every morning i can't believe i'm really in vietnam

Day One:
We arrived at the Hanoi airport around 10 am after about twenty hours of travel. Nervously gripping our passports, we survived customs to be greeted by about twenty of our students and the headmistress of the school. They welcomed us with flowers and took us to eat pho bo (a Hanoi specialty - beef noodle soup with lime and chile) at a restaurant near our school. We toured the school and got settled into our hotel.

Day Two:
The same group of students met us at our hotel at 7 am, where a bus picked us up for the tour of Hanoi. First we braved the crowds and the heat at the Ho Chi MInh mausoleum. In two single file lines, we walked around a well-manicured museum campus until it was our turn to enter the building and silently pass by the preserved body of Bac Ho (Uncle Ho). According to the students, most Hanoians will visit Bac Ho once a year. They don't want him to get lonely. This is also a first stop when people from the countryside visit Hanoi.

On the the Van Mieu (Temple of Literature), the first university in Vietnam. This place was built a thousand years ago! Now it mainly serves as a memorial to Confucius and the great teachers of Vietnam. Finally, we visited the oldest pagoda in Vietnam and ate lunch at a lakeside restaurant (the first of many, many seafood feasts our weekend would hold).

Day Three:
As a way to thank us for coming to teach this month, our school arranged for us to take an overnight trip to one of the most beautiful spots in Vietnam -Ha Long Bay. The bus arrived to pick us up at 5 am. After about three hours on the road (and stopping at those cute little tourist bus stops where you know your tour guide gets a cut of the profit for bringing you there) we stepped onto a luxurious boat for our trip through the bay. This is our team on the boat. Back row - Chris, Adam, and Susan. Front Row - Marie, Mike, Dani, Nikki, and Jenny. They are such a diverse and interesting crew!There are 1969 little mountains like these in Ha Long Bay, supposedly caused by a vocano how ever many gazillions of years ago. The bay leads to the China-Vietnam border. Some people groups live on houseboats in the water.

We made a couple of stops during our boating expedition - first to an underground grotto carved out by water and adorned with stalagmites and stalactites. Climbing down into and through the grotto led to a mountain path with beautiful views.And we swam.

We spent the night at Cat Ba island, where our vegetarians had to deal with liver and intestines (or tofu imitations of?) in their vegetable dishes.

Day Four:
This time, we road a "speed boat" (that made most of us nearly sick) to the bus that took us back to Hanoi. And today, our fifth full day in Hanoi, we are lesson planning like mad. Classes begin tomorrow.

ps- sorry about how the pictures and text aligned on this post - i'll try to make it prettier next time.