Thai's birthday lunch

Mai invited John and Melissa, Toni and I to lunch for a party to celebrate Thai's birthday...

Not only was it his birthday, he was also the chef!  We sat down to a delicious feast that he had been preparing for two days!

These snails are from ponds and riverbeds and rice paddies... wherever there is clean fresh water.

The meat is removed chopped up and mixed with other ingredients then re-inserted into the shells with the leaf to make it easy to pull the filling back out... clever, eh... and quite delicious.. . another first for the other Aussies!

 

  

The fish cutlets are crumbed and deep fried and taste just as good as they look.  They called the sushi by another name, but whatever it's called, it's always good. Also on the menu were sticky-rice fritters, spring rolls, hot chips, coleslaw and a variety of dipping sauces. So much delicious food!

This is Hà. She is a contestant in the spelling bee debating competition that I am judging tonight. Five of the 6 finalists are students I know so it will be exciting to see who comes out on top!

As we left I had to get a photo of me with Mai. How petite she is (even 8 months pregnant) !!

John and Melissa, Toni, Mai, me and Hà

Coffee with Sáng, Trung and Trung

This morning Sáng picked me up and took me out for coffee. Trung came too, and we picked up another Trung along the way. We enjoyed a very pleasant time chatting in this comfortable cafe...

 

Me with Sáng                        two Trungs

A lovely way to spend the morning.

Crescent Moon and a Star

For the past few weeks I have been getting up at 5.15am to go for a walk to try to get fit and and beat the heat. The first bit is slowly working, but it's still too hot!

Anyway, this morning I woke up before 5 and was amazed to see this crescent moon with a bright star

I tried googling it, but got conflicting opinions as to whether the 'star' is actually Venus or Jupiter... but either way I was pretty excited!



New Toni

We have a new housemate - Toni, from Wollongong, Australia.  She flew in from HCM City yesterday morning, ready for a six month stint at VAIE. She chose the top room... we're hoping the worst of summer is over because it gets incredibly hot up there... But it's big and airy and quite lovely with the doors and windows open - and there's a bathroom as well.  She spent the best part of the day cleaning out the broken old furniture and re-arranging  and cleaning it and it should be quite pleasant. The hard bed was a bit of an eye-opener, though!

She came to work with me at 5 and sat in on my beginners' class, which is always a lot of fun... so it was a good introduction to language teaching. She is a qualified teacher, but this languge teaching is quite different from normal classroom teaching but I'm sure she'll have no trouble adapting. 

We stopped off for Bún Chả on the way home. And of course, she agreed that it is simply fabulous food!

This morning I took her with me to the church class. It was packed... we had at least 40 students, including one guy from China!  There was plenty of lively fun and discussion as usual and I was delighted to have Toni share the teaching.

After the class a bunch of us went again to Sunflower Cafe to chat. Time flies by as conversation doesn't stop. It's a beaut way to get to know newcomers.

Going around the table clockwise is Xuân, Trung, Diep, ? ,  Linh, Thai, Trung, Sáng, Trung,

Toni, Linh, Kien, Đạt, Thảo, and Nguyet

Thảo offered to help Toni buy a bicycle if she wants one and to go shopping with her... That's by far the best way to get around... go with a local!

The boys dropped us off at Big C where Toni bought pillows, doona, towels, ... even an ironing board!! and of course, bánh mì for lunch.

Yep, she's in the swing of things already... and it's only day 2!

Fruit Tea

Woo-oo! Saturday night free!  After I had dinner with Will and Emma I walked home and had a shower... the rain has stopped, so it's very hot and humid again. But my early lesson tomorrow was cancelled, so I planned to sleep in!  My friend Ba has a bit of free time from studying, having just finished more exams, so he came over and picked me up at 8.  We went to the hotel/hostel where her is now living and studying and I met some of his friends. They are all studying English, so it was easy to talk with them. Ba shares a large room with three others and their classrooms are on the next floor. They work very hard for the jobs they will be offered as navigators depend on their level of English, for only English is spoken on the bridge on board ships.  I was too busy chatting to remember to pull out my camera.

After a while the others went to watch the gold medal soccer match between Brazil and whoever. I can't believe I'm missing an Olympic Games. It's televised here on a couple of channels, but of course there is no mention of any Australians... and I didn't see any of either the swimming or the diving, a little bit of gymnastics... every time I turned to that channel they were televising weightlifting, table-tennis or 'experts' sprooking on about highlights they didn't show!!  AARRGHH

Not to worry! Ba and I went downtown to a cafe and had Chè Hoa Quả - literally 'fruits tea'... How good does this look??

I have no idea what half the ingredients are, but they're all yummy!  It's called tea because underneath the heap it's swimming in icy orange tea.   Ba took a photo of me writing dowm the name of it, because I'd forget otherwise.

 So of course, I took one of him!

At about 9.30 I got a text from Will pleading with me to take his morning classes so he could have tomorrow off. I know he and Emma were having farewell drinks at Julie's Bar tonight and planning to hit Hanoi one last time tomorrow arvo... and I hadn't planned anything fabulous. So I agreed... but Will now owes me BIG TIME!



Goodbye Emma

All too soon it's Emma's last day.  I ducked into her final class and took a photo for her. The TA is Snowy, an absolute darling...

Since I had my camera out, I couldn't resist taking pics of my Kitty class... aren't they gorgeous?

These are the 3-5 year olds that often start in tears in the first lesson, but soon realise it's fun!

Then it was time... all the formalities were completed and everyone that was there gathered for a staff photo

Frank, Will, Jo, Emma, Loyal and Sun in the back row; Linh, Angelia, Snowy and Lotus in front. 

Linh, Emma and Sun... all putting on a brave face...

After final hugs, Will, Emma and I went across to Megan's for one last dinner and a cold beer. It always seems so unreal when you get to this piont. Emma's busting to see her family but of course that excitement is tempered by having to let go af all the friends and lifestyle here in Hải Phòng.  A last photo with Megan, and we said our goodbyes.

She is such a vibrant, bubbly person I know Emma will always leave a trail of friends wherever she goes... for now it's back to university in England to finish her Teaching Degree, but I don't imagine she'll stay put. I expect she will do a lot more travelling yet... at 22 she has her whole life ahead of her, and knowing Emma, she won't waste a minute of it!

Another Treasure

I woke up this morning all blocked up with a cold and feeling pretty ordinary. I was looking forward to going with Đạt to visit Lan (finally!!) this morning, but had to scrap that idea... she certainly doesn't need me spreading germs around! I also had to cancel my Vietnamese lesson with Xuân and Will so I could rest.

But dear Xuân came around as soon as he finished classes this morning and went to the market for me... I had run out of fresh food. He came back with cucumbers and tomatoes, watermelon, apples and bananas and fresh bánh mì. Wonderful! Then, even though he had other arrangements, he took the time to cook me some cháo hành (rice porridge) because he said I needed to eat some onion and you can't eat onion by itself, so the rice and chicken made perfect partners for the onion!

Chef Xuân...

The cháo needed to cook for an hour or so and after he got it all sorted Xuân gave me instructions on how to finish it off and he left, making me promise to call him if I needed anything else.  Of course, it was delicious... perfect comfort food! I've decided I'll definitely make it again and add this dish to my repertoire.

Another one of my treasures...