Farewell gift for Emma

It seems like everyone is leaving!! This weekend Emma will go back to England to her family and friends having won the hearts of all and sundry here in Hải Phòng. I have no doubt she's had the experience of a lifetime and she will be greatly missed.

Tonight she was presented with a gift from the teaching staff at VAIE... a new handbag to replace the tired old friend she has been carting around SE Asia for the last six months, which has been the subject of much comment as it has become more and more battered...

And here it is!  Da-daa!

Of course, it was an opportunity for group photos...

Will, Sun, Jo, me, beautiful Emma, Snowy, Ann and Lotus

Yes, Emma will be greatly missed!

Dinner with Will and Khánh

Oh no! Khánh's going away for at least a month... he has an internship with a Korean construction company in Quảng Ninh province on the other side of Hạ Long city and he leaves on Thursday. And Will is leaving too! He's going home to Ireland earlier than expected to attend his mate's wedding in September, and he won't be coming back to complete his contract.... which means Khánh will still be away when he goes. So tonight we went out to dinner one last time... my goodness, that was a hard sentence to type. How very sad it can be when life moves on.

Anyway, enough with the maudlin stuff. Khánh took us to this delightful little teahouse style restaurant in the city centre called Nam Giao. It's all dark stained carved timber and the atmosphere is so oriental old world it's fabulous.

We went upstairs past this nook...

and into the main dining room... the one with tables and chairs. There's another on on the other side where you sit on the floor if you prefer. There were people in there, but we had this room to ourselves.

Behind Khánh in this next photo you can see the balcony overlooking the street.

It was still raining (has been for days now) and you can see the raindrops caught in the flash!

For dinner we had claypot pork, rice, morning glory with garlic, and clam soup... typical Vietnamese fare and absolutely delicious.  How gorgeous is the chinaware!

When he gets back Khánh will teach me how to cook this... especially the pork. It is scrumptious!

So we had a lovely time reminiscing and laughing over our adventures in Hải Phòng and wondering what the future will bring. Maybe one day we meet in Ireland and Will can show us around... or Australia... Three people from totally different backgrounds from different corners of the world and different generations even, but such lovely friends. Isn't life full of treasures!

 Will and Khánh - two of my treasures.

Movie night

I went to the movies last night!  After finishing work at 5 and trudging home, I got a text from Will telling me they were going to see Batman - Dark Knight Rises. So I phoned Mr Cường and got him to talke me to Parksons where I met up with Will and Emma and three other teachers - Ingrid, Cathy and Katherine. It had been one of those really hot days here and it was uncomfortably hot on the entertainment level, too... where the food court and the games rooms are. I grabbed some dinner and the others (who'd already eaten at BKK) went into the bowling alley and played a game while we waited for the movie to start.

When Mr Cường dropped me off, he asked me if I wanted to be picked up and I explained (mostly in sign language...) that I didn't know when the movie would finish, so maybe around 9 o'clock I might call him. Well, there we were, engrossed in a three hour long movie and my phone began to ring! How embarassing! And do you think I could find it in the bottom of my bag in the dark?? It didn't occur to me to turn it off because I get so few calls... usually people here send text messages. Beyond embarassing!  Bless his heart, it was Mr Cường  checking if I needed a ride... All I could do was send him a text (in English) and hope he could find someone to translate it.

Other than that, the movie was great. I enjoyed it more than I expected to. I love going to the movies here... it's so Birch, Carroll and Coyle. A touch of home. And I had no trouble catching a taxi home at 10.30pm.

It rained all night, but this morning at 5.15am when my alarm went off to wake me up to go walking, the rain had eased to a light drizzle, so I had no excuse!  When I got back home again at 6.30 the rain began again in earnest and it has been pouring all day. I expect there is plenty of localised flooding around here... several roads will be blocked off by now. It will be interesting trying to get to work... I may be wading through water ankle deep (and deeper)!

Family farewell for Emma

Six months are just about up and Emma is flying home to England in a few days. She has been a much loved teacher here with her bright, bubbly personality and infectious enthusiasm. I know the teenagers  especially will miss her tremendously. Tonight Gene and Becki cooked up a roast beef, beans and smashed potatoes for dinner. On the way home from my late afternoon class I stopped off at the market and bought some fruit for a fruit salad for dessert and made it just as dinner was being served.

We laughed our way through dinner as we recounted some of the highlights of the past few months... and there are so many when you include stories from Emma, Will, Gene, Becki and me!  Since we'll all be going our separate ways in the next few months, maybe we should plan for a reunion in ten years' time...

Becki had to duck off around seven to teach a class, but we were still sitting at the table when she returned a couple of hours later. We were enjoying her home-made Kaluah.

 Will and Emma  

Don't you love the colour of my new top? Mr Cường said it was "Number one!" when he picked me up. I bought it in Hà Nội last month but I haven't worn it before because it's sleeveless. Tonight I could, because I was going to be with just Westerners, and they don't feel compelled to grab my arms and exclaim how enormous they are...

We had a lovely night. These gorgeous people have been like a family over the past year so it will be hard to see Emma go... then Will... then Becki. They will all return home by the end of September, then Gene will relocate to Thailand in November and in December it will be my turn to go home. Ex-pats are such a transient lot.

Now I've been to Metro

There is a huge bulk warehouse style supermarket here called Metro. The Wednesday girls here all shop there, because they have a better butchery section than anywhere else and a wide variety of goods. But I've never been until today!  Becki and Gene are cooking roast beef for a farewell dinner for Emma tomorrow night and they invited me to join them in a shopping expedition to Metro. It's on the other side of the city from here, so it seems a fair hike to get there. Our taxi driver was pretty stoked to get the 2 way trip + waiting time.

Huge

  

  

I found the seafood section fascinating because I didn't even recognise any of the fish varieties on offer.

All I had on my shopping list were AA batteries for my clock and cream for tomorrow night's dessert. But I managed to find more goodies to buy... including a block of Gouda cheese and some Revlon hair colour - yeaa! 

So now I can say I've been to Metro.

It's Bailey's birthday today!

3rd August... it's Bailey's Birthday!!  In order to catch her before she went to school, I needed to call her on skype at 5.15am our time.  But lately I have been getting up then to go for a walk and Khánh has been coming with me, so he got up even earlier than usual to get here in time to sing Happy Birthday to Bailey. She's 6 years old today...

 She wouldn't keep still!

Nor would she just give me a pretty smile!!

All ready for school with Jordan

 It's strange to realise it's winter at home when it's so hot here. Last night when I was talking to Katie at 1am her time (she was working on a Uni assignment that was due) it was only 4 degrees in Coffs!!  Gotta love skype - not only do I get to video call my darlings, I can take photos of them, too!

        

Perfect Day at Pearl River Hotel

This morning I was all ready to go to teach Vinh's class at 7am only to find out that it was cancelled for today. I had no classes at VAIE either, so unexpectedly I had a free day! I wrote a few emails and chatted to Katie... some dramas at home began to resolve themselves. My gorgeous mother is in hospital having suffered a stroke as well as gall stones, an infection and shingles!!!  The poor darling is 92 years old and it is very distressing to be so far away from home when she is not well. But my sister, Sue, is doing a wonderful job of looking after her and Katie visits her with my letters and flowers etc. I just have to sit tight and trust God to watch over her.

Anyway, after such an early start to the day, by 9am it felt like I'd done all the jobs waiting for me and I decided that today would be a perfect opportunity to finally get to go for a swim!!! There's a big hotel not far from here called Pearl River and Will has been talking about going swimming there in the lap of luxury for months, but I've never been. So I sent him and Khánh a text, to see if they wanted to join me. Will was probably still asleep, for he didn't reply till later, but Khánh was free so off we went...

What can I say? We had the best day!  It is such a buzz to be surrounded by beautiful things and pretend to be one of the rich crowd... and we had the pool all to ourselves all morning!

The pool is on the roof at the third floor so it looks out over the city well above street level.

And it was just as perfect in as it looks... not too warm, either.

We swam for ages - two laps then a chat in the shade under these palm trees, then a couple more laps... Khánh, like many young people here, didn't learn to swim till he was at Uni. It is compulsary here for all Uni students to learn to swim 100m. He was taught to swim freestyle keeping his head out of the water. When he saw me swimming, he wanted to learn how to swim 'like a Westerner', so for the rest of the day he practiced and practiced as we fine tuned his breathing technique.

After a few hours we got out and had a rest on the day beds in the shade...

You can see the skyline behind Khánh... blue skies, gorgeous day...

And still not a soul in sight. Since I had the camera out, we started mucking around taking photos... The action sequence shots are hysterical - but they don't translate to a blog too well, so here are a couple of highlights...

Nah, you don't get to see any action shots of me... one of me on the sunbed is as much as I'm prepared to post!  By then we were hungry, so we ordered some lunch... 

I know,  I know....

As we were waiting for our food to digest a little before going back in the water some more swimmers arrived (... like, Hello!...), a group of men and a Chinese family. But there weren't many and we still had our end of the pool to ourselves.  Then the weather changed and it began to rain... and the rain turned into a tropical thunderstorm! Needless to say we got out of the water when the lightning began!  Khánh put my camera out of the rain into his locker, so it wasn't on hand to photograph the storm. We sat under an awning and watched it. So much rain! The two little Chinese boys didn't get out of the water, they were having so much fun.

But it was just a passing storm and we were soon swimming again and it wasn't long before we had the pool to ourselves. Khánh was still practicing his new stroke and breathing and I showed him how to do turns... we weren't so successful mastering floating though... It's always pretty funny trying to teach someone how to float and today was no exception.  But we swam and we swam. (Did I mention how much I've been missing being able to just go for a swim...?). You can see that Khánh's persistence paid off and he nailed the new breathing technique:

Eventually it was time to go home, so reluctantly we got out of the water for the last time. The shower rooms are fully equipped and lovely except that they are not air-conditioned, nor are there any fans, so it was disappointing to get out of the shower into a room so hot you just start to sweat. However, the waiting area in Reception was lovely.

It was 5.30 when we left, so of course after all that exercise we were hungry! So we stopped off for cháo ngan and cháo tôm...

  

  What an absolutely wonderful day!