With, For, In Love

 Last week I was standing in the hallway at a parent teacher conference of my 3rd graders waiting for the homeroom teacher to be done presenting. I was nervous because this class is extremely misbehaved but the parents are highly demanding and expect excellence for their students who won't even pay attention. I was anxious to go in to talk and just agitated that I was there in the first place. I looked down the hallway and saw one of my 1st graders walking down with his sister and a puppy. He saw me and had a huge grin on his face. He pulled up his shoulders in excitement and said "Hello!" when he walked by. I smiled wide and waved and asked how he was. "I'm fine!" He walked past two or three more times and each time he raised his shoulders in pure excitement and grinned at me. I suddenly was no longer very nervous about those parents. Because truthfully I'm not there for them, I'm there for that little boy. When I was interviewing for jobs one of

"There will be days that Vietnam just grinds on you."- my boss I stomped around my kitchen/living room yelling about all the things that were bothering me and that had been building up over the past two months. I pointed at things, slammed cabinet doors, and almost cried. Why? Because sometimes Vietnam just grinds on you. I find it hard to talk about how you truly feel when you are traveling/living abroad. People expect it to be perfect or they read a blog or two and assume they know how you feel. But most of the time I don't even know how I feel. I can go days without truly processing what's going on around me. Which isn't good because it can come out in explosions like the one I had after visiting a museum. I really do like Vietnam. Some days I get soaked on the motorbike on the way home and I smile because it's so ridiculous and perfect and Vietnamese. But I'm going to be honest, there are some things that just piss me off.  I'm tir