Spring 2015 - Day 34

I did not feel like getting up for my 8 am class at all but it made it worth it when I got an email about scheduling a Disney interview. Yay! I am very excited. 

 

In photojournalism all we did was continue looking at people's photo essays from Japan and our motion blur assignments from China. It wasn't too exciting. 

 

Amber didn't end up going to Hong Kong Disneyland so she gave me back my money that I gave her to buy me pins. Sad, now I really have to go there myself. 

 

After class I blogged and took a nap. Then I went to world mythologies and blogged all through that. 

 

Then I ate lunch. Right at the beginning of lunch I was stopped by Grace, my art professor, apparently it was my groups turn to meet with her to discuss our visual journals. I had no idea that was supposed to be today so I ate quickly and then ran to grab my journals so I could meet her. 

 

My visual journals are not going that well. With all the blogging I do it is really hard to force myself to be creative. I talked to her about my struggles and she told me that she didn't want me to force my creativity, especially because I already have a creative outlet in my writing. She offered up some ideas of how I can turn my writing into a work of art using different languages. I liked a lot of them and it made me feel better about falling behind in that class. 

 

After that I watched Good Morning Vietnam! They were playing it on the loop in our room and it is definitely the right movie to watch right before arriving in Vietnam. 

 

Then I took a nap. I like naps. 

 

Then I went to art class where we did the same collage assignment so she told me to compare Japan and China so that we didn't repeat exactly the same thing. Grace is going to put all of them together and display them on the ship. 

 

In the evening we had re-port. Before pre-port we sat in the piano lounge and I attempted to blog more. Blogging was a struggle, I had serious writers block. There was just too much to say. 

 

Pre-port started off with the staff captain telling us about the types of burns we can get from riding motorcycles. Really bad ones apparently, not that they are different from burns you can get from any other motorcycle. Basically, don't ride motorcycles. Also, the traffic really bad. Like, really, really bad. They don't stop for pedestrians - ever. When you cross the street you just have to go and walk steadily, don't stop in the street and don't run. People will just drive right around you. Traffic accidents kill 30 people a day in the country. Terrifying. 

 

Absolutely terrifying. 

 

We were also told to bow slightly when we greet people and to present items to people with two hands. 

 

The food is different throughout the country. In the north it is less spicy, the central part is spicy, and the south is sweeter. Some things we should definitely eat are Bun Bo Hue, Pho, and Hu Beu Nam Vang. Sure, if you say so. 

 

Logistically we will be starting up the Saigon river at 7:00am. There we will pick up the pilot and some more immigration officers. We have had immigration on board since Hong Kong and the others were coming on to help them finish. It would take about 4 hours to clear the ship but they would be starting as soon as they got on so by the time we got to Ho Chi Minh at noon they should be done. 

The weather is going to be warm, the high is 92. YAY. NO MORE WINTER. 

 

We are going to have a shuttle service from the port to the middle of the city. 

 

Their currency is the dong right now the exchange rate is 1 USD = 21,200 Dong. 

 

We can't drink the water here again. But this time it is worse and we need to be very careful. Not excited about that. 

 

After pre-port I tried to blog more but it just wasn't flowing at all. Struggling so much. My plan is to not get off the ship tomorrow. We won't even be there until noon, I need to blog a lot, and my interview is in the evening. Plus, Vietnam scares the crap out of me safety wise and I am not jumping to get off the ship and deal with it. 

 

I took my malaria meds right before I went to bed on an empty stomach. I definitely wasn't supposed to do that and woke up at 1am with stabbing pains all around my stomach area. It was hard to breathe. I got up and just drank as much water as I could and that helped a lot. But I had really vivid dreams just like I had last time I was on Malerone. They weren't bad dreams or anything, they were just really vivid. Should make for an interesting month.