-^-for posterity-^-

someone said that when march came around it would feel like someone was cranking up the thermostat. they were right. every day it feels like it’s getting hotter. every day i sweat a bit more in class and every day our dog’s tongue hangs a bit lower.

there is a large trade fair going on here, in long xuyen. it’s quite an event and combines popular vietnamese music with all the latest consumable goods. consumable goods, sounds like home. stands stretch as far as the eye can see and everyone’s selling everything. the stands are all very modern and sleek. there are huge companies that we all would know and love, like honda and dell computers. there are also small, vietnamese based companies. everything from fish sauce to laptops.

large balloons hang tethered to the edges of the fairgrounds. our students took us. we paid, walked through a turnstile and were left sweating and gawking.

we first stopped at the chips shop. we sampled all of the latest varieties of shrimp chips, garlic chips, general sea-food flavored chips and regular old spicy chips. they were quite bland. they sat on plates in the sun and a smallish man with a large hat tried to explain to us, in english, why his chips were the best. his vocabulary was limited so he kept saying, “this potato is good! this is good! this potato is shrimp! you like shrimp?” we stood silently and nodded.

we next stopped at the pen shop. there were at least fifteen girls employed. they all stood shoulder to shoulder behind large buckets of pens and were very happy to answer our questions. “oh, yes, this pen writes very well. do you like blue? maybe red.” it was eventful. one girl explained that if we bought ten pens we would be given a large, white balloon with a rose in the middle. i didn’t know what i would do with that many pens and didn’t have any use for a large, white balloon with a rose in the middle so i passed on the offer.

our next stop was at the noodle stand. we were looking for some noodles that were not made from rice to cook at home. maybe we could fashion us up some spaghetti. we didn’t find any and had quite a difficult time explaining.

the fair is gargantuan. the fair is colorful. the fair is always moving and we need to go back at night to watch all of our favorite vietnamese pop stars perform.

we returned through the front gates and headed home with our loyal flock of students. the sun had beaten us to a pulp and our shirts were clinging to our backs. i never though i’d see such a sight in this country.