It is NOT fine.

My friend Taylor has told us a story about his first week living in Vietnam during his study abroad program, when he had just arrived in Saigon, and he was walking down the street when a rat walked over his foot. Desperate to be open-minded to his new host culture, and desperate not to be the high-maintenance American, Taylor forcefully convinced himself, "It's fine. It's fine. It's fine," although I'm sure he felt anything but fine. A rat had just stepped on him, for crying out loud!

Taylor's reaction rings true with a lot of reactions that I have to bizarre or seemingly gross cultural practices that I encounter here. In order to keep my sanity when experiencing a million new and strange things a day, I forcefully tell myself, "It's fine, suck it up. Get over it." For the most part, this method works and allows me to be (mostly) accepting of some frustrating or yucky aspects of life here. It's fine. Sure, they eat dog here. It isn't my thing, and I definitely won't (knowingly) eat dog while I'm here, but they can do what they want. It's fine. Similarly, they can throw their garbage and recyclables in the street and then burn it. Maybe they haven't seen An Inconvenient Truth, or maybe they don't have the resources or infrastructure to dispose of waste in a more sustainable way. It's fine. It's not my place to judge a culture's ways of dealing with daily life when they are probably doing the best they can with the resources (or lack thereof) that they have.

I want to say that just about everything I experience is fine, and that I can just get over any of the more bizarre or upsetting cultural differences that I encounter. However, some things should not be fine in any culture, no matter how objectively you're looking at them.

Here is some context to the story that I am about to tell: Vietnamese children learn to potty-train in the street. As far as I know, there is no such thing as little smiling plastic potties that are child-sized, and possibly not even diapers. If a child needs to go to the bathroom, he simply finds a patch of sidewalk or street, drops his drawers, and goes. It's fine. Maybe they potty-train earlier than American children do, as a result of this lack of luxurious diapers and potties. Fine. Not my place to judge.

However, I am going to judge all I want when I am sitting at a street-side restaurant, eating lunch, when a child comes up to my table, looks at me, and then pulls down his pants. I figured he was coming over to inspect me, as so many children in Ha Tinh do, because they most likely haven't seen foreigners before. But no, this child was just coming over to urinate five feet from my table.

I had to eat my entire meal staring at his slowly-spreading puddle of urine which was getting closer and closer to my table. Ew. Yes, on the bright side, at least it wasn't the other thing, and I know that urine is allegedly sterile, so no worries. I guess. But really? Right in a restaurant???? So not fine.

When my mother was here, she was asking me to explain the difference between "street food" and "restaurants." She was confused because many of the places where I took her to eat were not physically on the street, yet I still referred to them as "street food." Although I am unaware of any official distinction or definition, the explanation that I gave her is that real "restaurants" are enclosed by four walls, probably have grownup-sized furniture, and have some (varying) degree of decor and cleanliness. Street restaurants, on the other hand, have fewer than four walls, are open-air (so dogs, cats, birds, and bugs can come and go as they please), and you are probably going to sit on kindergarden-sized plastic deck furniture while you eat. A new point of distinction to add to this list? In street restaurants, you may be exposed to children peeing.

Fine? So not fine? Opinions?