I have successfully made it back from Vietnam! The trip was amazing, and there will be photos posted soon (but not nearly as many as there were for Rome, because I did much less sightseeing this time). This trip was less about sightseeing and more about experiencing the culture. I learned a lot on this trip--about Vietnamese culture, food, language . . . I also got a lot of perspective. I think everyone from a developed country like the US should be required to spend some time in a developing country like Vietnam, just to realize how big the world really is, and how much we take for granted. Vietnam is a bustling, vibrant country full of beautiful people, and it was such a pleasure to spend a month there.
. . . on the other hand, next time I go away for a month, I have got to make sure there are better spam control methods running. Coming back to 2000 spam comments is unpleasant in the extreme. Most of them didn't actually make it through the filter to get posted, but I still had to delete all of them. (Twice, actually--once in my e-mail, once here on the site.) The moment I get back to school, I'm upgrading to the newest version of Movable Type and installing some sort of spam control. (Probably some sort of captcha. I know some people are annoyed by them, but they're very effective, and much less annoying than, say, having to create an account and log in in order to post a quick comment.)
Now that I'm back, it's just about time to throw myself hard into my senior year of college. I'll be writing an honors thesis and taking way more credits than I ought to since I'm determined to graduate with honors and with a minor in Religion. I'll also be applying to the Peace Corps--and even though they tell me that's a huge hassle, I'm extremely grateful that I'll be doing that instead of studying for the GRE and applying to grad school.
