April: New House, and the Slaking of my KFC Craving

Zara and I moved into our new place. It's a small, two-bedroom, three bathroom house, that Zara and I have pretty much destroyed already since we're both quite sloppy and neither of us like to clean - quite an impressive feat, given that we've only been living here a week. Our next step is to hire a cleaning lady so that we can continue being lazy....gotta love the low cost of living here.

The neighborhood is really nice - there's a wide alley leading to our smaller alley. The big alley has tons of street food and a few small stores. It's a really young feeling neighborhood - lots of teenagers hanging out playing cards, and quite a few little toddlers walking around or riding bikes or playing in the street. Very cute. Our landlord lives just around the corner, and has a little bit of English, so if we need anything, we can just pop over and ask.

Our third or fourth day, we decided that we needed some things for our house, so went to Diamond Plaza (the upscale mall near where we live). Zara was excited because she used to work in a department store, and it reminds her of home there, and I was excited because there's a KFC in it (for some bizarre reason - as Adam can verify from our experience in Barcelona, and Robb can verify from my experience in Morocco - I get intense cravings for KFCs when I'm outside of the States, even though I hate it when I'm at home). Anyways, it turns out (and I'd completely forgotten this), that Diamond Plaza is about 80% clothing, 2% KFC, 10% arcade and bowling, 2% housewares, and 6% grocery store. After a few weeks of cajoling, Zara finally caved into going to KFC, and we walked in the door, I'd just picked out what I wanted to order, and Zara promptly decided that we weren't going to eat there (she's a vegetarian). So we left, and went to the grocery store.

The grocery store didn't really have anything on our list (other than booze), but it was so exciting to be surrounded by western products, that we ended up spending 1.3 million dong (about $70) and, while standing in the checkout line, watching our items being scanned, realized we'd gotten nothing on our list (other than booze), and had somehow ended up with 4 air fresheners, shampoo, perfume, band-aids, a toothbrush, a few other random things, and the only edible items....a box of crackers that I'd picked up as an impulse buy as we were standing in line.

We got back home after our grand grocery extravaganza, and as I'm unlocking the padlock on the gate, Zara points out that we'd totally forgotten to eat dinner. So we dump our things and head down the street to find a restaurant. We walk into a restaurant that has cute pictures of ducks all over the walls, and sit down and get handed the menu. Every single item on the menu (with the exception of "soup broth with no meat", "asparagus" and "white rice") had duck meat in it (duck head, duck chest, duck feet, etc). I ordered duck fried rice, and Zara asked for white rice and asparagus, but was not happy about the situation - again....vegetarian). After a few minutes, the waiter came over and told us they couldn't make rice with no duck in it, so we left. After that incident, Zara was more than happy to go to the KFC right down the block.

Zara and I are continuing to go to the orphanage, and I'm getting more used to it there, and feeling more useful. When we got home afterward on Wednesday, Zara pointed out how weird it was. We walked in, and each picked up a baby, then just went on having a conversation like nothing was out of the ordinary. This time when we got there the babies hadn't been fed yet, so we each picked one out and held them while they drank their bottles. I decided, being the mature person that I am, to race everybody else, and I'm proud to announce that my baby (nicknamed "The Philosopher") kicked all the other babies' butts. After that, we stayed and played with the babies for most of the time (I'm also starting to fall in love with the one we've nicknamed "Uncle Fester" - the fat, not-so-attractive baby that Zara loves).

Classes are going well for the most part. I've got three weeks left in one of my classes that I really don't like, and then I can ditch them and pick up a different class. Summer school's coming up, and that will change my schedule a bit. I plan on working a lot of hours, and probably being pretty exhausted, but the money will be excellent.

Off to dinner at a BBQ Garden around the corner. Not entirely sure what that entails, but it sounds delicious....Now a few pictures of the house:

View of the living room/kitchen from the front door:



Our sweet chandelier:



Our tiny kitchen: (still unused)



The top of our sofa, our nooks for displaying art (?) and our statue:



My room: (Somehow I managed to take a picture that shows absolutely nothing. That is the far edge of my bed, my bedside table, and through the curtains is a little balcony)



Zara pointing to my bathroom:

Brief Updates

Mui Ne trip was debaucherous and fun. Don't really have any blog-appropriate details to share, but suffice it to say, it was nice to get away from work for a few days and relax by the beach...

Teaching's still going well. I have a few classes that I'm really disliking, so I'm trying to figure out how I can strategically dump them. I think that once summer school starts, my schedule's going to change, so that'll give me the perfect opportunity to get rid of some of the worse classes. The good classes are still really good though, so that's keeping me enjoying the job. I was talking to another teacher the other day, and he told me about a conversation he'd had with one of the other teachers talking about how, despite complaining about teaching and disliking kids, when you're teaching here, you're guaranteed to legitimately smile or laugh within the first five minutes of your workday around these kids. When I thought about it, I realized it was true. And the more I think about things that way, the more I think about how great this job really is.

Other news...Zara and I found a two-bedroom house in a nice part of town, so we're working on getting the lease signed and moved in now. I'll be sure to post some pictures once we're moved in and starting to get settled. I'm looking forward to getting out of the guest house...it's a bit obnoxious having to ring the bell whenever I'm coming back after 11pm and hope that somebody wakes up to let me in...

Only other update was that I started volunteering at one of the orphanages here. ILA has tons of volunteer opportunities, but this was one of the few ones that doesn't involve teaching English (I really don't want to teach more during my free time). Every Wednesday and Thursday, people from ILA (both teachers and TA's), take a taxi over to the orphanage. When I got there, it was a bit overwhelming. We walked into a room full of about 25 baby's cots, with babies either crying, sleeping, or just lying there. We'd arrived after they'd been fed, so we'd just pick babies up out of their cribs, play with them for a while, then put them back and get a different kid. I also visited the toddler's room, and played with them for a while. After a few hours, we fed the babies, and put them down for naps. It was my first visit, so I wasn't quite ready to go into the room with kids who have disabilities, so I just stayed with the babies and toddlers, but eventually I'd like to start working with some of the other, less fortunate kids. Overall, a very good experience, and I'm glad that ILA is involved in the community as much as it is.

Other than that, Zara and I have found a house and will be moving in tomorrow (I had a slight moment of panic when I thought I'd lost my passport, so I wouldn't
have been able to sign the lease, etc., but just found it a bit ago, so I'm good to go). It's a nice place, on a really nice street and alley, and I'll post some pictures as soon as we get a bit more settled!