Getting ready for some football

"The earth is round, so maybe we will see each other again." - parting words from Trang's dad

Yesterday I had another sort of Vietnamese lesson with Trang. We had our weekly bowl of bun bo hue, and when I look at the heaping dollop of chili paste that I require to make it taste 'right', I remember the days when the pot of red flaky sauce looked like a pot of impending suffering. Mother's day is coming up and, as I told Trang, she is not my mother but there is no older sister's day or aunt's day, so I wanted to do something special together. I invited her/us to go get our hair washed. I haven't done this in almost six months, yet as soon as I walked in the hair washing women not only recognized me, but also asked Trang whether I am gaining weight. Oh, Vietnam. Once we were washed and massaged and cucumbered and washed some more, we went on to the next phase of the day.

For quite some time, Trang has been promising to teach me how to make fried chicken with a fish sauce glaze, which I tried at her family home way back when. We were supposed to finally do it this past weekend, but when the day came, Trang wasn't feeling well. Today her son, who loves to cook, would be my teacher. I mostly just watched and took notes, but it is a remarkably simple dish, totally within my capacities and totally reproducible back home. I intend to bring Vietnamese-style buffalo wings to many sports watching get-togethers in my future. As the afternoon rains washed away some of the heat, we feasted on our handiwork.

Ta-da

When I was back home, the power was gone for most of the afternoon, and I wondered whether it would come back in time for the English club. It did. For a while I thought no one was going to show up. No one was there, not even whoever was supposed to come with a key to unlock the classroom. Two students showed up, though, and they invited me to play shuttlecock/jianzi/Vietnamese hacky sack with them while we waited for more people to show up. I surprised myself by exhibiting more eye-foot- and eye-random-body-part-coordination than I expected. But I wasn't doing any stellar, behind the back kicks, like one of my more expert students. Two random students, not coming for the club, saw us playing and joined us. By 6:20, we decided it was time to just go ahead and start, even though there were only four students. I showed them a brief slideshow of pictures from Cambodia, which they had requested, and after that I decided it was time to have some fun. Since there were so few of them, I invited them to go have a sinh to (smoothie) with me instead. It is avocado season and I am definitely going to drink as many avocado smoothies as I can before I go. It was nice to sit and chat with them in an informal setting. Despite the fact that I had very clearly been the one doing the inviting, my students did not let me pay, saying I could pay next time. I told them that this meant that they were committing to a next time.

This morning I woke up early to go with Trang to a relative's house for a death anniversary. It would also be the last time I would see her family.I initially thought we were going to her parents' house, but it was actually someone else's house so, of her nuclear family, only her dad and brother were there. I felt like I had barely arrived and then it was time to go. I got there around 830 or 845; Trang's husband was my ride back and he wanted to leave at 10, so home I went. It was hard to keep it together when saying goodbye. Trang's dad and I exchanged long well-wishes and a long, firm handshake, and that was it. I barely managed to keep my tears in, and I let them out on the road. Crying on the back of a motorbike is debatably the best semi-public place to cry in Vietnam. People might see you, but the only person you know is sitting in front of you, and will (hopefully) never know.

Plate after plate after plate, as usual

I'm remembering the days I cried in September when I felt like I had this interminable stay in Vietnam ahead of me, and getting to the other side of the next nine months felt like driving across Texas when the road is an unwavering straightaway into the distant horizon. And now here I am, crying because I'm about to reach the horizon and a big bend in the road.

Needless to say, I was feeling pretty glum in the early afternoon. Luckily, my day didn't end there. I went out with Thy and Tuc. Originally, they were just going to help me get some photos printed, but that ended up expanding to dinner, Asian-style photobooth pictures at the supermarket, and a new milk tea place. It was just the time with friends, out of my head, that I needed. It could have been bittersweet, colored by the pall of impending goodbyes, but it's not the end yet, and I'm not going to mourn farewells while I'm still here.