Today we spent the whole day with Loc's family. We started the day by being served roasted pork sandwiches on fresh French bread for breakfast and then going to a local coffee house to sit and drink coffee. I had orange juice, but when I received it, it had ice in it. We had to request another one without ice. Not being able to have ice in my drinks really stinks. When you are sitting in the hot, humid weather ice just sounds so good. Mitchell wasn't too happy either. He had to drink a hot coffee while everyone else had iced coffee (one of Mitchell's favorites).The good thing about bottled water is that one of Mitchell's aunts is a manager for a bottled water company, so it is pretty easy to get.
After our coffee house experience, we quickly visited one of Mitchell's great aunts, then we headed over to Mitchell's grandmother's house. We spent the rest of the day there. Most of Mitchell's aunts, uncles and cousins were there. They served us food, then more food, then more food and yes, more food. We got to try many tropical fruits we have never had. We had a variety of meat to pick from: duck, chicken, beef, and pork wrapped in banana leaves. This was served with two types of noodles and rice. We did not even eat supper because we were so full from lunch. It was like a big family get together in the United States; more food than you could ever eat.
Mitchell made buddies today with a couple of kids. One was a cousin's kid that we have affectionally called "Silly Boy". He followed us everywhere we went and was always getting into everything. The other boy was a young man that found all of Mitchell's gadgets very interesting. He is just beginning his 7 years of English in school and tried some out on us. (Yes, I said 7 years of English. They start in 6th grade learning the language.) He really found Mitchell's iPhone fun to play with and kept Mitchell company all afternoon.
Luckily, Mitchell has two cousins that speak English. The first is Ngan who is able to speak a little English, but carried around her Vietnamese/English dictionary all day. The other was a cousin that is an English teacher in the local high school. She spoke English very well. I felt sorry for her because all afternoon she was required to translate between us and Mitchell's aunts.
We have uploaded many pictures to our MobileMe gallery. Click the following link to see them. If you want more information about a picture, just click on it then click the round "i" button.
http://gallery.me.com/mitchellandwendy#100008
