Day 96: November 24, 2014

I woke up this morning for class and quickly Skyped my parents before leaving for class. I was the only one to take the bus, and in fact there were only two of us in class! We learned the days of the week as well as how to say things like "I studied Vietnamese this morning at Open University at 8am". Binh and I made plans yesterday to get lunch, so he picked me up when I was done with classes and we headed off.

Turns out that he also needed to do his laundry, and since the house where his parents live has a washing machine we headed there. This is near University Village, where we went last week, and took 30-45 minutes by motorbike. We wore masks this time, and it definitely helped with all of the exhaust! We got to his house, but both of his parents are gone during the day. I was really impressed with his house in all honesty. His family had beds, mattresses, a kitchen table, and his room even had air conditioning. After being at Thao's aunt and uncle's, I definitely was not expecting all of the furniture! The house is located in a quiet little area of HCMC off the highway, and although Binh refers to it as the countryside it is more like a small, condensed town. It's awfully quiet, though, which is a nice change from HCMC.

After getting a tour of the house we walked to the vegetable market to buy some eggs and vegetables. The plan was that we were each in charge of making one dish, but I honestly had no idea what to do! We bought some morning glory and eggs and then headed back to the house, where Binh began to prepare lunch. He put me in charge of cleaning and preparing the morning glory, and honestly I think that's all that I could handle. In the time that I was able to get the one vegetable ready, he had already cut and chopped the meat. He basically ended up making the entire meal (because let's face it, I can't cook) and we had a pork and egg omelet, fried morning glory, some bitter vegetable with egg, and steamed rice. We sat on the floor in the living room to eat and he told me that we had to eat everything. This normally wouldn't be a problem, but there was enough food for four people! We miraculously managed to finish it all, much to the discontent of our stomachs, and it was only then that he told me he had never actually made these foods before but has only watched his mom do it. I would have had no idea if he hadn't told me, and I was very impressed because everything was so good!

Enough food to feed a family of four, yet we managed to eat all of it!

We watched some TV afterwards and found the English movie channel. I ended up falling asleep not only because I was tired but also because of all the food we had just ingested. Turns out that I was talking in my sleep, which kind of freaked Binh out because apparently I was answering his questions, and when I woke up I jumped up and walked around his house a few times. Or so he tells me. I don't really remember any of it. We washed the dishes and then got back on his motorbike to come to the dormitory.

After getting some lemon tea from the canteen, I headed up to the 12th floor to catch up with Cate and study for our sociology quiz tomorrow. Around 9pm Binh asked me if I wanted to get some beer, so we headed to a street side vendor and also had hard boiled quail eggs and chicken wings. I told him to order the chicken wings because beer and wings are a very American thing, but the chicken wings here are quite different than they are in the States. I met some of his friends who were also out getting drinks, and then we headed back to the dormitory to call it a night.