Day 32 & 33 / My Final Weekend in Vietnam

Five weeks can go by so fast! I leave in less than forty-eight hours. I am so grateful for the time I have been able to spend here, and for the fact that God has given me total peace about leaving. Five weeks was the right amount of time for this trip, and I know for sure I will be back. It has been fantastic for so many different reasons, one of which is the new perspective I have been able to gain, and the introspection I have been able to do. There will definitely be some good changes in the life of Tatiana when I get back stateside.

Day 32

I spent the morning replying to e-mails and repacking and starting to get ready to leave. After I got sick of that and totally restless I went for a fabulous long walk. It was a little over three miles and included all the rest of the shopping I really wanted to get done. Some of the shop owners here are really lovely to talk to. There was one young lady at a stall who spoke a good amount of English and was overly impressed with my meager Vietnamese, and we had a really nice little chat. I love exploring this city and am probably going to start doing small road trips more often.

After I got back from that adventure I went out for seafood with Elissa, Judy and Kelbin/Phoung. They ordered some more adventurous things than I would have picked, but it was all really yummy! I am going to miss having such amazing street food so readily available.

 That would be stingrey!

After dinner we went down to the Han river and saw the fire breathing dragon bridge and went on walk. I love how colorful and cheerful this city looks at night

Day 33

Elissa brought me to the Vietnamese church again, because she is just the best! The sermon was about love. One of the things he said was it can be hard to define love, but it is easy to identify it. It reminded me of something that happened to one of the girls that was on my team originally and is now in Nepal. There was a girl who did an amazing henna design on her hand because she said Kimberly's eyes showed love.

 It is funny how we think of places having names and those being the only names those places are called by. Turns out a Vietnamese globe has different names than the ones I am used to.

More street food for dinner tonight. After we had our soup Judy and I found an amazing desert place that has fresh fruit salad that they pour sweetened coconut milk over and serve with ice and big, crunchy coconut flakes. I liked it so much I got another one to go to eat with breakfast, and it was less than $1USD. I wish I had found this place on day one! It will be nice for the last two days though :D