Day 50

Today my morning changed from the usual, in fact there were no kids coming to my door, no crying in the morning, nothing… after I took my shower and got dressed, I was able to rest a little bit until around 8.30 and then I heard Thach Thao and Phuc. I keep doing what I was doing until a smiley Thach Thao comes to my room and tells me that she was sick last night and spent it all vomiting.

It’s time for their breakfast and Phuc is in a bad mood so I go downstairs to do my role as bad cop/good cop and everything runs smoothly. When Xuan and me are getting ready to leave the house for breakfast, a truck pulls at the door and guess what they’re coming to deliver? All the dinner sets we bought last Saturday. There’s around 20 boxes, each one weighting around 30 kgs, when we go shopping we do it big!

There’s a mistake with box so we go for breakfast at the Saigon Centre so we can go to the store after. During breakfast Xuan and me talk a little bit and we share funny stories, me about my parents, what they taught me other funny stuff, and Xuan about her family and the kids.

At the store they tell us that was a writing mistake and that inside the box everything is ok so we have a look around in the other stores and then Xuan takes me to the nail salon. They have a client so I put my stuff in the back, grab a chair and seat next to the teachers to watch how they do their art. This lady has toenails so big she seams an eagle and I can say without a doubt that’s really ugly. She tries to put them beautiful by painting them in black with white big roses and glitter but is an unsuccessful try, I assure you. It looks awful, not because of the nail art but because everything in this lady is wrong.

When the lady leaves I ask Châu to teach me another flower and I’m doing so well that they all let me try on their nails. I’m happy, I’m not feeling frustrated and I’m getting there, I’m starting to be good at this. Around 1 pm Xuan shows up with lunch and I go eat my steamed rice with pork ribs, lotus flower and roots soup and watermelon for dessert. After lunch I go practice again and then another client comes in and when it’s time to paint her nails she goes to was her hair and me and the girls have a couple of laughs with that because she felt asleep, she started snoring and was always pulling her arm not letting Châu paint the flowers in her nails. Too funny…

Around 4 pm, Xuan comes to pick me up with Phuc and tells me today she wanna go dancing and hearing live music and, of course, I’m down for it! My middle name is Party, or maybe not… but I wanna experience everything I have right in this trip, there’s not many opportunities like this one. We leave Phuc at home and go to the supermarket. When we leave we have so many things that we almost seem one of this…

We head back home, put everything into place and we eat dinner around 6 pm and while the kids have dinner I go to the office prepare all the images we need to go buy the fabrics and to go to the tailor.

It’s time! I put my make up on, my black dress (I’ve been wearing it the all day anyway), fish tail on my hair and there we go. Xuan looks beautiful and I know she was in need of this night out. When we arrive to the place is still a little bit early but we go inside anyway and stay talking a little bit more. This place has lots of flashlights, tables and chairs surround the dance floor and there’s also a stage next to the dance floor. For me, all of this is just surreal but nothing prepared me for what I’ve watched after….

Basically this place is a Vietnamese ballroom dancing place and the average age is over 45. There are amazing characters everywhere you look: the ones learning, the ones who are there every night, the ones who take that as a competition and so on… I can tell you this was one of the best nights of my life, I had never laughed so much with ballroom dancing. There are tango moves mixed with cha cha cha, there are bright sparkling dresses, men with high heeled shoes so they can dance better, all the ladies with high heels, well except me as I didn’t bring any high heels to my Vietnam trip.

dancers

There’s a couple there that, I guess, the old lady is learning and the teacher is a younger guy and while I’m watching them she’s dancing around the dance floor, shaking her shoulders and floating ungraciously in front of him, all of a sudden the guy gets tangled in the middle of other couples but she continues her shoulder shaking and her ungraciously floating until when she turns back and realizes the guy is not after her anymore and her face is priceless… and my laugh too loud that is possible to hear me in Hanoi! =)

What a night, what a night. Xuan is tired of so much dancing so we leave and before heading home we go for a strawberry smoothie near the park. We’re still laughing about what we saw at the ballroom dance place and we’re both in such a good mood. =)

It’s starting to be late so it’s time to go home, take a shower, watch a TV show and sleep until tomorrow…

Night night peeps!

P.S. – tonight lets have Ellie Goulding singing “anything could happen” acoustic… guess why… ehehehe