Friday and Saturday -- vietnamese lessons, great teacher, bike shopping, bad teacher, music school, so so pizza, greek salad?, and a great time at the pool.

I'll elaborate a bit, and if Sivan will let me upload a few pics from her camera, I might save a couple thousand words.

Thursday and Friday we started private Vietnamese language lessons. I bought a little whiteboard, and my colleague, Lan, who teaches Vietnamese in my school, but is really an English instructor at a nearby university, gave us our first two lessons. She is a fantastic teacher, even though I haven't successfully retained much. (The girls have -- I'm a bit slow). Day 1 -- vowels. Vietnamese has 12 of them. They look like the 5 in English, but 7 of them have little squiggles or are "wearing hats," and several make sounds that I have only uttered when suffering from bouts of constipation. Then we went over the 30 or so dipthongs and tripthongs and the sounds they make. Seems complicated, but actually it is much easier (except for the constipation sounds) than English. Think about it. How many sounds can the letter o make? It even makes a short i sound in women. English is impossible. But all languages are confusing to those who are beginning to learn them. We moved on to the 29 consonants, which are also confusing. "d" sounds like z, and sometimes "g" makes the z sound too. Anyway, we will practice before we start on the hard stuff -- there are 6 distinct tones in Vietnamese. If you say "ma" wrong, you might call someone's mother a horse. Think introductions to a student's parents: "Oh, this must be your horse."

After the lesson, we took a bus to where Lan told us there was a music school which offered guitar lessons. We asked and looked and asked and looked and were directed this way and that and in the end did not find it (until much later). Nearby we walked to a bicycle factory, where they sell bikes wholesale (about $80 for a new bike -- simple, one speed, basket, bike rack -- so the girls can commute to school). We'll probably head back to make our purchases this coming week. While walking to the bike shop, we passed a cinema, and after looking over the bikes went to watch a movie -- assigned seating for a huge theater that was maybe 5% full. The choice was Smurfs or Bad Teacher -- Bad teacher won and I sat through this horrible movie, but I have to admit that it did make me laugh, and the air conditioning was great.

We were still in the area where Lan said there was a music school, so I decided to call her. She lived a couple blocks away and met us and took us to the school -- 1 hour private lesson -- 170,000 dong ($8.50). Classical guitar, which Amali has reluctantly agreed to.

We passed one of the Pepperoni's restaurants -- a chain out of Hong Kong. The pizza was ok -- weird cheeses, but good veggies on top, but the greek salad that sivan ordered was not so great. It was also pricey, so we decided to avoid that place in the future.

The high point of our weekend was a visit to a public pool. Lan told us of pool a bit north of our street, and this afternoon, we set out to find it. It took a while, but we got there and went in. We arrived at 2:50 and luckily discovered that it opened at 3. Interesting thing -- you know how pools have signs that read "shower before entering." To exit the locker room into the pool area, you have to walk through a carwash like curtain of water. We were among the first there, and it seemed quiet and boring at first, but half an hour later, Sivan and Amali were thronged by girls eager to meet them. Perfect. They exchanged facebook ids and we look forward to seeing them again at the pool. It will be great if the girls make Vietnamese friends. Heading out for dinner. I saw a street stand with some kind of shawarma-like meat turning on a spit. Wish us luck.