January 4th (Week 3 Vietnam)

Happy New Year! Blessings everyone for 2016. 
Very few Vietnamese recognized Christmas so it was business as usual in the streets with people going to work and kids going to school on Christmas Day and throughout the week. 
Chinese New Year, or TET, will be a different story. TET starts in February and pretty much everything will be shut down for at least three days. Last week we had our first almost full week of teaching with New Year’s Day off on Friday. 
This is our weekly schedule.
Monday

• 9:00am meet at Waterman’s apartment to discuss and plan upcoming week
• 11:30am go for lunch or when the meeting ends
• 5:00pm team of 5 goes to  Detech college to teach conversational English 6:00pm to 8:00pm.
• Detech is on Mondays, Wednesdays and Friday evenings. Check out the video of the crazy rush hour traffic. Mopeds ride on the sidewalk. Detech

Tuesday - Friday

• 7:15am everyone goes to NT University to teach conversational English 8:00am to 11:00am
• 1:00pm meet at Waterman’s to review lesson and debrief. Repeat Wed, Thurs, Fri.

Saturday is our day off but we have an opportunity to visit a drug rehab and an orphanage on these days. Some of the team went this week and we may go next week.

This past Saturday we played tourist and went in to Old Hanoi. We went to the Ho Chi Min Mausoleum which was very somber. The line up was at least 1/2km long and we went early to avoid the rush. We watched a Biography of Ho Chi Min and can see why the people of Vietnam loved him.

We then took a cab to one of the indoor markets which was massive and packed full of everything you could imagine.

On Sunday we played some games with some kids in front of our apartment. We took out the parachute and played duck, duck, goose.

At 2:00pm we went to church in Old Hanoi and went to an awesome pancake house after for crepes and ice cream - sorry no photos, the crepe was way too good!

Our new favourite lunch is bun cha. It consists a bowl of soup; with some charcoal cooked meat, usually pork belly and meatballs; a plate of cooked rice noodles and a big bowl of salad including coriander, mint and basil. The idea is you put some noodles and salad in the soup and eat a mouthful of everything combined. The mint and basil add an interesting but tasty twist. It's surprisingly filling and costs around 30,000 vietnamese dong which is about $1.20 Canadian. Deep fried spring rolls are also available for 5,000VDN each (20c).

Bun Cha

I thought I was ordering a bun and I got this. It tasted as good as it looks. And I survived! 

Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum. No photos past this point.

Playing parachute with the local kids

The Chợ Đồng Xuân Market

A tourist