Ai prepared pho, a traditional Vietnamese noodle soup for breakfast. It was good but Laura and I ate around the meat. Soon after, our host mom, Dung (pronounced yong) arrived. Our host mom is incredible. She is a professor of fish pathology at the University of Can Tho. We talked to her for a while about who she is and what she does and she had plenty of questions for us as well. She expected us to cook for her and told us that her daughter loves Italian food. We decided to make spaghetti for dinner the next day. This required a trip to the grocery store. On the way there, I road on the back of Ai's motorcycle while Laura followed on a bike. Motorcycles have always frightened me and I wasn't too excited about riding one. I ended up having a great time. It wasn't as dangerous as riding in the states because no one exceeds 35 mph, typically riding between 20&25 mph. Also, most of the vehicles are motorbikes. I could see so much of the city on the motorbike and the breeze felt so good in the heat. We stopped at a couple small street markets to pick up a few things. Each market sold only a couple types of fruit or fish and at each market, Ai would ask if they had what he wanted. About half of the time they didn't so we just had to move on to the next storefront. The large grocery store we visited was called Metro. It's a warehouse type store similar to Cosco. "Say You Say Me" was playing when we walked through the doors. Lol. The music here is always very epic, sappy soundtrack music. We also heard "My Heart Will Go On" while shopping. Laura and I decided to make spaghetti with beef and corn, an eggplant, zucchini, corn Parmesan casserole and garlic bread. We wanted ground turkey instead of beef and a side of spinach but apparently you can't them in Vietnam. This time, I rode the bike and good Lord was that rough. Traffic in Vietnam is characterized by defense driving. There are stoplights at large intersections, but even so, motorbikes are driving in all directions at the same time. Changing lanes is immensely scary because everyone goes when they want to and you have to constantly watch traffic and respond accordingly. Being on a bike, I was not as fast as the motorcycles and I didn't have indicator lights-hand signals are not a thing here. I missed my first left turn because when I turned to see if the coast was clear, there were dozens of motorcycles coming to zoom past me. I later adopted a policy of not looking back when changing lanes. They will move, you just have to go for it. Ai turned back around to lead me again after I missed our turn, then he pulled over to show us dog meat being sold at a market. I didn't make it over once again due to the whole changing lanes thing. This time, Laura told me the key is to follow Ai super closely and don't look back. I did as she said and made it back home alright. Once I surrendered to the system it was pretty fun. We got home and Dung asked us to make soy milk with her. She had brought back a more complicated version of a magic bullet from Hanoi. The instructions were in English so
Laura and I were tasked with figuring out how it worked. We didn't do a very good job. The machine worked for a while then we burned it out and had to stop for two hours. There was a Vietnamese smoothie cookbook included with the machine. It had recipes for "wake up berry" and "good feeling health" smoothies and other funny drinks. Each recipe came with a description like "this smoothie has vitamins K, E and A. It will boost your confidence and ensure a good day." Very uplifting. Our host parents invited some of their students over for dinner. We spent hours cooking ban xeo-Vietnamese pancakes. It was the same meal that we had back in Hoa An. The girls didn't talk to us much as they didn't know English. However, there was a Thai phD student who was very lively and didn't speak Vietnamese. She kept calling grandma "Ama" and she always repeated verbs (ie: "cooking cooking"). Sometime that day, I asked if Laura and I should buy new outfits for the wedding. Our mom offered us some of her clothes instead. She brought them up after dinner. I was a given a beautiful red and gold dress/pants set. She said her clothes fit us because she wore them when she was pregnant. Lol. We wore the dresses downstairs for the students to see. They absolutely loved it. This was the first time they really payed attention to us. They kept commenting on how the dresses fit us better than they fit them because we have butts to fill in the shape of the dress. They could not get over it. We took a bunch of pictures and then Laura and I went to bed in preparation for the long day ahead.
