We've Arrived

Well, the long anticipated day arrived on Sunday (I meant to update earlier, but we have to pay for WIFI at our hotel and I'm cheap like my dad so...)

Here we are on the plane - the girls from Team Lao - Julia, Christa and Elise

I was trying to be artistic here...and trying to distract myself from the landing of the plane.

Nokia welcoming us

Our plane touched down and after 4+ weeks of nomadic living, we're finally in the country that will be home for the next year or so. I say in the country because we're still not quite settled. During language school - which is for the next 3+ weeks - we are staying at a guest house in the city. It's a really nice place and we all have our own rooms. Here's a picture of mine (before I organized everything).

This is part of my bathroom. It's kinda hard to tell from here, but the toilet, shower and sink are all in the same room and there is no distinction or barrier. You just shower right there on the tile and then the water drains down into the corner. It's very interesting and you have to put the water on low pressure or else it shoots right at the door. But, after some strategizing I think I figured out the system. 

This place is called That Luang...It's about a five minute walk from our guest house. We went for a stroll down there one night.  A bunch of guys were playing soccer in the parking lot and the sun was hitting the golden building so beautifully as it was setting for the night.

Cool sunset. Hanoi was so smoggy that it had been a while since we saw a beautiful sunset like this. How refreshing even something so small can be!

Christa and Elise with the sun setting in the background (and some soccer games too)

Our team leader, Corky, asking the price of the roasted chicken. We went to a night market right by That Luang and it was awesome - so many different kinds of food cooked right there and you can buy whatever you want. We ended up getting one of the chickens - the whole thing for about $4!

Here are Christa and Elise trying to figure out what we bought. Corky told us that the things wrapped in banana leaves contained rice with some sort of extra thing (coconut, beans, etc). But when we opened it up, it didn't really look like rice. And when we tasted it, it didn't really taste like rice. We found out later it was actually raw pork that had been soaked in something. Yeah, good thing we went with our instincts and didn't take more than a bite.

Here's a pic of the vendors at the night market. There were probably about 40 different vendors with their umbrellas or pop tents and delicious food beckoning to the hungry consumers.

Well, I will write more later. I really got behind on updating my blog because of the internet access, but I will share more about language school and our language buddies next time.

Phop kan mai

(that means, see you soon) :)