The day everyone's been waiting for

Let me start this post by saying that yesterday was day 50 of my time here. That feels like a significant milestone, and yet it feels like a drop in the bucket. A slightly bigger milestone will come at the end of the month, when I will have to stop saying "I'll be here for nine more months" and start saying "I'll be here for eight more months" whenever someone new asks how long I will be in Vietnam. Again, two months down feels like a long time looking back to the first week in Hanoi when I felt like it would be an eternity until I was home again, and yet it still feels like small change compared to what's left. But reaching Day 50 is not the source of the title, nor is my birthday. Keep reading.

The morning began with a symphony of construction sounds and music blasting in from outside. At seemingly random moments, music will be played on the campus loudspeakers. And apparently, whoever is in charge of that decided that 7am was a good time for that today. The construction sounds came from next door, and are my current soundtrack. An ETA from Europe will be coming to Ben Tre soon and she will be my neighbor. This is exciting news, but in the meantime it just means that I hear banging and pounding and drilling and scraping all day through my paper thin walls while her room is prepared. I actually forgot that it was my birthday until I got a text message wishing me a happy birthday.

Before it was time to say goodbye, Trang and Mr. Hung Vũ took me and Kelly out to breakfast for some cơm tấm. It is one of my favorite foods here, but as the best place to eat it is in the city center and it is exclusively a breakfast food I don't get to eat it very often. We took Kelly to the bus stop with elaborate transfer instructions and high hopes for her trajectory and said a hurried goodbye as she jumped onto the practically still-rolling bus.

When I got back to campus I had a nice chunk of down time. It was interrupted once by Ms. Trang. Five birthday cards had arrived from the U.S. Perfect timing! I was interrupted again by my students. They had come to give me a beautiful, intricate, mobile/wind chime handmade out of white and lavender ribbon. Then my down time was interrupted yet again. (Let me be clear: I'm not actually complaining about any of these interruptions.) This time it was one of the staff members, delivering a gift on behalf of the English teachers that I teach during English club. It was the long-awaited purple aó dài. I was to wear it for our afternoon meeting with Ms. Nga and Ms. Diu from the Fulbright office.

Handmade awesomeness

[Editor's note: How frustrating! The second half of this blog post seems to have disappeared! I will try to rewrite it as best as possible tomorrow morning.]

Ever since I got here, people's comments on my looks have been coupled with interest in seeing me in an aó dài. "Do you own an aó dài?" "Will you wear an aó dài?" "You would look so beautiful in an aó dài." Well, today was the day everyone had been waiting for.  Trang instructed me in the many requirements of aó dài wearing. It is an über-feminine garment, so when you wear it you must embody femininity. It is cut long so that you have to wear heels, you should wear makeup, your hair should be perfectly styled, and you should walk slowly and demurely. Wearing an aó dài requires a lot of work -- all while looking gentle, of course. I was told that most westerners can't pull off an aó dài because of their frame, but that I looked lovely. I was also told that I look like a Vietnamese woman. I'll admit, at first I felt a little more like a classy version of the purple people eater, but the compliments I was showered with got me feeling more comfortable.

Vietnamese girl or purple people eater?

I was taken out to dinner at what I was told is an 'eco-restaurant' outside of town, with a beautiful view. We had a chicken dish, steamed fish, and pigeon soup. To eat the steamed fish, we took sheets of rice paper, loaded it up with leaves and pineapple and starfruit and vermicelli and fish, and wrapped it up to make a sort of spring roll. The dipping sauce was some variety of fish sauce that had a generous proportion of horseradish. I liked it. The pigeon soup tasted pretty good but was strangely gritty. It felt like the meat had been ground without removing the bones first. I also received my third birthday cake.

On the way to our table at the restaurant

Visualize a 20-foot table with this setup repeated five times. That was our feast.

Pigeon soup

Remember when Trang asked me what color aó dài I wanted and I said green and she told me I wanted purple? It turns out Trang is very very sneaky. Yesterday I received a second aó dài on behalf of the English faculty, a beautiful white and chartreuse one. I love it. I am supposed to wear it to the college's opening ceremony, which for some reason is in October.

At the end of dinner I received a huge bag of chôm chôm and grapes. As you can see in the picture below, taken earlier today, I have no more room for fruit. I will try to force it onto my students.

My fridge: entirely filled with fruit