And the adventures continue

Good morning (well for me anyway),

It's almost 10:00 a.m. and I've been up for 5 hours. For all of you who know me well, I would normally choose to be up by 8 or 9. However, this morning my volunteer friends and I chose to get up at 4:45 and drive out to My Son, a Cham religious site for followers of the Hindu religion. It was still dark when we left but we were treated to a nice sunrise and cool (!) weather on the drive out there. If you want more info, Wikipedia "My Son". The temples were built out of bricks without mortar, and scholars are still trying to determine how they were constructed. Unfortunately the largest temple was destroyed when a US bomb hit it in the "American war" after withstanding more than a thousand years of everything else. The temples were built between 400-1400 AD by the Champa Hindu people. This group now lives in the Mekong Delta in the south.

In the past several days I've seen a good quarter of Vietnam from Saigon to DaNang, I taught my first lesson at Duy Tan University, I rode on a motorbike (driven by someone else, with a helmet), I moved to "homebase" in DaNang and I've had several items of clothes made for me in Hoi An, south of DaNang. My volunteer friends, all from Australia, and I are in Hoi An for the weekend. Today I'll be getting a good book and going to the beach. Life is rough.

I'll post additional photos in the next week, including one of me in my new Au Yai (the traditional long dress and pants outfit that I'm having made right now). Hope all is well!

~E