Shadow Puppets on the Wall

August 19: It all began with a bill slipped under our door the second day of coming to Vietnam. Multiple days Carolyn and I thought we should take it to get interpreted but we always seemed to forget.

September 1: I woke up and Skyped with my parents. All was well in our apartment then. Later that afternoon we received an announcement. We could not interpret it then but we understood once we tried to ring our doorbell and it did not ring. At first we thought…oh it’s just another power outage. It should be back on by 3 o’clock but that did not happen. When returned from teaching there was still no power. Carolyn broke out her trusty headlights and we sat in the kitchen writing Haikus, eating Oreoes and milk and making shadow puppets on the wall. We also had a fun time interpreting the papers that were slid under the door. Not that it was much of a secret anymore, but they both said our power would be turned off. Now it’s not what you may think. We are very responsible girls and would have paid the power bill, had it been ours. The bill was dated the 16^th….we weren’t even here yet!

September 2: Still no power. And to make things better…it was a holiday, assuring us we would go at least one more day without it. We decided to get out of the house and explore a market we were told about. While walking along we began seeing broken pottery in the trash. Because it was so beautiful, Carolyn and I thought it would be fun to collect pieces and eventually make an art project out of them. The rest of the day, we talked and tried to interpret conversations, ate an expensive restaurant, waited for staff members to come by and sort out the problem, went to yogurt when they did not show up and returned again to darkness. On this night we decided to go old school and play a few games of MASH.

September 3: 8 o’clock in the morning two guys came by from school and told us they would call the office and get things sorted out and that we should have power that day. We decided not to sit around and wait so we went to our coffee place and to school to use the internet. Just a side note…due to multiple mornings of going to the same coffee place, we no longer have to order. The woman knows what we want and starts making it when she sees us coming! They are the cutest couple and we are excited to get to know them more. Anyway, the day progressed like any other day. However, this day we were hopeful that when we returned we would have power but we did not. Luckily, we had charged our computers at school and we had enough power to watch a couple episodes of The Office. The night ended with me getting ready for bed and finding a gigantic cockroach on my window. Carolyn (being the awesome roommate she is) helped me shoo it out the window. I spent that night with the windows shut and no AC but at least I was cockroach free!

September 4: I am writing this and sending it to you from our apartment! We came back from school today with a bathroom light on and the doorbell ringing!