Graduation, Ethnic Cuisine and Tangi Lanes

I was walking down the hall from the teacher's workroom to my classroom and I overheard one of our custodians asking another teacher how her weekend was. The teacher's reply? "Too short."

I know exactly what she means. My weekend literally flew by, because I don't think I stopped once in the past two days. Here's what happened:

Saturday I drove to Hammond for Southeastern's graduation. I picked up Doug in Loranger (he has no vehicle--his fault, but I felt sorry for him--my fault, LOL), and we sat through the two hour and so commencement together. We joked that we should have been friends with more liberal arts majors, since the college of Arts and Humanities was called first, instead of being friends with science majors, since Science and Tech was LAST. But that's what you get when one of you is a Biology Ed major and the other is a Physics major (or PhySUCKS,as I like to tell him). Anyway, afterwards we were going to go eat at Mariner's, but Trammie (one of our graduating friends) invited us to New Orleans to celebrate with her and her family--so Doug and I gamely went along. And by gamely, I do mean we were the best of all possible sports--crammed in Trammie's car, with her and her parents, on an hour and half drive in the rain, with Tram driving (like riding the Wild Mouse) and I had NO seat belt because her car ate her middle backseat seatbelt... oy vey. :) But we love Trammie, so we went. It was an interesting ride, really, because Tram's parents' English is about as good as Doug's and my Vietnamese. There was perpetually two conversations going on at all times: Tram to her parents, and Tram to us. LOL. And every so often, Tram's mom (who shared the back seat with Doug and me) would look at us and begin to laugh... I'm not sure at what, but we just smiled back. Her mom loves me though, she's always hugging on me and feeding me when I go over to their house, so I don't mind she she laughs at us for random reasons. I'm pretty sure we're amusing sometimes.

Anyway, we went out to this Vietnamese resturant and ate some really good "foods" as Tram says. The waitress bought out this stove looking thing and placed it in the middle of the table and there was a big platter of (raw) thinly sliced beef, a tray of assorted veggies, and big bowls of rice noodles. They also gave us a stack of things that looked like plastic doilies, only it was rice paper. We cooked our beef at the table, then dipped the rice paper in a bowl of steaming hot water to make it soft, then put the beef, rice noodles and whatever veggies you want onto the rice paper, roll it up like a tortilla (a very flimsy, floppy tortilla) and then dip in one of the "fish sauces" provided. That was the first course. The second course was a hot soup, kind of yellowish base with okra, shrimp, crab, squid, pineapples, cucumbers, and some other veggie I couldn't identify. Then to drink we had hot, unsweetened green tea, which was very good and kinda cleaned the palate after all those other interesting tastes and textures. Anyway, I sampled it all and liked it all except the squid, which was cold and kinda squishy. Doug, who is less adventurous than I when it comes to food (a fact he freely admits) only ate beef and rice noodles on the rice paper and skipped the soup (he said soup makes him sick, which he blames on this gray soup he ate in the Phillipians). I really enjoyed it, and Doug said he did too.

Trammie dropped us off at my car in Hammond, and I drove Doug out to Ponchatoula to a friend's house so he could go to his graduation party (we knew a lot of people that graduated Saturday). Then I came home and fell into bed almost immediately because I was exhausted.

Then Sunday I woke up, went to church from 10-11:30, then went to Baton Rouge to pick up Tram, we drove to Hammond, picked up Doug, went out to IHOP for lunch, then went bowling for two hours at Tangi Lanes. I am a horrible bowler (my best score for the day was a 68) but Doug and Tram are moderately good and highly competetive, so it's amusing just to watch them try to beat each other. I teased them and told them that I am really a pro-bowler, and if bowled like I *usually* did, they would be crushed into oblivion, but I cared about them to much to do that to them. LOL. Once we went bowling with Tram's boyfriend Phu, who actually is VERY good at bowling, and he whooped all of us. It was hilarious how awful we were compared to Phu.

Anyway, after we bowled I dropped Doug off, and Tram and I stopped by my little sister's house to visit for like 5 minutes, and then I drove Trammie home and went to the night service at church and then went home, called Bets and talked to her for awhile, and then went to bed because today was work! Last week of school and I'm currently giving final exams. Yippee!!! Two weeks until Chicago, with Mame and Judy!!! I'm so excited about my trip!!!

And then I have to find a part-time job for the summer. Bets suggested I check the library, so I think I'll swing by there after work either today or tomorrow and see if Mr. Dan has any open positions. I'll keep you posted!