Friday was class then out and about in the evening with Em Hoang.
Saturday morning, I had breakfast with em Thao, the girl who took me to the supermarket earlier in the week.
Restaurant near the medical school with a great view of the street traffic below: Glass noodle soup with chicken + iced tea = 20,000 D
Then we went to Ao Dong, a market near the medical school. It's cheaper than Ben Thanh, and bigger with 3 levels. I was looking for some fabrics and clothes, but there are so many stalls, it quickly got very overwhelming. I'll go back next week again with em Thao and take some pics, but it's just crazy incredible how many stalls there are and how many things they have on display. I bought a new black messenger bag (fake Prada, whaaaat!) for 386,000 D = $20; probably overpriced but I really needed a new one. Okay, I am not going shopping again without someone else, because my bargaining skills are laughable. I just get nervous and sweaty and overwhelmed by the language barrier and the amount of math I have to do in my head and then I just get tired and really want the product and so just say OK. It really must be a learned art, because I am failing at bargaining 101 that's fo sho!
Saturday afternoon, I studied some Vietnamese with Cau Giang (Chu Dung's nephew), then was able to video chat with mom, and catch up on some tv shows.
Sunday morning I went with a group of the medical students to tour the Reunification/Independence Palace. For some reason, they like to do things really early in the morning, I was picked up at 7:15 am. The group got together a bit before 8 am, but there were already at least 5 bus loads of people in the Palace grounds.
It was a beautiful Palace, and much of the furniture, artwork, displays are the original from 1975 - basically like a time capsule of the 1970s, and full of history and culture.
I took a ton of pictures and spend the last hour labeling, editing, and uploading...so too tired to write up a post, so I'll put the pics here for now and write a big thing tomorrow.
New pictures posted
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