A Vietnamese Date...and other things from a busy week.

I had my first Vietnamese Date this week! I wore my shiny dress and heels, we went by taxi, he payed for everything, we had great seats at the Opera House for a famous Italian pianist, we sat in the same room as the PRESIDENT of Viet Nam, we even got ice cream afterwards. It was great!

Too bad he's 12 :)

It actually was an amazing performance! It was in honor of the upcoming visit of Vietnamese President Nguyen Minh Triet to Italy, the first of it's kind in 36 years. My family got 2 tickets from their conductor friend, and I think in their attempt to inspire Minh to keep up his piano practicing, had us go together. We had an excellent time.

My date added to what was already a really busy week. MCC hosted a workshop in Tam Dảo, a mountain region about 70km outside of Hanoi. The office was hectic all week preparing for it, we had about 40 of our Vietnamese partners from the Provinces where we actually do most of our work come to share about their experiences with the environment and development. MCC is phasing out of a few districts and beginning in new ones this year so the plan was to give people a chance to interact. In my opinion it was quite a success!

This week was also Hannah's birthday. As you know, I LOVE LOVE LOVE birthdays, even other people's. All of Wednesday was taken over by celebrating. I made sure MCC bought her the ugliest cake possible (imagine GIANT frosting cats!) and we went to dinner with friends and then on the Duck Boats (paddle boats in the lake by the Zoo). I was lucky enough to share a boat with the birthday girl herself. Together we acted like 5 year olds, laughing hysterically, paddling in circles around the other boats, in general being a nuisance, and yet loving life :)