Wednesday

What an eventful day today was!

It is currently 1am here and so friggin hot and humid that I can't bloody sleep!

During the day I taught at district 8 again with Nikki. She was being weird as usual and panicking this morning thinking we were going to be late for our class. I'd have to say,  today has been by far, the most trying day for me. Teaching English to a bunch of teenage boys was horrendous! There was one token twit who would just not listen. I can really appreciate highschool teachers now. It's only made me realise how stressful it could be when you want your students to learn so much yet they don't cooperate and pay attention. After today's class, I decided that I'm going to bribe them with prizes next time.

When I got back to the peace house, I unfortunately didn't get enough time to take a nap, which I normally do, since I had to leave early for my afternoon class at district 8 again.  However, this time instead of going with Nikki I was teamed with the Americans. We were so excited and eager to go as our itinerary for the afternoon was to take the boys for a swim. I should probably pause here and give a little description of the weather in Ho Chi Minh during the month of July.  Well there is no other way to describe it other than HOT & HUMID! I thought Philippines was really bad in terms of heat and muggines but Ho Chi Minh by far exceeds them. I have never heard the phrase "It's so hot!" overused so much.  Furthermore, during orientation we were advised to dress modestly, meaning no shorts and singlet.  At first we abided by this rule, but it has come to the point where you either die of heat exhaustion trying to appease the vietnamese culture or dress less conservatively.  Majority of course have gone for the latter which in turn, has got to be accepted back at the peace house.  So you can see why just going to the pool has got us all excited.  We had been dying for the aforementioned ever since we got here.
When we got to the shelter there was a bit of chaos with the organisation of transportation to the pool. The boys actually had a swimming teacher who was there to assist us as well.  In the end, Swimming teacher and a couple of the boys went on scooters.  Might I add that you can fit a family i.e. up to 5 people on a single scooter. The others got on their bikes and peddaled away.  That left the Americans, three boys and I just standing by the road not knowing what or where to go.  It took us awhile to figure out how we were going to get to the pool and where exactly we were going.  One of the students, the brightest one called Bi just biked past us as we waited by the side of road. Jane called out to him to ask for help but he just totally ignored us! Instead of calling him Bi though she actually called him Bamboo (which could possibly be why ignored us). Her calling him bamboo just made us laugh our heads off. We ended up catching a cab with the rest of the boys to the pool. Once there, we headed to the toilets to get changed.  The toilets were so disgusting and dirty and we had to squat to pee as there were no toilet bowls but just holes on the ground. We also weren't allowed to wear thongs around so we had to walk around barefoot on the dirty decaying ground. Thank goodness the pool was clean and looked absolutely inviting. We stayed at the pool for two hours, swimming and relaxing. It was quite a surprise to find the boys were so good at swimming. Half the time they were trying to drown us if not splashing us constantly. It was such a great day and we had never felt cooler!

Afterwards we decided to have dinner at our fave restaurant in Ben thanh market, called Pho for the President 2000. Yes former President Clinton ate pho there during his historic visit toVietnam. We were so sick of the food back at the peace house and I also had the biggest craving for noodles and iced coffee. When we got home, once again I didn't have enough time to rest as we had to get ready to go to karaoke that night with the other volunteers as well as the local Vietnamese volunteers.

We had alot of fun at karaoke - drinking, singing and dancing.  Admittedly I hogged the microphone majority of the time.  Later on we had a late night feed of fishballs and fruit drinks at a little eatery by the side of the road. I have always despised the smell and taste of fishballs but those fishballs were so delicious!

Back at the Peace House in the wee hours of the morning we collapsed on our beds exhausted from the long but eventful day we had.