It takes a village

Today I got to sleep in until 930, which might be the latest I've slept in since I got to Vietnam, with the exception of the day I was sick and slept until 230. I had lunch (breakfast) at Trang's house at 11am. People here wake up so early that by eleven it is high time for another meal. Dinner is usually right after work, around five. As someone who eats late by US cultural standards, this is taking some getting used to. Over lunch I learned that Trang's son loves to cook, and is the kind of person who can taste a dish and figure out how to make it.

I had the bulk of the afternoon to myself, and it was time for me to undertake one of my many self-improvement/life skill development missions for this year. To (re)learn how to ride a bicycle. I had planned it carefully. Though many students live on campus, most of them go home during the weekends. This meant that there were very few people around to watch me haltingly weave around campus. Perfect. However, as soon as I walked out of my door, Ms. Mei approached.* (See the end of this post for the original Ms. Mei story.) I smiled at her and she locked my door for me as I maneuvered my bike through the walkway. I thought that would be it, but she followed me. The thing about Ms. Mei is that, while well meaning and helpful, she doesn't speak English. And I don't speak Vietnamese. So she chatters away what I presume to be either conversation or instructions, but I have no idea what they mean. Anyway, it turns out that Ms. Mei made herself my self-appointed bicycle tutor. Instead of trundling around alone, I had a tiny woman leading me/pushing me around as I tried to keep the bike steady. After a few rounds I decided that the seat was too high, but neither I nor Ms. Mei could figure out how to lower it, so we went to the guard's office to ask for help. Two more people later, we figured it out and I was riding more comfortably. An hour later, I could ride my bike without looking like I deserved a ticket for public intoxication, and the two of us were sweaty and a bit worn out, as Ms. Mei never let me ride solo. I'm not sure how much of a difference she made since she was jogging behind me, and she is a tiny woman who probably doesn't weigh more than 90 pounds, but I am worried that I'll try to ride alone and discover that she was responsible for all of my apparent success.

In the evening, Trang took me to mass. It is somewhat of an unusual looking church from the outside, though similar to the handful of other churches I have seen in this part of the country. Inside, there  were strings with colorful pennants and large piñata-like stars. The saints had neon lights on their halos, but they never got lit up. At the end of mass, Trang introduced me to the priest, an old family friend of hers.

Then we went to dinner, and I had yet another new dish, bún riêu cua, a vermicelli and pork and crab soup. It had several new ingredients, including a kind of crab cake, congealed pig's blood, pig's feet, and shredded banana flowers. I liked the blood better than I like tofu, which was also in the soup, but I couldn't get behind the pig's feet. There was no meat, just skin and fat and connective tissue. I didn't really see the point, so I didn't persevere. To wash it all down we had milk tea with tapioca, which has never been my favorite texture but was remarkably delicious.

The claw/mitten looking thing is the pig's foot. The dark brown brick is the blood.
The bowl of curly things is the shredded banana flowers.

 *On our first encounter, Ms. Mei came into my room and began investigating. She picked up a broom and swept everything, then began filling a large bucket with water. I later learned that the bucket was a reserve bucket for when the water gets shut off. After our bike session today, I invited her in for some water. The first thing she did was swipe the floor with her finger to see how dirty it was. It must have passed the test because she didn't start sweeping. Instead, she left and came back with a meter stick and a tape measure to measure my windows. Hopefully this means curtains in my near future!

The visitor I found in my bathroom tonight