Something's gotten into me (finally!)

My favorite bugs visitors are the ones that don't actually
come inside my room

This morning Trang showed up at my door unexpectedly to take me out for breakfast. She took me to a cơm tấm place within reasonable walking distance, which is awesome, since it is one of my favorite foods but I did not know of any good places for it nearby. The thing is, even though it is a plate of rice and meat, it is only a breakfast food. So, if I ever want to eat it, I have to drag myself out of bed early enough to get it.

When we returned from breakfast it was time for me to spend two hours proofing translations, definitely my least favorite activity every week. I don't dislike the activity itself, just the fact that I never know quite what I'm doing or why, and I am always given new tasks before I can complete the previous ones. Today I was asked to design postcards using images randomly lifted from the internet, but I was still working on last week's translation. However, today was made much easier by the fact that Morena will also be working in the same office at the same time. Now I can at least catch her eye when something absurd or incomprehensible is afoot.

On the way back from breakfast Trang had stopped to buy some snacks for me from a lady just outside the school. At lunch I investigated the contents of some of the little baggies. One contained what as far as I could tell was just fried pieces of dough, except they were spicy. It was almost like having puffy jalapeño chips. Another bag contained bananas in fried dough. That was definitely my favorite. I still have some banana bread for tomorrow and this green bean cake thing. Whenever I am given sweets involving beans, it is always a battle of will to make myself try it. It has yet to be really bad, but for some reason I really have an aversion to it. Morena joined me for lunch and we hung out for a while, watching TV and relaxing. I think I am getting used to being social again. I am looking forward to when she moves in next to me so I can just walk over to say hi and hang out. Also I'll be happy for the construction sounds to cease.

1. Top left: bananas 2. Lower left: spicy dough 3. Center: banana bread
4. Right: green bean cake

Trang is a very busy woman: she is a full-time teacher, my fulll/part-time big sister, a private tutor, and my mother. She usually gets about five hours a sleep a night. Where I'm going with this is that more often than not my Vietnamese lesson often gets dropped in the shuffle, but I don't hold it against her. Today I had Vietnamese lesson for the first time in over a week. However, as it often ends up happening, at least half of the class was spent with us talking about other school-related issues that need discussing. I keep telling myself that it is ultimately my job, not hers, to teach my Vietnamese, but I haven't been very good at making time for self-study. I didn't have an 'aha moment' or a sudden surge of dedication, but somehow this finally changed today.

Ms. My invited me, Morena, and Mr. Luan (my Tuesday morning supervisor) over for dinner tonight. There were many possible outcomes for the event. We might have sat in peaceful silence because of Ms. My's extremely limited English. We might have fractured into one pair speaking English and another speaking Vietnamese. I might have internally lost patience with Mr. Luan's characteristic combination of high-energy and limited English proficiency. None of these things happened. I made it a learning experience. I tried to learn the names of the ingredients of the food we were eating. I tried to form a few sentences with my slowly growing vocabulary. I understood enough key words in a few sentences that weren't even being spoken to me to understand what was being talked about. It was energizing. Food-wise I was a little apprehensive when I was handed a bowl of noodles, broth, bamboo slices, and cuts of pork that looked like they were mostly skin and fat. I was anticipating one of those meals where you can eat it all only through sheer conviction of courtesy. I wouldn't rush to order it or ask her to make it again, but it was flavorful and it wasn't chewy and went down easy. When I finished my first bowl she started to serve me more vermicelli and I worried that my ambivalent reaction would be polarized by the second bowl. Instead, she piled leaves (always those mystery leaves) and shrimp that might have been pickled with garlic. It was really fresh and tasty and certainly a pleasure. Dinner was topped off with fresh guava before I had to run to teach tonight's English class for teachers.

Course 1: vermicelli, bamboo, and pork

Course 2: yumminess

The shrimp in isolation

Course 3: guava

Last but not least, the famous Ms. Mỹ

We always have a break after an hour or so of class. Usually I end up sitting quietly at my desk unless some of the more advanced teachers come to talk to me to practice their conversational English. I had just finished a segment on colors and I still had my color samples taped to the board. I asked one of the teachers to teach me their names in Vietnamese. I discovered that, just like in English, the word for orange (cam) is used for both the color and the fruit.

Notes from my break-time Vietnamese mini-lesson

All along I've known that everyone I meet is a language resource. Today, I finally started acting on this knowledge.