Need a Boost to Your Ego?

If you're foreign, attend a large university in southern Viet Nam. There are nice looking people everywhere, and they're all looking at you, all the time.

Win.

What else was there today? Music and fruit in class. Mr. Bich is a renowned expert on Mekong Delta culture, and so we were treated to a history of Vietnamese classical music and instruments. Yin and yang is big here in Viet Nam, and one of the best exampled is tropical fruit (yin) with salt and sometimes chili (yang). Watermelon with a bit of salt is both delicious and good for replacing electrolytes lost during ... uh....

Dinner with homestay families tonight. We biked to a new part of town, the locals' entertainment district, and met all of the host families. I was introduced my homestay family, a really nice lady and her 15 year old son, who insisted I looked like a character from Twilight. He and I talked about Pokemon (they have like 12 games out for the Gameboy now), and just as we were talking about the Elite Four, the homestay coordinator said that there was a change - these people weren't my homestay family after all! It was a really sad and really weird moment, because the same forces that were having us open up to one another just shut down the whole operation. We laughed a bit and Hinh and I kept talking about Pokemon, and then they left to find their new student. "Well, that was sad..."

In a few minutes, however, I met my few hosts - Dr. Khoa and his four year old daughter (insanely cute). He teaches agriculture and applied biology (win), and he likes to cook. So that is cool.

One little side note (an observation) - parenting is a shared job in Viet Nam. Partly it is because multiple generations live under one roof, and children don't leave until they are married, so there are a lot of hands to help out. But more than that, mere acquaintances can help put food on a plate, or wipe a dirty face. I think it has to do with the Vietnamese cultural belief that everyone is part of a big family (when using pronouns, for example, you refer to someone your father's age as 'uncle'). In the US, kids are the property of their parents and few others. There are benefits to both systems, sure, I just think it is interesting to see how the two methods came about.

Imy, some of Adam and Joy

Off to study... see, barely any time to myself here!