A French And Finnish Encounter
After a few nights in Dalat, our crew returns to Ho Chi Minh City and our host university, Nong Lam. We are provided accommodations in the on-campus guest houses.
I leave the room to find a yellow-lit courtyard. A few students mull around. One points me to the boxed food delivered special for us. I'm not hungry, just disoriented. The rest of the Penn Starters must be somewhere. I step over a lizard and turn the corner. A few more guest houses later, I find a table surrounded by some familiar, some French faces. I sit next to what happens to be the only Finnish member of the party. The crowd shares college stories in comfortable, if accented English. My Finnish neighbor and the six Frenchmen offer beer and cigarettes and make it easier for me to forget my unfounded distaste for French culture. These 20 year old students weren't as pretentious, xenophobic, or snooty as the French are often made out to be. I'm not one to subscribe too fully to stereotypes, and I won’t assume they're all this nice, but at least these six French men and women were adventurous enough to study in a rustic Vietnamese university and generous enough to welcome American guests into their nighttime ritual. While walking back to my room, I narrowly avoid stepping a sandalled foot on a scorpion. The French laugh nervously. They’ve been here long enough to watch their steps; that species has a deadly sting. Merci beaucoup for the information. |