After months of saying that I would come visit, I finally made it out to her house . She met me at the bus stop and she rode the bike with me on the back to her house. The next post is a video that I took from the back of the bike. This path got WAY smaller, with about a foot drop on both sides. I tried to ride the bike, but I was too panicky when the path was the size of a bike wheel.
She lives out in the country. She loves it. She tells me what everyone is growing as we pass the fields. The rainy season is only just starting, so now is the planting time. Obviouslt these beans have already had their time...
Their irrigation systems were bamboo poles in the air with hoses comes out of them. This man is watering his crops with the hose.
I didn't arrive until 1:00, hoping that I had missed lunch. But Oanh had not eaten in anticipation of eating with me. I wasn't hungry, but Oanh's mom gave us huge bowls of banh canh with cucumbers and carrots and plates of mangos andwatermelon. The noodle soup was steaming hot and I would drink tea to cool off. Oanh instructed me not to drink while I was eating or I would get too full to finish my food.
Oanh has 3 sisters and a mother. This is me with her mother. Such a sweet woman. Oanh's father died from lung cancer last October and they're still coping with that.
His massive headstone was a few feet from the door. Oanh said that if it was somewhere else, she would never be able to visit him. We looked at pictures from the funeral and talked about it a little.
This is a papaya tree in Oanh's yard. They have a cherry tree, 2 mango trees, a star fruit tree, a plum tree, and her sisters planted a mang cau (custard apple? we don't have it in America, but I don't like it anyway) tree while I was there. Like or not, I want fruit trees like this someday (Francois agrees).
They made this to pick mangos out of the tree. It's made of bamboo and it works perfectly. There's an area for the mango to go, and then Oanh swiftly pulls it back, snapping the mango off. Very nifty.
Oanh going after a mango for me.
Oanh's mom working in the garden. You can tell from her hands that she works hard. Oanh looked at my hands last year and said that I could never pick rice with her because it would be too difficult for me, which I can't even let bother me because I got a blister sharpening pencils last night..
Oanh is a very special friend of mine. We've had some very difficult/frustrating communication in our friendship, times when we didn't understand each other at all, or when we were together too much. She is such a happy person, very high energy. We've learned a lot from each other in the past 2 years. I'm going to miss her a lot.
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