Day 90: November 18, 2014

This morning was a pretty standard day: wake up, eat breakfast, and head to class. After class, Cate and I ate in the canteen at Open University. Although I ordered nui xao trung, I received mi xao trung. Not really a big deal since it's only a difference in noodles, but receiving ramen noodles when you thought you ordered macaroni noodles can send you for a loop.  Nevertheless, it was good and filling. It helps that Cate and I had some good conversations while we were eating, and the hour she had before class went way to fast. Suddenly we looked at the clock and realized that she had to go or she would be late!

I headed back to the dormitory and did some homework, which was basically writing my history paper due tomorrow. After deciding that I had a good start, I bought a mango smoothie. The people that advertise for Axe Body Spray were in the courtyard area, so the entire front of the dorm smelled like Axe. It seems kind of funny that these women dress up in tight, short dresses to sell Axe to a bunch of boys at university, but it must work. I got in the elevator to head back to my room, only to have the other person in the elevator turn to me and ask, in Vietnamese, if I spoke Vietnamese. The confused look on my face was enough an answer, and he soon switched to English to tell me what he asked.

We soon had to leave for DRD, which was kind of awkward tonight. We had to test the students on their English speaking skills and grade them, basically deciding whether or not their English was good enough to go on to the next level. It was really tough, simply because we didn't want to be the ones who decided which students got to move on but also because we've been working with them all semester and didn't realize that this would be the end result. Not only that, but I definitely don't feel like I was qualified enough to determine which students got to move on.

With DRD over I came back to the dorm to finish my history paper and then met up with Binh. We headed to the Co-Op so I could try some new foods, and we first headed to the fruit section. There was a fruit there he wanted me to try, but he couldn't find a ripe one, so he had to ask a woman shopping to help him. It was rather funny, especially when he asked her in Vietnamese but she turned to both of us and began speaking English. None of the fruit was ripe, though, so we decided to buy a bunch of sugary snacks instead. He ended up purchasing some Vietnamese desserts while I decided to buy a bag of Pepperidge Farm cookies so he could try them. We basically spent the night eating sugar, although most Vietnamese desserts have beans in them, and talking about everything from books to music to family.

The desserts were good, although very different from what we would consider dessert. One was a little chalky, one was rice and bean wrapped in banana leaf, one was bean cake, and the other was a husband and wife cake, which was basically a gelatinous rice mixture with bean inside. The cookies were good but not the best, but Binh said that he thought they were good. Eleven o'clock came way to soon, and when the guard came around to tell us to go back to our rooms we decided to see how long he would allow us to stay in the courtyard. Every time the guard stood up I though he was coming over to tell us we had to leave, but he honestly didn't seem to care. The guard soon fell asleep in his chair, and suddenly it was 12:30am. That was when we decided that maybe we should go back to our rooms since neither of us realized that we had spent an extra hour and a half talking. He let me take the extra Vietnamese desserts, I let him take the extra cookies, and we both headed back to our rooms.