Contradicting myself

Part 1
I feel like I am running out of new experiences to have, and consequently running out of blog material. I know that there are a zillion things I haven't done or tried or experienced or seen, but I'm finding a routine. Lunch today was the by-now-normal 'rice et cetera'/'rice and point'. But, afterward I had a delicious if grossly unphotogenic fried banana. Sorry, no picture; imagine a very flat red-orange crackly strip of ambiguous friedness. After lunch, setting aside our original intentions to wander the market during our remaining break time, we sat to chat with an elderly woman that Maria had already met. It was my first genuine interaction in Vietnamese. Usually when you know that someone is a beginner in a language, you speak slowly and simply. Our new grandma-friend named Thi did not take the above approach. She spoke quickly and interestedly and laughed kindly at our blank faces and cobbled words and gestures. But, she was willing to write down her sentences. Thanks to Andrea’s phrase book/dictionary, we were able to decode enough to have a modicum of a conversation. It was surprising how many times translating just one word was enough to reveal the whole question. I was really proud of myself for recognizing the phrase ‘brothers and sisters’ that I learned from mass and understanding that she was asking whether we had any siblings. Overall it got me excited and optimistic if not confident about my future adventures in communication. It was also an interesting linguistic insight into what and how much information is necessary for understanding.


Part 2
I wrote most of part one right after lunch. Speaking of (not) running out of new experiences, I had hot-pot for dinner. You get a hot plate, a pot with broth, and a pile of raw meat, dry noodles, and greens. You add them to the steaming broth at the pace and quantity you desire. The meat is so thinly sliced it browns thoroughly (by my raw preferring standards) as soon as it is submerged. Don't worry, Mom, I let it cook for longer than that. As for the large floating bubbly sheets in the broth in the picture below, those remain a mystery. At first we thought they were skin, but upon tasting them we hypothesized that they might be sheets of something tofu-esque.

On the way back to the hotel we passed a lamp store. I feel like this picture exemplifies street-side shops here. Space is premium, so every inch is covered in a mind-boggling mass of product. Now imagine a block with this shop repeated from one corner to the other. We have taken to referring streets by the product they feature: Fan Street, Motorcycle Seat Cover Street, Bamboo Street, and so on.

Tomorrow we are team-teaching a real class at a local university. I'd ask you to cross your fingers for me but that's an obscene gesture here.