Vietnamese Sports Day

After about a month of prep, David finally got to give his presentation on Vietnam today. I'll try to upload the video I took of him practicing last night.

Aside from researching the culture of Vietnam, David also had to dress in costume and we decided to bring food.

David found a recipe for watermelon jelly. At first I didn't think it was really Vietnamese, because it just looks like jello in a watermelon. But it's not quite. At least, not boxed jello.

You cut a watermelon in half and hollow out the meat. Save the hollowed out shell and squish the meat so that you get watermelon water (or juice!) I used a cheese cloth.

Then you mix 3 parts gelatin with 1 cup of the water and set aside. Meanwhile, heat 2 cups of water with 1/4 cup of sugar until it boils. Then pour the water/gelatin mixture in and mix well.

Pour all of it into the watermelon shell and let set overnight. I had a large watermelon so I made a double batch of the jelly mixture. If I ever did this again, I'd buy a small watermelon. Partly because that's a lot of gelatin to make and partly because I think it would stay together better if it was smaller.

Here are the watermelon jelly slices. Apparently it was tasty. I hate jello so I didn't try it.

The other food we brought (at the nice man from Saigon Grocery's suggestion) was Rambutan. These were a big hit. Apparently they're a lot like lychee, only sweeter.

Some people have though they were sea urchins!

There's the fruit and the seed.

We totally lucked out with David's costume. We thought he was going to wear a white shirt, white pants and a traditional square straw hat, but we could find the hat. And then David spotted this blazer and we found the hat (at Value Village). The canteen is ours from our dating years and Andrew and David made the gun out of wood.

Friday was also sports Day. I drive the kids to school on Fridays so I got to sneak a few pictures of the kids in their gear.

Jade was team green.

Lizzie was team yellow.

David was also team green and represented in his Viet Cong uniform.

Haylea is hear for moral support :)