First 24 Hours

I woke up a little bit ago feeling ready to start the day. After lying in bed for a few minutes, I glanced at my watch and noticed it was only 12:45am, on this side of the world anyway, and I’d been asleep for just a few hours. Hmm. Jetlag.

Hopefully my body will start to adjust soon, but in the meantime, here’s a snapshot of our travels and the first 24 hours in Vietnam!

We departed from the Minneapolis airport early on Tuesday, Sept 6 and arrived in Vietnam near midnight on Sept 7^th. Our route took us Minneapolis – Chicago – South Korea – Vietnam.  Sarah and I have been enjoying each other’s companying, and, as one can expect after travelling together for 30 hours straight on little sleep, already have some pretty entertaining stories to reminder each other of in the coming months. One of my favorites so far:

Sarah, on airplane from Korea to Hanoi (after 24 hrs of travel): Sam, have you seen my pillow?

Me: Uhh…you mean the one sitting on your lap?

Sarah looks down, dazed. We both break out laughing.

She also has a Caribou radar. As we’re sitting in the airport in Korea, she grabs my arm and says, “Sam, is that a Caribou cup???” Love this girl – and yes, it was! So lo and behold we had Caribou in South Korea…yay Minnesota.

When we got into Vietnam, we spent the night at our director’s house, woke up early the next morning (again, jetlag), and began our adventures for the day.

First stop? Learn how to take a taxi.

2^nd stop: Get a cell phone.

3^rd  stop: Exchange money. In dom (Vietnamese currency) we’re millionaires!

4^th stop: Buy groceries.

5^th stop: Move into the university guest teacher housing and meet program director and a few staff.

So we’re being initiated into Vietnamese culture and life. We’ve already experienced the, shall we say, “fluid” traffic laws. The humidity here is incredible. (Remember back in MN the day with the highest humidity this summer? Yeah, that’s what it was here today, and that’s normal.) I found a gecko running along my bathroom wall. And sometime soon we’re going to have learn how to cross the street. A bit stretching? Yes (especially the gecko part), but also so exciting. I’m very grateful for the people that have been put around me here and look forward to seeing what the future holds. Oh, and one last note – for the first time in my life, I feel tall!