Beach Vacay!

I officially suck at keeping a blog. The whole point is to keep people updated with your life, but that requires people to update. In my defense, it has been a busy few weeks, including my trip home to Ann Arbor for a long weekend which was a blast! In truth, I was a little worried about the whole reverse-culture shock thing (especially in that I would officially consider myself to be super pretentious), but it was fine. In America, I experienced very little jet lag. It was also a steady stream of seeing people after a long time, eating food I can't get over in the Indochine, and parties. Aside from the fact that I had a minor melt down in H&M due to the insanely high prices (it's actually quite reasonable) compared to Vietnam's fresh-from-the-factory prices, it was a wonderful time and had not a hitch. I still feel super guilty about being away for the holidays, but it was nice to have time with the whole family even in April. An amazingly fun wedding which involved a large amount of Randolph-family dance floor time rounded out my 3-day extravaganza.

I had two really quite nice flights involving empty rows of seats and my own tv; the only glitch came on my way back, when the airline flipped out about my visa expiring on the day I got back to Vietnam. I had gotten my HR people to get me a new visa, but their confirmation email was late, and I didn't have it yet. In the end, they let me board, and I printed out necessary documents in Hong Kong during my layover. Not a problem at all unless you include the fact that once in the visa line at the HCM airport, it took a good hour to get things in order. Don't get me started on their placement of atm. Unlike my USA trip, I was attacked by horrible jet lag once home, resulting in far too much napping which sadly has yet to go away.

I finally have some non-children classes to teach, and I think I might just be able to handle teaching for a while. Unlike the children's classes which are more discipline than anything else, I actually get to teach and at times have smart conversations with adult students. SOO nice. Most of my partnership classes are ending as swell, which is good because I don't think I can handle much more of that. I've now done General English, Confident Teens, and Corporate (my favorite). Starting next week, I get my own pronunciation class and I am quite pleased.

This past weekend it was Victory Day, so we got the weekend off. I went to Mui Ne with some friends, and we had a delightful time. Despite the fact that in Mui Ne (a little beach resort town about 5 hours from Saigon) it was even hotter than in Saigon, it was super fun. And by the way, the heat is insane. like, face-melting-I-feel-like-the-subject-of-a-Dali-painting hot. Shared a room with my friend Hannah, and just to make us really sweat, the air conditioning was broken. Nonetheless, we had a lovely time swimming in the sea and eating amazing food. Its funny how on vacation, all we want to eat is western food. And there was some amazing western food. Since we eat VN food every day here, a legitimate burger is exactly what you want on holiday. Though there was supposed to be a big party on the sand dunes, it was cancelled, so our big party night was slightly less cool than it should have been. But we made do at one of the clubs on the beach, so it was still a lovely time. It's still crazy to me that I live but a bus ride away from a touristy, beach party town. A strange town that is comprised of about 3 miles of one seaside-road. On the upside, you are always next to the ocean.

Can't think of anything else to say. More details later.