Hi everyone!
Its currently 5:30 am on Sunday morning and I can't sleep. I'm in our room at the Hoa An research center with 5 other girls in it. We have these huge blue mosquito nets over our bed! Right now it sounds like somebody has been back and forth mowing the lawn outside our room for an hour...But I know there aren't lawn mowers here. I'll tell you a little about our trip so far and the trek over here!
The flights were pretty difficult if you ask me. We flew with Asiana Airlines so there were no English speaking flight attendants and hardly any American passengers. On the 12 hour flight I was in the middle seat between two non english speakers, but we communicated through expressions sort of haha. I indicated whenever I needed to pace up and down the airplane and stretch my legs. As I told some of you, a little Korean girl kept pointing and laughing at me and calling me Barbie when she would walk past me on the plane! (And then her mom would yell at her in Korean) I'll explain later how this nickname stuck...long story short, the trek over was long but thankfully problem free! And customs only yook 5 minutes. So, after over 20 hours of flying time our entire group of 9 Americans finally met up at the Ho Chi Minh Airport. We were led by two of our Coach for College leaders, Nghi and Trinh. They are 26 anf 21 and two of the sweetest and most fun women!
We stayed the night at a hotel in Ho Chi Minh city. Our hotel was 6 stories high, no elevator, and a 3 foot wide staircase--just picture me and my luggage...we all got a late dinner (2 am!) And walked around the city a little. The night life was poppin. Many bouncers tried to persuade us to enter a club called "Go Go" or "Crazy Buffalo." Throughout the night we could hear the party people and lots of moto's--but before we knew it it was 7 am and time to get ready for the day!
Yesterday we were tourists all day. We traveled in our mini bus to the northern part of the Mekong Delta. We all bought conical coconut rice hats and got on a boat with our wonderful tour guide leader, Lam. We toured around the river and saw a floating market, rode on our own paddle boats, tried lotssssss of amazing/interesting new food. Upon hearing my Barbie experience, Nghi declared that I was truly like barbie since: "my hair was SOO yellow", eyelashes so long, and I dress just like her! Haha, I can deal with that..so everytime we did something and I told Nghi how much I enjoyed it she would say, "barbie likes chum chum" "barbie likes sesame cracker." Oh and she made me sing the barbie girl song when we were on the boat singing lots of American songs. When I upload the pictures I'll explain more!
After a really fun day of touring we got back on the bus to go to pick up the Vietnamese college students that will be coaching with us. They couldn't be nicer, more outgoing and interested in the American culture! I am so excited to work with them! When we got to camp/school/research center, we had dinner and went to bed. I'm not exactly sure what's in store for us today but I'll write later!!
I'm writing from my blackberry because we haven't figured out how to use/connect w/laptops yet. So when we figure that out, I'll upload photos and go into detail about all of the cool things I've seen! Miss everyone!
Love love.
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