A quiet day
01/12/2009
Today was a relatively quiet day. I was treated to a motorbike ride to the English Department, where I saw Ms. H's office and retrieved a few books from the shipment I sent here prior to my arrival. It was exciting to open the boxes because western books are prohibitive in cost here. Ms. Q found Tom Sawyer in one of the boxes and said that she had read it in Vietnamese. It would be interesting to compare the translation and the original.
After doing some more laundry, reading, and taking a nap during the heat of the day (a custom I rather like), I took a walk about the campus, which seems quite busy. Some basketball hoops have appeared in a couple places on campus recently, and seem to be quite popular with the young men. Students are taking exams before Tet and then will be going home for the holiday. After the students leave for their break, I will work with some of the faculty, but during the Tet holiday I think this is going to be a very quiet place.
After walking through campus I headed for the street pictured above. I wanted to see if I could conduct a transaction without Mallory's assistance, and am pleased to report success! The woman who took my money had a calculator and showed me how much I owed her. I also wanted to buy a jug of water from a shop across the street from my dormitory, but there is a road project underway so I decided to try again tomorrow.
Tomorrow I hope to meet one of the volunteer teachers, who has been away traveling with her mother, but now it's time for dinner--tonight I'm having rice noodles in a chicken broth!
