Day 1

aToday I convinced a table of us to eat prawn eyes. But let's start from the beginning! 

First day in Vietnam was amazing! And amazingly humid. Made it feel like a bizzilion degrees. 

A delicious breakfast of "no idea what this is, but it's good!"

The day began with a short bus ride to the University of Economics (UEF) where we were met by a group of Vietnamese students with excited grins and flower leis. I'm fairly positive the lei was made out of parsley and prickled like no other, but how cool!! It was like going to Hawaii! 

One of my new Vietnamese friends and my flower lei.

After breakfast, we were informed that we had just received shirts that we were to ear today (given that it was the opening ceremony). A swank red polo that said "Pitt" and "UEF" in some combonation on all sides of the shirt. (He is expertly modeling said shirt)

Inside UEF, we were treated to a series of dances in both traditional and K-Pop styles. There were speeches  made and gifts presented. All American students were given a set of books that we will be using in our classes, a second red polo, and either a tie (for guys) or fabric (for girls). The fabric is going to become Ao Dais (traditional Vietnamese dresses), which we were fitted for and will receive on Friday. Very excited! And selfies. So many selfies and pictures to be taken with our new friends! SO. MANY. SELFIES. 

After that, we spent some time butchering the Vietnamese languages as we tried to learn the alphabet and different tongues. Didn't go well. Vietnamese is such a difficult language! 

Lunch was a series of other delicious things, including chicken balls in sauce, unidentifyable meat still on the bone, and egg with mushrooms. 

After that we spent some time learning about Vietnam's engineering and business at another university, Hutech. It was pretty interesting to learn that UEF and Hutech are private universities, and weren't allowed to be until very recently.

So I named my blog as I did because the traffic in HCMC is CRAZY! Majority motorbikes, and people just go! It's crazy!! 

It's pretty cool being here right now because we just recently passed the 40th anniversary of the fall/liberation of Saigon. Eveyrthing is still done up (there are pretty flower signs and banners over the streets) from the celebration. 

Dinner was probably my favorite part of the day (although the dancing was a close second place). We went to this place that served street food. The way it was set up is that the perimeter of the restaurant had stations where they were making the food, and you could just walk around and watch them prepare what you would then go and order. 

Our food was picked for us. Plates of rice jelly cakes covering tiny shrimps still in the shell (very tastey, a good crunch to offset the textures!), noodles with crab, grilled pork, fried and cold spring rolls, soup with egg and crab, and more! Which brings me to...

Off with his head!

Most of us were happy enough munching on the shrimp (prawns?) with little trouble peeling off the shell and head. But of course I had to tell the kid next to me to eat an eye, to which he responded that he would if I would. MOVE OVER ANTHONY BOURDAIN! Eventually I got majority of my table to join in in the eating of a celebratory prawn eye. And I will leave you with this: they taste like nothing, but the little pop when you bite it is all you need :)