Washington D.C. is far from New York so it was a very long ride, but when we eventually got there we had a family at a Laotian restaurant so we can taste, and get a feel for the cuisine of Laos and to have a party before the ceremony that was the next day. My cousin Rena knows that I love food. She was so nice and she had someone show me all of the different Laotian foods and tell me what was in it. I made a plate with some different stuff on it. I was honestly not starving but I took a good amount of food. I got spicy eggplant salad, sticky rice, pork shoulder, and sun dried beef.
I had a little bit of each dish because I was not that hungry, but all of them were satisfying. Let’s start off with the pork. I really enjoyed the pork. It was fatty, and had a nice char on it with a lot of really good flavors. Next, was the eggplant salad. It might have been my favorite one even if I did not have a lot of it. Considering I do not love eggplant, this dish caught my attention. It was very spicy but in a good way. The sticky rice was cool. Sticky rice is a glutinous rice and I kind of liked it better than regular white rice. Lastly, I tried the sun dried beef. It was almost like beef jerky because it was tough but it was better because it had a tang to it.
The next day we went to go see her get sworn in at The United States Department of State. It was super cool because inside there were a lot of historic papers. We even got to see the real Emancipation Proclamation signed by Abraham Lincoln! Her speech was very nice although it was a little weird looking up at the stage thinking this is my cousin and not someone I do not know. Overall the whole experience was great and the meal was very good. I cannot wait to go to Laos to see my Cousin Rena again and try more amazing food there!