Day 20: September 9, 2014

This morning started off with me not wanting to wake up and head to sociology at 10am. With my only class for the day over, I met with Thao for lunch. We hopped on her motorbike and headed to a market in a nearby district. This market is meant for the locals, so there were no tourists around and no pushy sales people. There, were, however, plenty of locals to stare at me and make comments about my height. Thao told me that many of them were saying the Vietnamese equivalent of "so tall!" I told Thao that I didn't need her translation in order to figure that out and she just laughed.

We ate lunch at the market at one of the food stands. Thao ordered food for us and I'm still not quite sure what it was we ate. One dish, as she explained, was a mixture of pork and squid formed into balls. It was then covered in this gelatinous substance. Very weird texture and not my favorite thing to eat. The other dish was much better. It was rice flour flattened into half dollar size pancakes topped with some yellow mush. I realize that it doesn't sound appetizing, but it reminded me of potato salad. We had dessert at another stand, which also consisted of two dishes. The first one was flan, yes, flan, as in the Mexican dessert. It was served in a bowl and coffee and ice were poured on top. I'm not a coffee fan, but I couldn't believe how good this tasted! Our second dessert was sticky rice and a kind of potato. In the United States, it definitely wouldn't be considered a dessert because it is not sweet. I did ask Thao if she thought it was sweet, and she said yes. Taste buds are just that much different!

The potato salad tasting dish.

Basically mystery food.

As mentioned many times before, the Mid-Autumn Festival was this past weekend. I really wanted to try moon cake, so Thao took me to a stand. The big moon cooks, 250 grams, were 125,000 a piece. I was told, though, that it was buy one get two for free. So I enlisted Thao to explain all of the different flavors to me (about 8) and then tell me which one was her favorite. Flavors included coconut, lotus flower, several varieties of bean moon cakes, and some with meat in them. Turns out, however, that it is not buy one get two free. That's all a ruse. If you only want one moon cake, then they just divide 125,000 by 3. I ended up getting two moon cakes, a coconut and a lotus flower. I haven't tasted them yet but am excited too!

After filling up on food, Thao took me to a KFC so we could practice some Vietnamese. we each got an ice cream cone and sat in the store for quite a while she drilled me on what I am supposed to memorize. She is such a tough teacher, but I wouldn't ask for anything else! Without her help, I wouldn't know half of the stuff I do and my pronunciation would be much worse. After she decided I had learned enough, she took me back to the dorm.

Service learning was also tonight at 6pm. They were also celebrating the Mid-Autumn Festival so the activity tonight was to make bamboo and paper lanterns. We spent two hours making these things! I made a bamboo lantern in the shape of a triangle. When it was time to light it, it caught on fire and I had to step on it to put it out. My poor lantern! We all thought service learning was only supposed to be an hour and a half, but after we made the lanterns we had to play games with the people there. I don't want to say that these games were pointless, but there was no interaction between us and no "service" was really happening. When we were finally told we could go at 9pm, we were all hungry and a little frustrated.

The service learning wasn't a complete bust, though, because we each got a moon cake in the shape of a pig. There were four different flavors, and mine had seeds and fruit in the middle. I grabbed another one on the way out and I'm hoping it's something different so I can try another flavor!

Pig shaped moon cake with a little top hat!

We got back to the dormitory late and the Corn Lady was out, so I got corn again. Good to know that she usually has her cart out in case I miss another meal!