Freedom!

So I'm officially done with Singapore International School (well, not exactly, still have to pick up my last paycheck). The new teacher has taken over, I said goodbye to the kids and received some really cute "good luck" cards/poems/songs. I'm sad to leave some of the adorable kids behind, but excited to start living like an actual English teacher, rather than a full time classroom teacher... which is a drastically different life. All of my friends work at after school English clubs or teach English to adults. This mean they don't work every day of the week, so week nights turn into big party nights for a lot of the foreigner English teachers living in Ha Noi. Since I was doing a full-time gig, I was going to bed by 9:30pm on week nights and saving my energy for the weekends, the days that most of my teacher friends would go to bed early. So, the swap in lifestyle means seeing a lot more of my foreigner friends. Speaking of, Anneliese and Carlo officially left Ha Noi on Tuesday to go visit Egypt and then back to the states. Son and I decided to take a break from bit tet and do a different sort of street meat for their goodbye dinner. A bunch of us met up on Cau Giang road and sat down to some pans of hot oil atop a coal burner. Next, we proceeded to marinate our beef in a deliciously spicy sauce, then went on to fry the beef, along with eggplant, onions, and french fries. It was by far one of the best meals I've had on the street so far, and I will definitely be returning soon. Obviously, there is a trend developing here involving my love of street meat...Yesterday, I joined my friends Flip and Ryan for some lunch (something I was usually never able to do given my job at SIS). We met up around the corner from St. Joesph's Cathedral at the fried food lady. Here, we were taken into the "VIP room" (I think because Ryan was still in his teacher clothes) where we were able to dine with the big shots. Well, big shots were men on lunch break from some nearby financial office. You actually had to walk through the fried food lady's house to get to this room, which was slightly strange, but very typical. We had some banh goi (meat samosas), nem chua ran (friend meat rolls), nem ran (spring rolls), and bun noodles. After eating way too much fried stuff, we settled down to play some Phom, the traditional Vietnamese card game that I have mentioned in earlier posts. It is really quite addicting and I've found myself playing it at every opportunity. After I managed to win a little over 10,000 Dong, we decided to switch venues. We walked down to the corner and sat on little stools that are in the shade of St. Joseph's Cathedral. Since this is also directly next to a school, this "cafe" is called Sinh Vien Cafe (or Student Cafe, very creative, I know). Here we had some tea, played some more Phom, and watched Flip pass out tour package information to tourists. I was very much enjoying sitting next to such a lovely example of religious Architecture on a beautiful day, and thinking how cool it was that all these 8th graders have such a great after-school hangout. Honestly, I would hang out by the Drug-Fair, or Super Stop and Shop after school. These kids get to sit on the steps of one of the oldest and most famous buildings in Ha Noi... lucky.