Rain

We are currently rained in. Rain in Saigon comes out of nowhere, suddenly appearing like pinpricks of needles, straight down in torrential downpours. Yesterday was Christmas, and we spent another full day shopping for fabric at Ben Thanh. Co Xuan then took us to a tailor to get measured for our "ao dai's."

In the evening, she invited us over to her house for dinner. There was more food than 10 people could possibly eat: "banh xeo" (Vietnamese crepes), "cha gio" (eggrolls), "banh hoi" (angel-hair rice rolls with meatballs), "banh tet" (cylindrical sweet-rice logs with pork and mung bean filling), a thick seafood soup, a hot-pot soup with bitter greens, and fresh salad. For dessert, there was custard apple, papaya, and a "buche de noel" log cake that no one actually made it to, which ended up as a centerpiece display.

This morning, we went once again to visit Tung's grandma, where we got a lunch of rice noodles or egg noodles with chicken.

I took a little tour of the marketplace near Tung's grandma's, another interesting scene of merchants squatting by their merchandise: fresh fruits with a glossy luster to their peel; shoes in a massive pile, the left and right separated from each other; bunches of fresh leaf lettuces with their roots still intact, glowing green in the slant of sun; my favorite "chuoi xiem" bananas in various stages of ripeness; silver shrimp still jumping and twitching on the metal tray that held them; dried cuttlefish and anchovies displayed in piles on newspapers. These people live day in and day out with the same scene playing in front of them, the same neighbors to their left and right, selling the same foods day after day, most of the same shoppers from the nearby houses going to market in the early morning to buy the freshest fish and meat. But to me, it was an overwhelming rush of interesting sights, sounds, and smells; my senses were assaulted with the scent of fresh vegetables and dried goods, the sound of merchants inviting passersby to come look at what they sold, and of customers haggling for a better price, the feel of the warm sunshine on my bare arms, reminding me of all the goodness life still has to offer.

One of Tung's aunts took us to the jewelry shop to get measured for rings for the loose pearls that we brought along. I brought two pearls, gifts from Tung's mom when she traveled to China, to be fashioned into jewelry here in Viet Nam. I wanted to go to a temple after docking at home for a brief rest, but that's when we got rained in.

Today I got to really flush a toilet--and by that I don't mean pushing the silver lever and walking away, forgetting about it. I mean gather a plastic bucket full of water from a barrel under a lone faucet in the wall, then pouring it down the toilet until the water became clean. Accidentally throwing toilet paper down there instead of in the accompanying waste basket sitting near the toilet is, apparently, a big no-no.