Blank

I'm supposed to be writing for my Creative non-fiction class. But ideas won't come. I've tried typing, handwriting, writing in pen, in pencil, in colored pencil! For goodness sakes, this must stop.

But I did come across a beautifully decorated house on Design Sponge (which is my new favorite website).

Check it out . . .

http://www.designspongeonline.com/2010/10/sneak-peek-ma-mamie-hippie.html

Beautiful, right? hmm.

B-A-N-A-N-A-S!

One morning this summer, my teammates and I decided to walk down the street to the indoor market to purchase some fruits and vegetables. Usually we bought street food for meals, but after the twentieth bowl of Pho (beef noodle soup), we needed some variety.

For simple purchases like chopsticks and bowls we never had a problem communicating in broken Vietnamese and hand motions, but buying fresh produce turned out to be complicated.
After much hand-waving, we ended up with a sad bunch of bananas . . . which turned out to be plantains. We tried frying them, but they smelled so bad, that our sweet landlady ran up the stairs, scolding us in Vietnamese and threw them out.
The next morning, we were in the living room lesson planning when our landlady came in with a giant clump of bananas.
Excitement!

Vietnam Days

It's been three months since I left little Bien Hoa, Vietnam, and I still haven't written about it like I have wanted to. So I'm going to begin posting pictures and stories from my summer, just small, enjoyable stories that I have been thinking about lately.

Story number one: Laundry.

I wish i had taken a picture of our sad washing machine; it fought hard for us. After washing our clothes, we hung them on long metal poles that crossed above the courtyard.
Like this.




And while they dried, our landlady cooked . . . directly beneath our laundry. Our clothes always dried with the scent of Vietnamese dinner. Sometimes i miss laundry days at the hotel, even if my clothes dried crunchy and smelled like food.