Made it!

So I've made it safe and sound. I slept the entire way on both flights (11 hours from Seattle to Seoul, and 5 hours from there to Saigon) thanks to a sleeping pill from mom (thanks, Mom!) and got in around 10.30pm. After dealing with my visa (a smooth process, I was able to get it right from the airport) and getting my luggage, it was about 11.30. The school sent a teacher (Lewis from Scotland) to pick me up at the airport and he helped me get a cab to the hotel where I'm staying for at least the first week (and probably until I find a house to move into). We dropped off my luggage, then went to satisfy my craving for a beer at a bar around the corner. We met up with ten or so teachers from the school there, and they were all really cool...it made me look forward to starting teaching and meeting more. They said that the Center that I'm teaching at has about 100 teachers, and if they're anything like the people I met, it's gonna be totally awesome!

It's difficult not knowing the language - I feel bad walking in somewhere and asking something for English, but what can you do?...... I still have delusions of learning Vietnamese, but it's pretty difficult, and from what I've heard from the other teachers, nobody understands them anyways when they try to speak it. But I think it's still worth a try (at least to get down the basics of it).

As for first impressions of the place.......busy, busy, busy! So much traffic, and I don't know how people do it, but they somehow have a system worked out where people can go as fast as they want, in whichever lane they please, and not get into an accident. It's crazy trying to cross streets as there is never a break in the traffic, but Lewis advised me that the best way is to just close your eyes and walk at a steady pace. It's worked so far (for the two times that I crossed the street during my walk around the area this morning), but I'm still trying to limit how often I cross - hopefully everything that I need in the next few days will be on the same side of the street as my hotel....

Anyways, I'm off to do more exploring and hopefully avoid the traffic while doing so.....I'd love to hear from people, so please please please send me emails!