Bring a foreigner in for show and tell!

As the title might indicate, I was definitely brought in for show and tell last night. My naive little Vietnamese friend, Thang, invited me to her English class, which was three hours long. It had it's moments but overall, it was like sitting in a boring class where you already know everything and you are frustrated that no one else is getting it as quick as you (okay, I was obviously that kind of little asshole student). Mostly it was just boring though. And considering I sit most of the day at work, I did not want to sit for three more hours after work. But, alas, I figured I owed Thang a favor since she showed me around the city so I went!

I walked in and as usual everyone stared as if I was an alien. One guy even said I was literally the first American girl he has ever seen in real life ... wow. He mentioned he had an American friend who is a male, and he married a Vietnamese woman. He said she married a Vietnamese woman because he found them to be more honest and real. Mind you, he had a limited vocabulary but it seemed like the gist of what he was saying was that American girls are nuts. He laughed and said yes, that's what he heard. I couldn't really disagree.

Thang seemed very happy I came to her class so I guess it wasn't so bad! Their class is split up into sections, for the first 1.5hours they have writing and for the second 1.5hours they have speaking. Their writing teacher has reasonably good English although I found her a bit hard to understand. Their textbook is kind of dumb. The writing prompt they were discussing in class was "Architects are to blame for ugly buildings in cities, do you agree or disagree?" ... they asked me to help but I felt like you needed to know more about what architects do to make an educated argument. I kind of gave up at that point and just corrected their English. Their speaking teacher was pretty hilarious. She was very loud and animated. Her English was much better, luckily, since she was the speaking teacher. But she spoke very fast and I am pretty sure most of the students couldn't keep up with her.

I guess Thang mentioned that I liked "Bahn Xeo" which was the omelette looking thing, apparently more of a pancake? I don't know ... but either way, it was what Thang had ordered that first night we had dinner and she claimed it was fattening. Her teacher said the same thing to me! I was like, ummm first of all, clearly you haven't had American food, second of all, obviously that's why it was so delicious. I don't really think it was that fatty ... I guess they used a bit of oil? But compared to what we eat in the US it was practically a plate of vegetables. 

Anyway, after class Thang and I got dinner. As per usual I just let her order and yet again I had rice noodles and soup with meat in it. They also use a lot of fresh herbs. They aren't bad but I don't think I'm much of an herb-person, especially if they are anything like cilantro (yick!). It was very good, but I am getting a littttle bored of rice and soup...let's be serious. Give me a pizza. I am so tempted to check out the KFC that's near my house... Thang also asked what I wanted to drink. I said bottled water but the next thing I knew I had some weird white frothy drink (clearly her English isn't stellar). I still have no idea what the drink was but it was pretty tasty and it went well with the soup since the soup was super spicy!

A trend that has been happening to me lately is either: I have a local order for me so I don't know what I'm eating OR I think I am ordering one thing and I get something else. The first day I had that clementine-like juice I thought the lady was merely going to squeeze some lime on my bahn mi (I don't know? Is that a thing?) but then it turns out I ordered a drink. Another day I sat down and tried to motion for a menu and the girl looked confused and then just brought me a coffee ... I didn't complain. And then yesterday I thought I had pointed to a guava but after eating half of it I realized it was a sour, unripe mango. I didn't even know people eat them like that? So here is a picture of my sour mango which they give you this super spicy salt on the side to sprinkle on it... it was still pretty good, but not guava!