HEI outing

Sunday afternoon was my "goodbye" outing with HEI, the medical English club that I've been meeting with a few times during my trip. There was a big group of us that went out, most were the HEI officers and 3rd year medical students. We headed out to district 4, across the river, for what was an eventful night.

First on the menu? ốc! Snail!


We had little ones that you had to poke out with a fork, larger ones that just came on the shell, and these "fingernail" snails, called because of the shells they come in.



I have never eaten so much snail in one sitting, but it was quite good - though we all knew that one cannot really get full just eating snail!

Second course was a real sit-down dinner of fried rice, vegetables, noodles, and french fries!



After dinner, we headed back to district one so that we could walk around and burn off the meal. We ran into a group of bicyclists who had left Cambodia that morning and just arrived then at their hotel in Vietnam. That's the coolest thing about being in District 1: you can just walk around and see cool, fun things and run into a great variety of people.



We walked around a night market that was just closing up, enjoyed some coconut gelatin on the streets by Nhu Lan (where I had one of my first meals in HCMC with Chuong), and then continued walking. I ended up finding the new "Vietnam Quilts" store (64 Ngô Đức Kê), which was totally random, but there were two women still there and invited me inside to see the new shop. It's really big and beautiful inside, I hope to return in a few years and buy more quilts! (Total purchases for this trip include 4 quilts, 4 custom ordered pillows, 2 baby quilts, some aprons, and a bag - yeah my motto has become "buy now, worry about packing later".)

We also went through the large Fahasa bookstore, where I bought three more children's books to bring back with me. These books are about Vietnamese myths and have English and Vietnamese on the pages so that I can learn the new vocabulary quite easily. There were a ton of people in the store, even though it was so late, probably because it was nice and cool inside!

After this, it was time for goodbyes. One first year gave me a keychain that she and her roommates had made by hand out of beads and wiring, so sweet! Em Khue, who was my original contact person for the group, presented me with a small gift: a small display of 3 dolls dressed in traditional ao dai from the North, Central, and South Vietnam, a bookmark, and a note of thanks. It was really sweet, I know that they don't have a lot of time or money and their generosity is just overwhelming; these students are a lot of fun to talk to and are just so nice and friendly! It was really great to get to know them and I really hope our paths can cross again.