Day 6, Sunday, Sept 14 - Rest & Relaxation

Helping in the kitchen

 Joy learns how to make fresh lemon juice--Vietnamese style
Also in the kitchen are Coc--yes, pronounced Coke (middle), and Perfume (right)
Coc is Perfume's first cousin and usually helps daily at the home stay.

Making morning Pho

Adding the noodles & veggies to each bowl before adding the broth & meat.

This is a bag of fresh green tea.  I've never seen it fresh before.  It tastes so good!

So, how they serve it:  After steeping the fresh leaves, making very strong green tea, they ladle some into a glass--about halfway.  Adding ice next, and  then filling the remainder of the glass with water.  (Otherwise, it's a bit strong.)  Mmmmmm, it's so refreshing in the heat!

Perfume was excited to have the kids spend the day with her children.  So after a late breakfast, Mom and the kids went with Perfume and her kids to (what I've heard) a massive water park not far away.  James took pictures on his camera while there which I'll upload later.  John spent the day catching up on sleep, while I spent the bulk of the day uploading pictures and blogging as I'm sure you noticed by Sunday morning your time!!  For now, these are the two pics I have on my camera: 


Jesse & Joy get to ride with Perfume on her motorbike along with her son!
Mom & James went in a taxi with her daughter to the water park.

We had a lot of fun, Mom!!!

When we sat down for supper, I noticed a cut-off water bottle with fishies inside.  Immediately suspicious, I asked if they would be used for supper.  Perfume laughed and said no.  I'm not really sure, though...I never saw them again--by morning they were gone...

Supper

Mom writing down some things for Binh, Perfume's husband.  Each evening after supper, we made an attempt to organize for the next day...but never did any one day go as we'd previously planned!!!

This is Liep -- Liep Lap Thai (pronounced Chai)!!
We spend quite some time in order to properly pronounce his rather long name.  Every other Vietnamese name we'd come across was only 1-2 syllables long.  But we got it, and by the time we did, he was grinning from ear to ear!  What we learned the next morning:  he was pulling our leg...  Lap Thai means handsome!  Well, the following night when he walked into the home stay around suppertime, we greeted him, "Helloooo, Liep Lap Thai--Liep Handsome!!"  He turned a very bright red!!!  It was a lot of fun.  We found that many Vietnamese men will try this on unsuspecting foreigners.  BTW, the Vietnamese words for beautiful are "sin gai" (pronounced "sing guy")

Family of 4 on a motorbike...goodnight!