Santa Barbara Schools - March 25

Mekong Delta – By Malaya
I believe that this has to be one of the busiest days on this trip so far. There were so many new experiences and thoughts.  It all started with a friendly competition (sort of a camp team building experiment, except

much more entertaining, in my opinion) in the local floating market.  We were split up into two teams and were challenged to find four items for the cheapest price.  The language barrier caused haggling to be extremely difficult, so my team just ran around trying to actually find the items, without even trying to coax the market person into selling them for a cheaper price.  Our team did not exactly win, however we did learn a lot about trying to communicate solely on actions, and not by speech.

We got to ride in canoes on the way back to the homestay, which was really relaxing.  At the homestay we took some time to hang out and take some nice cold showers.  After this extensive heat, I have gained a huge appreciation for cold showers and the great weather back home in Santa Barbara.

Then we were off again, and this time we got to ride bicycles.  Personally, I have had a bad past with bicycles, so riding a bicycle on the busiest roads I have seen was not the most welcoming.  We all adjusted pretty quickly though and got to have a really nice bike ride through the countryside.  On the way back, we challenged some locals to a volleyball game.  You could see who of us were really waiting for this moment (I’m talking about you Pierce and Mr. Dorfman).  It was really fun to play and entertaining to watch.  Unfortunately we lost, and we paid for the drinks for everyone on the opposing team.  Everyone seemed to really be enjoying themselves, so it doesn’t really matter who won or lost, in my opinion.  We got to ride the bicycles back to the homestay, which was a bit of an adventure in the dark.  But we all made it home safely, and I think riding the bicycles was such a great opportunity for us.  We got to see how difficult it is to ride bicycles, or drive for that matter, on an extremely busy highway.

At the homestay, we enjoyed some more team games by trying to build a structure for an egg drop.  My team lost again, but to our defense, we were distracted by the cutest children on earth.  We all cleaned up and played a little karaoke, which was something I had never played before. Four year-old “One” also sang some karaoke, and was the winner.  She was absolutely adorable.

Thank you for taking your time to keep up with our blog, we are all having a great experience.  Thank you also for letting us all go on this trip, I believe it will be something that will last with us forever.