There's no end to the excitement! Today began with a xe-om ride to the big market to meet Lina who bargained for me as I bought fabric for four new tops... 8 metres for $24. Next stop was her tailor's place for measuring etc. They'll be ready next week. After that we went to Big C and had KFC for lunch!... Vietnamese KFC... a piece of original finger-licken-good chicken with a cup of rice and 3 slices of cucumber. I hadn't been grocery shopping for a couple of weeks, so it was good to do some shopping for essentials.
Turns out this week Big C are celebrating their 20th birthday, so we were given tickets in an instant prize draw.. and I had a winning ticket. Lina and I were stoked and busting to find out what I'd won... wait for it... I won 30,000D i.e. $1.50!! and it took the girls ages to work out how to give me my prize. After 10-15 minutes I was ready to forget it, but they came good with the cash :)
I eventually got home about 2-ish wringing wet with sweat to find out when I went to have a shower that the reason the washing machine didn't finish the cycle this morning wasn't because it had broken down again after all. It was because I hadn't turned the pump on this week and the water tank had run dry. Dumb as.
Anyhow, Mr Cuong picked me up at 3 as usual, and I continued getting lessons ready as usual. There was a weather alert that a typhoon was headed our way and it weather was very oppressive. Hot and humid even more than usual. The teenagers were all arriving at about 5 when the rain started. It bucketed down and there was plenty of lightning and high winds. At this stage, most of the kids were still upstairs in the classrooms waiting for their lessons to start and we had the foyer to ourselves.
Nicholas, Sun, Ian and Linh
I shot a video from inside the reception area just as we had a blackout.
Frank, Linh, Ian, Loyal and Ann
There was much excitement as the storm raged and we all watched through the big glass doors.
After a while and it wasn't looking like letting up, classes were cancelled for the evening and we sat around waiting for the rain to ease so we could go home.
Everyone was very light hearted about it all... except for poor old Frank - he got caught in the storm coming to work and his pants were saturated and his shoes and socks, too. So he was paddling around barefoot with wet trousers flapping around his legs.
As for me, I was thrilled to be getting an evening off.. and not only that, the classes that Sun and Frank would have taught tonight are now the lessons that I will have to teach on Saturday night, so they gave me their worksheets etc for those lessons... woowoo... less preparation work for me!
After about an hour, the power came back on, and it eased up enough to make a run for home. Ian gave me a ride on his motorbike. The gutters were overflowing.. it was strange to see neat little piles of lychees like pyramid islands abandoned by the roadside. There was flash flooding everywhere and we had to go the long way home. Even then we rode through several patches of water 20cm deep. I am so grateful I didn't have to walk home... I would have been wading most of the way.
So I was home and dry by 6:30, the power was on, and the fridge full of fresh food! What a blessing. So I had a chat to Katie on skype and here's my blog and I even managed to upload the videos!
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