i have been working allot and i feel like i have nothing to show for it except a lack of social life. i went to a party last night. it was a going away thing for a girl i work with but i barely know. i have been working at VUS for three months now and i hardly know anyones name. i haven't felt so awkward in a social setting since high school. i found myself listening to peoples conversations and stories and it made me realize i haven't actually talked to anyone in saigon in weeks. when my friend pat was here was the first face to face conversation i have had with anyone in months. i talk to my students, and a little bit to the ta's in my classes but that's just exchanging social pleasantries or comparing cultural differences. being at a party and surrounded by people who are all friends i realized i know nothing about any of these people and they know nothing about me. i haven't told anyone about the things that happened to me last night, or last week. no one knows about the drunken xe om drivers, the flat tires in district four, the late night rides across the suspension bridge and getting lost in the rural areas and rice paddies surrounding saigon. for the first time since i've been here i felt lonely. what was i doing here in this room full of strangers, in this foreign country where i cant speak the language or understand the culture. this feeling of loneliness turned into panic as i looked around the room wondering if i could even remember how to have a conversation. have i become such a hermit that i have finally forgotten how to interact with others. i took the last sip of my drink and went into the kitchen to make another one. i saw a guy from seattle that i have met before and i shook his hand and opened my mouth and before i knew it words were coming out.

cheap, fast, quiet and available; the best that we can achieve

wearing badges is not enough in days like these

im working seven days a week now, well its been that way for the last three weeks actually. on the weekdays i work at a preschool for an hour and a half in the afternoon. on the weekends i work at a private language school in the mornings and the evenings. and i just picked up an extra class a another language school on thursday evenings. it may sound sound like allot of work but its only about twenty hours. which surprisingly here is almost full time and more than enough to live on. somedays it does feel exhausting though, every day going in and dealing with seven different groups of kids. on my way into the preschool the other day i stopped for a coffee on the side of the road and was taking a picture of this tree growing out of the wall when i noticed this person sleeping on there cart. i almost didn't notice the sidewalk napper, and it made me wonder what he had been doing that made him so exhausted.

on tuesday i went for a bike ride with my friend sasha around district two. its a strange world out there across the canal. as you can see from this photo its quite close to downtown saigon, but it is very rural and in some areas totally desalit. the area along the canal appears to have once a been a booming little neighborhood but now its rows and rows torn down houses, heaps of bricks and the occasional woman selling fruit. i guess that the area is getting ready for a major wave of construction to come in and build high rise apartment buildings like in district seen but with a better view of downtown. you now what they say, there's a slow train coming.

my friend pat is in town from korea. he is here to visit his girlfriend sonha whom he met in seoul but lives here in saigon. i got to hangout with them a couple nights last week. we went out for delisious sushi one night and the next night they substituted in for paul and ana (who just moved home) on our weekly pub trivia game. we did alright somewhere in the middle of the group for points. its hard to live up to the win that my team of carmen, sasha, ana, paul, and i got one week. taking home the top prize of a bottle of rum was huge for us.

after trivia pat, sunha and i went to one of the bia hoi's on de tham street. we sat outside drinking beer and watching the craziness of the backpacker district at night. i don't know when we left but it was quite late, and i felt awful the next day at work while reading to the preschoolers the story of bambi and trying to explain why the animals fall in love and why the forest has to burn. these are complex questions and i cant explain them to preschoolers in english let alone vietnamese. there are evolutionary reasons for us to feel love for a partner and it helps to create a safe and nurturing environment for raising young. as for the burning of the forest they almost tricked me with that one into going on a long diatribe about the benefits of periodic burns for replenishing carbon in the soil. sometimes i get frustrated when kids ask me a question that i want to answer but i cant pair down my vocabulary to make them understand. its really nice to talk to someone here who is an old friend.

remember kids, say no to drugs