Mid-Autumn Festival!

This weekend we celebrated the Mid-Autumn Festival! Friday was a relaxed day at school because of the upcoming holiday; students didn't wear their uniforms, nap time was cancelled (and replaced by chaos), and at lunch there was a buffet! In the evening, Dung and I made moon cakes, the specialty treat for the Mid-Autumn festival. They start with a cooked, salted egg yolk in the middle, wrapped in lotus seed paste, then wrapped in an oil-flour dough. After the egg and lotus are encased in the dough, you press it into a mold to shape the moon cake and get an intricate design on top. I included pictures of the whole process of Dung and I making the cakes. We started by cooking the salted eggs and mixed the dough while the eggs were cooking. For the second and third batches, we added fun colors to the dough. When the eggs were done, Dung wrapped them in lotus paste then I wrapped them in dough and we both made a few using the molds. They had to rest and set overnight but I tried one today and it was very good. They were way too sweet for me to eat more than a couple bites but much better than the store bought one I tried before and very fun to make.

The main events were scheduled for Saturday so in the morning, Anna, Dung, Anh's parents (who were visiting from the city) and I went to the park at the far end of the Ecopark for the parade but, as we were walking, it started raining! We went anyway in hopes that the rain would let but it never did. After watching a few of the performances under the big circus tent that had been set up, the parade was cancelled and a disappointed Anna led the way home.

In the afternoon, I met with The Anh to work on our history project. The assignment was to tell the history of anything and we chose computers. We designed a timeline and put 20 of (what we thought were) the most important times in the history of computers. We didn't finish on Saturday because The Anh had to go but we were able to print out the timeline on Sunday and draw on all of our pictures. On Saturday evening, we went out to dinner in the Ecopark and Anh's brothers joined us (though they were nearly half an hour late). I didn't get to talk to them much since they mostly spoke to each other but we had a nice dinner of hot pot and sat outside where many other Ecopark residents were dining.

I unintentionally woke early on Sunday morning and as Dung was leaving early for an event in the city, we went out for breakfast together and had pho. I brought some back for Anna who woke up a

little after I returned to the apartment. I did work on my college apps until lunch and talked to my parents a little on Skype while they were cooking dinner. After lunch, The Anh came over so we could finish our history project. We had to wait a few hours since the printing shop wasn't open, but after we got the papers printed out, we were able to get it done. Dung's parents got back from the city a little later and we had an early dinner of hot pot with huge Alaskan king crab legs. I'm sure the crab wasn't actually from Alaska but it definitely looked the same kind of crab you can get there. We ate while watching another motorcycle race which I think was one of the many qualifiers for the race that Anh and Dung are going to see in Malaysia in October.

It's after now dinner and I'm getting ready for the week. I'm supposed to go with Hop (a volunteer from my exchange organization) tomorrow to get my visa renewed since it expires in a couple of weeks and I definitely don't want to get deported. Send positive thoughts to Seattle on Monday, my dad's getting surgery and will be out for a little while. Thanks for reading and have a great Sunday!