Tastes Like, Ummm....Chicken

After our night out last night, we woke up to the now normal breakfast in the hotel. We finished our food and then headed over to UEF for our culture and language classes. Today we learned about the many different religions in Vietnam from culture class and the numbers from language class. We are going to use the numbers when we go to the market on Monday.

Snowball eating chicken and worrying about 

whether he left the the stove on.

            Once we finished classes, we ate lunch at the cantina and were later shuttled over to the U.S. Consulate where the Tet Offensive took place. This specific site was really what changed the tide of the Vietnam War and caused public opinion on the war to decline. We got to tour the building and courtyard and were briefed on what work was done at the Consulate. We then took our group picture by the flower beds made famous by LIFE Magazine.

Vietnamese shrine to commemorate the

Viet Cong that died in the Tet Offensive 

located right outside of the U.S. Consulate.

(No cameras were allowed inside Consulate)

            After our tour, we walked over to the U.S. Service Center and got to talk to Vietnamese students (not ones from UEF). It was pretty much just a Q&A session where we broke off into small groups and the students asked us all sorts of questions about life in the U.S., school, social events, etc. It was such a rewarding experience because of the unstructured and unrestricted interaction that we got to have. The amount of awe and reverence that they show us is indescribable. They treat us like celebrities and it feels so…different. While Americans are so often guarded and uptight, these students are willing to share everything and are so incredibly sweet, polite, and overall good people. My favorite part about our discussion was their answer to my question to them. When I asked them the question: “What comes to mind when I say the word American?” Their answers left me dumbfounded. While I was expecting words like, “ignorant,” “rude,” or “pretentious,” I, instead, received answers such as, “freedom,” “beautiful,” and “technology.” Those answers really took me by surprise. That is probably the best way to describe their respect and admiration for us. I was not expecting to hear such nice assumptions about Americans, and frankly, I do not necessarily believe that they are deserved.

More Vietnamese friends. The "Peace" sign actually

stands for the number two. In Vietnamese the word for two 

is "hai" (pronounced "hi"). Makes sense, eh?

            It’s hard to live up to that experience, but after the discussion, we went back to the hotel and swam in the pool for a little while. Most of the guys then decided to go out with Bo, a Vietnamese student from UEF, for dinner. We went to another restaurant where you cook your own food. (I’m just saying, I better get a degree in culinary arts after this program.) For dinner, we had various forms of goat and other, more interesting things. The interesting food began with the initial course. While an American restaurant might give bread, this place gave quail eggs. Not just any quail eggs though. These quail eggs were actually quail fetuses and we decided as a group that we would all eat one. After about five minutes of hesitations, we all counted to three (in Vietnamese of course) and threw them into our mouths. I was expecting to taste feathers or a beak but instead, it tasted just like a hard-boiled egg yolk. Who knew?

This is the quail fetus. Looks delish amiright?

             The next odd food that we ate was part of the uncooked meal. We were given bowls filled with two things: pig veins and a pig brain. What happens in Nam stays in Nam, right? Naturally, we decided that everybody needed to try them as well. We put them in the soup and waited for them to cook and once cooked, we all tried the parts. Believe it or not, they had similar consistencies to that of calamari. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again…I’ll try anything once. At the very least, I know I could probably make it on Survivor.

Pig brain on top, pig veins on bottom. 

I'm not getting kissed for a while...