THE Mall

We had the chance to visit my childhood church this past Sunday: the Edmonton Vietnamese Alliance Church.  It was great to see so many familiar faces and quickly get a catch up.  Afterwards, we went for Vietnamese food at Pho Hoa.  It is actually a Vietnamese restaurant chain that started in San Jose!  There are locations all over North America- we went to the one in West Edmonton Mall.  Of course I loved it- I had my usual bowl of pho and Jason had his usual vermicelli bowl with spring rolls.  After lunch, we spent the afternoon at the mall; THE Mall: West Edmonton Mall!  I've blogged about this place every year it seems, but that's because it's one of Edmonton's biggest tourist attractions.  It still claims to be North America's largest mall (based on square footage, I think).  There's so much packed into one space- after all these years, I still think it's pretty neat.  After leaving the restaurant, we strolled down a few aisles of T&T SuperMarket... It's this HUGE Asian market that has every possible Asian thing you can imagine!  There is just no way for me to put into words or even take enough pictures to give you a good sense of what I'm talking about!  If Fresno had a store like this, I'd have no excuses as to why I don't cook Vietnamese food more often!  The store leads into the "Chinatown" section of the Mall.  We stopped to pick up some bubble teas.  Jason tried a new flavor today- blueberry- he really liked it.

Grace & Jeremy sharing their mango slush bubble tea. They love it!

We got the chance to wander around and do a little shopping.  In all our years of visiting THE Mall, we've never seen this: the Sea Lions' Show!  We just happened to be walking by and saw the crowds forming.  It was a pretty cute and decent show (if you don't think too much about the fact that they're animals being kept for entertainment- Jason and I are strangely beginning to have some opinions about that).





The kiddos with Di Dao (pronounced, "yee dow," ow as in ouch)