VN Sunrise

I've been studying hard for the last week or so even though Conrad is down, he has to work a lot anyway, plus lots of hospital scans etc for Nhac. We've had some tasty table-bbq's and beers now though. I've moved to a small apartment with a balcony overlooking the canal on a backstreet with tons of little street cafe's, real Saigon basically. Just what I wanted. It's this place . Scottish/Vietnamese Buddy! The class is intense for sure. I've been getting in for about 0645 to study for an hour before it starts which is just about enough to keep up, so I'll do a bit more as it's much more enjoyable when not struggling to keep up. A few people dropped out today at the start of the 3rd week (of five) and I can see why, but I've been enjoying it and things are starting to come together, although I've never been good at memorising stuff. My pronunciation and listening seems reasonable for the amount of time I've been studying, and I had...

Had a day off yesterday, bottle of wine and kwik-e-mart food in the hotel, reading this: Days without End   which was pretty cool, bit like Blood Meridian by Carmac Macarthey. So don't read it if you don't like nice people encountering horrible people. Was walking back to the hotel and a minibus was broken down at a junction with about 5 skinny little teenage lads (passengers) trying to push it, not succeeding, looking exhausted and a bit helpless with all the cars and bikes behind beeping at them. So to their amazement I joined in, all well dressed with my cowboy sun hat on, a muscular vietnamese guy did too, and we gave it 1 2 3 and managed to bump start it, running as fast as we could down the road in the middle of Saigon. They were so happy, all of them grinning and shouting thankyou and waving as they piled back into the bus and drove off in a big cloud of smoke. I love that sort of stuff, wish I'd got a vid of it. Now I'm working in my office which is dark, c...

First week at school has been really intense, but also just what I wanted. Learning Vietnamese in a group of 10 fun people with good teachers, in a bustling little university in the middle of Saigon. The class is 8 Koreans, age 22 to 60, 2 Brits including me, and one Japanese guy age 60. Really good mix and I'm glad I've done this. Learning Asian style is also fun, lots of group chanting words to learn them, and the alpabet, and the tones, then doing it individually, then more learning. Then having very ...  hesitant .... conversations in Vietnamese with the teacher or class buddy. The teachers use less and less English too, now they've taught us the word for page, and the numbers, and 'listen and repeat' etc, they use those in Vietnamese, so you have to be totally focussed all the time. Draining but challenging and fun, although I did wonder on day 2 if I'd be able to keep up. Teachers say I'm doing good though and they like my tones, which are  hard for ...