Day 2 of Tết 2019 (or... technically day 1, since it's officially the first day of the year). Definitely had an idea of what to expect today (lots of visitors, lots of alcohol being shoved in my face, lots of strange food), but was told that my expectations were way off (day 1 we only go to other people's houses, there's no drinking on Tết, and the food is amazing). So, first got up late and headed to give out lucky money to the kids. By our second stop I was being force-fed multiple glasses of rice wine while being excitedly spoken at during a loud karaoke party. After a rest at home, we tried to go out again, but kept getting stalled by new visitors, so we didn't have time to visit everyone. Fortunately we had food to eat at home - gifts of weird #BananaLeaf wrapped stuff from prior stops (you can see how delicious it is by observing the faces in the last photo). Notice that the nice new table is left in favour of a typical wobbly Vietnamese style metal one...that's where you want to eat food. Also, since I had to memorize the Vietnamese new year greetings, I forced all the cousins to say the greeting to me in English if they wanted their lucky cash. What I also knew to expect was the difficulty in trying to keep track of all the second cousins ( #twiceRemoved ) and their great grandparents and how they all fit in. Happy Vietnamese New Year! (Again) https://www.instagram.com/p/Btgdz8nleEj/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=10wzeow7uny6f
