Woke up at 6:00 to a birthday email from my delightful little sister and her husband. Unfortunately, I've been battling a mild case of Uncle Ho's Revenge since yesterday, and this morning it was slightly worse, so I decided not to go to work, since the bathroom there is funky and lacking in toilet paper. The director was very understanding. He said this is usual in the first two weeks, and he had been there and done that.
Shortly after that, we got a message from Skype that we had a voicemail. It was from the Pereiras, wishing me a happy birthday. We had a great conversation with them, then got on with our day.
O. worked on her lesson plan all morning while I lay low, then in the afternoon, since I was feeling much better, we went to see a few apartments. The last one was shown to us by the agent who had found us the place we had wanted to rent, and after showing us a very nice old house (but not as nice as the first one), he told us that the landlord of the house we originally wanted was willing to work with us again!
Within moments we had reached at tentative deal, and it looks like we will get the house we wanted after all! Of course, nothing's done until it's done, so we're keeping our fingers crossed.
On the way back from looking at the last apartment, we got lost in a maze of alleys, finally emerging in an intensely crowded, narrow street that seemed to be one big market. Foolishly, we had left our cameras back at the hotel, so we couldn't document the amazing variety of delicious looking foodstuffs: flattened roasted chickens, huge chunks of juicy roasted pork, roasted ducks, every variety of vegetable and fruit, even apples (green and red) and peaches. It dwarfed the market we posted pictures from. We will definitely go back to stock our kitchen.
For dinner, we splurged on a local favorite called Green Tangerine, French/Vietnamese fusion in a beautifully restored French Colonial villa built in 1928. Lovely setting. The food was quite good. O. had a fruit gazpacho and salmon, I had duck roasted with Vietnamese spices. Overall, however, we thought it was overpriced and saw no compelling reason to return.
All in all, a pretty good birthday.
1 comment:
You called HIS bluff!!!! Fingers crossed.
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