kind of boring stories

This is part of my class of 13 year olds girls. There are only three boys in the class and they are all very shy(and one of whom cried when the girls laughed at his haircut). The girls are smart, but talkative and giggly, and usually thwart my wrath by giving me gifts. They have presented me with fruit, paper flowers, and a small container of paper stars. They love Miley Cyrus and they cheer when I can say or write ANY Vietnamese word.

Song of the Day

Unbeknownst to each other, Erica and I both had a song of the day last night. Her's was "Give us Clean Hands," sung by Kutless. And Mine was "Before the Throne," sung by Chris Rice. Isn't that interesting? We both just announced this to each other and made the other listen to our song. Weird. I think mine is way better. You can all pity Erica for having to live with me later.

I don't think there's really a good story behind why this is the song for the day. Just one of those days when I especially needed a reminder. Before the throne.

Before the throne of G0d above
I have a strong and perfect plea
A great High Priest
whose name is Love
Who ever lives and pleads for me

My name is graven on His hands
My name is written on His heart
I know
that while in Heaven, He stands
No tongue can bid me thence depart

When Satan tempts me to despair

and tells me of my guilt within

Upward I look and see Him there,

Who made an end of all my sin

Because the sinless Sav*or died

my sinful soul is counted free

For G0d the Just is satisfied

to look on Him and pardon me

To look on Him and pardon me

Behold Him there, the risen Lamb

my perfect spotless righteousness

The great unchangeable I Am

the King of glory and of grace

One with Himself I cannot die

My soul is purchased by His blood

My life is hid with Chr*st on high

With Chr*st my Sav*or and my G0d

Let's review November. Can't believe it's over

There's still lots of traffic. Always. There's still lots of pollution. It seems more evident though now because I believe we've entered the dry season, so there's less rain to clear the air and keep away the dust. It is SMOGGY. Well, actually this picture was just taken at dusk... Erica and I took motorbike taxis to a soccer game, got lost, and missed the game completely. We did go to the after-parties though, and we learned some more about the cultural responses to being toasted. Though I still have questions.

Phuong, a friend who has been my TA a couple of times, invited us to the soccer game. We might not be friends anymore though because I've been telling her for a week that I would bring these pictures to her and I still haven't done it.

Jannene and Janell, friends from fellowship, came out to district six to hang out with us before Jannene headed out to America. Then to Australia, or South Africa, or wherever the wind blows.

I don't have a good caption for this picture. It's not even a very good picture.

We took them for fruit juice at our fruit juice place. I finally learned how to order the drink that I ordered on accident one time and was never able to duplicate. It's delicious.

They sell all kinds of snacks at the bus station. This one is supposed to be sweet, though it's not as tasty as it looks. Makes for a pretty picture though.

I think the Vietnamese actually have a word for sitting on the street talking and drinking. I don't know what the word is. Sometimes they yell hello and this time, I took a picture of them while we were walking by. They liked it.

Early in November, the Christmas decorations went up. They are ridiculous. I thought it was going to be hard to find them and now I feel silly for packing dollar store candy cane socks and barely making weight at the airport. I could have bought an entire Santa outfit here!

There is nothing that can't be carried on a motorbike. I have seen miraculous things being stacked and carried: eggs, glass bottles, large glass windows, huge bags of rice, buckets of slop, hundereds of plastic chairs, and in this case, a dozen metal stools.

We had a Thanksgiving meal at Fellowship last week. It was....soooo... gooood....

There a lot of families there. I really want my family to be like some of theirs. A lot of them have adopted children, work with orphanages and schools, and just seem to live exciting lives.

I discovered the black and white button on Erica's camera by accident.

Our friend Andrea Hamilton is in HCMC singing at the Park Hyatt in District One. I had no idea that it was so nice (and so expensive)! It was fun listening to her sing, and I felt so cool when she talked to us after (and during) singing.

November 20th is Teachers' Day in Vietnam. That night there was a celebration, which we didn't udnerstnad because it was all in Vietnamese. There was singing and awards, I think. Our school VATC broke some record having to do with a large greeting card. Here it is, decorated with thousands of tiny paper lotus flowers, and I even helped make a bunch!

No one really explained what it was to us, so we had no idea that there would be hundreds of teachers there. Fortunately we arrived in time and I made the decision not to wear jeans, and we were pinned with a lotus flower and ushered to nice seats. It also cost me 2,000vnd to use the bathroom. The things they assume we know...

This woman was cutting up the meat in a shop next to our apartment. She has a huge cleaver that I covet. They thought it was funny that I wanted to take their picture.

This man is sometimes at the shop where we have coffee. We think he is the great grandfather of that boy. The boy will play games with me from a distance, but when I hold out my arms, he shrinks away. Doesn't want to come to me.

Erica and I borrowed a card to the local Metro (The Sam's club of Vietnam). We then purchased a lot of toilet paper and some soap. We couldn't take out bags into the little shop in the way home, so Erica held everything when I went inside to buy milk.

In the last week or so, they've been cleaning out the sewer system, or at least that's what I observed. They actually sent a man down there to fill up buckets and send them up. He came up later and he was just wearing a pair of shorts. Nasty.

They sell a lot of balloons, especially in the really touristy areas of District one. And I don't know why because I never see foreigners carrying balloons.

This is just a picture of corn. I thought it was a cool picture. Cool picture? Yes. Good corn? Nooo.

Well that was kind of a low note to end on. So I would like to announce the start of my December. Tonight I used a public toilet for the first time! I walked up and started to go in and the man stopped me, motioning for me to take my shoes off. Then I went. And it was only 1,000vnd, which is NOTHING. However, I feel like they should take your money before you go, because after you've gone, it's done. But I guess they know what they're doing. Either way, it was a very pleasant experience, and I would do it again.

Quest for feathers: The sequence

I've been looking for feathers for Thanksgiving. So we could have Indians. I know there are chickens everywhere, but these feathers were hard to find.




















And then we found a guy at a construction sight with a circular saw and he sawed it right in half

Aaaand then we saw a lady on the street selling the short ones. But we have no regrets.

maybe now we're friends...

There is a roadside stand where Erica and I sometimes get something to drink. The woman who works there is very sweet and sometimes we exchange a few poorly pronounced words in Vietnamese. Well, actually, she is soft spoken, and doesn't make any mistakes that I am aware of, so the mispronounced words might be a little one-sided.

One night while Erica was teaching, I went to have tea and the woman's daughter was there. The girl (I think her name is Hung, or something like that) brought over her English notebook to show me. She didn't speak to me in English, and looked confused when I tried Veitnamese, but I thought that we shared an unspoken friendship.

Every day when we walk past, the woman (usually wearing a huge floppy hat for the sun) waves and flashes an infectious smile in our direction. Sometimes Em (prefix for someone younger) Hung is there and I wave enthusiastically at her. On almost every occasion, she refuses to even look up at me. Once, she looked up and acted like she had never seen me. Another time, I ran up waving and saying her name and those around laughed when she ran off giggling and shy. I think these stories make me sound like a creep, but I've SEEN her eyes light up when we walk up, and I've seen her smile when I walk away, even if she ignored me when I tried to talk with her.

Tonight, Em Hung was inside and I saw her and waved. She smiled and acted shy. So I pulled out Erica's camera and took a picture of her. Her first reaction was this:

She ran back inside and I saw her pull out a comb and comb her hair. Then she peeked out again.

Slowly, she made her way outside, smiling the whole way.

Here she is next to her mother. She giggled the whole time. See! I knew she liked me...

When she was finally outside and not standing next to her mother, she acted like she had been waiting her entire life for this modeling opportunity.

I have the feeling that she'll still be shy the next time i wave, but I enjoyed our (lengthy) photo shoot. We'd like to get to know her mother more too. Baby Steps.

continued story time

My classes all went really well today, even my class of 6-year olds, which I was dreading. I can't tell you how excited I am about that. What a relief! They still crawled all over me, offering me a piece of candy, tattling to me in Vietnamese (futile), showing me the sentance they wrote, wanting me to get the gum out of their clothes... But I'm learning that it's not impossible; I really can be their teacher.

I feel like I did little but yell at them to be quiet last Saturday, and I even resorted to banging on the white board to get their attention. But when I walked in the classroom this morning, I was greeted by huge grins and shouts of, "Hello Teacher!" and I was dumbfounded. Could they possibly have forgotten how much I yelled at them (or maybe they just weren't listening..)? They immdeiately began to tug at my clothes to show off pictures they had drawn or just to smile at me! That made me want to love them so much better today.

I tolerated much more noise today and smiled. I encouraged abundantly and smiled some more. I took up some kind of pokemon cards, and I smiled sadly. I removed a "desk" that they broke from the room, and I smiled. And I sang the hokey pokey and smiled until my face hurt. And class went so much more smoothly today. Who would've thought that a smile would make such a difference (They probably teach that in 'teaching 6-year olds 101.' But I never took that class)? The pryr probably didn't hurt either.