 99% sure they don't have them here. I guess jelly bunny rabbits are the best I can do.
My students are returning to class any minute, so I should wrap this up... bye!

It's Friday! Wooohooo! The weeks have been FLYING by, I've been working for a month now and everything is starting to blend together. Guess I really am a full-time worker now? On Fridays, the kids are absolutely CRAZY so I can never get them to do much work. In lieu of anything productive, we watched the Thriller video... twice. I have one student who has all the moves down pat, extremely impressive. Maybe I will have them put together a Michael Jackson tribute dance for the talent show coming up?
I rode my bicycle to work in some intense rain this morning. Unfortunately, my hood didn't stay on too well, and I showed up with my hair and face dripping water. The Vietnamese staff had a good laugh at the foreign girl who couldn't figure out how to stay dry, but oh well.
All this past week large masses of dragonflies have been descending into the Singapore International playground. Apparently they come around this time of year, but I still haven't gotten used to the thousands of large flying bugs... BIG bugs. I tend to spend my recess duty looking up at the clouds of dragonflies above my head... although I should be making sure all the kids are safe of the playground, whoops. One of the most happenin' bars downtown is called Dragonfly, I think I finally get it.
So I've been in a pretty big rush to get home after school with errands to run, and I've found out that putting eggs in a bicycle basket and hitting large bumps at a relatively high speed does not insure the safe return of eggs. Granted, this should be common sense, but twice I arrived home with an egg or two (or three) completely exploded. Guess I'd be better off buying my eggs at the market and walking them home...
Speaking of eggs, I totally forgot this was Easter Weekend until a student drew me an Easter Bunny with a basket of eggs. This will be the first Easter of my life away from my family. I would like to say that I will definitely be missing my grandmother's famous jello eggs. I guess I could attempt to make my own, but I have a sneaking suspicion that it will not be successful. I can't even get a whole carton of eggs back to my house in one piece, let alone create my own. What I CAN do is some real nice deviled eggs, which I shall make and give to my Vietnamese friends (they have no idea what deviled eggs are) as an Easter present. I will be spending this Saturday making Vietnamese food, which is a far cry from my typical Easter weekend, but hey, at least I'm learning something new. I am half-tempted to put together an Easter egg hunt for my buddies over here (people looked at me like I was crazy when I tried to explain the concept of an Easter egg hunt) but this whole weekend is supposed to be thunderstorms... this could put a real 'damper' on an intended hunt. I do live across from a park, which would be a lovely spot for a hunt, but I doubt that I can even find plastic eggs to stuff with candy, AND all the children who hang at the park would likely steal them all. Looks like I will have to forgo any sort of Easter egg hunt this year. Alas.
I hope my family and friends back in the states eat enough candy to make up for the fact that I don't really have any. ;)