Nam for Mom: Real Life Merry-Go-Round

I am absolutely exhausted, in a good way. I wish I could write an indulgent, beautiful blog...but I need to rest up and do my homework! I have the bulk of an essay to write, due in a couple of days, and have been working and playing hard! Hopefully in the next few days, I can sit down to reflect more and do the past few days justice...

They say a picture's worth a thousand words, so I hope that combined with the following annotation of the recent days, these few pictures give a good feeling of what it's been like:

Where do I even start?? Dong Ha has been NUTS.

Day 1: watched a bomb explode, and saw a container full of unexploded bombs; drove out to super remote areas, saw rivers/streams/jungle/mountain/water buffalo/people lounging in hammocks; played soccer with a bunch of locals

Day 2: Dug holes in cement & installed playset for elementary school; painted the swingset, planted trees, visited a huge citadel and grave, called a "meat grinder" by the professor due to the enormous amt of deaths in the citadel...saw a french colonial prison where they kept Viet Namese rebels and civilians (1868-1954); there were huge spiders in the prison, and bullet holes! The citadel was destroyed in 1973 by American carpetbombing, I believe.

Day 3: planted trees in a field, went to the De-militarized Zone line drawn at the 1954 geneva convention, hung out at the Laos border for awhile, where there's a large market; went to a SNAKE RESTAURANT, drank SNAKE BILE and SNAKE BLOOD, and ate snake meat and snake skin.

Day 4: Visited a rubber plantation, saw raw rubber seep out of a tree! visited a pepper farm, saw real pepper bubbles growing up vines, went to a whole city BUILT UNDERGROUND during the war!!! went to an empty, white-sand beach, swam out to a sandbar, met 2 fishermen who gave us their goggles and led us underwater to tropical fish!! soaked in the sun for 3 hours before heading home.....

Day 5: Poured concrete base in house for family; laid tile (much cooler temperature wise, and much cleaner/healthier for the family). Finished in late afternoon; went to ANOTHER snake restaurant, drank more snake blood and bile, ate a snake heart! Now, I blog and sleep...

The pictures are not presented in chronolical order.

Here's a video of the snake-heart consumption, as well as one of the sea snakes (2nd snake restaurant). I must say, the sea snakes aren't as big as the first snakes we ate, but they are snakes nonetheless...

If you want to watch the video on a bigger screen, go to this link:

snakes, pre-eating: http://youtu.be/OCAqHDrISKU

shooting the snake heart: http://youtu.be/-je7RUPHPfQ