Eggs, Nails, Balls, and Screws.

What a great weekend...
Here are some key things that happened to make it so.

1. Eggs Benedict.
I went into Hanoi on Saturday morning. When I first moved to NYC as a freshman at Fordham, I used to get a feeling when coming back to the city after a weekend at home in Pennsylvania. It was exciting and different, but also just felt right. That's how I feel when I leave Hai Duong and get into Hanoi. Maybe I just find something refreshing about smog??

In the last few months I've really been able to find some great places in the city, the most recent being Puku. Puku is a little cafe down a questionable looking alley and up a beat up set of stairs in the Old Quarter. It has wireless internet (which, UNLIKE Hai Duong, doesn't BLOCK my facebook!), comfy couches, and, most importantly EGGS BENEDICT. I stayed there for 6 hours on Saturday.
2. Nails
I got a manicure. It's light pink and makes me feel girlie in a very good way.

3. Golf Balls
My friend Mia and I hit some golf balls. We went to the driving range at the random and semi-bizzarro 4 star hotel for Japanese businessmen in Hai Duong. Mia and I have VERY little golfing experience, which was obviously very apparent to the man working at the range. We were there for 20 minutes before he left to find a hotel staff member who golfs to come and give us an impromptu lesson. We definitely improved, and improvement should not be underrated...

Mia and the good golfer.
I'm not saying I always made contact with the ball, but I will say I've got a helluva swing...

4. And the best part of the weekend!!!!
Mia and I volunteered with Habitat for Humanity for their 2009 Carter Work Project. There were hundreds of volunteers from all over the world, and they're building 32 homes in the Dong Xa fishing village, which happens to be near my school.

On Sunday night, Mia and I headed down to the opening ceremony. We were a bit late and didn't know where to sit until serendipity stepped in and sat us with three Kiwis from New Zealand. They were fun dudes, but we figured we wouldn't get to be on their build team. The next morning at the site, Mia and I were inexplicably unassigned to a team so we were able to find the Kiwis and work with them after all!

Mia and I were put on screw detail for the first part of the day....a fact that let no ribald joke or word-play go to waste.

"Can we see you girls screw over here?"
"Those girls sure love to screw, don't they."
"Yeah, no one screws like them..."

It was just like being on a real construction site!

But in all seriousness, it was pretty funny. And the people on our team were awesome. I only wish we could work with them all week, but we can't get off school.

Here are some picture highlights.

The Work Site

The Kiwis

Team America (That's Matt. He is American.)

Mia, Me, and Tim! Tim is from New Zealand and it was his 55th Birthday!

The neighbors! This is Malcolm. He loves Habitat and New Zealand.
Mia and my screwing handiwork....

This is most of our team at the end of the day.

I have decided 2 things:
1. I need to do another Habitat project abroad.
2. I need to visit New Zealand.

And trust me--I'm not screwin' around--I'm gonna make it happen!