Independence Day!

This week has felt a little disjointed and hectic for a number of reasons but I'll start with Monday. At our weekly assembly there was a 7th grade "talent show" in place of the typical performances. One boy did magic, a group of three girls did a dance routine, another girl drew a picture, and a boy played "Fur Elise" on the piano. After the performances, the judges gave them each a slip of paper to read aloud that had comments of their performance. I think they will announce the winner next week since they didn't have any big announcement at the end for any of the specific performers. I think the boy who played piano did the best but I'll just have to wait to see how he did. The rest of the day went by as usual, though our schedule was changed, so we had Chemistry instead of history. They also changed the order of classes so after I left for lunch, I had to come back to school for 8th period to have the chemistry class. Usually Monday ends with math in periods 6,7, and 8, so I get to go home and do my homework but with this new schedule, I have to come back on Mondays for just 8th period which is a little annoying..

Tuesday's schedule was essentially the same. There's no math class on Tuesday so the only change we had was in the order of classes. Wednesday has a very different schedule but it was Independence Day on Wednesday so we didn't have school. This year was Vietnam's 70th Anniversary of Independence from Japanese and partial French control in 1945. On September 2nd, 1945 after leading the Viet Minh independence movement in August of 1945, Ho Chi Minh read the Vietnamese Declaration of Independence in Ba Dinh Square. His Declaration of Independence named the nation the "Democratic Republic of Vietnam" and invoked the US Declaration of Independence and the French Revolution's Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. Since 1945, September 2nd has been recognized as National Day and each year they hold a ceremony and parade to commemorate the event. I had planned on going to the city for the celebration but after all my friends had said how crowded and busy it would be, I decided not to go. I also had to start my online math class so I figured it would be better to stay in the Ecopark with my family.

In the morning I woke up and watched the parade on TV. It started with a speech from the president of Vietnam and then a presentation of the service members on the lawn of Ho Chi Minh complex. There were a few floats that led the parade through the 40+ streets of the city that had been blocked off but most of the parade consisted of marching service members from different branches of the Vietnamese military. After I realized this and had seen enough marching soldiers, I decided to get started on my class orientation. The class is online so I had to sign in and go through the website to learn about the location of each section in my class. I had some trouble about halfway through when I had to install a test-taking software. Apparently, the software is not compatible with my tablet and so I asked Dung if they had a laptop in the apartment that I could borrow. I ended up walking to her office in the Ecopark to borrow one from there and I was able to take the short quiz and finish my orientation. When I finished, I walked out of my room to find a mess of pie ingredients strewn about the kitchen table. I guess Dung was very excited when I made an apple pie a week ago and so she got enough ingredients to make four! Anna was mixing the filling and Dung was working on the dough. I help roll one of the dough balls and Anh rolled out the others so that everyone had contributed. We put the dough in the fridge to cool off during lunch time and for lunch, Anna and I made fresh rolls in rice-noodle sheets. They were just herbs and beef rolled up in the rice noodle sheets but eaten with our "bun Bo" (rice noodles with beef, herbs, peanuts, and sweet and sour broth), they were very good. After lunch, we finished making the pies and got around to tasting. The pie was delicious! The crust was very flaky and the filling was good, although we both agreed that she made the best crust and I made the best filling. Next time, we'll split the pie-making in that way. Later in the afternoon I met up with The Anh and his sister! She was visiting with her parents from the city and wanted to meet me since she knows that The Anh and I are good friends. Her (English) name is Crystal and she's only 18; it was nice to finally talk to someone so close to my age. She graduated from high school in the city last year and is applying for a visa in Australia to study in University there. I unfortunately only got to talk to her briefly because we ended up going swimming soon after she arrived

but it was nice to meet her and chat. Unfortunately our swimming got cut short as well. We had walked to the pool in the private villas but headed back early when the sky started to darken. We had pretty good timing too because not five minutes after we got back to the apartment had it started dumping. By dinner, the sky was black and the rain was pounding down on the windows.

It carried on through this morning too and I had to walk with an umbrella to school because the rain was still coming down. It managed to clear up a little during the day though and hasn't rained since the morning. This Saturday the school will celebrate the beginning of the year (though we've been at school for a month now) and our teacher started the planning for that this morning. Consequently, she was unable to teach English and we basically had two free periods to hang out. The Anh and I drew pictures and I helped him plan his design for the classroom. He was asked by our teacher, Ms. Thuy, to decorate the back board with drawings that represent our class so I was brainstorming ideas with him during our free time. We had chemistry during third period and there were a few new concepts that I was able to figure out. In the afternoon I signed back onto my tablet for math but found that Dung had taken the computer I needed for tests back to her office. I spent the next few hours trying to find a solution for the issue because I need a real laptop to be able to take my tests for the class. Dung said that Anh might be able to bring an old computer for me to use and I'm really hoping he'll find one because if I can't take the tests, the class wont count for anything. The good news is that I don't need the computer until September 21st so I have until then to figure something out.

Its nearly dinner time now and after dinner I have to stay up until 11 PM to sign in to my first online calculus class. Thanks for reading and I'll be back for an update on Sunday!