Waiter, there's a rat in my bowl

This weekend there was a conference at Dong Thap community college, Kelly's placement. As I mentioned at the end of my last post, Violet was a purveyor of adventure, by way of being my ride to Cao Lanh (the main city in Dong Thap province). After my Friday classes the two of us got lunch and then got on the road. We missed a turn according to the map she'd drawn out, but we ended up taking a much easier route. After about two hours on her motorbike we needed to stop and take a butt rest. We stopped at a hammock cafe and I took a nap. At this stop I also reached a Vietnam milestone. I got my first Hanoi hickie, also known as a tailpipe burn. Initially my skin just turned gray, but over the course of the weekend it turned into a sizable blister on my calf, big enough that I could feel the fluid move when I walked. We got to Cao Lanh in the early afternoon, with our time on the road coming in at just under three hours. The rest of the ten ETAs who were coming for the weekend trickled in after us, and we had a great time catching up into the wee hours. I hadn't seen several of them since our mid-year conference in December.

The conference took place on Saturday morning, and it was for Kelly's English students. The ETAs worked with small groups of students to facilitate the activities that Kelly and her college had planned. Lam and I worked together, and it was a bit of the struggle because we were working with some of the lower level students. As often happens, it was hard to tell whether they weren't participating because they didn't understand the questions, didn't know how to answer, or just didn't want to. We got them to loosen up a little near the end by eschewing the required discussion questions and just trying to ask them about their lives. The second half of the conference consisted of skits that the students had prepared. Given the morning's rocky start, the clever and comical skits (addressing the conference theme of finding balance) were especially impressive.

Ao dai ETAs

After the conference it was time for the requisite Vietnamese party lunch, and the ETAs went and feasted with the teachers and administrators who worked on the conference. Our next scheduled activity was cooking a western-style dinner for them. Though it is said that too many cooks spoil the broth, cooking for 20 was a big enough task that it kept most people engaged throughout the preparation process. Funnily enough, what ended up making dinner late was trying to boil the amount of water necessary for that much pasta.

Sunday morning started bright and early, with a short road trip to a bird sanctuary. Even though we arrived later than planned, and therefore past prime birding time, we still saw a ton of birds. I have to say, it seemed generally superior to the bird ground in Ben Tre. Instead of tramping through mosquito-filled brush, we took a pleasant sampan ride through the preserve's grounds.

And then, after a hammock nap, it was time to enjoy Dong Thap's most famous culinary specialty: grilled field rat. You may cringe, but most of the flavor came from the grilling, and it could have easily been bony and oddly shaped chicken. To cap off the meal, we also had ground snake on rice crackers and huge snails.

When we got back to campus most of the ETAs had to leave. Those of us who remained caught up on sleep, went cafe-ing, and did some shopping. Violet and I headed home this morning, made great time, and got to Ben Tre in two hours. She joined me for lunch and then zipped away across the delta, back to Tra Vinh.

In other news, it turns out that my mysterious text-sending student was actually Violet under guise of a borrowed phone.