Kari_ITA4

So, last night Sydney and I did so much and spent so much time with our ITA that it really needs to be put into 2 parts. We went to Keith's house around 5 and met some of his friends that had already arrived. They were also from Vietnam but were very fluent in English. One of his friends even had a phd in English and was a professor in Vietnam. After we arrived at Keith's place, the first thing we did was go to a Vietnamese grocery store, and man was it COOL!! It was actually divided into 2 parts-one side was a seafood store where they sold fresh seafood (and at really good prices too), and the other half was the actual grocery store.

This is at the seafood store-they had squid, crawfish, shrimp of various sizes, fish, lobster, crab and much more.

This is in the actual grocery store-this ENTIRE aisle was made up of noodles, it was awesome!

This is Bubbles. He really liked Sydney and kept waving his feeler things at her ;)

The grocery store was so cool-the vegetables and fresh produce they had were nothing like what's in Publix. They sold Japanese mushrooms, which were these tiny little stringy things that looked like really thick bean sprouts. They also had flowers (edible), leek roots, palm tree sugar, dragon flower roots and a bunch of other stuff that you never see at Publix. Also, I don't think I've ever seen SO many noodles and ramen in one place! They had them in about 20 different seasonings and flavors and even came in huge value packs. They also sold containers of tea leaves in jars and sold tea sets to go with them if you needed one. Oh-and they also sold the pearls that go into "Bubble" or Boba tea-one of my personal favs!