Today was a pretty simple day. We woke up to another
breakfast in the hotel where I tried this pineapple jam on bread that was
delicious! Our classes at UEF consisted of a lecture on the history and rural
development of the Mekong River Delta in southern Vietnam. That was an eye
opening lecture because it really made me realize that the one thing that we
have in common with our Vietnamese counterparts, regardless of our cultures, is
our humanity. What I have come to understand is that farmers are farmers.
Across the world, they are hard-working individuals and we have built our
societies off of their hard work.
Later, we
had another Vietnamese language class where we got to ask the students specific
words or phrases that we wanted to learn. I “didn’t,” ask to learn specific
useful phrases to say to Evan. Similarly, he “didn’t” learn any Vietnamese
retorts.
Once
language class was over, we headed over to the cantina for lunch and today they
had outdone themselves. There were chicken legs, and these shrimp covered in
some kind of batter and fried with a sauce on them. There was also this meat
that was skewered on stakes, which was also fantastic. I also found out that
mango is quite tasty. Who knew?
Snowball.
From the
cantina, we went over to the U.S. Commercial Service. They are a government
agency that works with the U.S. Consulate here. We got a briefing on what they
do and also took a picture that makes some of our group look like a news team.
Our Plus 3 News Team
(From left: Akhil, Edziu, Dan, and Kohler)
For dinner, we went out, once again, with our guardian angel, Kate. She took us to this cool restaurant that for some reason had a very small kitten that lived there. Honestly, very little surprises me anymore. Afterwards, we took a taxi to this coffee house. We were dropped off at a very odd location and had to wait for Kate. Initially we thought we were lost, but she finally got there in another taxi with small cakes for us and we went into the coffee house. For clarity’s sake, I probably shouldn’t say house because houses usually have roofs. This place was just a walled in area with streams running through and trees growing up and open to the sky. It was very unexpected and one of the coolest places I’ve been to since coming here. I ordered a ca cao sua da (Pretty sure I spelled that wrong. 100% sure I don’t know the accents on it.) It was pretty much chocolate milk with ice in it. It tasted much better than chocolate milk, but I really don’t know how else to explain it. Anyway, we finally left an headed home for the night. I need to sleep.
My dinner of so many things. None of which
I know how to pronounce (or identify).
This is the coffee house that we
went to. NOT a "house."
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