First was a trip to Thai Nguyen. It's been a long time since I've been back (and longer for Nancy), so we hopped on the bus Saturday morning to visit a couple of our friends/former students. Aside from the usual "trolling," it was a smooth trip. "Trolling" is what we call it when the bus leaves the station and sloooowly pokes along the road looking for additional passengers to fill the empty seats - and the aisle, and any laps that look like they have room. We trolled almost all the way to the airport, but we had good seats this time so it wasn't bad from where we sat.
We visited with our friends, had lunch at a seafood restaurant, and marveled at the big lobster-like critter in the tank that you could order for $100 US per kilogram. And we were absolutely amazed to see a 4-story shopping center, complete with escalators, standing where the old, open-air central market had been.
Our friend and Nancy have been quite close over the years and she spent most of the day lobbying Nancy to move back up to Thai Nguyen to hang out, practice English, play with her kids, etc. (She has cute kids, but it didn't work.)
In the old days, Nancy taught our friend to bake and she's gotten pretty good at it. But she's been busy with work and family and hasn't had much time for baking. So, after helping her assemble an apple pie and sticking it in the oven, we headed out to catch one of the last buses back to Hanoi.
The following weekend was the big "Miss IIR" contest. IIR is the old name for our school - The Institute for International Relations. (The name was recently changed to The Diplomacy Institute of Vietnam.). The field had been narrowed from the original 25 contestants to 11 and Saturday night was the big competition. It was quite an event, but also quite long. I didn't stick around for all four hours, but I heard that a girl in one of Josh's freshman classes took first place.
It looks like weekends will stay full for a while. On Saturday we're going with the rest of the VTF team to Ha Long Bay to treat our spring fever and the following weekend we're in Beijing for the VTF/CTF team leader summit.
