The overalls of opportunity

 “Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.” – Thomas Edison

Wednesday is by far my busiest day. I woke up bright and early at 630am to finish preparing for my first day of teaching, which was to start at 750 (the college was nice enough to not have me start teaching at 7am, when first period begins). Of course, I had spent most of the night living out most of my teaching anxieties in my dreams. I put on my teacher dress (overalls of opportunity, perhaps) and my game face. It was time to do the work that gives me the opportunity to be in Vietnam.

My first tour of duty was teaching 3rd year listening. I had not prepared very much for this class because the teacher prefers that I follow the lesson plan in their textbook. However, the listening activity in the book is not enough to fill the 90 minutes that I am supposed to teach. Given the fact that these students are at the highest level and that the class was mostly pre-planned for me, I was not too worried. Retrospectively, I don't think I should have been more worried, but it was definitely rockier than I anticipated. I was not feeling super confident after that class.

My students. English majors all wear pink.

Next, I was teaching 90 minutes of 2nd year speaking. This was the lesson plan I had really focused on yesterday, but also the group I was most nervous about. Contrary to all the warnings I had received about this particular class's passivity, contrary to my own experiences with the students yesterday, the class was great. Students really got involved and spoke to each other and participated. The class period flew by. We didn't have time to do the one activity that I had been most worried about (in that it would be too difficult) and I was perfectly ok with that.

Trang took me out for lunch to try yet another new dish, but I ended up having the most American Vietnamese meal possible. It was spring rolls and bún thịt nướng, vermicelli with grilled pork and sprouts and fish sauce and lettuce and peanuts. It's pretty much what I get whenever I eat Vietnamese food in the US; I just didn't know it by it's Vietnamese name. Over lunch we talked about my classes. She told me that she teaches the 3rd years right after I do, and she said that they were very happy and generally pleased with my class. I was glad to hear this, since this was definitely not the vibe that I had gotten from them. She was also very impressed that I had had such a successful class with the notoriously passive 2nd years.

After my early start, I was ready for a post-lunch nap, and it was a good thing I set an alarm because I might have slept all day if I hadn't. As it was, I woke up only a few minutes before today's office hours. I was half-hoping that no one would show up so that I would have time to come up with activities for tonight's student English Club. Instead, a group of four students came over just to chat. Our chat resulted in a dinner invitation, which I was very happy to accept. It meant that I would have even less time to prepare, but I strongly believe in accepting social invitations, especially when you are in a new place and trying to make friends. They gave me half an hour to finish planning, and then two of them met me for dinner at five. They took me to a nearby place famous for hủ tiếu chay, or vegetarian hủ tiếu. They told me to add a brown sauce and a red sauce. I asked them if the red sauce was hot sauce, spicy, had chile, or pepper. They said no. Note to self: if it looks like hot sauce, it is hot sauce. But it was delicious all the same.

Hủ tiếu chay

 At six I had the first English Club session, with 3rd years and some area high schoolers who were actually at least as good as the 3rd years. I was worried about not having enough activities planned, but my warm-up of having them mingle and ask each other a variety of questions was much more successful than I anticipated, and I let it continue for about half of the time. It was really nice to see all of them actually mingling and making the effort to get to know each other in English. During the second half I gave them an overview of American holidays, and when I got to September the teacher asked me to talk about September 11th. When you have to describe it in limited vocabulary, you end up using the words killed and died a lot. And somehow that made the events feel even more grim and painful to talk about than they ever have. The second session of English Club was with 2nd years, and I had the same lesson plan. As expected, I had to make some modifications to make it appropriate for their level. I'm getting pretty good at thinking on my feet.

My most recent visitor. Photo is smaller than life size.

The first day of the next nine months of my life

This morning I was scheduled to start at eight, but at 715 there was a sharp knock at the door. Thinking I had overslept I threw on pants and went to see who it was. It was Trang, looking for breakfast company. Apparently people think that eating alone is so sad that they would rather not eat than eat alone. Luckily for her I was awake and she got to have breakfast rather than just coffee.

At eight it was time to find out how exactly I would be spending the ambiguously described next two hours of my Tuesday schedule. It looks like I will be proof-reading automated English translations of texts for a local bird sanctuary. I took a paper full of sentences like this:

In this context, as the host organization of the small scale project promulgated over the past six months: “Maintenance handbook for the protection of Vam Ho’s bird ground,” I have the pleasure to express my gratitude to the organizations and individuals that have taken interest and provided the Youth Creative Group, the project’s host, with valuable help, so that they could reach the aims set out for the project.

and do my best to turn it into something comprehensible. This is what I came up with:

In this context, as the director of the Youth Creative Group’s small-scale project, “Maintenance handbook for the protection of Vam Ho’s bird ground,” I have the pleasure to express my gratitude to the organizations and individuals who have helped us reach our project goals.

In the afternoon I finally buckled down and wrote my first lesson. Hooray! Then, my armoire arrived. This prompted me to rearrange all of my furniture for the second time this week. I may or may not be becoming my mother. Some time later, the curtains arrived, though sans curtain rod or any other device to put them up. Along with the curtains came Ms. My and a delegation of about five women, all wearing a purple or a pink suit. They poked around and discussed and re-rearranged and told me to sit. I still don't really know what happened. 

After that it was my office hours. I wasn't really expecting anyone to come, but two groups of students came to get some preemptive corrections for upcoming presentations, and that took up most of the 90 minutes. The first group was shy but eventually warmed up to me and stayed a while to chat and ask me questions. The second group pretty much managed to conduct our entire meeting with mime. Even though both groups were here about presentations, neither group actually did a spoken run-through; they just showed me their slides. The hardest thing is that I can't always tell whether they can't understand what I'm saying or whether they just don't feel comfortable speaking. 

Remember my lesson plan? It is for tomorrow's Speaking Skills class. All of the students that visited me are in tomorrow's class, and their silence is making me seriously question my lesson plan. When I emailed the teacher my lesson plan earlier today, he told me, "students are rather passive and want their identity not to be uncovered, be flexible with them." (Teachers here constantly describe their students as passive, which I have taken to mean that they don't participate much in class.) I was ready to have to coax students into speaking, but I didn't realize just how serious the problem might be.  
Side note: if there were ever a TV show called Pimp my PowerPoint, my students should be on it. They embed instrumental audio clips and downloaded fancy backgrounds and use pretty much every effect possible. 

When my office hours drew to a close I scampered across the street to get dinner before my next engagement: English Club (aka classes) for teachers. We have a coursebook so I hadn't prepared anything, but the coursebook seemed pretty advanced despite being introductory, and I had a feeling I might be expected to provide supplementary materials. In the fifteen minutes I had between scarfing down dinner and rushing to the classroom I put on my teacher shoes (read: heels) and came up with a couple of activities. I admit, though, I was expecting a stilted disaster. When I got to class, it turned out that no one had the book. So, we would be relying on my largely nonexistent plans. Whether by some miracle or by inherent teacher skills heretofore untapped, I managed to fill two hours with learning. We ended by practicing proper American handshakes and then going out for dinner (dinner #2, in my case).

Dinner was báhn ướt, and after that we had 'fruit salad' again. This fruit salad was one part fruit, one part snow cone, and one part Russian roulette. The fruit included avocado, papaya, watermelon, dragon fruit, jackfruit, heart of palm, peanuts, a mystery vegetable, and ... durian. The durian gets an ellipsis because it has quite a reputation. It has a very strong, distinctive smell, and a very strong flavor that is very polarizing. I had never tried it and I, unfortunately, really don't like it. This is especially unfortunate because the minimal but powerful durian flesh was kind of interspersed into the whole thing, and contaminated the rest of the dish, if you will. So, from the durian and the unpleasantly textured mystery vegetable, the roulette. Next week we are supposed to go out to karaoke after class.

Avocado on top, unknown perils within

Tomorrow I teach my first class! And then another one! And then two English clubs! Eeek!

Meet. Eat. Repeat.

Why I am paranoid about inadvertently using offensive body language.

This morning I had an 8am breakfast meeting with the one professor whose class I could not observe last week. It turned out he got too hungry waiting for 8am so I ate and we talked. This professor had worked in tourism before teaching, and he gave me good advice about places to visit and where to go. After this meeting it turned out that other teachers had convened just to chat and hang out with me/each other for a while, so we changed tables to go join them.

Shortly thereafter, I had my first Vietnamese lesson with Trang. It was mostly review (introductions, pronouns, nationalities, numbers), but the one-on-one teaching meant that she wouldn't move on until I got the pronunciation and tone just right, something that will be really beneficial. When I was little I used to toy with my parents by making them say "Moo, moo, moo, moo, moo, moo, moo" in a very specific cadence. I always insisted that they were doing it wrong, and would repeat it and make them try again, though they couldn't hear a difference in what they said and what I said. (Signs that I was a budding linguist? Or that I could still hear tone at that age?). That was kind of how I felt today. Say X. x. No, not x, X. x. No, X. X. Yes! Perfect! Sometimes I could hear the difference, and sometimes I just stumbled upon it.

In the afternoon I met with the chairman/mayor of the city to introduce myself and discuss ways I can contribute to the city's English education. It was the quietest meeting I have ever been to. I was almost glad I couldn't understand anything, anyway, because even if it had been in English I would have had no idea what was going on. I naturally project in that kind of situation, and when it was my turn to speak I had to mentally turn down my volume knob to not feel like I was using a bullhorn in a library. I was also paranoid about somehow conveying disrespect via body language. Consequently my suddenly itchy nose went unscratched for far too long. We discussed many possibilities and made no decisions. I think I am getting pretty good at being noncommittal but supportive. Eg. "I look forward to exploring the potential to participate in the activities we have discussed, pending more details, so long as my schedule allows it." Of course, who knows if my diplomacy survived translation. But people seemed pretty pleased with the (non)outcome of the meeting and decided that we should go have a meal afterward.

So, at 3pm we set out for a meal. I'm not sure whether to call it lunch or dinner or supper. What I do know is that I had dinner plans at seven and was worried about spoiling my appetite. But you can't really turn down a meal with the city's officers of education, especially when your ride has decided that you are going. We had some kind of fish that was translated to me as grilled ray, though I'm not sure what that is. A problem with the cultural practice of serving the guest means that not only is food put in my bowl for me, it is dipped in chili for me before it gets put on my plate. So suffice it to say that if by the end of this year I don't have a great tolerance for spicy food, all hope is lost. More life skill development right there. Then we had chicken sour soup, which was delicious and kind of made me forget that I was trying to not eat too much. If I try to be sneaky and just don't serve myself more food, someone else does it for me. If I try to be sneaky and eat my food really slowly so as to not get served more food, people urge me to eat, eat! So I can't really escape eating. I'm pretty sure I saw the chicken's head in the soup pot, but luckily it was not served to me. I did, however, get the heart and a lung, which was just fine with me. The third course was a pot of clams steamed with mint and ginger. It was absolutely scrumptious. The woman next to me took it upon herself to keep my bowl stocked with clams, and I had a hard time resisting. When I finally remembered that if I lay my chopsticks across my bowl that would indicate that I no longer wanted to eat, she just moved my chopsticks and kept serving me food. Oh well. 5pm rolled around and I rolled on home hoping to be able to work up an appetite for 7pm.

Heart and lung in the upper left.

The experience made me appreciate Trang even more. I am comfortable with not understanding the conversation around me, and I don't expect everyone to exit their linguistic comfort zone for my convenience, but at this meal I was pretty much ignored except when more food was getting put in my bowl. Given that most of the people at the table were English teachers at various schools, it seemed like someone could have made a little more effort to include me.

At seven, I was to meet Trang and her sister to go try her sister's favorite dish. Trang's son joined us too. The dish turned out to be hủ tiếu xương again, but with chicken this time. I also had nừơc mía, sugarcane juice. It tasted almost like orange juice, presumably because it is mixed with some lemon juice. 

Hủ tiếu xương gà

Sugar cane juice

After this meal, which fortunately was just the right portion, it was suggested that we go get fruit salad. What comes to mind when someone says fruit salad? I bet it's not what we had. We had chè, which comes in many forms, but in this case was kind of like a warm milky tapioca pudding. It is one of the few things that I had been hoping to avoid eating while here. Despite the fact that it was made of milk, sugar, flour, seaweed, green beans, and peanuts, it tasted fine. The powdery wet texture was not my favorite, but I managed to ingest it all a lot more easily than I anticipated. 

Do any of these look like fruit salad to you?
Mine is the one on the lower right, same as the top right.

  
Would it seem like my evening was drawing to a close? I certainly thought so. But around nine I heard a knock. Ms. Mei was at the door, holding up a bag of fruit. More food! It was to be my third meal in five hours. I guess it's a good thing I'm a bottomless pit. She brought cóc, the mystery fruit that people keep giving me but that I hadn't figured out how to eat, and a pomelo. She also had a jar of what I think was chili salt to put on the fruit, but that in my opinion made everything taste like barbecue potato chips. After peeling and slicing and preparing she left me there with my bottomless pit filling up and about half a pomelo to go, while she started sweeping and mopping. Maybe in my next class with Trang I will ask her how to say "You don't need to clean my room, thank you," and "Please, eat more." But I appreciate the gesture of the fruit and the cleaning and I appreciate the company, even if for now we just sit in friendly silence.  

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

A busy day of relaxation

Things I have learned in the last few days:

1. The Vietnamese term for potholes literally translates to chicken nests.
2. Even more terrifying than needing to sneeze while driving a car is needing to sneeze while sitting on the back of a motorcycle.
3. People here will likely think that I am from India, and Indian women are considered very beautiful.
4. In the hierarchy of respect, teachers are above the father and only below the king.

New food I tried today:

1. Quả cóc (I think) - a fruit
2. Hủ tiếu xương - Hủ tiếu is a breakfast soup with pork and noodles. Today I tried hủ tiếu xương, which is essentially the same thing but with the noodles in a separate bowl. The meat seemed to be a pork knee or shoulder.
3. A dumpling soup whose name I can't remember
4. Sticky rice cakes, one with green bean paste and one with banana
5. Hotpot with rooster meat, papaya, loofah(!), and other untranslated ingredients
6. Bánh tránh - some kind of sweetish, thin, crispy, plate sized ... thing. Cracker? 
7. A very crunchy tooth-cementing candy made of peanuts wrapped in a hard sugary flour concoction

Whenever Trang invites me to go out to eat with her, it is always to 'try something new.' That is all the information I ever get, though I guess it never occurs to me to ask what the something new is going to be. It's not like I would know what was in store for me if she were to tell me the name of what we were going to try. This morning we met at eight to have the aforementioned hủ tiếu xương at a restaurant by the lake. Today, she had me practice saying the name of the dish so I could order for myself. I spotted some dumpling-looking things and asked Trang about them. She ordered those, too, so that I could try them. The food was good, as is always the case when I am eating with Trang. 

On the way back we zipped through the central market on the back of Trang's motorcycle. I spotted some silkies, a breed of chicken that has blue-black flesh. I will definitely be going back to explore! Trang bought me some goodies wrapped in banana leaves. When I was ready for a snack later in the day, I sliced them open and found a surprise. The green bean rice cake looked like mardi gras, and for some reason the banana was pink.

In the afternoon I finally started making my space my own. I finished unpacking; I organized my things, and I even started decorating a little. I also started writing some creative fiction for the sake of having an internet-independent activity with which to occupy my time.

In the evening Trang picked me up to go have dinner with her and other members of the department. One of them goes to Ho Chi Minh City quite often, and I was supposed to bring my camera to give to him so that he could take it to the City and see if it could get repaired. On the way out, though, I tested my camera again. It worked! Hooray! I can't express my joy at this discovery. We arrived at a hotpot place and after the first mouthful my mouth was on fire. But it was delicious. Over dinner we talked about me, Vietnamese pedagogy, and whatever else was discussed in Vietnamese. A troubadour/candy salesman came over to our table and, probably for my sake, a candy was purchased for everyone. I'm not a huge fan of peanuts, but of course I accepted, and it was quite enjoyable. The candy reminded me a little of pepitoria, a Guatemalan candy. 

After I got home, I got a call from Trang, inviting me to her house for lunch tomorrow. I'm looking forward to it already. 

The smell of green

Today is Independence Day in Vietnam and, as such, it is a national holiday. Trang invited me and other members of the English department to her family home to enjoy the holiday. After a motorcycle ride that took us from city to countryside, over bridges across waterways (dare I say cricks), passing horse-drawn carts, onto dirt roads through the fronds of palms, we arrived. It was a taste of paradise without tourists or expenses, but with a family. And boy was paradise tasty.

I was almost immediately summoned to help pick (and eat) longans. Then I was offered coconut water from a freshly picked coconut. Then it was time to actually eat, and plates and plates of piping hot bánh xèo were brought out, accompanied by platters of various leaves that I cannot name. Everyone took a large leaf, added smaller leaves like mint, tore off a hunk of bánh xèo, and rolled it all up in the large leaf to then dip into a bowl of fish sauce. It was exquisite. I have eaten bánh xèo many times in the US and several time in Hanoi, but northern and southern bánh xèo are quite different, and this was by far the best I have ever had. It was moist rather than crunchy and unbelievably rich and flavorful. It is a local specialty, and any dish is always better when it is homemade. I ate until I could eat no more, and then I ate grapefruit and watermelon.

Coconuts and grandkiddos

Bánh xèo, photo from the internet

The feast -- clearly I am more interested in the food than the camera

I should describe this spectacular house. Located in a clearing amidst a variety of fruit trees, it has a very open design. The room where we ate is at the front of the house and opens up to the yard, almost more like a very large porch. In addition to several tables where we ate, there were hammocks hanging from the columns. After gorging ourselves, it was time to sit and chat and hammock. I was invited to nap. I didn't need telling twice. Taking in the serene view outside, with the only sounds being soft conversation, the clink of teacups, and palm fronds in the breeze, it was all too easy to fall asleep.

Among the overwhelming pleasantness of the whole experience, there was one unexpected thing that was the frosting on the day. I assumed that this would be a pretty English-free experience, and I was ok with that. However, it turned out that Trang's dad had spent a year in the United States back in 1968 studying at the school of music at the Norfolk naval academy. Though the first thing he said to me was that he had forgotten how to speak English, I spent a long time listening to his stories in perfectly clear English. He told me that he took a Greyhound bus from Norfolk to San Francisco because he was curious to see the country and agricultural practices, but it was summer and it was hot and nothing was growing. He told me about how everyone in the US mispronounced his name and always tried to speak to him in French. He said the Americans knew nothing about Vietnam. He told me about his musical tastes, which included Andrés Segovia, Karen Carpenter, and Herb Alpert. He told me that most of his friends moved to the US back then and he had wanted to, too, but as the eldest son it was his duty to inherit the family home and take care of his parents. Now, his friends in America tell him he made the right choice. Life in the US with a large family is too difficult.

Grandpa Hong telling stories

There were many maps decorating the walls of the house, and I found it very interesting to see the transliterated names on the world map. After napping I was given a sweet iced coffee that I actually very much enjoyed, and was given more coconut and longans. I was told that the word 'longan' comes from Chinese, and means 'the eye of the traitor'. I also learned that the xèo part of bánh xèo is an onomatopoeic word that comes from the sound it makes when it is being cooked, equivalent to 'sizzle'. When it was time to leave, the requisite 50 photographs were taken and I was invited to come again next weekend. It might have been a rhetorical invitation, but I hope I can come back many more times in the months to come.

Mornings, meals, meetings, and more

Sometimes I forget where I am. I wake up and I think about what I have to do that day, but somehow the fact that I'm in Vietnam doesn't factor in. Then the sound of Vietnamese filters in through the open window and I remember. I'm in Vietnam, where I don't understand people. It's not an unpleasant realization, just a surprising one every time I have it, because all of my activities and everything about my environment constantly remind me of where I am.

This morning I woke up bright and early at 6am for Trang to take me to try a new dish for breakfast. It was well worth the bleary-eyed start to my day. As I say every day about every new thing I try, cơm tấm may be my new favorite dish. It a dish of crushed rice, sprouts, cucumber, chargrilled pork,  an egg-based component, and, of course, fish sauce. The benefit of being taken to try all of these new foods is that Trang always takes me to whatever place she thinks makes that dish best. I have seen cơm tấm places closer to school so I will have to compare. If my experience with bánh ướt purveyors is any indication, though, I doubt I'll find a place that's better.

I have been to several meetings this week, and I don't quite understand them. Bearing in mind that most of the meeting takes place in Vietnamese, it seems to me like someone brings up a talking point, it is discussed, and then casual conversation takes place for five to ten minutes before another point is brought up. This process is repeated ad nauseum. This makes it very hard for me to know when the meeting is over. I am never sure if people are now just chatting and it would be ok for me to leave, or if something important is going to come up again. Usually something else does come up. People do not silence their cellphones during meetings, and seem to find it perfectly appropriate to leave the room to take a call while the meeting is going on. Today I attended a meeting of the English department and it was held predominantly in English for my benefit. It was somewhat more succinct than previous meetings. I was asked to introduce myself and then to allow people the ask me questions. The following questions were all asked by women, though it was a mixed crowd.

Question 1: Are you married?

Reply: No.

Question 2: Do you have a boyfriend?

Reply: Yes.

Question n+1: Is there any chance for the young male teachers at this school?

Reply: No.

Rebuttal: Your boyfriend is in America! You are single here!

Reply: Nope. 

It was lighthearted, but the frequency with which this gets brought up makes me think that these jokes bear a grain of truth.

I sat in on another class today, and I got asked to sing again. It is inescapable. Today I received an affirmative reply to my inquiry about whether people knew 'If you're happy and you know it' so I went with that.

This afternoon I was taken to buy more supplies for my room, and on the way back we stopped for a beverage. I wanted a mango smoothie (sinh tố xoài) but they didn't have it, so I went with some other kind of smoothie that I didn't understand. I got a glass full of cool creamy green. It was an avocado smoothie. I had had one in the US prior to my departure in an attempt to pre-acculturate, but I couldn't handle the aftertaste. This one was aftertaste-free, delicious, and refreshing.