Cafe Sua Da 18 floors up

Our first evening out with a student! I met Linh at a coffee shop on the top of a hotel. It had an amazing view of the city and I got to meet her friend Phu who speaks amazing English despite never having been out of Vietnam. He talks to a lot of Vietnamese Americans online. He even knew about Bolsa! I also got to meet their Australian friend Daryl who will be teaching in Vinh at a private school for an entire year! When we got home the gate was locked so I had to climb over it to get one of the church boys to open it for everyone else.

End of Week 1.

The week ended on a high note. We really did nothing exciting during the week except develop our routines around teaching. As we were not allowed to leave the compound all we really did was sleep, eat and teach. Sunday we were finally allowed to go out after having a really big celebratory breakfast with all the priests. First we got Cafe Sua Da, then stocked up at the market before doing a bit of sight seeing. Unfortunately my camera died. I had no idea we'd be doing touristy things.








This morning we woke up at 5 and boarded a large air conditioned at 5:30. We drove about 2 hours to a remote village for one of the father's first mass in his hometown. It was quite an experience. The ride there we went over a number of very small bridges made with materials that would not be up to code in the US. Once we arrived at the church there was a lot going on...a parade of sorts with priests, nuns and even a band. We fortunately did not have to stay outside. Everyone moved to make way for us like celebrities. We had seats reserved just on the side of the altar with all the nuns.









Afterwards we headed over to father's family house where they had set up a feast for over 1000 people. Can you imagine that? Having to invite everyone to a relatively small home for a meal after the ceremony?! What was even more interesting was the speed at which everyone ate. They sat down shoveled everything in then left, leaving behind a huge amount of trash. Hung started gathering up some of this drink we all liked to bring home. Father Hoang caught on and had the church boys get a huge case of it for us. Some of the band members must have noticed that we also grabbed a few beers because on my way out they stopped me (JUST ME!) and put a huge beer bottle in my hand to take home. On a side note the amount of staring I have to deal with in Vinh actually is not as bad as in Hue.






This week we are only teaching four days. We go to Phung Na Caves on Saturday and Ha Long Bay next weekend!

Getting adjusted.

On Sunday we met the Bishop and hung out at Cua Lo Beach (sp?) where I had chom chom for the first time in a year! and Chao (Vietnamese Porridge) before coming home and meeting before Monday's opening ceremony.



It is Tuesday, day two of classes. I have my last class in a few hours at 3. Things have gotten better since we first got here. After communicating our concerns about the bathroom with the head priest here he arranged to move us into another room in the main compound but they had to do some repairs first...namely installing a/c for us. This morning I used the shower for the first time and I was SO excited to have such good water pressure. I'll post a picture later...It's funny how excited I am over a bathroom that normally would be enough to convince someone otherwise of coming to Vietnam...The shower literally is pvc piping just barely positioned above my height and there were lizards all over the wall this morning.

Also it's been a bit frustrating because FB is blocked. I'm able to use it through Opera but I still can't upload any pictures which is really frustrating! My clasroom is pretty nice except when the power is done and we don't have any fans :( The weather here is so humid...I find myself completely drenched in sweat by the end of each session...but nowhere near as tired as I was last year. The food here is :/. We gave a list to the cook requesting other foods, a lot of them were things we tried in Hue last year.

Last night was really cool because we went to Thong's house for dinner. He shadowed us last year in Hue to help set up the program here and Vinh and it was nice to spend the evening with his family...and eat some of the amazing food they gave us. I filled up on rice, tofu, bamboo and goat and a few mugs of Hanoi beer.






We can't leave the compound for cafe sua da until next week :(

Arrival

So we finally made it to Vinh yesterday at about four in the afternoon after an epic three flights to get here. We flew on Cathay Pacific for 14 hours from LAX to Hong Kong, caught a three hour flight from Hong Kong to Saigon, then got on our final two hour flight from Saigon to Vinh. We were warmly welcomed by a large group of students with flowers and a/c taxi cabs. On our way to the Church which serves as both our living and teaching area we stopped to have coconut milk on the side of the road. After freshening up a bit we went out to dinner.


The living situation this year is not the best. Because of logistics we are not able to stay at the Bishop's residence like in Hue so everything was very last minute here. I have to share a room with Hung and Quan which is fine but our bathroom is awful. I think it is actually meant to be a closet...it reeks there's no ventilation, the toilet isn't flushing, and worst of all there is no drain...yet we have a running shower hose. We're going to have to arrange a schedule to share the bathrooms of other volunteers because I don't think they'd be able to just install a drain over night. Also another thing we'll have to deal with this year are blackouts. Apparently everything here is running off of generators because of city power problems.

Aside from the bathroom situation everything else is going pretty well. The city is very different from Hue, much more urban. This makes sense as the city had to be completely rebuilt after the war. It was completely obliterated, hardly anything original exists. Later today we will go explore the city some and find a hotel with a nice a/c wifi cafe. Right now I'm sweating listening to mass from the Church. Unfortunately it's in Vietnamese so I can't understand anything...but the Church is really beautiful. I'll go around later and take pictures to post on here. The Church is another thing I'll have to get used to because they have mass at 5 am and ring a bunch of bells at 4:30 am. All in all it appears as though this is going to be a radically different experience from last year, but nonetheless hopefully a great one.

UPDATE: We're getting moved to a new bedroom tomorrow with a much much much nicer bathroom. They're installing a/c for us today. Our first meal of the trip: