Photoless Post

It's typhooning outside. 'Nuff said for the lack of pictures. Camera or not, I'm settling into my temporary Vietnamese life very nicely, most of the time. If nothing else, this experience will teach me patience as well the ability to roll with the punches. I thought I was relatively good at that before, but this is like the XGames of punch rolling.

Nothing is ever to be as expected and logic is the farthest thing from most situations. Needless to say, life is interesting in Vietnam! It takes about 3x the amount of time to get something done as one would expect. I thought it was bad in NYC with the public transportation but the N train pretty much equates to having a teleporter in Vietnam.

It took me about an hour to get a package at the post office the other day. I didn't happen to have my ID on me and even though I had picked up my slip at the university, they didn't seem to believe I was who I was. This was most likely the only package received from the US in a very long time, and I'm about 1 of 3 white people in Da Lat at any given time. C'mon people, just give me my Halloween goodies! They ended up calling the school, making me go up and get my slip signed and then finally relinquished the goods. Not for nothing, I get a lot of walking in here!

Today I had 2 classes. I only teach 6 hours a week and all of those hours were today, Monday, the first day of the week. They apparently think we Americans need alot of downtime. I walk into my 7am class and attempt to write on the board. This chalk board was glossy, but not white board glossy, black board glossy. Needless to say, my lesson had to be spur of the moment revamped becuase of lack of chalking ability. TIV, people, TIV (this is vietnam!). I realized today how truly integral chalkboard ability is here, they comprehend much better when I can write things down as well as speak them. Miss Bria's words were coming way to fast for class AVK32D early this morning. Oh well kids, this is a speaking class. Or you could just tilt your heads in confusion - ok, lets go with that.

Until the typhoon is over...