Lunch at the office!

Like any good office, MCC has birthday parties about once a month for people's birthday that are close together. MCC doesn't exactly have a lot of employees, so I can't imagine this will continue very frequently all year, but I really like it! MCC has workers both in the office and doing various things in the city, so it's a great chance for everyone to get together. And there is always cake :) Yesterday we celebrated Hiro and Van Anh's birthday. I took some pictures so you could see a little more of MCC, my work day and food! On a normal work day there are about 6 people for lunch, so imagine a slightly smaller gathering for an average day.

This is Co Thu, the cook! She is fantastic. I really enjoy most of the food we eat everyday! I'm going to try to start helping out a little so I can learn to cook great Vietnamese food.

There are always a lot of different foods at one meal. Sometimes it follows what feels like a normal pattern to me with one meat, one vegetable, plus rice and always a Vietnamese soup. But other times it seems like there are a lot of options and a lot of equally main dish like things. For the party we had some sort of meat, although it looked more like bones than meat. I'm still working on enjoying eating meat like that, so I'll admit that this meal I skipped that part. We also had fresh spring rolls, which happen to be one of my favorites! And pho, which I have come to enjoy. I haven't eaten it that often, but my teacher at school eats it every day! It is definitely a Vietnamese staple.

Pho is always a little better if you add lime and maybe some ground pepper

I'm not a big fan of soups so Pho, along with many other Vietnamese dishes, has required some getting used to. And even when I like the soup I have a hard time finishing a whole bowl of it. Sometimes I think I get bored of eating before I actually am full! This might have been the first soup I have actually comletely finished!

And it's time for dessert! Yay birthday cake! This one was store bought, but still pretty good. You never quite know with Vietnamese sweets, especially flour based ones. But you can always count on the cutesy decorations. The Vietnamese love their cutesy things.

Just because you have cake doesn't mean you don't get fruit, the normal dessert, too! Today we had apples and pomelos. I think I've eaten pomelo almost everyday since arriving here, the Vietnamese love it! It's is kind of grapefruity, but not at the same time. At first I didn't love them, sometimes they can be rather flavorless, or even kind of sour. But other times they are great!

And there you are, a little office lunch tour. I have to admit that I definitely miss food from home. Just the normalcy of it. And the ability to cook for myself and eat the amount I want. Sometimes I feel like I have to gear up to eat a meal here, because it's like eating out every meal in that it always feels temporary. But I am getting more used to it and I do legitimately enjoy most of it! I've also gotten much better at eating only the amount I want to. The Vietnamese are GREAT at putting food in your bowl for you when they think you should eat more, even if you feel like you've already eaten half of the food that was on the table. Oh the culture of food...how interesting!