rain, rain, go away. no seriously, go away.

(photo courtesy of pamela nguyen corey, one of the few students in our program brave enough to bust out her camera in this weather!)

last night we had a big dinner planned with our five côs (female teachers) and the giam doc (director) of the program. this guy is VINA-VIP, a big wig. apparently he worked either as or with an interpreter in the negotiations to normalize relations between the US and VN, and apparently this involved fudging the translations a pinch here and there to make sure that everyone on each side of the table was happy. we were all working toward the same goal, they figured, and they were just making that process a little smoother!

but, i digress (already!). anyway, we students were all a bit stressed as the whole thing was going to be in vietnamese - nothing melts the brain like four glasses of warmish beer and three hours of pretending to understand what's going on around you - and we were expected to introduce ourselves with appropriate deference and, ideally, in a language free of the tonal gaffes that have one asking for "penis juice" when one believes oneself to be asking for "grapefruit juice." i spent the afternoon looking up words and verifying all my tones (i will not make that mistake again) and consequently did not really notice that it was dumping rain outside. it was still raining when we left for the restaurant, which was only 6 or so blocks away, but no taxi would take us. happy and dry in my superfine, kinda-moldy, 20-cent plastic pancho, i was content to walk. but as we turned the corner onto hai ba trung (the infamous two trung sisters street), we realized we were in for more than just frizzy hair and wet sandals.

according to today's paper, it was the "worst flood in 10 years." it was up to our KNEES in some places. there were vietnamese driving on sidewalks, dudes squishing their shoes and socks under their motorbike seats to drive home barefoot, women in sassy sandals driving with their feet tucked under their butts, horns tooting, people swearing, whacky foreigners trekking to dinner with the giam doc of their summer language program... who didn't show cuz it was pissing rain. and flooding.

made sense to me.