Sea Olympics and Vietnam Day 3

Yesterday was Sea Olympics, and the Red Sea won.  I am not the Red Sea… I’m the Caribbean.  Opening games were Saturday night, and it was when each team brought their banner in and did their cheer.  On Sunday, I went to breakfast and then went to sea feud for a little before crab soccer.  Our team did so good but ended up coming in 4th… and it was such a sucky game to end on.  It went into overtime and the Adriatic sea beat us on such a sucky goal.  We had the ball and went to clear it but a Adriatic sea guy was there and kicked it right back in.  It sucked but our team did awesome.  At lunch time we were in 4th, and then it all went down hill from there.  My event was “Dean White Says”, which is Simon Says.  And I came in first in the first heat!  Which meant that I was in the finals.  And in the finals, I came in 3rd and got our team points!  So at least I contributed a little bit.  Dinner last night was AMAZING!  It was a bbq!  With hamburgers, ribs (which were amazing), potato salad, corn on the cob and lots of fruit.  It was the best dinner yet.  Then everyone… almost everyone… got into the pool. 
I did not.  Do you know how many diseases were probably spread?!  Haha.  This one kid on my team was like.. “ew, I am not getting in, its like a cest pool in there.”  Which is sooo true.

Ok so let me get back to Vietnam since I haven’t finished that yet. 
My third day was spent with Erica, Ryan, and Megan.  We went to the War Museum.  The museum didn’t have so many artifacts but instead, lots of pictures.  There were pictures of everything.  Actually, I lied.  It did have artifacts.  It had a plane and tank and helicopter all out in the front yard of it, and then inside it had a bunch of bombs and gun shells and all that stuff.  But there were more pictures than artifacts.  Some pictures were very gruesome.  There were pictures of guys holding Vietcong heads, all the birth deformities from Agent Orange, napalm burns, and destruction of everything.  There was one section of the museum that I thought was very interesting, and it was photographers from the Vietnam War and their pictures displayed.  A lot of the pictures there were shown in newspapers during the wartime, and the one photographer’s collection was in TIME magazine during the war.  There was also a section there that was all about the protestors of the war.  And this section… uh… I guess I got upset in?  I don’t know how to explain how I felt in that section of the museum.  I guess what it came down to was that I felt like the protestors were… mean?  I don’t know, I can’t explain it.  I guess what I’m trying to say is that they weren’t just protesting the war but they were protesting and disrespecting the soldiers and that was what made me upset.  I mean, protest the war all you want, but don’t hate on the guys that are over there.  sorry about my little rant there.
There was one section of that area that it showed pictures of 3 men and it had a story under each man.  And want to know what their story was?  It was that they had each doused themselves in gasoline, and lit themselves on fire in front of different government buildings to protest going to the war. 
They left their families and wives FOREVER, instead of just their term in Vietnam.  It just shocked me.  That’s the thing that I loved about Vietnam though… it shocked me.  Everything about it was a huge shock… culturally, the landscape, the people and how friendly they were (after coming from China where they shove you and cut you in line, Vietnam was awesome), and all the people!  But anway… back to my day. 
After the museum, we grabbed some lunch.  Since we were with Ryan and she had never had Pho yet, we went to Pho 24 again.  This time I got beef pho and it was better than chicken pho.  So if anyone is in Vietnam anytime soon, beef pho, with the filet meat cooked well done, is AMAZING.  And get the iced coffee with sweet condensed milk.  When we were at Pho 24, we sat with a couple who had gone to school in the United States but were from Vietnam.  I believe he said he went to LSU.  And he asked where we were all from and he knew every mascot to the places we were from.  After that we went to the markets for a little and then got some frozen yogurt.  Then Ryan and Erica went back to the markets and me, Megan and this girl I forget her name, went to get some coffee.  When walking back to the market to meet Erica and Ryan, I saw the man again with the burned face.  This time though, I did not see him until I felt a brush on my leg and realized it was his hat that swiped past my leg and he was sitting on the curb asking for money.  And if I wasn’t so shocked at first, I would have given him money… considering how much dong I have left (Vietnam is a crazy cheap country and I took out too much money and have so much left now).  But I would have gave him money anyway because I’m such a nice person.  After the market we just headed back to the ship and grabbed dinner before going to the night markets.  Tons of shopping I did in Vietnam and I’m not even that big of a shopper!  The night markets are the same as the day markets, but just more clothes and no DVD’s.  After the night markets I just came back to the ship and didn’t go out or anything because I had to be up early because I had a field trip the next day to the Cao-Dai temple and cu chi tunnels….which I will right about later tonight because I am going to go to dinner!