Alright, so it has been hard to figure out how to possibly talk about everything that has been happening here. It's been so much, so fast and all so amazing! Here is my attempt to fill you in…
Last weekend, I had the opportunity to join a team of 3 Vietnamese university students compete against 9 other teams in the second round of a game show. Random, right? It's been that kind of month. Honestly, I had almost zero clue what I was getting into, but I pulled myself out of bed at 6:30am anyways.
We were given a set of 6 challenges to complete during the day.
1. Get 15 strangers to do the chicken dance with us in front of the Notre Dame Cathedral
Check!
2. Find a pottery shop (with only 2 bikes for the 4 of us) and throw/paint our own bowls. My artistic skills + instructions in Vietnamese= hilarious.
Check!
3. Decipher from a list of clues what we were expected to eat for lunch and find it.
Delicious Vietnamese noodles, pork and fish sauce? I think yes. Check!
4. To the museum! Present a tour of the history of Southern Vietnam weaving to 4 foreigners.
Can I just say, my team totally rocked it! I beamed from the back like a proud mother. Check!
5. At a random high school, I had to memorize a poem in English, run it over to 2 of my teammates who translated it into Vietnamese and our last teammate wrote it in calligraphy. Just look and see how beautiful it is…
Check!
6. Make kites. As soon as we got the station, it started pouring rain. Did this deter us from making that kite? No way! Umbrellas and parkas went up, and we continued gluing paper and sticks together to make a beautiful masterpiece.
Check!
Finally, we were finished. After waiting a few hours in the rain for the results, it was announced that my team got 2nd place! The top 4 teams go to the final round and have the chance to win the grand prize!! I'm so excited for them to have to chance to compete next weekend. They truly deserve it.
To say that it was a crazy day would be putting it lightly. But I wouldn't ever have expected to end up with 3 new amazing friends and teammates. They welcomed me in without hesitation. While I was riding around all of Ho Chi Minh on the back of a bicycle, I truly could not take it all in. How blessed am I to have been gifted with this insane opportunity to experience so much of Vietnam and its people in such an intimate way?!
At the beginning of this month, I asked G-d to bring people into our lives here because we had so few hours of scheduled 'work'. Well, He completely blew my expectations out of the water, and this is just one example. Can't wait to share more about how He chooses to surprise me throughout my time here 🙂
