11/2/2009

This is my second post of the day and tonight was so amazing I truly feel it warrants the second post. Tonight I went to dinner with our RA Ruby and a few of her friends it was amazing. She took us to get hot pots in down town and we talked and hung out and for the first time I felt so fully immersed in the culture. We talked about movies and we shared traditions and superstitions and beliefs. In Vietnam they have all these odd things that they believe are lucky and unlucky. Like pregnant woman are bad luck for business men and using chopsticks that are uneven lengths is bad luck and if you write down the numbers of a crashed car and use them to get a lotto ticket you will win the lotto. They also put different animal body parts in wine for your health and they eat live squids. We just ate and talked and ate more. We ate with successful Vietnamese people that were our age and eager to talk about everything from movies to parental expectations. The two guys we were with were both engineers (which makes them cooler) and they had traveled all over Asia. One of the guys had even been to Russia and they told the best stories and I can't even get over how much fun we had. We went to west lake and had ice cream and I saw parts of the city I had never seen before. It was just the most amazing feeling just being young and exploring Hanoi, the world was our oyster and you better believe that we were living in the now and living well. I just wanted to share that with all of you.

PS sorry I never post pictures...