Day 67: October 26, 2014

This morning I woke up on the concrete floor of the tent I was sleeping in at 6:30. Unable to go back to sleep, I headed out to the beach and spent the next two hours sleeping in a chair. After waking up again at 8am, I packed my stuff and headed to the bus. The drive back was spent sleeping, and even fresh pancakes at the Happy House (aka rest stop) didn't sound appetizing.

Eventually, though, we made it back to the dorm, as we always do. I finished my environmental science poster before I decided to head outside to do some homework readings. There were soccer matches going on, and my plan was to read and watch soccer as a nice break. A girl from English club came over to talk to me, and then another girl did, which wasn't really a big deal considering that the homework isn't due tomorrow. Then a guy from English club, whose Vietnamese name (Binh)translates as "bottle", came over and started talking. Let's just say that no homework was done for the next four hours. Instead, we watched four soccer games and got to know each other. When we decided we had enough of soccer, he introduced me to the game da cau, which is only played in China, Vietnam, and Laos. When you're playing non-competitively, you stand in a circle and kick one of these to each other. It's funny, because there were two guys playing when I asked him about it. He then told me that we should play, so we just walked over and joined them playing. Soon some other people came over and what started out as two people playing turned into six. At one time during this entire afternoon deal, I was even told that I needed to come to Vietnam to marry a Vietnamese husband and have children with him so I could help increase the height of their country.

I met Yen for supper at six, and since neither of us were very hungry we headed to the bot chien stall to have fried rice. It was my first time getting that from the stall but it was very good with greens, beef, soy sauce, and chili sauce on top. Afterwards, I asked her to walk around to the street vendors with me so she could explain what some of the food was that I wasn't sure about.

At 7:30 I went to a meeting that Binh had invited me to where the students practice their English. There weren't many people there and I had in fact met most of them before, but it was a great time. The theme was animals, and we had to make a skit where the main character was an animal. Our team came up with a boy cat falls in love with a female lion, but the lion wants nothing to do with the cat because they're so different. It might sound silly, but it definitely reminded me of some things I've heard here about village vs. city people. When the meeting was over, Binh invited me to go to the canteen with him where the guitar club was playing. I walked in and was immediately greeted by people saying "Hey Ashley!". Although the songs were in Vietnamese, it was still fun to listen to some very talented students. After about half an hour I had to call it a night so that I could Skype with my parents and finish some homework.