I've Missed You So Much Pizza

    Here's to our first day in Vietnam. Very different from Thailand, kind of missing where we were very much as I wandered the streets today. We had begun mastering the language, we knew where to eat, we could cross the street without feeling like we were committing suicide. Now all that's gone. So are the banana pancakes for breakfast. Going to be really happy to be back there in about a month. But here's the weekend update!!

• Saturday
• Another day of traveling. Woke up an hour before the alarm went off because I was so stressed out over packing. Ran around like a chicken with it's head cut off till it was time to go. Went out for a rather silly errand: eye-brow waxing. In middle school I sorta resembled this famous female artist named Freida Kahlo because of my facial hair. I made a promise to myself after that issue was resolved: never again. Drexler found out about it and has been making fun of for it since. 
• Left for the airport in a songthaew. Our last ride for a while. Got to the airport fine and then had some pre-flight DQ. That's when some drama started. I made a comment about getting the bigger sized Moo late (they use ice cream instead of ice here which gives it a very different texture) and feeling fat because of it. Donna then started picking on my weight, a pretty sore subject with me. If you sensed a disturbance in the force around midnight on Friday, that was it. 
• The flight was amazing. The seats have pillows, are multicolored and have foot room. Plus, if you go over the weight limit, they usually don't say anything unless it's a lot over the weight limit.  They play music when you enter the plane and when you leave. It was one of the best flights I've been on.
• When we landed in Bangkok airport all those weeks ago it didn't seem like an awe inspiring place. It is. The distance from our landing gate to our departure gate was a good half mile or more away from our departure gate. The airport was set up a bit like a Target: put the stuff you don't need but want on the way to the things you came in for. They sold everything there from alcohol to make up (they had a nicer selection than most department stores) to mango sweet sticky rice. And then some. Would have gone shopping but we were in a rush since we found out that instead of an hour and a half between flights we had a half an hour. 15 minutes of which were already gone. So most of us booked it to the gate. Karen, Deanna and Drexler were the last ones to arrive because they grabbed all the free samples (minus the alcoholic ones). There was a statue on the way there that I snapped a few pictures of.
• Another happy(ish) flight to Vietnam. Except I had to sit by Lilith who dressed herself as a hooker. If my grandma saw the way she was dressed, that would be the first word out of her mouth. She bought some platform high heels that don't have a heel. I will take a creeper picture when I get the chance because they are so outrageous. They look like Lady Gaga shoes as a better description. Kind of like these. Methinks she does not travel often. 

• Watched Wreck it Ralph on the flight over. Definitely a good movie (once you get past the annoying little girl) and I'm getting it once I come back. You can look up the plot yourself and I highly recommend you watch it. It's got a Monsters Inc feel to it. 
• Met up with some Vietnamese people we will be working with while here. They seemed really nice (mainly because of the cookies) and they allowed us to sit in the back seat while the three of them crammed into the front. The ride was pretty scary (as mentioned previously, we almost got side impacted by a bus coming at us head on) and we ended up at the wrong hotel. Then we couldn't find the correct hotel. Some people were enjoying the tour and wanted to keep driving around. I needed a bathroom pronto and felt ready to smack the people who wanted to go around the block one more time. 

• Sunday
• Slept in till 10:30, slept through a phone call an hour earlier and only got out of bed to go downstairs for a book meeting. I failed to mention this meeting to Donna so I had to go up and get her. A couple other bad feels moments happened yesterday between us, one of which was partially my fault. But instead of voicing my feelings, I have stuck to my passive-aggressive Midwestern roots. Because Donna, being from the South, knows what I'm doing and how to respond to it.
• Went to Joma's (this Asian cafe chain Drexler is obsessed with) and discussed our current book The Tale of Kieu which is like The Tales of Huckleberry Fin for Vietnam. It's not actually a book because it's prose poetry. So far this girl got engaged to this guy after one night (Romeo and Juliet anyone??) but her father and brother were kidnapped and tortured before she could tell them. In order to pay for their freedom she sold herself to an older man to be his wife but he was working for a brothel and actually bought her to work there. Very interesting premise so far. 
• Went to the Vietnamese Alcatraz after the coffee house. It was built by the French to contain Vietnamese rebellion leaders and torture them. They played creepy music everywhere you went and had dummies so you could see how people were treated. After the French left it was used to hold POWs during the Vietnam War. This was the prison that John McCain was held in, they even have his uniform there. The American POWs were treated ten times better than the Vietnamese prisoners. 
• I have been to Alcatraz and I think the biggest distinction is how commercial Alcatraz is. You can buy Alcatraz themed merchandise all over San Fransisco while this prison didn't even have postcards with it on them. 
• We went to this Italian restaurant for dinner. Some of us had pizza for the first time in months, mine was half-way gone before most of the others had finished their first piece. I discovered that ham on pizza is delicious. That's a really important thing to learn when you're in Asia. 
• The Drexlers think I'm crazy for wanting to get a hedgehog. You probably feel the same way now. 
• Found my way back to the hotel with help from Niko. I've come to realize he's actually a pretty cool and really sweet guy during the last few weeks. He had noticed I was not in a good mood earlier and asked me why. 

    We have an early day tomorrow and I can't wait to try out the buffet in the morning. I think I need to purchase an alarm clock or something so I can get up on time since I am not waking up to anything right now. Ah well, tomorrow is another day. 

The pictures uploaded themselves in no particular order today. 

Those are some colorful seats.

The women with children cell

One of the most famous pictures in Vietnam. 

Torture devices used on women. Yes, the bottle was used for torture. 

Probably my favorite picture from today. This was a sculpture of some of the Vietnamese prisoners. The girl was in there by accident but I really love how it turned out.

How prisoners spent their days.

The statue from the airport.

This was a French prison and this their favorite way of killing people.