RRBS

Last weekend we all went to Ninh Binh, where there was nothing, really, and Hoa Lu where there was old temples - it used to be the capital in like 950 or some such year long ago, and to some other town where we rode little boats between rice paddies and mountains and through caves under mountains and it was really nice, and to Cuc Phuong National Park where I walked through the jungle :) and joined crowds of students in the "cave of pre-historic man" who (the students) were seriously more interested in goofy foreigners than pre-historic anything.

That was that. Back in Hanoi we hear about President Bush really going at this war business, and then there is severe acute respiratory syndrome, SARS, or, as I prefer to call it - Really Really Bad Something, RRBS. Doesn't that sound more ominous when you say it? RRBS. Yes, very ominous... Anyway, so from what I know there was one doctor here who came back from Hong Kong, had this disease and a bunch of workers at the Viet-Phap Hospital were infected. From what I read today, there seems to be no kind of new severe cases of it, here or elsewhere, so that is a good thing. That hospital is quarantined now, it is actually pretty close to where I live and go to class, but not right next door or anything. The school has issued the rather cryptic directive to us Hanoi students to 'avoid prolonged contact with people'. Something like that. Obviously the people who wrote that have never been to Asia, avoid people ha! Anyway, they also kind of recommended that we stay in Bach Khoa (this neighborhood) which seems a little bizarre to me but whatever. Anyway, I eat street food every day, and that is probably more dangerous than anything else around here!