Day 70: October 29, 2014

History class this morning was finally a little more interesting because we are now beginning to learn about the Vietnam War instead of past dynasties and French colonization. After class, I grabbed some papaya and walked to the Vietnam Center for theology. Along the way, I stopped at a bookstore and bought a Vietnamese cookbook. I showed Julio when I got to class, and he said that I picked out a good one; he has given that one as a gift in the past. There were several to choose from, but I wanted one that had good pictures as well as some of my favorite foods I've had so far.

After class, we took the bus back to the dormitory. While we were waiting, we began to play da cau because I had the shuttlecock with me. The guys on their motorbikes were laughing at us because we were absolutely so horrible. We were excited to get two hits in a row! Sophie asked them if they would join us, and one of them did. We improved a little with him our circle, but we're still not very good.

The afternoon was basically wasted. I got bored so headed to the streets for a snack. I ended up getting this thing kind of like a waffle but made with coconut milk. I came back to the room, watched some horrible American television, and ate it. Around 7pm I decided to go find some real food to eat, and I was planning on going to the bot chien place. Instead, I saw Thinh, whose basketball practice had just been cancelled. He asked me to wait for him and said that we could go somewhere to eat together. When he came back, we headed down to the garage where all of the students keep their motorbikes. It was crazy! We're talking 2,500 motorbikes and bicycles, basically one for each student that lives in the dorm. It took Thing a little while to find his, but when he did we hopped on and drove off through the rain.

We ended up at a place that served banh canh, which is a very thick rice noodle in a broth served with chicken, shrimp, crab, pork, blood cubes, and a quail egg. It looked somewhat like this. It wasn't bad, but I had a tough time convincing myself to eat the noodles. The chicken was on the bone with a lot of fat, so we ended up having a conversation about how food is prepared in the United States. It was not a bad meal at all, and in fact was nice to have something different and new, but it is not something that I would ever be hungry for.

Finished with our meal, we went to get bubble tea. I had told Thinh that I had had it before and wasn't impressed, but he said that you had to know the right places to go. And was he right! I ended up getting  a peach bubble tea, and it was so much better than the one I had had before. We got them to go, and drank them in the courtyard as we talked.

Around 9:30 I headed up to my room, and guess who was in the lounge? English club! I sat with them for awhile and helped prepare some more Halloween decorations. Yen came in at one point to tell me about a conference being held at her campus about water resources in the Mekong. She is going to see if there is any way for me to attend, and I'm pretty excited about it.

While we working on decorations, we talked a lot about what we want our jobs to be in the future. It's kind of funny--they don't understand what I mean when I say "I don't know". Since they all study engineering, their goal is to be engineers. They also assume that since I study environmental science, my goal is to be a scientist. It was tough to explain to them that there are so many other options I have.

I brought them some Starbursts, and unlike the other Vietnamese that have tried it, they liked them. Maybe these students only talk to us because they want to practice their English, but it is so easy to have conversations with them and get to know them. Much easier, in fact, than making friends in the states. But that probably has a lot more to do with mindset than anything. They keep asking me why I can't be here to celebrate Halloween with them, and it's even crazier to think that out of the next four weeks I'll only have two weeks to actually spend with them. The semester is going much too fast!