the perfect 24 hours

So I have already titled one post "the perfect day" so for my second perfect day I had to call it the perfect 24 hours, which actually makes more sense considering that it was Monday morning to Tuesday morning (aka 24 hours). So like I mentioned in the previous post we went to the island of Cu Lao Cham. When we pulled up to the island our jaws dropped as we all said, "Wow Co Thanh (our academic director) this is incredible!" Her response: "Oh thank you, thank you– it is like something for William and Kate." Yes, I do believe William and Kate would like to vacation here:

After we had changed into our bathing suits as quickly as possible and raced into the ocean for a quick dip, we got back on the boat and went snorkeling! It was my first time snorkeling and I absolutely loved every second of it. I felt incredibly happy while exploring the cove and every time I saw a new creature I got overly excited– my favorite was the humongous bright blue starfish. Even though there was so much going on under the water, I was content watching the sunlight dance across my skin– it truly was amazing. Mikala and I decided to swim back instead of taking the boat. I am really glad we did because we saw some new creatures. Mikala has an underwater camera so I will steal a few from her and post them later. Once we returned we ate lunch and lounged on the beach for a few hours.

The water was such a pretty blue.

After a few hours of napping and lounging in the sun we went to explore the small fishing village on the island.

If you look closely you can see that there are eyes painted on
the front of the boat. This is for good luck– the boat can "see"
where it is going and won't crash into anything.

Go U Bears hat and a nice sunset.

By the time dinner rolled around I was absolutely famished and ate more than I should have. A majority of the meal came from the sea– we had two different kinds of fish, octopus, and squid. It was

clapping along

so so so good. Following dinner was a bonfire on the beach; Co Thanh invited some locals to have a cultural exchange with us. We tend to have a lot of these cultural exchanges, usually consisting of us teaching the Vietnamese how to do the macarena and then singing "Build Me Up Buttercup." Last night we tried to switch it up and sing some disney songs but it turns out that among the twelve of us we don't know all the lyrics to a single song. But it ended up working out because the Vietnamese had lots of songs to sing. I've noticed that Vietnamese are really good singers– I think it must have something to do with the tonal language and their natural ability to raise and lower their voice.

Okay so the next part of my 24 hours was the only bit that wasn't perfect. We were originally going to sleep in tents on the beach but since there was a typhoon coming in we slept in tents on a concrete floor with only a bamboo mat as padding. We were provided pillows, but no sheets or blankets. I don't think any of us slept very well. In the very early hours of the morning it was pretty windy and I got a little chilled. I curled up into a ball and used my rain jacket as a blanket. So it goes without saying that I was pretty happy when my alarm went off meaning it was light enough for me to run. This is when the best, best, best part of my 24 hours took place. For the past two months I have been able to run almost every day, but it has been pretty painful since I have been running around a 250 meter track or in streets where I need to repeat the same loop three or four times. Today when I was running on the island I was working my face muscles just as much as my leg muscles because I was smiling the whole entire time. I ran up the mountains while listening to waves washing onto the beach, birds singing, and monkeys jumping around (although I didn't see any). The best part: it wasn't flat and I didn't need to run the same loop over and over again. I even decided to do some hill sprints and had a little old Vietnamese lady cheer me on for my last repeat. I was so incredibly happy when I finished. I really have missed getting in good workouts and feeling exhausted after reaching the top was a rewarding feeling. When I got back to the beach I jumped into the ocean to cool off. We had to leave the island earlier than anticipated to avoid the typhoon so we missed out on another few hours of snorkeling and sunbathing but we did get to ride around in these fancy boats:

Someone on the program dubbed them "basketball boats"

Now we are back in Hoi An for one more night. I am going to go pick up my new shoes and skirts in a few hours. I need to make sure everything fits, if not then they will alter it. I really like this whole custom made clothing deal– I could get use to it!