Dinner at home!

Tonight for the first time in months I actually cooked dinner! I had the night off, so Khánh and Xuân came over and Khánh brought Jutta and Maarten, from Germany.  We had chicken drumsticks, garden salad, potato salad and bánh mì – simple as...  It’s surprising how many things I thought of cooking, but had to cross off the list because I don’t have an oven! I hadn’t realised how much I rely on an oven to cook for guests at home.

Khánh set up my laptop downstairs so we could have music and Katie came on Skype, so that was a turn around... Katie talking to me while I was preparing dinner. It has always been the other way around.

Xuân took over shallow frying the drumsticks as soon as he arrived, bless him. It’s so hot standing over a frying pan.  The boys got a huge bottle of beer hoi from the restaurant down the lane (about 20 litres for $5) and we sat down to a typical Aussie summer meal right here in Hải Phòng... 

Jutta and Maarten both commented that the potato salad was just like they would have it in Germany – so there you go – small world.  We had fresh fruit salad and yoghurt or ice cream for dessert and by then we were all full. But not too full for a game of darts.

None of us were very good at it, but local rules are that the looser has to do push-ups...

 

We girls had the option of singing a song when we lost, but Jutta opted for push-ups instead.  So did Quỳnh when she arrived a bit later.

While Khánh took Jutta home, Xuân and Maarten played chess.  Though I must admit it didn’t take long for Maarten to get to checkmate!

What a lovely night. The boys had already washed up, so there was very little for me to do to clean up... just toddle upstairs!  How blessed am I.