First Impressions

I left Vancouver at 3:55 a.m. on June,24th and flew for 13 hours until I arrived at Hong Kong.  From Hong Kong I flew another 2 and a half hours until I reached Ho Chi Minh City or Saigon as it used to be called.  There was a little bit of craziness on arrival because neither my Mother nor the person who hired me at the school had bothered to mention that I would need $50 USD in order to get my working visa.  After much confusion I found a bank machine that would accept my Canadian debit card and all was well.  Did you know that Vietnamese money is called dong?  Anyway $50 USD equals a million dong, I found it all a little confusing but was much relieved when everything got sorted out.  I was picked up by a lovely Korean woman named Saemi who took me to the school where Valerie works.  The drive to the school was fantastic we drove past all these great sights.  The electrical wires here are insane they are bundled together in huge strands that look like something out of the matrix. The river we drove over was full of boats that people live on, it was so pretty. The school is actually a series of store fronts in the bottom of an apartment building, they are moving this August into a more traditional school-like building. This year was the inaugural year for the school and they only had 280 students. I met all of Valerie's fellow teachers and it went by in a jet-lagged blur.    I met my boss who looked at me and said "I expected someone physically quite different" I have a lot of dance stuff on my resume so I guess he was expecting a lithe dancer-type.  Thats ok I wasn't expecting to be employed by someone who looks like a garden gnome.  It looks as though I will be teaching kindergarten and I will only have 7 students.  I may be staying a little bit longer than intended (by maybe 5 days) which will be fine.  They are not paying me as much as I was quoted which sucks but it is still MUCH better money than chapters. I can't wait to get out and take some pictures. Last night we went out for dinner with some of the teachers from the school to celebrate (it was their last day of work). We had all kinds of lovely dishes, after eating we went to a place called Fanny's which serves gourmet ice cream, YUM! The ice cream place was right across the road from a spot called the Drunken Duck.  I wasn't really excited until I got here and I have gotten really excited.  The culture is much more gentle than Egypt and the people are very kind and polite.  I look forward to exploring this wonderful place.  Tomorrow we may be going to Hoi An or Halong Bay, either spot sounds lovely.

The Book that changed my diet

As many of you know I have been a vegetarian now for nearly two months.  I was inspired to make the change in my diet after reading Skinny Bitch.  The book actually suggests veganism which I am working towards.  I think the thing I value most about this book is it's focus on ingredients and it's explanations as to why certain foods are horrid (e.g. aspartame turns into formaldehyde in your body).  Since reading the book I have become much more careful about reading labels.  However I have made the mistake now several times of assuming something is vegan and then reading the label only to discover the ingredients include milk and egg products. 

New blogs

www.nomibnia.wordpress.com

and

www.nominia.wordpress.com


I really only update when I travel or so something interesting...so not that often.

Moving Day

I started using blogger back in 2001 because at the time it was a neat new gadget to play with. Now it is no longer keeping up with what I want. So I am working on creating new blog(s) with wordpress...stay tuned for links...

Old friends are the best friends

Jazz came back. Amber stole him from Allan's drive-way. This is an old picture of Jazz, he doesn't look like this anymore. His coat is kind of ratty and his eyes are all weepy. I'm doing my best to fix him up. I can't believe how much I have missed him. He follows me everywhere I go and spends almost all of his time curled up on my bed. My little old man is home at last.

In case you didn't know.

I'm famous.

(In Wawa).

A loooooooong time ago

When I was little I had a great friend her name was Melli and she lived next door to us in Gizo. We had so many fantastic adventures together. If nothing else I am grateful to facebook for putting us back in touch. This was Melli, her Uncle, and I at the beach when we were about 7 years old. We were both really short so we looked closer to 4 than 7, ha ha ha.

The Rock Hyrax

I have been, for the most part, uploading these in sequence. However for this post I am uploading a bunch of pictures of the rock hyrax from all over the place because we would come across this funny little creature in the strangest areas. There are two varieties the rock hyrax and the tree hyrax. We saw tons of rock hyraxes sitting atop large boulders in the Serengeti so when we saw this little guy in a tree at a rest stop we assumed it was a tree hyrax...not so according to Prospa it is another rock hyrax, in a tree.

Monkey

The vervet monkey is sometimes called the turquoise monkey. I couldn't figure out why at first and then I read a bit of the guide book that said something along the lines of "they become particularly colourful when agitated. Huh...

Then we came across these little monkeys sitting by the roadside. Take a good look at the last picture uploaded and you will see why they are sometimes called the turquoise monkey.

If it smells like phunk it must be us!

I would argue that the success of any trip depends a very great deal on who your traveling partners are. Valerie and I were really lucky. Emily and Kelly were so much fun! We enjoyed our time with them. Their sense of humor and adventure made the trip that extra bit better. There was a span of about 4 days when we couldn't bathe so we didn't smell very good. No one harped about it. We did make fun of one another but that almost goes without saying. I want cool tats on my feet like Emily. The video posted above is of poor Kelly, he falls asleep in any kind of moving vehicle, this is him sleeping and his head bouncing around.

Lion in a tree

We saw two animals on our safari that were wearing radio collars. This lion had a huge leather collar on, I'm not sure if you can tell from these pictures though. I wish blogger would let me post bigger photos.

Hello Creepy

This is the secretary bird, and one of the creepiest looking birds we came across. It isn't really clear in this picture but the area around the birds eyes is bright red. Then they have this fan of black feathers that stick out around it's head. This bird is a hunter, as we stopped to view this pair they destroyed another bird's nest and ate her eggs.

Black Death

The cape buffalo also know as the black death. This animal is a member of the "Big Five" which is the top 5 most dangerous animals in Africa, the list includes; lions, leopards, elephants, rhinos, and the cape buffalo. Looking at them you wouldn't think they were so very scary, all they seem to do is stand around and chew their cud. Apparently they are are notoriously unpredictable and capable of inflicting massive damage with their horns.

Safari Part 7

Christmas morning. I probably took more pictures of this group of elephants than of any other group of animals. It was amazing.