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| May and I |
My roommate’s name is May (which means cloud and/or lucky
depending on how you say it). She’s nice, very relaxed, and majoring in Spanish.
Most of our conversations are in Spanglish with Vietnamese thrown in.
Spanglishnamese? May points at things and says their name in Vietnamese and
then I repeat them back to her. It's quite comical. Her goal is to be an
international translator, hence all the languages. Communication can be
frustrating for both of us, and some things just don’t translate. Most
conversations end up with one of us throwing up our hands and laughing.
I have not stopped
eating since I got here. It
seems like every few hours we sit down to another humongous meal with lots of
different food that just seems to keep coming. I try to pronounce the names of
each dish, but by the time the next one comes I've already forgotten the first.
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| duck egg (you break open the top, pour in the sauce and add the mint leaves) clams, snails, and dragon fruit |
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| Pork spring rolls, egg balls (called nuggets) |
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| Coconut bark shrimp salad |
Things I learned (among other things):
1.
Taking a shower with only a dip cup and a 5
gallon bucket is actually harder (and colder) than one might think
2.
At the Vietnamese night clubs they only play
American music. And of course my roommate knows all the words to “Starships”
3.
Vietnamese people say “hi” and do what we
typically think of as the “peace” sign (two fingers in the air) because “hi”
means two in Vietnamese. It’s a joke on the English word “hello”
4.
How to eat a (nearly grown) baby duck before
it’s hatched
5.
Since Vietnamese is a completely tonal language,
lyrical music is very hard to make. Instead they take the “melody” that the
words make in a poem, and arrange background music to fit the sounds of the
words.
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