Yall have no idea how insane my commute to school is. Riding a bike in this city is so much fun. The one rule is that you always look ahead. The complimentary rule is that you never look behind you. Not while merging, changing lanes or pulling a U-turn. But you can't look back, because in the rightmost lane, it is okay for traffic to travel against the legal flow, and people can park in that lane, too. Stoplights are suggestions at best, with timers counting down until liftoff. And while being honked at home usually makes me shrink into my seat, here, it is the best thing somebody on the road can do for you. It's the way of saying, "I'm here", so you don't do something silly. You have to keep looking ahead, but you can take in information from all sides just by listening.

I also rode my first cyclo today as a passenger. So much fun.


We visited a supermarket today, which is a blast. If you ever decide to travel to Vietnam, don't bring anything except that which you really want to bring. They have real supermarkets in the cities, just like the rest of the world. I bought some hair wax and notebooks for class.

I had my Lego backpack on, and some woman came up, poked the logo and smiled to me, speaking Vietnamese. The teenager following her told me that I was very beautiful, in English. That is pretty common here: if you are pretty, people will tell you.

Language class today - also very fun, but intensely tricky. I'm already scheming about how I could work for some company abroad, maybe start Ecovative's Saigon branch, and learning the language would be really helpful.

So, off to dinner with the local student volunteers, hopefully to grab some phone numbers and start making friends. I love this stuff.