Day 31: One Month In

Crazy to believe that I've been on this journey for a month already! This morning was basically a chance to do some homework. Yen came to my room and (thankfully) she's going to translate some questions I need to ask people for my research project. Turns out she is also doing a research project on wastewater, so it might come in handy that our projects are similar.

I ate lunch across the street and I believe it is the cheapest meal I have bought so far--14,000d. I got rice and egg with soup and got it to go so I could eat in my room. I also found the English speaking channel on TV, so it's good to know that those channels are always there.

Six of us met with Wilson at 2pm to head to an orphanage called Mai Tam. This is another place that we can get community service hours besides DRD. Mai Tam is an orphanage/HIV clinic. We walked in and the kids instantly swarmed us. The next hour and a half consisted of playing with the kids and sweating more than I have sweated on my trip yet. The area where it is located is very different from the rest of the city. It's actually hard to believe that it is even located in HCMC because of how much quieter it is.

For supper our group met with Chris at one of his favorite places to eat in the city, a seafood place. We had noodles with seafood, some fantastic fried spring rolls, and soft-shell crab. Soft-shell crab, not to be confused with hard-shell crab, is eaten differently. You just eat everything. It was in a very sweet sauce but after eating the top shell and some of the legs I tried to pick out just the meat. I think it got to my head more than anything, but overall it was very good.

The rest of the night was just spent in the dormitory. I originally wanted to go see a band that was playing in District 1, but after getting back to the dormitory I realized I didn't really want to go out. We played some card games and walked the streets for a little bit looking for good street food. We ended up at Co-Op right before it closed, and I bought a sticky rice dessert and some off brand Oreos called Cream-Os. (Fun fact: A lot of the brands here are produced by a company called Jack n Jill, just like the old grocery store chain!) The sticky rice dessert was not good, and I actually ended up eating the smoothie Cate ordered because she somehow ordered it unblended. Meaning that she had a cup with fruit and milk on the bottom and a whole lot of ice on top. Even though it wasn't technically a smoothie, it was still better than my rice dessert.