Yesterday I moved into my homestay! For the past two weeks I have been living out of a duffel bag so it was nice to finally be able to unpack, hang up my clothes, leave my shampoo in the shower, etc. I have my own room, well really it is more like my own floor. It is a five story house, but each floor only has two or three rooms. So on my floor I have my room and my own bathroom, and then there is another room that was explained to me as the prayer room. My family practices Buddhism and they worship their ancestors, so this is the room they do it in. It is very cool! My family is so nice and accommodating, it really should be a fun three weeks. I think that this is the time when I am really going to be immersed in the Vietnamese culture and way of life.
I love eating meals with my homestay family. For the past month I have been either eating at a restaurant or finding street food for every meal. It was fun, but I definitely missed the luxury of walking downstairs and having food on the table. I don't have to make any choices, I just eat what is set in front of me. Yesterday I had my first pig foot. It is served in pho with vegetables and other pieces of meat. I really haven't eaten very much meat since I have been here but I made a promise to myself that at my homestay I would try everything that was served to me. The pig foot just tasted like a normal piece of meat, but it had a strange texture, I guess I would compare it to blubber? Maybe? It was pretty strange to hold up a pig's hoof with chopsticks and then gnaw off the meat. Everyone have a good visual? For dinner we had a variety of different seafood. My favorite was the squid. I don't know how Co Minh, my host mother, prepared it, but it was unbelievably good. There was also tiny fried shrimp; they were about the size of a fingernail. When eating the shrimp, you eat everything. They were very crunchy. I liked them. Then we also had some sort of fried fish. Once again, the fish was fried whole so I used my chopsticks to tear it apart and pick around the bones. I didn't eat the tail or head. And this morning for breakfast I had caviar and bread. Following every meal we are always served fresh fruit. I am being spoiled. Everything that is set in front of me is so good. Meal times are definitely going to be a highlight of my homestay. Besides the food, I just love sitting around the table and listening to my family talk. Unfortunately, my Vietnamese is absolutely terrible so I can't contribute to the conversation at all but it is fun to listen for the different tones and on occasion I think I catch a word or two.
My homestay is pretty far from everyone else. Today in Vietnamese class our teacher, Co Thuy (pronounced tweeeeee) asked the class where all of our homestays are. After I failed to pronounce my street name and district correctly I just handed her a piece of paper with my full address written down. Her response: "Why you so far away? Why do they put you in this district. It is too far." All in very broken English and with long pauses between each word. I honestly didn't realize it was far enough away for her to be so flabbergasted, but then again it doesn't take much for her to get super excited or interested in something. She is quite the character. Anyways, my house is about a thirty minute bus ride into the University and luckily it is only one bus so I don't need to worry about transfers or anything like that. The bus system is so confusing. There aren't really set schedules, actually I haven't even seen any schedules, so I need to make sure I am at my bus stop with plenty of time to spare. It is super cheap to ride, only 4,000 dong, or about 25 cents. Trinh, my homestay sister, rode with me today in order to show me what stop I get off on. She goes to a different University that is an hour away from her house! Tomorrow I will ride the bus all by myself. I am just growing up.
Oh one more glorious thing about my homestay– I can run in the streets! Goodbye little 250 meter track, hello freedom. My house sits away from all the main roads so there are many little side streets I can explore, also there is a river that I can run next to. There are tons of people out and about in the morning walking, jogging, and playing badminton (basically Vietnam's national sport) so I felt very safe while running. After hearing a very scary story from my best friend, I decided that running on the streets with an ipod is a bad idea. So I don't get my daily lil wayne and britney fix but I don't have to run around in circles. It is a very fair trade.
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