Day 17: September 6, 2014

After waking up rather late at 10:00, I headed out to the ATM and to grab breakfast with Ulysses and Dan. Traveling to the ATM is always an excursion for a few reasons. First, I remind myself that when I withdrawal 2,000,000d at a time I am withdrawing just a little less than a college-educated Vietnamese makes in a month. Second, I find myself a little nervous to be carrying around so much cash. Third, it's always a shock to see whether the ATM will give me 500,000 bills or 50,000 bills. It sucks when you get 500,000 bills because there are very few places that will break them. Street vendors won't accept them and taxi drivers don't really want them. Thankfully we live next to the grocery store, so when I need to buy something I make them give change for 500,000d.

Breakfast this morning was a more traditional Vietnamese banh mi. This is a breakfast sandwich that is French bread served with either a fried egg or meat, soy sauce, cucumbers, herbs, and chili sauce.

I did a little homework today but since this weekend is the Mid-Autumn Festival there was supposed to be activities all weekend. Today's activity was a soccer tournament and I was going to cheer on the 6 Loyola students who decided to form a team. Just as the first game started, however, it started to downpour. The game is now rescheduled for tomorrow at 8am, so we'll see if I actually end up going. Especially considering the fact that during the little bit I watched the soccer ball hit me in the face. Guess I was too close to the sidelines.

Since it was raining, we all basically hung out in the lounge today, playing cards and telling stories. Not a whole lot to tell there. We went out for supper at a Vietnamese-Chinese restaurant. Since it was all Loyola students, and we can't speak either of those languages, Wilson asked them what the three best dishes were. Out came a bowl of noodles with shrimp, a bowl of noodles with pork, and a bowl of noodles and part of a duck. The duck was my favorite so I just stuck to that. The noodles weren't that bad, however, as they were more like ramen noodles. I had a very small amount of those and gave the rest to Cate, who in return let me have her share of duck.

Wilson has organized a trip to Nha Trang next weekend, which is a beach town, so we all paid 750,000d for our bus ticket. While I'm not a big fan of beaches, I am excited to see a different part of Vietnam as well as try my hand at snorkeling and maybe do a little hiking through the jungle. Time will tell what activities we partake in, but only 4 days of classes stand between us and a warm weekend.