The Rock of Saigon: Petro's Adventures in Teaching

Debriefing

2009-08-25T13:55:00.004-04:00

I have been home for one month now. For the most part, the transition back to american culture has been smooth. Everything is familiar, and it's easy to embrace the convenience of everyday life once again. Still, many things remind me of Vietnam, and I continue to notice stark contrasts between our culture and theirs. Many of their customs have rubbed off on me, and it's difficult to break them.

Let's just take the example of eating out. Now I find it strange for the waiter/waitress to take drink orders and then disappear for five minutes before coming back for meal orders. I'm used to rushing to choose what I want to eat and drink at the same time, since the waiter is ready to hear it all at the start in Vietnam. When eating something out of a bowl, like rice or noodles, I have to resist the urge to bring the bowl close to my mouth for scooping. And at the end of every meal, I'm always looking for the toothpicks. Some places don't even have toothpicks here, which causes me to feel a little confused. Why wouldn't I want to pick my teeth after a meal? And when I do pick it, I absent-mindedly cover my mouth to make sure no one sees what I'm doing. The same happens when I yawn, and I have to get used to the fact that other people yawn with reckless abandon. In addition, I'm trying not to cringe when I see people wearing shoes when walking around the house. I could go on and on...

Driving a car at first was a little strange, after becoming so comfortable on a motorbike. I missed the sensation of being outside and exposed to the wind and sunshine while I drove around. Being in a car feels like you're not even moving. It's like I leave my house, I enter a room, the room is transported, I leave the room and find myself in a new place. I look at motorcycles I see on the road longingly, but I also am turned off by the gigantic, garish models I see most people driving here. I'm much more interested in scooters and vespas rather than big harleys.

The weather of course was another shock. During the day here, it can get as hot as Vietnam, but it's not nearly as humid. It's actually somewhat pleasant, and when other people around me are complaining, I don't see what the big deal is. In Vietnam, it stays warm all through the evening and night, and being outside at night can still be a sticky, sweaty time. In America, it actually gets chilly at night even in the summer, and I cross my arms to feel warm even when other people still say it's hot. I wonder how winter will feel for me.

I would say the biggest shock, though, is the advertising in America. The food advertisements on TV are ubiquitous, especially at night, and they show the unhealthiest foods at the latest hours of the night. They show burgers up close so that they cover the screen, and I can't help my mouth from watering, but I know in real life that they're actually quite greasy and disgusting. This pervasive advertising, though, seems to be a major part of our culture, and probably part of the reason why we're so unhealthy. I don't recall fast food commercials or anything like that in Vietnam. Instant noodles and such would be advertised, probably because there was just a bigger audience for that. In America I have also noticed a huge prevalence in media commercials, advertising movies, electronics, etc. When a new movie comes out, it's advertised so frequently that you'll hear about it on every commercial break for every show on every channel. And then after it comes out, it's forgotten, and the next movie is advertised. Everything is so ephemeral when it's so consumeristic. New product, then it's old, see what's next.

So, I'm progressing through my reverse culture shock, and I'm re-acclimating to America even as I miss certain things about Vietnam. I wish there were nice, inexpensive, well-decorated coffee shops here where one could bring their laptop or chat with friends. Unfortunately, there is mostly just starbucks and duncan donuts, with boring settings, expensive drinks, and I think the wireless costs money to use. It's not the same as a cafe filled with trees and ponds where you can while away the hours of the day.

Looking back on the past year, and reading some of my old blog posts, it seems like it was a dream. When I read certain things, I can't believe they actually happened. It was almost like a second life I lived over there, where my personality and habits changed, and when I came back here they are slowly changing back. However, I would say that the experience of living on my own, teaching English at different schools, and meeting new people really did change me in some ways. I think it transitioned me from my college stage to my adult stage of life. I learned greater independence, confidence, and open-mindedness. I learned what it means to be a man on his own, either here or abroad. And I learned that teaching is a fascinating and worthwhile profession, but it is probably not something for me in the long term. If I try something which is unfamiliar, I can succeed at it and attain new strengths, but in this case I can also better understand my own personal areas of interest. So for the next stage of my life, I will be entering law school, and taking the experience I've gained in Vietnam to prepare me for whatever unexpected challenges await me in the future.

Hen gap lai!

China

2009-08-06T00:24:00.003-04:00

After Hanoi, I went to China.

I wish I had spent longer there. Three days was a bit short to spend in Beijing, although I saw all the big things that I had planned to see. Because I was only there three days, I was able to spring for a better hotel room, and treated myself to a sumptuous peking duck dinner on the last day. With longer time, I could have seen some different temples and museums and zoos in the city, but perhaps that will have to wait for a future date.

I had some interesting impressions of Beijing because it was the first city I came to after leaving Vietnam. It was like coming back to civilization again. There was a wide, well-paved highway from the airport to the city. There were actual criss-crossing highways in the city. There were subway stations and decent buses. Everything seemed much less crowded in general. But the biggest change was the lack of motorbikes. Sure, there were a few here and there. However, it was mostly cars and bicycles, and they didn't constantly fill the streets. It was actually quite pleasant walking down the street. I didn't notice pollution per se, but the skies were pretty hazy during my whole time there.

One other difference was that there seemed to be less English everywhere as in Vietnam. I think since Vietnam relies more on foreign investment, they realized the importance of putting English translations on signs and restaurants and such, but the Chinese seem to be attempting to be more independent of America, and all around me I saw chinese symbols that I couldn't even read. When I asked my hotel for a place to eat, they wrote two symbols on a piece of paper, and I had to wander down the street trying to match the symbols to a sign. I felt that the Chinese were also not quite as friendly as the Vietnamese, but that may just have been my impression.

I took a hiking tour of the Great Wall from Jinshanling to Simatai, which was 10 kilometers. I severely underestimated the strenuousness of it. A lot of the area was old and unrestored, which was really cool to see, but it was tough climbing up and down steep staircases and ramps that were falling apart. I was completely exhausted not long into the hike, but I kept on moving and eventually I finished it. While I was walking, an older mongolian woman was following me with a bag of things to sell, and she kept fanning me and chatting with me and helping me climb down steps, until the end when she asked me what I wanted to buy. I was thankful for her company so I bargained down some good quality chopsticks from her.

When I first entered the great wall, there was a group of chinese who were all taking pictures. A few of them asked to take pictures with me, which I guess is something they do. So I posed for a few pictures with them, and they seemed happy at that. I couldn't imagine someone trying to do that in America, though.

In Beijing, I checked out the Forbidden City, which was full of old temples and palaces, and one could really spend hours and hours in there. It's very crowded and full of people from all different countries, with automatic audio guides in about 30 languages available. The guide explained everything to me, so I understood the gist of the chinese imperial history. Mostly I just liked looking at the architecture and hearing about the meaning behind certain statues.

And now, some pictures:

Hanoi and Ha Long Bay

2009-07-28T22:25:00.003-04:00

I spent 4 days in Hanoi, and it was very nice to see a familiar face, because my friend Mike was staying there working with the organization Kiva, which does microfinancing in developing countries. So, he was able to show me around, and introduced me to his friends, and I didn't feel like so much of a helpless tourist. While there, checked out a water puppet show, too. They have the puppets in the water, telling a story, with people moving the strings standing behind them out of sight. We couldn't really tell what the story was, but the program gave us the gist of it. It was a lot about the harvest and the kings and the magical animals of Vietnam. Worth seeing, but anything longer than the one-hour show we were there for would have been a little repetitive and boring.

What I really liked about Hanoi was the Old Quarter, which was an area filled with many little streets, full of shops and hotels and travel agencies. This is the most popular area for backpackers, so when you walk through here you are constantly being asked to buy something or eat something. All of these streets have names which correspond to the product they used to sell, such as "duong" for sugar or "cha ca" for fried fish. But, nowadays the names dont always correspond to what they actually sell. After all, they didnt have a "bootleg dvd's" street a hundred years ago.

People told me that Hanoians are less friendly than Saigonese, and I couldn't really tell any difference but I started to assume it was true. Perhaps I was reading too much into it. I was taking taxis everywhere in Hanoi, which I hadn't really done in Saigon, and had a couple bad experiences to sour my mood. No one really walked up to me to ask me where I was from, which happened often in Saigon. But maybe they could tell I was a tourist, not a resident. Anyway, even though it was 1,000 miles away from Saigon, I felt the same distinct Vietnamese atmosphere, similar food, practically the same language, similar looking people. All in all, Vietnamese.

It was a nice, relaxing few days there, but we did spend one long day on a tour of Ha Long Bay. We left very early for the 3 hour drive there in a cramped travel van, but we had a nice boat to tour the harbor in. We ate a lunch on the boat, then docked at an island that had a strange cave with many stalagmites, and then back to the boat while people tried to sell us sodas, doodads, and jewelry. Next the boat traveled around the bay some more, it was a very sunny day, and we saw some remarkable islands and strange rock formations. The Vietnamese have folklore about the area, and when they look at the rocks they can see a certain person or animal who is part of the story. You have to admit when you look at a certain rock that it looks like a man's face.

Ha Long Bay is a UNESCO heritage site and it's on the list of nominees for the 7 natural wonders of the world. So, it's a very famous place of natural beauty here, and I'm very glad I had the opportunity to see it.

I could ramble on all day about it, but here are some pictures:

Home

2009-07-26T22:27:00.002-04:00

That's right, folks, I'm finally home from my year living in Saigon. It was quite a whirlwind the past couple weeks, saying goodbye to everyone, finishing up last minute things, then going on a week of traveling. Even though i was on my own, I still kept pretty busy while traveling, and it wasn't the relaxing vacation I had envisioned. But that was fine, because I was in such beautiful, fascinating places such as Hanoi, Ha Long Bay, Beijing, and the Great Wall, so i didn't want to waste time. Now that I'm home, I have plenty of time to lounge around and relax before I start law school.

Now I'm still pretty exhausted from my long journey and my huge time shift, so I need to let my body clock adjust. Once I feel up to it, I'm going to post about my travels and show some pictures, and also reflect on my year abroad and the reverse culture shock of coming home.

And I think I may still keep this blog in the future. After all, even though I'm no longer in Ho Chi Minh City, I will always be the rock of Saigon.

Cafe Tram, or what i'll miss the most

2009-07-12T06:50:00.004-04:00

Did I mention how much I love coffee shops? In Vietnam, they really embrace nature and make you feel like you're miles away from the city when you've ducked into a coffee shop down an alleyway. I met fellow blogger Kevin at a coffee shop Thursday morning that was very relaxing and beautiful. However, I did not have my camera to take a picture.

However, later that day I met someone at Cafe Tram, which is practically around the corner from my house, on Tran Huy Lieu. I didn't know it existed until my friend recommended that we meet there. I think they are really trying to keep the place a secret. All you can see from the street is a narrow passageway. You enter through giant wooden doors to find a secret garden of sorts. There's a small manmade stream, and you walk over it on stone steps, with lots of statues nearby to wish you luck. In the water are big, bright koi. My friend led me into a very dark room, lit only be dim Chinese-style lanterns. It takes awhile for your eyes to adjust when you first walk in, as you can barely see. But once you adjust you realize how peaceful and cozy it is in there. You are at almost a lower level than the water outside the window, so you feel like you're in the deck of a ship. Did I mention the fruit juices are delicious? I can't believe I discovered this place with one week left in Saigon.

Also, they wouldn't let me take pictures, apparently afraid that someone would steal their ideas. However, I still snuck a few, and they let me take a couple from up top as long as a person was in the picture. So, enjoy a free, clandestine peak at Cafe Tram! (by the way, Tram, which sounds like 'jum', is a word which means introverted or introspective)

What I'll miss

2009-07-08T02:43:00.002-04:00

Even though I miss many things from home, I know that when I go back I will miss many things about Vietnam.

My tutoring job has finished and my student will try taking his visa interview for the third time. Good luck to him, but I really think he needs another toeic course before he can hope to pass it. Anyway, in this last week or so before I go home I once again have a lot of free time, even though I'm still teaching at VNU right to the end. Also, the construction on the house nearby has finished, so once again my neighborhood is quiet and peaceful. It reminds my why I quickly felt at home here in the first place.

So here is the list of things I think I will miss:

Cheap prices for almost everything
Overly friendly waiters
Smiles from everyone
Toothpicks readily available on every table
Driving a motorbike
Never needing a jacket, except for a rain poncho
Many exotic fruits
Looking around the room in a restaurant and finding that I'm the only foreigner, and the good feeling that i'm not another face in the crowd.
Harmony of seeing churches, temples, and mosques all together in the same city.
Planning life around my own timetable
Vietnamese coffee
Cheap gym, even though it's hot, small, and has old equipment
Juice coffee shop
The abundance of street vendors
Interesting stories from English students
very cheap dvd's and tv shows
being able to live and not be saturated with pointless news and media updates
all the friends I've made here, even up to the very end

I could go on, but I think I'd really just keep listing things that are cheaper here.

What I miss

2009-07-05T02:06:00.002-04:00

Things I miss from America, that are either hard to find or nonexistent here:

Carbonated red bull
Greek food, including an abundance of Feta cheese
Sarcasm
Being able to use slang wherever I go
Using googlemaps to find where I am
Nintendo wii
Fast, stable internet connection
Electricity not randomly getting shut off by the city
Temperature fluctuations
Driving a car
Empty supermarkets at 8pm- ive actually never found a time when the supermarket isnt swarmed with people.
Quieter neighborhoods
Lemons
Grilled burgers, hot dogs, and shiskabob
TV stations like comedy central
Being able to watch any TV show online
Greater variety of music, movies, books
Black pens - they all seem to be blue here
Wearing shoes indoors - not that i ever really did
Snow
Hiking in the woods
Homemade apple pies, cookies, etc.
Orthodox churches
Driving a car
Trash being put in trashbarrels, not just thrown in the street
Printing things in my own house
Philosophical discussions!
pumpkins

New Ventures

2009-06-26T03:37:00.003-04:00

I'm not really inspired to write today but I figured I'd give an update.

It's always darkest before the dawn. For awhile I was worried about money, and I thought the last month here would be rough trying to find work. However, I was blessed to be given a lot more work by one of my schools. Vietnam National University, the Foreign Language Center, has been giving me a lot of new classes to teach. Mostly children classes in the morning, which I don't prefer, but I'll take it. I'm glad that when all other schools turned a blind eye and couldn't find any work for me, one still stood by and offered me classes. I guess it was good that I kept friendly with one of the administrators there. In addition, on the bottom of my paycheck this week I saw that I got a small bonus because the re-enroll percent for a class I taught was 67%. So I'm doing something right, and the school rewarded me. That's a good way to run a school, rather than those silly random evaluations done by the other school. And to think that I was considering quitting VNU a few months ago since they only had one class for me at the time. It just goes to show that sometimes it pays to stick it out and take your chances. It's never true that "all is lost".
I've also been given the opportunity to tutor a student who wants to study in the US. He has to pass a difficult visa interview before he can study there, and he has already failed the interview twice, so he's paying me to prepare him for his next attempt. It's a lot of pressure, and I hope he passes so that it wasn't a waste of money for him. However, he really has a lot of work to do. He makes many mistakes speaking english and he has trouble understanding me when I talk at normal speed. I've been asking him a lot of different questions in addition to the interview ones, hoping to get him more comfortable with the language. He makes a lot of the same mistakes that I've been seeing in my students for the past several months, so I know what to expect and I know how to help. However, even if I repeat a sentence a hundred times and finally gets him to pronounce and intonate it correctly, he'll forget it before the next time we talk if he doesn't practice on his own. Now we're halfway through our 3 weeks, and I'm seeing some improvement, but I really hope I can bring him up to the right level before the end.
I've made Juice part of my regular weekly schedule. The place, not the drink. Although sometimes I do drink juice there.
I go there every tuesday and friday afternoon. I've been trying a new dish every time I come. I must have had 10 different things already. I'm starting to run out of options so I may have to eat some again.
Usually I get some good writing in when I come here. But sometimes I just don't seem to be in the mood. I don't know how to describe it other than that my mind is lazy.
The workers there are very friendly, especially the guy behind the counter at the end of the day. I usually spend up to 30 minutes just chatting with him before walking out the door. He even gave me a 10% discount on my bill once. I guess it pays to make a friend sometimes.

Anyway, I have 3 weeks left in Saigon. Can you believe it? With work, exercise, and coffee shop I should get through without too much boredom. I'm getting really excited about coming back. But it will also be sad saying goodbye.

Vietnamese Wedding

2009-06-21T13:33:00.005-04:00

Last night, I went with Uyen to the wedding of her friend. Although I haven't been to too many weddings in America, just one when I was 8 years old, I could tell that the Vietnamese wedding is very different from the American one.

For one thing, the wedding is usually held at night. We arrived there at 6pm, as the sun was going down. (As a side note, I have experienced 6pm sunsets every day for the past year, because we're so close to the equator.) The wedding was in a small city about an hour's drive from Saigon, and we took motorbikes out on the main road out of town. Not really a highway in the American sense of the word. Just a long, straight road populated mostly with trucks on their way to the port city of Vung Tau and back.

The wedding was held in a big hotel, not a church. In fact, there wasn't really anything religious about the service. I assume they have a more traditional wedding ceremony, but this was just seemed like a very modernized service. Modern, but still distinctly Vietnamese.

The wedding itself resembled what we in America would consider the reception after the wedding. The bride and groom stood at the entrance greeting everyone who came in, and they were very excited to see me. So, I suppose it was not taboo for them to see each other before the wedding service.

I wore jeans and a casual buttoned-down shirt, as suggested by Uyen, and in the big hall I looked out at the crowd of guests sitting at tables and saw that most of them were dressed similarly, although there were a few ties. Only the people actually involved in the wedding were wearing suites or dresses.

And what about the wedding gift? People give money, not gifts. This lets the couple buy whatever they want. Uyen gave them about 55 dollars, and I gave 11 dollars, placed in an envelope and then slid through a slit in a huge box. Sounds like an odd amount of money, but it's equivalent to 1,000,000 dong and 200,000 dong, respectively.

Anyway, the service began with a traditional dance performance of men and women which was really entertaining.

Following this, the announcer welcomed everyone and the lights were dimmed. The bride and groom marched up the aisle to the stage, holding a sparkler thing that was shooting off sparks. They were joined on the stage by their parents and some other people. They all said a lot of things in Vietnamese, and I think the father was offering his approval. Then they brought out the cakes and champagne and everyone toasted. Then all the balloons popped and the sparks shot up and it was a huge spectacle. I guess at this point they were married, but I'm not sure. There was no kissing, of course.

Then the groom went over to a stack of wine glasses on a table on the stage and poured a bottle over it so that wine fell into all the glasses. It was red, so I don't think it was champagne. There were also smoke machines firing off smoke all over the place. Finally, they departed from the stage, and circled around the tables to toast people throughout the evening, stopping by our table twice to toast me and and shake my hand. The next form of entertainment came in the form of a steady stream of pop singers, and we were right near the speakers so it was kind of loud.

BUT the best part, of course, was the food. There were several courses, and I gleefully ate them all.

As usual, all the food was placed in the middle, on a swiveling thing (man I'm really bad at naming things), and everyone put food into their bowls.
1st course: wafers, a collection of shrimp and vegetables, and some weird meaty bready cube thing which tasted just like a chicken mcnugget. in other words, delicious.
2nd course: a hot pot was placed on our table, and a pot placed on top. inside the pot were a dozen or so LIVE shrimp. That's right, whole shrimp, eyes and tentacles and all, squirming away, slowly being cooked by the burner. After some minutes, they had turned from grey to orange, and we were shelling them and cramming them into our mouths. I didn't quite like the head part of them.
3rd course: soup with some kind of chewy red meat, i have no idea what it was, but it was good. probably just some strange part of beef. it was a nice hearty soup with carrots, and bread to dip in it.
4th course: another soup, with noodles and seafood, all the standard things like shrimp and squid and maybe clams.
5th course: dessert! cake? no. pie? no. just some nice fresh pieces of fruit. Pomelo! it tastes like grapefruit but it's a lot better. i just call it "buoi", the vietnamese word.

after we had eaten, everyone was celebrating and having a great time and i fully expected it to go long into the night. much to my surprise, about 7:45pm, uyen said to me, "ok, we go." With that, our party left, and i could see a number of other people clearing out too. i was surprised to find the wedding celebrations so short. but anyway, we did have a long ride back to saigon ahead of us, and i was quite full and tired.

So, all in all, a really great experience, and I'm glad I went. One thing is common to weddings of all cultures: celebration and cheer! everyone was just in a great smiling mood for the start of these two people's lives together. if anyone was in a foul mood from the traffic congestion or the hot, sticky weather, the wedding was sure to cheer them up.

More pictures here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2202685&id=1607549&l=742e06d6fa

Friendliness

2009-06-12T04:49:00.003-04:00

I wouldn't call myself a friendly person. And I know most people think it's a good thing to be very friendly. But I'm just naturally not that way.

However, people who get to know me well usually say I'm friendly. I suppose what they mean is that I'm friendly in the sense that I'm congenial and chatty, at least with my friends. But my definition of friendly includes a dimension of outgoingness, and being so comfortable around other people that you can greet and talk to people you don't even know as if it's the most natural thing in the world. I'm not like this, and in fact very few people in Connecticut seem this way, but it is a very common trait among the Vietnamese.

If I walk into any store or restaurant where the manager speaks some English, he will not hesitate to start asking me questions and learning about me. It always starts with something like "where are you from?" rather than "what's your name?" or even "hello, i'm __, what's your name?". Then they want to know everything about me, and I realize only after several minutes that I don't know their name. I've met several people around the city this way, and they're so chatty and free with their questioning that they act like we're old friends. I don't mind, but it's certainly not something that I would do, and I have to get used to the fact that when I come home, I'll be the same as everyone else again, so when I go to buy a book or a coffee, they won't ask me where I'm from or how long I've been there, they'll just hand me my bill with a bored expression. Everyone here keeps a smile on their faces, and the waiters are especially polite. If I've finished my coffee, they don't just take it, they quietly ask "excuse me, may I take your coffee?".

I've even had people introduce themselves to me at the gym, asking me what I'm doing in Vietnam, how long I've been here, etc. Sometimes they also walk up to me and randomly give me advice, like where to position my hands when I'm lifting weights. I'm innately very cautious of new people, careful not to trust them if they're looking for a way to take advantage of me. But so far everyone who has introduced themselves to me has had no ulterior motives than to meet a new person and use english. when i was driving home from work one day and stopped at a light, i was startled when the man on the bike next to me said something to me, "money about you", and pointed to my pocket. i didn't know what he wanted, until I saw that there was money hanging out of my pocket. so, people are always trying to help. even those that don't know english well. on my street, i pass by a family who hangs out at the entrance to their alley, who sell cigarettes and repair motorbikes during the day. they're always out there in the evening, eating their dinner or relaxing, several members of the family spanning all ages. the matriarch is an older woman reclining on a hammock, there's a middle-aged guy who fixed my bike a couple times, and there's a young guy with a haircut like a japanese pop star who gave me motorbike rides a couple times. everytime i pass by, they yell "hello" at me. i say hello or wave back in return. then i drive by the small cafe and nod at the employee who sits on the chair at the entrance watching the traffic go by, and sometimes little kids are playing soccer in the sidestreet and say hello to me.

i dont really know any of my neighbors. but when i was walking past a new house being constructed, this woman called at me to have a look around. it's a 4-story house and she's hoping to rent out rooms. it was almost finished and looked really nice. the workers have been laboring away there constantly for a few months and soon all that dedication will pay off. from the top floor balcony, you can look down on my roof, as my house is only 3 floors. it would be nice to see the house when it's completely finished.

When it rains, it pours.

2009-05-31T06:50:00.002-04:00

Last week one night, there was a very loud, violent thunderstorm. The thunderclaps kept waking me up, and when I got up in the morning, I saw that some of the water had seeped into the house. Apparently there was a river downstairs, but the maid cleaned it up before I came down. Even my bedroom on the second floor had some pools of water on one side, which was very strange to see. That was the first time I'd seen flooding in my house in Vietnam, luckily.

Nothing else to report. The evenings/nights can get pretty lonely here when my friends are busy, and since it's early morning in America, I have no one to talk to. It doesn't help that the sun goes down at 6pm all year round, either.

The Daily Schedule

2009-05-22T03:52:00.003-04:00

I'm sitting now in a cafe called "Juice", which has become my new favorite place to hang out. Despite the name, they have more than just juice. Their menu includes a lot of sandwiches and wraps and salads, and the few I have tried are absolutely incredible. They've really captured what I love and miss about sandwiches in America, in a way that they usually fall far short in typical Vietnamese cafes. I've had the smoked beef, which turned out to be pastrami but it was quite good, and a french pannini which was made of chicken. Today I've ordered a mediterranean pannini which should feature the usual elements. I guess the reason why I kept coming back here was that they gave me a card that gets stamped every time I get a drink, and after 8 drinks I get 2 free. It's good, because every time I come here I bring my computer and spend a few hours so I have a couple coffees or juices.
The upstairs room is large but cozy, with low lighting, cool A/C, and no invasive Vietnamese pop music, just the sound of the cars below.

It recently dawned on me that unlike some people, I have no daily schedule. I almost never do the same things at the same times every day. This is in large part caused by the fact that my teaching schedule is different everyday, but I also just naturally resist any sort of routine. I know some people like having a routine, but it always seemed dull to me.
I start the day usually waking up in the late morning. The time I wake up is different everyday. When I set my alarm before going to bed, I consider how tired I am, how much I want to sleep, how much I want to do the next day, and I set the alarm accordingly, but it's usually between 10am and 11:20am. During the week, I never have to teach in the morning, so there's no need to wake up earlier. Once I'm woken up, I often neglect to turn off my alarm and fall back to sleep, only to be awoken by the snooze feature. But I'm motivated to get up because of the breakfast waiting for me. I go downstairs, and the one thing I do every day is take my computer with me to the living room. When I've just woken up, I'm too sleepy to do something different everyday. So, I check my email and various blogs and such while watching tv, maybe cnn or mtv, since they play just music videos at this hour. Then my maid brings me a breakfast, which is different everyday. There's always fruit in yogurt, but the fruit changes. Maybe it's strawberry, banana, mango, dragonfruit, any combination of these. She also brings me bread and cheese, or bread and jam, or bread and peanut butter, or bread and omelet, or a BLT she just started making recently. So, I slowly munch through my food, drinking my Vietnamese coffee and becoming more alert. When my laptop battery starts to die, I go upstairs again. It's around noon or 12:30 or so at this point, so I shower, listen to music, play a computer game, whatever. In the afternoon I used to have classes at public school but now they're finished. So lately I've been packing up my computer and going to a coffee shop.
Even though I haven't been writing much in my blog, I've still been writing, in this book I'm working on based on my experiences. The problem is I haven't thought of a proper title yet, and this literally keeps me up at night trying to figure it out. It makes more sense to write it first and then decide what it should be called. At this point, I can't even tell what the main point of it is.
Anyway, even the coffee shops I go to are not the same every day. I've been to several around the city, and rarely do I go back more than once. I'm not the kind of guy who has a "regular" place. Even when I was in college, I would get lunch at a different place every day and couldn't eat the same thing twice in one week or I'd get sick of it. I like most of the places I go to, but they all fall short of perfection. Juice is nice, but it's very far from my house and anywhere I teach. Cafe de la May is good, and the food is cheaper, but it's not as good, and I hate driving on Le Van Sy in rush hour. This other place near my house is nice, it has a vietnamese name like Moc or something, but it's not as comfortable as the Western-type places, inadequate A/C, terrible Vietnamese music, etc.
So, rather than go to one place regularly, I prefer to go to a new place every time, since there's always the possibility I'll discover something approaching perfection.
Now, the way I go to this cafe, or to a class, or anywhere, also changes based on many things. I know half a dozen ways to get to the center of town, but I take into account where there is construction, where is the heavy traffic at this hour, where am I trying to go, and I pick a certain way to go. I recently discovered a whole new way, cutting through a small sidestreet, that is really preferable during rush hour.
Anyways, when I go to these cafes, sometimes I eat lunch, sometimes I don't, and the time I eat lunch is different everyday. As for dinner, I usually eat what the cook prepares for me at home, and I could eat any time from 5:30pm to 10:30pm. It really depends on whether I teach, what I'm doing, if I had lunch. And basically, when I feel hungry, I make dinner, and either watch tv or some tv show on my computer. At night, I might watch tv, but usually there's nothing good on, as I've seen all the overplayed B movies they have on constant rotation. So, I typically watch a tv show like Scrubs or 30 Rock or Simpsons or Seinfeld or anything else I have on dvd or I can find online. Usually every night, I'll watch a few episodes of a show.
As for going to bed, this is different every night, depending on what I'm doing, how sleepy I am, how early I have to wake up the next day. I could go to bed anywhere from midnight to 3am. Basically, when I yawn and rub my eyes, I say, "ok, i'm going to bed." I brush my teeth, turn on the fan, turn off the A/C, get in bed, read a little, and then (hopefully) fall asleep. Lately I've had insomnia so I take some tylenol PM to help me. So that's my (sort of) daily schedule.

BUT I recently added a new activity, which is something sorely missing from my life, and that is exercise. My boredom and lack of work has led me to start going to a gym with my friend Simon, and at 9 bucks a month, I think I can afford it. It's just a simple weightroom, and also has a track and tennis and basketball courts, but it's a nice place to go in the evening, and after working out I'm able to relieve some stress.

In other news, I recently solidified my travel plans. I'm flying to Ha Noi on July 17, and then to Beijing on July 21, and then home on July 24. Really just two days in Beijing, but I think that's plenty to see all that I need to see.

That's all for now!

Dam Sen Park

2009-05-07T08:34:00.002-04:00

No news to report, but sometimes people just like to see that I'm still alive. It has been uneventful, and I suppose that a lot of classes are finishing for the summer, so teachers have to find work at summer school programs. It may be difficult for me since I'm leaving in July, but I'm really hoping to get some classes to teach. After the hassle of working here as a teacher, I'm definitely going to appreciate having a full-time, reliable job in the future. I've had enough of not knowing what my schedule will be like next week, of frequent last-minute changes, of getting called in the morning to teach somewhere later in the day. I guess that some people have been able to find more stable jobs, but nothing is set in stone, and it seems like only after you've been around for awhile at schools do you start getting preference.

Anyway... last weekend I went to Dam Sen Park with Uyen and a couple other people. The place is a very big amusement park with gardens and interesting landscaping and a huge lake in the middle. Unfortunately it was pouring rain the day we went. But we still made the most of it, walking around and taking pictures. The rain eventually let up so it turned out alright. They had little pagodas and bridges which looked just like they were from a distant, idealized past. They had an Egyptian-looking temple that maybe had some sort of attraction inside for kids. They had lots of bumper cars and bumper boats and some animals to see. It seemed like a popular place for kids but also young couples in love.

Here are some pictures for your viewing pleasure!

Birthday Pictures

2009-04-29T09:09:00.003-04:00

I've had lots of free time lately, which is ok. The schools are waiting until after the holiday to start up new classes. All my schools are closed for 4 days. But, a lot of places got booked up fast, since everyone wants to travel. I think it must be really crowded at any vacation place. So, I'm just going to hang out with Uyen and her cousin and go to a nice resort close to the city. I think it's better to plan vacations during times that aren't holidays, so there's less crowds.

Yesterday I got a freak illness, a really bad stomachache and fever, and I think it was probably some food poisoning. Not sure what caused it, it could be anything else. I'm feeling better today and able to eat some normal food. I got a lot of medicine to take, too. But my stomach still feels a little strange.

So, last weekend I celebrated my birthday with Uyen and her cousin and a friend. We were originally going to eat peking duck but we wound up eating sushi instead. Which is ok, sushi being one of my favorites. We ordered a lot of different sushi, and then some soup and rice as well, and we were all stuffed by the end. Since it was my brithday, I treated them all to dinner. Such is the tradition in Asian culture. But altogether it was about $30, which for quality of food and the amount we ordered is still a great deal (though very expensive by vietnamese standards). After that we got a cheesecake at Tous Les Jours which made me very happy.

A Proper Update

2009-04-23T10:48:00.002-04:00

Time for, as the British would say, a proper update.

Today is also my birthday! Although it hardly feels like it, because today I had to work, and so I'm celebrating on the weekend. And it's strange not having all my usual family and friends around. But at least I can celebrate with Uyen.

The past couple weeks have been moving at a slower pace, as a lot of my classes have been ending. Since many classes started up soon after Tet, and they last about 10 weeks, a lot of them end around this time. Maybe there won't be any new classes until after the next holiday (april 30 to may 1). This holiday celebrates the reunification of Vietnam, or the fall of saigon, and then may day. It's one of the biggest traveling times for the vietnamese, and this year it's on a thursday and friday, meaning a 4-day weekend for people who dont work on the weekend (or a proper weekend for those who usually have to work weekends). I was hoping to go somewhere new and interesting, like Binh Chau hot springs, but it got all booked up quick. So now I'm trying to book a room in Vung Tau, which I've been to a couple times before.

A few days ago, I was pulled over by a cop and my heart started racing. But, less than a minute later, he let me go and I was on my way.
What happened? Well, I was moving into the left lane in anticipation of a left turn onto Pasteur street from Dien Bien Phu. It is not allowed for motorbikes to be in the left lane, and it is strictly enforced by the cops here, but I hate getting stuck in the right lane trying to make a left-hand turn so I thought I could fudge the rules like everyone else. No dice, and I was waved by the cop to pull over. I decided to play dumb and kept repeating in English "I go left!" and using hand signals. So he finally gave up and waved me to continue on. I was fretting because some foreigners get pulled over and have their bikes impounded because they dont have vietnamese licenses. But apparently it's the cops on bikes who ride around and pull over foreigners, not the stationary ones.

On Monday, I celebrated Easter belatedly at the Russian consulate. I tried in vain to find an Orthodox church service on Easter, but I did discover that a priest was coming from Russia on Monday, so I stopped by the consulate to see what was going on. I was happy to stumble upon a small room with 10 or so Russians inside and the priest doing the service all in slavonic, which is an old, church version of Russian. I had no idea what was going on but I can only assume it was the service for the day after Easter, so I joined in and crossed myself when I saw the others do it. It was really nice just to smell that incense again and hear that beautiful music. After the service he flung a lot of holy water on us, and I got a little wet, but it was nice and reminded me of home. After the service, I didn't quite understand what was going on but I could tell they were preparing for another service, and since I didn't have to teach for another hour, I decided to stick around. It turned out to be a baptism! So I stayed and watched because I was sorely missing all the beautiful Orthodox services. I guess the small Russian expat community has to wait a long time for the priest to come, so while he was there to celebrate Easter, they had him baptize a baby as well. After it all, I introduced myself to the priest in my bad Russian and he said he spoke a little English, so we chatted for a bit. He was pretty friendly and bearded, and I was glad that despite different languages and cultures and being in a completely different country, we had something that connected us in the faith. Finally I said "do svedonya" and went to my class.

That's all for now. Stay tuned for the next "proper" update!

The Quieter American

2009-04-21T06:56:00.004-04:00

I got tired of seeing that picture of beef at the top of the page, so here's an update.

I finished reading "The Quiet American", and I found it to be a pretty engaging book. It wasn't so much about Vietnam as the development of the characters and the political tensions underneath. It was fascinating to find out more about the history of Vietnam, since I wasn't alive in the 1950's and I only have a vague understanding of the war with the French and then the Americans. It's interesting to note, though, that most Vietnamese I meet today are really not interested in politics. In Greece, everyone wanted to rant about something political, but in Vietnam it's just not on the minds of most people. They mostly want to talk about culture or something, and the most political they get would be talking about Obama or something. But if I try to read an article about Israel or anything else that doesn't concern them, they get very bored and actually confused why anyone would even be interested.
It's a very different world from when "The Quiet American" was written. Even then, there was a colonial mindset, though it was fading away. The French thought they could control Vietnam's destiny through force. Then the Americans thought they could do the same and prevent Communism. But the North Vietnamese eventually took control. Nowadays, it seems like military force is not as reliable a method of controlling destiny, because you'll never win the hearts and minds of the people. Today, people are conquered by culture and economics. The only remnants of French rule you see in Saigon are the architecture, the bakeries, the catholic churches. These became somewhat part of the culture of Vietnam. All but a couple of the streets were renamed. There is no more "Rue Catinat", the central area of activity in "The Quiet American". The only French names that remain honor important scientific or cultural figures, such as Louis Pasteur, or a school named after Marie Curie.

In the book, the main character is a British journalist, and he and an American are both in love with the same girl, Phuong. She appears to have no real power over her own destiny, just sort of blowing in the mind and going with whatever man promises her a better, more secure future. Today, there is a little bit of that sentiment left, but I think that the women here are much more assertive now, and the stereotype of submissiveness is quite outdated. At least in my own personal experience. However, the large economic inequality between the women here, along with many of the locals, and the foreigners is still a reality, so this will always affect the relationships between them.

Right now the Vietnamese system is really quite stable. When looking back through their history, there has been a lot of violence. Even before the Europeans came, there were numerous dynasties and kingdoms over different territories that were at war with each other, and the Chinese were actually in control of the country for 1,000 years. Then there was the French rule and the many years of rebellion and war that followed. The past 30 or so years have been pretty stable compared to the rest of the region, and as Vietnam grows more economically successful and open to foreign trade, I believe the quality of life will gradually improve. Right now, though, it still has got a long way to go. The biggest change that I'm holding out for in Saigon is a subway, to ease the horrendous rush hour traffic situation. 6 million or so people, all trying to drive to work or school on their motorbikes, is just lunacy. There are buses, but when vying for space on the narrow roads with the motorbikes, and navigating around construction, it seems like far from the ideal public transportation.

Anyway, this was just my own rambling observations, make of it what you will.

on Beefsteaks and Teachers

2009-04-13T07:28:00.005-04:00

It was a good weekend. I especially enjoying hanging out with a couple expat friends. We ended up at a place overlooking the river in Phu Nhuan near my house, where a lot of local Vietnamese go. It closes very late, around 4am, so a lot of locals go there when the bars and clubs close, and it's a great place to people watch. It's also a good chance to buy cheap food from the people who wander up and down the tables trying to sell things, like quail eggs and boiled peanuts. It took me awhile to get used to the softer peanuts when they're boiled but I've come to like them.

Sunday night I wanted to go with Uyen to a place that advertised ostrich meat. I was really excited to try it, but when we came they told us they were out of ostrich. So, we settled for beefsteak, which was fine, because I really like it here. It's not the same as the typical steak in America, which I imagine as being thick and juicy with steak sauce. Here it's very thin and is served on a hot pot which is hot and crackling as it comes to you. Often it is also served with an egg and other styles of meat, and even french fries and bread on the side. The Vietnamese then squirt chili sauce over the whole mess but I passed. Anyway, beefsteaks are one of my favorite dishes in Vietnam, and they're usually cheap compared to Western food. Plus, almost every coffee shop in the city has it on the menu, so if you're ever in a hunger panic at any time of the day, you can count on getting some beef and eggs and bread at a cafe.
Here's a picture of my meal:

So, now that I've been teaching more children's classes, it's very interesting noting the differences between my co-teachers. When I walk into a class, the students are often already engaged in a lesson with the Vietnamese teacher, and I unwittingly cause a disruption. They all turn to me, most of them saying "hello!" and if some of them remember me then they shout my name. Some Vietnamese teachers are really hands-on and don't like letting go of the class. I'll start to teach and they'll keep interrupting with suggestions or ideas for games, which is okay towards the end of class if I'm looking for a different activity to do. Sometimes they will even interrupt in the middle of a game and say they want the students to work on their workbooks. But these teachers are good at translating my more complicated instructions to the students so they can participate in the games. Other teachers see me come in and immediately retreat to the back of the class, where I don't hear from them until the end of class and I'm pretty much on my own. So, if I do try to explain an activity, the students are lost and the teacher isn't really paying attention, so I have to look at them in exasperation until they realize they should translate what I'm saying. I can relate to these teachers, because the students really are a handful, and they have to be around the kids longer than I do, but still, I rely on their ability to convey quickly in Vietnamese what I'm trying in vain to describe with English and hand signals. At any rate, I think I'm able to better establish a rapport with the students when I'm communicating directly with them without having the other teacher trying to direct things all the time.
In general, I feel like a novelty item, as a foreign teacher. I come in and I'm immediately an item of interest. I don't have all the training of the Vietnamese teachers, and I'm not expected to have any knowledge of grammar or anything like that. Yet somehow my role is still essential. I guess it pays to have someone who speaks English as a native speaker so the students can at least hear how it's supposed to sound. Especially when even the Vietnamese teachers pronounce things wrong, saying "He ee tall" instead of "He is tall". No one wants to say the "s" at the end of words. It's an ongoing battle.
But Rome wasn't built in a day!

I've finished Don Quixote and bought a photocopy version of The Quiet American for 2 bucks while on vacation in Nha Trang. It's quite short and I'm almost done, but I'm enjoying it so I'm only reading a little bit everyday. I'm interested in its portrayal of Vietnamese culture 50 years ago, not so much interested in the politics. After I finish it I want to compare my experience with that of the observations in the book.

And on that note, farewell til next time. I'm trying to blog more often now that Kevin of SaigonNezumi.com gave me a shout out and I'm getting some more readers! So, if you read mine then check out his too, he talks a lot about coffee shops which are a major interest of mine!

My new-found obsession with coffee shops

2009-04-10T01:58:00.002-04:00

I've gotten back into the swing of things, and making up the classes I missed last week at the public school has kept me busy. Some of my classes at the journalism school are ending so I'm hoping that new ones will start up for me to teach. So, some days I have a little more free time than others. Yesterday I was busy pretty much from 2pm to 9pm but today I just teach from 3:30 to 4 then 4:30 to 5 and I'm free at night. Hopefully I'll be meeting some fellow expat friends. I've been hanging out almost exclusively with Vietnamese people lately, which is good, but there's something to be said about being with expats and being able to speak at full speed. With some of the free time I had on Monday, I started writing, and trying to realize the goal of making a novel about life in Vietnam, semi-autobiographical. As they say, you need to write a little bit everyday and get in the habit of it. Same as exercise or reading the bible or anything else, but since I tend to forget about my daily tasks until the end of the day, I usually don't exercise since doing a bunch of sit-ups before bed keeps me awake. Even though I'm tired, I'm usually able to write a little bit before bed and time will tell if it's actually cohesive. I'm just writing now and not worrying about what it looks like until later.
This week I've also been sick with a common head cold, which are so common here that people barely bat an eye if you tell them that you're sick. They just remark, "oh, it's the weather" and recommend some medicine for me to take. The medicine has been making me feel better and I should be back to normal soon.
Sometimes living in Saigon really gets on my nerves and I dread the drive to work. I think part of this is just the conditions of driving in general. From where I live, there are several routes to take to reach my school, and I often try different ones to test the traffic, but I keep finding that all of them are bad. There is perpetual construction on some streets that limit the width of the road to barely the width of a car, and all the motorbikes have to go on the sidewalk to get around it. There are some construction areas in the middle of the road which actually jut halfway into the intersection, and if you're making a left-hand turn, well, good luck. Because of all the narrow spaces, if a motorbike breaks down in the middle of it, it causes more chaos than the apocalypse.
Now, it appears that the rainy season has arrived early. Every day for the past week or so it has rained heavily in the afternoon, not for long but rather intense so that driving is very unpleasant. A light drizzle doesn't cause much of a reaction, but as it starts to pick up, you see many drivers who are stopped at the side of the road pulling their raincoats out of their compartments and sliding them on, then back on their motorbikes. One upshot is the cooling down that happens after a rain. But I still miss the cool, dry season.

Now I've been getting more interested in finding coffee shops, particularly when I have some free time. It's much better than sitting at home. I want to find one that is the perfect combination: good vietnamese coffee but not expensive, some light food options, free wifi, A/C, relaxing music, interesting decor, a nice upstairs area, close to my house. Sounds like a lot, huh? But it's pretty common, except the coffees are more expensive than I want. At the places I've been trying, coffee is 35-40,000 dong, which is about $2 or $2.25, but when I can buy it on the street for a quarter, it's overpriced. I guess I'm paying for atmosphere. Yesterday I had coffee at a nice place called Le Cafe de la May, which had a French theme and nice artwork, on a busy street but pretty quiet inside, and lots of plants around. A recurring theme of coffee shops here is the inclusion of nature, with some cafes being right outside with trees in between the tables, but I like my A/C so I'll take an indoor venue.

So, this brings me to today. I was enjoying my typical breakfast at home when suddenly the power turned off. I learned not to expect it back up again until 5pm, so I made plans to look for a coffee shop. I looked around near the street where I teach this afternoon but found some other places were missing power too. So now I wound up at the turtle pond rotary place, and found a place aptly named "Coffee Cup". I like this place a lot, although the coffee is still expensive and I decided to indulge in an iced cappuccino. Anyway, I like the music, it's some good instrumental stuff and now suddenly this song "quando quando quando" came on, this big band song that probably has a famous singer whom I should know but I don't. Now the decor here is really amazing, it looks like a 19th-century parlor. They have comfy old couches and chairs, along with standard coffee shop chairs. I'm resting my computer on a glass table with flowers on it, looks like it was taken from a hotel lobby. Next to me is a shelf with pictures and candlestick holders and mirrors and mood lamps with darkened shades. I have sort of my own little corner here. And of course, free wifi. Being close to Vo Van Tan and Nguyen Dinh Chieu, two streets where I teach, is convenient, and about 15-20 mins from my house. They even have these elaborate curtains on the windows, and flowerpots by the windows as if this were an old apartment building.
And now, a word on the "upstairs" requirement I have. You see, horizontal space is limited here. It seems that most buildings are alotted just a small amount of space to build on the ground floor, and this place looks like they probably also bought the place next door, because it's twice as big as the typical place upstairs. Anyway, this means that when downstairs, you're pretty much open to the outside, there's not much room to hide. I like to hide away in a coffee shop to read or do some writing or internet browsing, so I go upstairs to find a nice nook or an empty seat by a window to watch the rat race below. Nearly every building as at least one or two extra floors above the ground floor.

Anyway, that's all the news that's fit to report right now. Au revoir!

Nha Trang

2009-04-06T03:38:00.003-04:00

Nha Trang is one of the most popular beach towns in Vietnam. I say town, but it's really a small city, though much more relaxing than Saigon. One road lined with palm trees stretches along the coast, with the beach on one side and hotels on the other. It has the standard tropical beach town feel but definitely has the Viet charm too. There is some dispute about the origin of the name, since "nha trang" doesn't mean anything. But, I noticed that it's similar to "nhà trắng", which means white house. Could this be the Vietnamese Casablanca? Well actually, this was the home of Louis Pasteur, and he and Alexandre Yersin did their scientific research here. Apparently Pasteur had the only white house in town, and when he was telling the driver where to go he said in his bad vietnamese "nha trang" without any tones, so the name stuck somehow. That's just a story, one of many possible explanations, but it's my favorite.

Anyway, I had a fun couple of days in Nha Trang. It was just me and Hien, as the other teachers had already gone. Unfortunately, it did rain quite a bit. But it was still a fun, relaxing time.

The first day we got in very early from the night train, about 5:30am. We took a taxi to the little but comfortable hotel and saw many people out exercising as the sun was just preparing to rise. After checking into the hotel we had to wait for the breakfast places to open, then we got breakfast at a nice french place. I had my usual vacation fare, an omelet, along with bread and of course a ca phe sua da. After that we went to the beach, I read Don Quixote for awhile, I went swimming for a bit in the pool, and just relaxed. It started to get cloudy and then rained, which it kept doing most of the time there. Anyway, at least I got some beach time in.

The rest of the time, I ate a lot of food, Vietnamese and Western, I got some very good pizza, billed as the best in Nha Trang and definitely the best I've had in Vietnam. We also went on an island tour, we took a bus and then a boat to check out a few islands. They had lots of animals to see, like ostriches and deer and monkeys. One island was all monkeys, and they were wild but also used to people, so they went right up to you and demanded food. As soon as they got some, they grabbed it and ran away to eat it. They were very competitive with each other. I think there were two different monkey tribes that were at war on the island. They also had a little performance with monkeys and dogs and goats, dressed up funny and doing tricks, some of it was silly and ridiculous. It looked like they mistreated the animals, and I figured that such a show wouldn't go on in the US without a lot of complaints. But here, the presenters were smiling away and the audience was clapping.

Anyway, I took a lot of pictures too, which I'll show. When I came back to HCMC, I drove back from Languagecorps at 5am, 1 hour before the sun rose, and saw lots of people awake on the street, some selling food, others exercising. I can't believe what an early start people have. And my mom complains about waking up at 5:30 hahaha... Actually, I complain if I have to wake up before 11am.

So, not much else is going on. Been slow with work since I got back, since I have a couple days off because of Hung Vuong. He was the first king of Vietnam, like 4,000 years ago. It was his birthday on Saturday. They don't know for sure, because it was so long ago, but they decided to celebrate it then anyway. So I got off from both private and public schools. Then later this week it's time to get back in action. A lot of classes are ending but I should start getting some new classes too.

Here is a smattering of pictures. I realized how easy it is to just upload photos to facebook instead of photobucket, so all my pictures are on there as well. Here are the links to those albums: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2192334&id=1607549&l=28f012c1ac
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2192335&id=1607549&l=8fd9477f55

A Teacher in his natural habitat

2009-03-28T01:28:00.003-04:00

Recently, we caught on camera an English teacher in his natural habitat, the classroom. You must be very quiet if you spy him, so as not to scare him away. So here it is, just for you, exclusive photos straight from the public school!

Here we are again

2009-03-24T09:58:00.002-04:00

March is always the month that feels like a black hole which swallows me up and never seems to end. This is probably because it comes after February. Or maybe March drags on because it seems like a time for change, but change is slow to happen. At home, it's the beginning of spring, but it usually stays cold with the potential for snow even into April. It may get warmer for a few days and then plunge back into winter. So, the delay and even backwards motion of change seems to make March into a month that becomes an eternity. Even now for some reason I feel like I've been living in March, 2009 forever. Maybe this is because the heat makes every afternoon unbearable, and now instead of spending the afternoons snug in my air-conditioned pad, i have to brave the sun's rays to drive to the public school, sometimes more than one in the same day. One day I actually had four different schools to go to, almost all right in a row.

I also have been waking up earlier on the weekends to teach children's classes at Elite. These classes are 45 minutes each, using the same books I've been used to at the public school, but it takes more creativity to fill up a longer class time. The classes are smaller so it allows for better interaction. But the students are no less restless, and begin to demand games after 15 minutes of class.

So, waking up earlier and having more to do in a day certainly makes each day longer. Which in turn makes the whole month longer. At any rate, it's not bad. Time doesn't move faster or slower, just our perception of it. So, I'm only in Vietnam for a limited amount of time, and I want to enjoy every moment while I'm here. I'm taking chances to eat out at various places for lunch or hang out at a coffee shop when I have the chance. Mostly because it's so cheap. And now with my busier schedule, I'm making more money and I'm starting to feel like part of the aristocracy. I was surprised to hear, but I guess it shouldn't be surprising, how much money a foreign English teacher makes compared to locals. Even working about 20 hours a week, I make twice as much as someone working 40+ for a company.

So, while I keep hearing grim news about the economic recession from the US, I haven't really felt the effects here. Nevermind my debts from college for the moment...

So my vacation to Nha Trang is finally going to happen, next week. This is a trip I paid for when I first came to Vietnam but I delayed going on it. Finally I have an opportunity to go, and I feel that it's at the perfect time for me to take a little time off to relax. I also haven't seen the beach in quite awhile. It will be good to hang out near the ocean and go swimming a little before the rainy season kicks in again. It's supposed to be a really beautiful place, very popular with tourists and locals as well.

As for the future... I was planning a glorious trip around all of Asia, stopping in every country for a brief time to soak up the culture and move on... but I realize that that's quite impractical and expensive to book so many flights. So I'm now interested in just traveling around Thailand and Laos, checking out some relaxing beaches and nature and temples and such. When I think about what I like to do on vacation, I realize that I'm not big on shopping. So, there's really no point in going to Singapore or Hong Kong, two big cities that are sophisticated and wealthy but I think I've had enough of cities for now. However, I think I'd love to make it up to China to check out Beijing, the forbidden palace, the great wall, maybe even Tibet. And rather than fly everywhere, I want to utilize trains. It will take longer, but the experience of riding through the countryside will be worth it, I think.

Since tonight I don't work, I decided to wander to a cafe on my street to blog from there, because I always drive past it and it advertises free wifi. However, it's not airconditioned, the fan just moves back and forth, and although it's wide open to the outside and it's 9:30 at night, it's sweltering in here and I'm sweating bullets. Specifically, about one bullet per minute. That's some record fast sweating. I just checked the temp online, it's 82 degrees, feels like 90, 79% humidity. I'm starting to feel that rainy season can't come fast enough.

The time has come, the peter said, to talk of many things...

2009-03-09T03:19:00.002-04:00

...of bricks and gifts and lecture halls, of pizza huts and things.

Well I tried to fit the events of the past week into a rhyme by Lewis Carroll and it didn't quite have the punch I wanted. Plus, the only thing I could find to rhyme with thing was thing.

Bricks: The empty lot a couple doors down from my house is finally getting built upon. Maybe there used to be a house there that fell apart or something. Now there are several people there working on the house, starting in the early morning and often waking me up. They've got the bricks piled on for the walls and also a roof, but the inside is mostly bare. There's also an old woman who sits outside during the day bending metal wires into rings. I'm not sure what it's for. I haven't really inspected the area because people are always there and stare at me when they see me, even if I cheerfully yet awkwardly greet them. Sometimes in the evening they're eating or playing cards, and even at night, the workers sleep there in hammocks or on blankets on the ground. I don't know if they're going to be living in the house or if they were hired to build it. If they were hired, I don't know why they'd sleep there at night.

Gifts: Yesterday was international women's day, which no one seems to care about in America, but it's a big deal here, even though they also have a vietnam women's day. Uyen adamantly told me she doesnt like flowers, so when I drove down the street and had flowers thrust in my face by the roadside vendors, I had to politely refuse. Instead I found a cute stuffed bear that she liked a lot and practiced saying "happy women's day" in vietnamese. Even moreso than Valentine's day, this is a day to go out to eat with girls and treat them to things. Also, many husbands will do the housework and cleaning and cooking that the women usually do.

Lecture Halls: Well, not quite. But I just started teaching more classes in the afternoon at another public school, and the classes are much larger than what I'm used to, with students all packed in in nice rows. There must be at least 40 in each class. The Vietnamese teachers helps to keep them in line, even slapping a ruler on a desk to calm them down if they get loud. They all greet me with 'hello teacher' in unison at the beginning and when i say 'how are you' they all respond with 'Fine. Thank you. And you?' Doing certain games and activities is difficult with such a big class and so little room to move around, but the teachers helped me out. It's easy enough to make two teams by splitting the class in half, and taking one student from each side to square off in a game on the board, like writing or drawing or saying or slapping the right word.

Pizza Huts: I went to Pizza Hut in Vietnam for the first time, and just like in Greece, it's a fancy place to eat. It was nice having a thick pizza for once, with all the greasiness and crispiness I was missing when I got pizza at other places. I also finally got some real pepperoni. This pizza hut also has lots of other things like pasta and salad and soups, so it's a far cry from the pizza huts in America where you just run in to get your pizza and get out.

Things: I'll admit it, nothing to say here. I've been busier with more work, and Uyen got a full-time job last week where she works monday-saturday, which is pretty standard. I guess she's working as a secretary for a construction contracting company or something. So now I only see her on Sundays or if I happen to have a night off, which is ok. It gives me time to work on my novel which I will probably never start or finish.

the tangled mess that is my mind

2009-03-01T12:19:00.003-05:00

Well, it's been a long time since I gave people any real news, so I want to update people on a lot of things, and give some observations, but it's difficult to organize my thoughts, so I will be presenting ideas randomly and not in any logical order. Enjoy!

1. I asked my maid one day to cook avgolemono soup. This is a Greek soup, and one of my favorites, it always reminds me of home, especially when I'm sick and my mom would make it for me. Basically, the name means 'egg and lemon', but it also has chicken broth and pieces of chicken and rice, and I also like to squirt lots of lemon juice in it. Anyway, I tried to explain a recipe I found online to my maid and her daughter, who knows some English, and they sorta got the gist. However, when I saw the finished product, it was quite different from what I was hoping. The egg is supposed to be all mixed together as part of the soup. But there were pieces of egg floating in it. Anyone who knows avgolemono knows that this is a very strange appearance. No matter, I heated it up and ate it and enjoyed it, but it wasn't the same as what I was familiar with. Part of this reason is because...
2. Lemons seem practically non-existent here. Instead, it's all limes. When I ask for a lemon, they point to a lime. I can't remember if I've ever seen a lemon here, but maybe I have and don't recall. At any rate, they're rare. If you know me, you know I like lemon on a lot of food, like rice and broccoli and fish. Lime is not an adequate substitute. I guess that's one more thing to look forward to when I come home.
3. I have applied to several law schools and now I'm waiting to hear back from them. Actually, there's one more I may apply to this week, and my app is almost done. It has a slightly later deadline than most other schools. I probably should have applied to all these schools earlier to increase my chances, but it's been busy and I feel confident about my chances.
4. An interesting restaurant: The City Diner. This place looks just like an American 1950's diner. It has a non-functional jukebox, cozy booths, stools, signs on the walls, a harley davidson hanging from the ceiling, it's got it all. Even pop art pictures of Elvis and Marilyn Monroe. I explained to Uyen all the history and culture of diners, and she got a kick out of it. The food was pretty good too. They have lots of good sandwiches and burgers and even stuff like chicken fried steak and meatloaf. I got a meatball grinder that I enjoyed very much. No diner would be complete without a good amount of breakfast dishes as well, so maybe I'll have to come back to try it out. The place is a little hard to get to, though, and it seems to be almost in the middle of nowhere. From a busy area in district one, you take a long road which seems to stretch on into the abyss, and it crosses the saigon river to the far end of binh thanh district where there does not seem to be much, but development is in progress. There is lots of construction, and half-completed shells of tall buildings. One day it may be a busy area but so far its kind of a spooky, desolate area with a post-apocalyptic feel. The diner itself is part of a massive apartment complex called The Manor, which looks like a wealthier place to live, particularly because the diner had prices in American dollars rather than dong, and the prices were almost up to the level of a diner in America. I mean, dinner for both of us cost about $15 so I guess I shouldn't be complaining.
5. Pizza Hut exists here, but I haven't eaten there yet. They don't deliver. I tried to run in one day to grab a pizza before my class, but I got held up at the post office and didn't have time to wait for the pizza (they told me it would be 17 minutes). But, similar to the pizza hut in Athens, it has the appearance of a nice restaurant, or at least like a ruby tuesday's or something, not like the places in the US where you basically just run in, grab your pizza, and go. Anyway, there are many pizza places in Saigon, but so far I haven't been able to get one with actual pepperoni, just some cheap knockoff sausage stuff, and I miss those red crispy circles. I hear Pizza Hut is the real mccoy, so I'd like to go there to get a taste of home. There's a Vietnamese teacher I've hung out with a couple times and he's suggested we go there some time. Last time we hung out at a Vietnamese place, and I tried rabbit meat for the first time. It was okay, like chicken, but it was on the bone so it was difficult to chew off. My perennial favorite at Vietnamese places is squid. Also on the menu at this place was frog. I'll have to give that a whirl someday.
6. I've been getting some more classes lately, and I hope to get another public school class for an hour every other day, but I've still got mornings and afternoons mostly free, and if I can it wouldn't hurt to find another place to work so I can save up some more money.
7. One of my roommates, the one who just moved in in January, is named Yen (pronounced "een"), and she's spending all of march in Cairo, Egypt for some training program for her job, which sounds interesting. She's very friendly and I just started getting to know her a little. Her English is good, but not as good as my other roommate Le. I hope I'm not embarrassing her, but something she said was very funny, and I think that all mistranslation stuff is funny. I was watching a rebroadcast of the Oscars on tv a few days ago, and she was chatting to me about it and asked "is your favorite waiter or waitress in there?" It took me awhile to realize that she meant to say "actor or actress", and when she realized her mistake she was pretty embarrassed. But they are both pairs of words with the masculine ending in "ter" and the feminine ending in "tress", so I can see how she could confuse them. God knows I've done enough stupid things trying to speak any language throughout my life.
8. Speaking of languages, one of the languagecorps folks is Tzachi, from Israel, and he apparently has started some Hebrew classes just for some of his friends, for 11:30 on Sunday mornings. Sounds like fun, I always love learning the basics of a new language, and it's a reason to wake up before noon on a sunday since I don't have church here. I really miss Orthodox church services and I want to find one for Easter. I've read about a Russian church in Vung Tau and I hope to get more information rather than going on a wild goose chase trying to find the place.
9. I've been pressured to talk more about cockroaches. There's not much else to say. Apparently Mortimer has a large extended family, and sometimes a new cousin will wander into the house. I find them grotesque. Last time I put a box over one and let it slowly die. When I took the box off, it was curled up on its back. I wonder why they always die like that.

10. Today I said goodbye to Genessa and Greta at a special dinner at Pacharan with the other languagecorps crew members. It was a bittersweet time, because as long as I've been in Vietnam they've been there, and we did the whole training in Cambodia and everything. I can't believe that was 7 months ago now. And I'm actually over halfway through my time here. It still feels like it's just beginning for some reason. Anyway, I haven't even explained what Pacharan is. It's a spanish restaurant, with lots of good tapas and dishes, and I decided to go all out and treat myself to a nice big steak. I hadn't eaten a proper steak since I was home, so I enjoyed it. It had blue cheese on top, and came with roasted potatoes and vegetables, very tasty. We were on the top floor of the restaurant and could look out on a good central area of district 1. We were directly across from the gigantic famous Continental Hotel. It was a wonderful night even though it briefly monsooned in the afternoon. The girls will be going home on Tuesday to resume their normal lives and move to different places in the States for jobs, so i wish them good luck.

I'm probably forgetting ten more important things, but for now I think that's a good update. Adios!

The Hotness

2009-02-23T14:00:00.003-05:00

It's been noticeably hotter here in the past couple weeks. I was talking to my students about it and I guess this is the sunny/hot side of the dry season. While it was a little cooler in December and January, it gets much hotter with a strong sun in February. Maybe the temperature itself isn't higher but the constant presence of the sun just makes it seem much worse. I checked the weather a couple days ago and it was 95 degrees, but felt like 102. So if you're freezing in America, you can picture yourself here. I would gladly trade places for a day, though. After driving to work through insane traffic, and trying to calm down a class of active kids in a non-airconditioned room, I'm awash in sweat. I taught my kids about weather today, and I said that today is hot and sunny. One of the kids said "yes, but I'm cold and rainy." I don't know why he called himself rainy. Maybe there's a euphemism I'm missing.

That's all I wanted to say. I've been very busy and tired lately, but I promise to make a longer post with more news soon.

Tip Top Tet

2009-02-09T05:43:00.005-05:00

Not much to say, back from Tet and moving slowly back into the normal working mode again. The students and teacher both don't seem very eager to get back to school but such is life.

Here are some pictures from Tet.

You can see some Tet decorations, and myself with Uyen's sister and niece, and myself with Uyen's brother and his friends.

My First Tet

2009-01-31T03:23:00.003-05:00

A lot has happened since last time I blogged, but I haven't really had internet access except for the occassional internet cafe session, which I'm making use of now. The Tet celebrations have slowed down now, and people are starting to return to their daily lives, but I'm still in vacation mode as long as I'm in Pleiku.

I came here about a week before Tet started, and it was a week of preparation and anticipation for the big day. I took an overnight bus from Saigon, and it was full of beds instead of seats, so I was able to sleep a little on the way there. When I got there, it wasn't too exciting in the days before Tet, because Uyen was helping one of her sisters run her shop, which was really busy selling snacks and special foods and wines before Tet. I helped in any way that I could, but I couldn't exactly help the customers when I couldn't speak Vietnamese. Anyway, I was Uyen's guest and I was treated as such, so I had access to as much food as I wanted from the shop. There was quite a bit of snacking that went on, but not as much eating as during Tet, which I'll get to later. During the preparation time, though, Uyen also had to help clean the house, and I helped out with this. Her family has a nice house, even though like most houses in Vietnam it's very narrow, but they make use of the space and it's actually pretty wide open inside. The floors are all hardwood or marble, and I don't think I've really seen any carpets here. Breakfasts and lunches and pretty much every meal involves rice, and different plates of meat and fish and vegetables, and you just take from the middle and put on your plate. If I happened to be awake early enough for breakfast, though, I always preferred just some bread with cheese or something. For some reason certain "regular" foods I don't feel like should be eaten when I've just woken up, like rice and meat. I always have to have some kind of bread or egg or fruit.

Anyway, I was able to explore a little bit of Pleiku, but there wasn't much to see. It reminds me of Glastonbury back home, in the small town feel, but this is also the capital of the whole province out here. The center of the town still is probably no bigger than a small town in America, but it does feel a little more urban and crowded. They don't really have any chain stores or big stores, it's mostly all little shops that are run out of people's homes. There aren't any restaurants except for little noodle places that serve things like pho or bun bo. The food is healthier and I like most of it, but they don't seem to be afraid of a huge chunk of bone and having to gnaw around it to get to the meat.

On Tet and the days that followed, we ate a lot of different foods. Tet really lasted more like 4 or 5 days, since it started Monday and only now it's getting back to normal, and I don't see all of Uyen's family hanging around the house anymore. So over the whole span of it, we ate rice with most every meal, but also they cooked pasta and liver one day, and I really liked the liver. They made some fried spring rolls and also these fried squid and pork balls coated with coconut, or something. The other night for lunch there was lots of fried chicken pieces that were really delicious, but some of the pieces were a little less appetizing, even though her family members picked it up and started nibbling away without hesitation. I'm talking about the actual head of the chicken, where you can still see its eyes looking at you. Also, Uyen seemed to like the feet of the chicken. I guess they don't waste a single part of the body. Also, part of nearly every meal is some soup, with pieces of fish or some kind of meat inside. On one day we drove a couple hours to another town to meet her grandmother and some other cousins and relatives, and for lunch we ate from a giant hot pot on the table where we cooked beef and noodles, and it was very good. All in all, lots of food, and they always seemed to cook much much more than anyone could possible eat. If there were leftovers from lunch, and there always were, they just brought out the same stuff for dinner again.

The eating tradition on Tet itself was interesting. After you eat at home, and distribute lucky money to your family members, you go off and eat and toast at all your friends' houses. I went with Uyen's brother and a few of his friends, first to play billiards, and then in a caravan across the city, stopping for a few minutes at a friend's house, raising a glass of tea or beer or wine, having a few snacks, and moving on to the next place. Since they didn't really speak English, I was very confused by all this, and I felt more like a sheep just being herded along to various pastures, but all in all it was pretty fun. The snacks were similar at every house, usually some dried fruit like raisins or dates and pieces of dried ginger, as well as some other crackers or cookies. Ubiquitous here are fried watermelon seeds, which you crack open with your teeth and feast upon the tiny seed inside. Everyone is entranced whenever they see them around, and start mindlessly opening and eating one after another. Every single place you go, from the coffee shop to the internet cafe where I'm sitting now, has watermelon seed shells littering the floors. For me it's a great difficulty to get them open and I usually end up with some hard shells in my mouth, but part of the fun is the process of opening them, when you have nothing else to do.

Uyen's family is very big, because she has 3 sisters and 2 brothers, and most of them are married with kids. She also has several cousins, and her grandmother had 9 children so clearly there's lots of extended family, but she doesn't see them very often, especially since she lives in Saigon. For the family members who are dead, they honor them on Tet, going to the temple to light some incense and say some prayers. From what I could see, it was not a Buddhist temple, and I'm not sure if there is a specific name for it, since Uyen said her family doesn't have a religion but they just honor their ancestors. At the temple and the shrine in their house they have little statues of people that look like Confuscious or some other old wise person. They leave anything from fruit to chocolate cakes to cans of beer at the shrines in their homes. Also at the temple, people get their fortune on a piece of paper which predicts what will happen to them in every month of the year, according to the year in which they were born. This year is now the year of the buffalo, which in China is the year of the ox, and since it is the year I was born in maybe it will be lucky for me. Apparently not only do I add a year to my age for the new year, but I add one in advance of my birthday, which I don't really understand, but now I tell people that I'm 25, and it feels nice to be a little older.

What else is there to say? Pleiku is a little colder than Saigon, which I like. During the day it feels pleasant but at night it's really quite cold (uyen tells me that it gets down to 10 degrees celsius), so I'm glad I have my hoodie with me, which I hadn't used in Vietnam until now. People go to bed pretty early here, like 9 or 10 o'clock, but I'm staying in a hotel and at least there's a couple movie channels like HBO that I can watch before I go to sleep. I don't know why I wasn't allowed to stay at Uyen's family's house, but I guess it's a cultural thing, like only family can stay there during Tet, or something. She hasn't told them that I'm a boyfriend, just a friend, because I guess once someone is a boyfriend or girlfriend, it is assumed they will get married. But they have to suspect something. Why would I come all the way to Pleiku to spend two weeks with just a friend?

Anyway, I've said a lot, and I'm probably forgetting some stuff. I just wanted to point out a few interesting differences in manners between this culture and Western culture. Respect and politeness is very important here but they do many things that people back home would frown upon. For example, they have no shame at all in burping at the dinner table or elsewhere and not covering their mouths. However, if you yawn you must cover your mouth. At the dinner table, appparently there is no etiquette to wait for everyone to be seated and have food to start eating. At least in my experience, they encourage me to sit down and eat when only the father has food. Maybe he's supposed to eat first since he's the head honcho, I don't know. Something that I always tried not to do at home was put my elbows on the table, but apparently that's no big deal here. People actually usually pick up their bowl of rice and noodles so that it's just a few inches from their mouth, and shovel it in with great speed and fervor. I can't say I object. It may, however, be a shock when I go back home.

So, on Monday I return to Saigon with Uyen, and soon after that it's back to work. I may be looking for a different schedule, or quitting one of my schools and looking for another. Actually, ideally I want to start tutoring some people, because that's the best hourly rate you can get. I want to work more in the morning because Uyen is finished with her degree now and will need to find a daily job, so if I keep working at night I'll never have a chance to see her except for the weekend. Plus, I tend to waste a lot of time doing nothing in the afternoon, so it will be nice for a change of pace.

That's all for now.
Chuc mung nam moi!

Cu Chi, and other interesting matters

2009-01-19T08:42:00.002-05:00

My classes have been over the past few days, so I've been finding other ways to pass the time, going out to eat and exploring and such.

On Saturday I finally went to the Cu Chi tunnels outside of Saigon, where the Viet Cong hid during the war. They had a really elaborate system of tunnels that allowed them to get underground and reach the Saigon river, and I think it even connects to the city itself. Also, many booby traps were still there, and the tour guide showed us how they all worked. For example, you step on a platform that swings down and you fall on spikes. The tunnels had many entrances, some of them very narrow, and some bigger so the bigger western tourists could fit. You can't even stand up in the tunnels, and have to scoot along with your back hunched over. There are a few lights down there, but some parts were pitch black and you had to slowly creep along and hope not to hit something. We also watched a short video about the tunnels, and listening to the narrator and the tour guide talk, they kept stating how brave the Vietnamese were in fighting off the American Enemy who was trying to invade their homes. A skewed perspective, but that was to be expected. Anyway, I'm glad I did it, it was a nice little half-day trip.

Sunday night there was an end-of-the-year party held by Elite, at this reception hall called the White Palace. Every time I would drive past it, the White Palace always looked like an incredibly lavish place, with everyone dressed up very nice, and I felt like it would be too good for me, but it was alright, I found some friendly western teachers to sit and chat with. The event started with a performance of dancers followed by break dancers, and then the announcer presented some awards and talked about the progress made by Elite over the year. Standard stuff, really. Then the buffet started, and my oh my were we in for a treat. There was so much food, both Vietnamese and western, I was in heaven. Then had some fried breaded squid balls, and noodles, and rice, and really incredible pieces of beef, as well as a very spicy seafood soup. Basically, I love food, so I was happy. Then they started a talent performance from various teachers at the school, singing different cheesy pop songs and dancing. When I saw them performing, all dressed up nicely and belting their hearts out, I could not picture them as teachers. To me, this would be very different from a Christmas party at a school in America. In Vietnam, I guess there's not as much embarrassment about putting yourself out there and singing something you love. No one is ever ashamed to sing, whether it be in the shower, or at karaoke, or riding on a motorbike.

Tomorrow I begin my valiant sojourn towards the faraway land of Pleiku. I will probably be eating Vietnamese food for 2 weeks straight, so maybe I'll lose some weight. I'm looking forward to relaxing and just going with the flow. If I have internet access, I'll update the blog with information and pictures.

For now, here are some pictures from Cu Chi.

Spas and Bakeries

2009-01-14T05:02:00.003-05:00

Last night after teaching, I went out to eat with a couple teachers I know from the journalism school. One of them is an American from Oregon, looks not much older than me, but he's married and has a kid. It sounds like he wants to eventually move back to the states, though.
After eating, we went to a massage place that was actually really nice, like a spa. There were two steam bath rooms, which were incredibly hot and steamy, but as long as you didn't move it felt kinda nice. After that, there's the jacuzzi stage, and then you get a nice silk robe and wait in a room where the tv is playing a motocross dvd, and then you get called for a massage. Once again I was surprised at how rough they can be, especially when they're doing crazy things like walking on your back, but ultimately you feel much better and relaxed.

Now today I stopped at a bakery to buy a snack. They have more than just bread and desserts. Basically they can bake anything into the bread. They seem to like hot dogs, either whole or in pieces, so they had a lot of bready pastries with hot dogs. I bought a banh jambon pho mai, basically a hot ham and cheese pocket. Everything has "banh" in front of it, which is like a cake. Even imported English words have banh, like banh pizza and banh cookies. They had little french bread pizzas and round pizzas, one of which was called "banh pizza new york" and had pieces of hot dogs on it. I didn't have the heart to tell them that people in new york don't eat pizza like that. They also had an array of sweet cakes and pastries that looked appetizing, like banh donuts. They was something called "banh mehico", or mexican cake, but it didn't really look mexican, more like just a sweet roll. I'll have to try it some day.

The new year will be the year of the buffalo. In China, it's the ox, but in Vietnam it's the buffalo. There are lots of cute cartoon buffalos everywhere, and it's sort of a mascot similar to Santa Claus. But I guess it has to change every year. I was also born in the year of the buffalo, 24 years ago. Three months until my birthday! Although, in Vietnam I could already say that I'm 24, since everyone counts an extra year in their age.

That's all for now!

Tet Den Roi

2009-01-11T06:34:00.002-05:00

So, it's 2009, as usual I didn't make a resolution but I just hope for another safe and exciting year, beginning in Vietnam and ending in America.

What's happened in the past couple weeks?

The Christmas decorations have been replaced with Tet decorations. Really elaborate red and yellow signs and lanterns and hanging things with symbols on them, or messages like "happy new year". The symbols looks like Chinese characters but they're actually the old version of Vietnamese, before they adopted the Latin alphabet. Everyone is getting really excited about the upcoming holiday, and it is a similar feeling to America when people hope for greater fortune and luck in the new year. One thing that you must do is buy new clothes to wear on Tet. I bought some jeans and shirts with Uyen's help, and it took a lot of driving around to different stores to find jeans that fit me. I was excited to start wearing my new clothes, but she told me I can't wear them until the actual day of Tet. I will be spending two weeks in her hometown of Pleiku with her family, starting on January 20. Looking forward to it, and participating in all the traditions, but right now I'm not really sure what to expect.

Classes have been winding down at schools, and I haven't been getting as many classes this past week or so, as I guess people are eager for Tet. In one of my classes only 2 students out of 13 showed up, but we still made the most of it. I finished up at the public school a couple weeks ago, and they had an interesting way of saying thanks and farewell. After my last class, I said goodbye to the students and walked out of the classroom, and one of the women who worked there was standing outside, and she handed me a wad of money and said "your salary." Then I signed my name on a piece of paper and I was off. Looking back, those were very fun classes, and I'm glad I did it to see the lighter side of teaching English, and see what it's like to teach kids.

There's a Tet song that I heard on TV. It goes "Tet, Tet, Tet den roi..." which means "Tet, come now!" Except the song is sung with the northern Viet pronunciation, so the "r" sounds like a "z".

Today is Sunday, and you know what that means... pizza and banana day!

Bye for now!

Christmas Time

2008-12-28T04:14:00.014-05:00

I had the 24th and 25th off, as most schools are closed and everyone wants to celebrate Christmas. So, I celebrated on both days! Even though I was away from home I had some great people to celebrate with. In Vietnamese, the word for "celebrate" is "an", the same as the word for "eat". If you say that you want to celebrate Christmas, it sounds like you want to eat Christmas. I think it just emphasizes how important eating is on a holiday, in every culture.

On the 24th, our maid prepared a lot of food and my roommate Le invited some friends over to eat, listen to Christmas music, and gift swap. We had a shrimp and noodle and veggie mix that was actually served cold and tasted great. Then there was a beef stew with potatoes and carrots, just like back home. His friends brought over desserts like cake. AND I couldn't buy eggnog so I made it myself using a recipe online. It came out alright, didn't taste as good as regular eggnog and the eggs kept wanting to separate, but at least the guests got a general idea of what eggnog tastes like. Rather than go on and on talking, I'll just show some pictures.

Here's a picture of our group:

And my parents sent me a nice package from home with some candy and toys and an elf hat that I bought last year, so I posed in front of my freshly-decorated tree:

The next day, the 25th, Uyen and I went out to take pictures of the decorations around the city. There was a nice wintery theme outside of Diamond, the one big department store in Vietnam, although it didn't have the same effect when I'm wearing shorts and a T-shirt next to supposedly icy trees. Also, the big Notre Dame Cathedral was all lit up with people coming to the church services that night. Lots of people were out and about taking in the sights, although it did start raining. Perhaps I spoke too soon about the dry season, because it's been raining every day again. We got pretty wet, didn't have jackets, and now I'm feeling sick, but slowly recovering now. Oh, also, before we went looking at decorations that night, we stopped to eat sticky rice and chicken at a local Vietnamese place. Uyen got more exotic fare and had my try one of her pieces of meat. After I bit into something very rough and chewy, she told me that it was pig's tongue. That in itself didn't turn me off, but I just didn't like the taste that much. I didn't have my camera at the time to snap a photo, but here are some other pictures.

More pictures can be found here: http://s334.photobucket.com/albums/m418/PetroSmith/Life%20in%20Vietnam/Christmas%20in%20Vietnam/
Some other Vietnam picture can be found here: http://s334.photobucket.com/albums/m418/PetroSmith/Life%20in%20Vietnam/

Merry Christmas and happy new year everyone!

Unrelated Thoughts

2008-12-21T10:09:00.005-05:00

There's many things here that I take for granted now, and I don't even realize are worth mentioning. For example, it seems common sense now that when you order a pizza, they will also bring you a free banana. I've gotten so used to it, that I forget that if this happened in America, it would be very confusing or at least worthy of a chuckle. Here I just welcome the extra fruit, and after my pizza I have a way to cleanse my pallet and feel like I've been slightly healthy.

Time keeps moving, and sometimes we don't realize it. At home, the passage of time is obvious, because it gets about 50 degrees colder during the fall and into the winter, plus it's hard to ignore the snow. (I've heard about the blizzard that hit the northeast.) But here, there are only two seasons, and the passage of time only becomes evident twice a year. Recently, we entered the dry season. Perhaps it is still in transition, but I think it must have rained only maybe twice so far this month, when it used to rain every day. Now the air is drier, but the temperature is just as high as before. The mornings and afternoons can be sweltering, but if you don't think about it too much, it's not that bad. Since it's dry heat, you don't sweat as much, and when you're riding on a motorbike you can sometimes feel a breeze. With no humidity to hold in the heat, though, it gets kinda cool at night. It's nice and refreshing, though. When I check the temperature online, the lowest it ever gets is about 72 degrees. And this feels cold to me and everyone else here. I think it will be a shock going back to America, but at least I'll be returning in summer.

Another random observation, it looks to me like certain things don't have the same stigma as in America. Like colors, for example. I see boys riding motorbikes that are pink or yellow, with helmets the same color. I think it's just a matter of what they have. Maybe they're borrowing someone else's stuff, or they just don't care. Either way, it seems like pink is not necessarily a feminine color.

Coming up is Christmas, and while it's not the same as back home, there is definitely excitement in the air, from the overwhelming decorations and lights to the Vietnamese Christmas songs blaring out of the shops. Most of my friends won't be around, but my roommate Le is cooking a Christmas dinner and inviting a few friends over, so I think Uyen and I will partake. I'm going on a quest to find eggnog somewhere in this city. Christmas just wouldn't be the same without it. Then, I would like to just drive around District 1 and look at all the decorations. I guess that's what a lot of people do here on Christmas. I don't know if anything special actually happens. Already there are tons of decorations everywhere. But I guess we'll have to see. I'm definitely bringing my camera to snap some pictures, though. I dread ever looking like a tourist, but I guess I can run that risk for one night.

I did take a picture recently, though, when I stopped to eat at a place I found called Red Hot Saigon that has burgers and hot dogs. I spoke to the owner for a while, he's very friendly and speaks English well. The food is pretty good, but they really pile on the sauces and extra toppings, so it's kind of a messy affair. The hot dog I got did taste like a hot dog, though, which is more than I can say about some other hot dogs I've had. I liked the style, too. The places to eat were in closed-off rooms where you take off your shoes and sit almost on the floor, like a tea house. It was nice and cozy, so I hope to make it a regular spot to dine.
Here is a picture of the hot dog, half-eaten and next to an imported Shasta Root Beer:

Also, last weekend Hien had her birthday. She's the program leader here, and she's the nicest, most helpful person, that I can always call with my problems and she provides an answer. She turned the big 3-0, and people are not afraid to reveal their ages here like in America, so I don't think I'll get into trouble for saying it. Anyway, Uyen and I bought her some nice flowers, which we put on the table of the restaurant where we ate, and it was kind of like a centerpiece that everyone liked. The table was very nice, as all of Hien's friends and the past and current Languagecorps students were there.
Here's a picture of me, Hien, and the flowers:

Yet one more thing to mention, this week I've been covering Genessa's classes at a public school for young children. The classes are only 30 minutes long, but it's as exhausting as a 90 minute class for adults, because they're so energetic and hard to keep focused. They're a lot of fun, though, and very friendly, saying "hello!" several times when I come in. They like a lot of games and songs and stuff, and some of them can't sit still for more than a minute. It's very satisfying because they're learning basic English words and structures, so you feel like you're really teaching them something new each time, and the games give them a chance to practice.

My roommate just made some che, which I'm eating now. It's kind of a sweet dessert made with beans, sometimes very cold and icy, but this one he made is very watery, but it's nice and refreshing and seems healthy since it's made with beans. They look like very big kidney beans, and even though I'm not a bean enthusiast, I don't mind them much, and they're kind of sweet.

Well that's all the news that's fit to give. Merry Christmas everyone!

My December

2008-12-08T12:16:00.004-05:00

Hello, hello.

One of the gas companies here is Saigon Petro. It seems fitting, so I added a picture of the logo to the left.

Not much new to say really, but people keep clamoring for posts. I may have forgotten to mention that I started working at a third school, Vietnam National University. So, this is serious business. Same kinda stuff though, teaching lessons and getting students to talk English with each other a lot. I don't like the lesson books as much as at Elite. There aren't a lot of fun activities, and it's mostly centered around listening exercises. The one class I taught so far only had five people. Still, I bet I can think of some activities and games to make class more interesting.

I've been going out to karaoke a lot lately. They get a kick out of me singing in Vietnamese, and I can barely pronounce the words in time to the music, but it's alright. The collection of English songs they have mostly predate 1990, so the ideal songs to sing are the cheesy, over-the-top ones. Obviously, I showed off my Tom Jones impression.

I got a new roommate. And a toaster. He brought many things with him. But I especially am loving the toast.
He's a very cool guy, and I think we'll become friends as well as roommates. He's Vietnamese but very easy to talk to in English. He goes to work early every morning, so I feel like a bum since I usually get up around 11. He also goes on business trips a lot. Right now he's in the Philippines for the next few days.

And now, by popular demand, here is a picture of a recent energy drink which I consumed:

When I drank it, I briefly became a samurai. Then I reverted back to my normal self. It was actually pretty uneventful.

Farewell!

The 5th Post of the Month

2008-11-30T02:44:00.003-05:00

Welcome to the Christmas season! Actually, with no buffer holidays like Halloween or Thanksgiving, Christmas decorations start popping up in October here. For a society with only a minority of Christians, they sure love Christmas here. It must be the commercialization of it, and how it's associated with American culture. At any rate, I bought my own 4 foot fake Christmas tree, and I'll be adding lights and ornaments another day. It's nice to have some festive charm in my house.

We all celebrated Thanksgiving here last Wednesday, with a complete meal delivered from an American restaurant. The turkey and mashed potatoes and stuffing and everything was great, just like back home. Unfortunately, there was no football on TV. Not that I would really follow it or understand what was going on, but it is tradition.

I'm starting work this week at a new school, the Vietnam National University. So, I have yet another style of lesson to get used to, but the variety will keep things interesting. I think the university students will be that much more eager to learn, and many are probably hoping to study for some time in an English-speaking country. A lot of people go to Australia or New Zealand just because they're so close. That leaves them with an interesting accent, and vocabulary including "cheers" and "mate".

I was able to get 5 posts in this month, so that's an improvement! Hopefully more adventures await me in December.

I'm one third of the way through my overseas excursion.

Of Cockroaches and Kings

2008-11-19T15:46:00.002-05:00

It's no secret that I hate bugs and small creatures.

The only ones I don't mind are the small geckos who live on the walls in my kitchen. They're very shy and run away when I turn on the light. I tolerate them because they eat all the little bugs and they look kinda cool.

It's a different story with Mortimer. This is the giant cockroach-like-insect who lives in my bathroom(s). I first met him when I lived in the bedroom down the hall and used the other bathroom. As I came in to brush my teeth, he poked his head out of the drain to say hello. I addressed the situation as I do any other, without any action but a determined staredown. He retreated to the safety of the pipes, and I brushed my teeth at a distance from the sink. I decided to name him something like Archibald or Seymour and I eventually settled on Mortimer. When I moved to the master bedroom, I thought I might never see him again, and I was glad. But tonight as I walked into my bathroom to take a shower, I found him scampering on the floor and I resumed my stare. It looked like he couldn't find a way out through a pipe this time, and he didn't fit through the drain on the floor. He was very shy, though, and dashed under a table. I had him cornered this time, and I was going to end things once and for all. I grabbed a box from my bedroom and wheeled the table to the side, which caused him to appear, terror in his eyes and trembling in his antennae and mandibles. I brought down the box on him and placed a sneaker on top, because I figured that the strength of an insect with a name like Mortimer should never be underestimated. He will spend the night in his airless prison and I'll have my maid dispatch of him tomorrow morning. It is very likely that she is less squeamish around bugs than I am.

That's all for today!

Teacher's day

2008-11-18T11:06:00.003-05:00

On Thursday is Teacher's Day in Vietnam. It's kind of a big deal since teachers are traditionally given a lot of respect in this society. Students give presents like flowers to their teachers on this day, but I don't know if I'll be getting any gifts. My classes fluctuate too much from week to week, and on Thursday I'm filling in for a class I haven't taught before. Unless the students are so zealous about teacher's day that they bring gifts to class even when they don't know who the teacher will be, I won't be expecting anything, and I'm not that big into flowers anyway. It is kind of a good feeling to know that they have a day that honors teachers, since I suddenly randomly chose that job for the time being. I'm still trying to figure out what I'm going to do after this, and the time is ticking on making a decision, since graduate school application deadlines are coming up.

A couple days ago I had a dinner party at my house with my fellow English teacher friends, and it was nice to see them again and act like a host. My maid prepared a lot of quesadilla mix, we fried them up and they came out delicious. I also kept things classy with a plate of brie cheese and crackers, because I couldn't find feta in the supermarket, and some cornichons. I always associate those things with the idea of a dinner party. I take great joy in planning things and getting all the details right and having everything go well. Maybe that's my calling: I can be a wedding planner, haha.

Tales from the Classroom

2008-11-11T04:31:00.002-05:00

So much for new leaves.

Ants seem to be everywhere. Everywhere indoors, that is. I'll often see a stream of ants crawling up the walls in the kitchen, or crawling on the counter and threatening my dinner. And they often show up in my bedroom as well. I really can't understand. They're tiny and innocuous enough that it doesn't bother me too much. Still, it's unsettling. The ants must have discovered some tiny forgotten morsel of food. I kinda solved the mystery last night. In between teaching two classes, I went to the break room of the school and had a snack of fried rice. It was an interesting concoction, there were like 6 different kinds of meat inside, as well as bunch of other things. As I was wolfing this down, I dropped a small bean sprout or something on the floor and I didn't pick it up. About ten minutes later, I got up to get a drink of water, and I looked down at the floor in front of my chair. I observed a sea of ants emanating from a hole in the wall to the place where I dropped my piece of food. About halfway to the hole, a dozen or so ants were carrying the food, slowly inching it closer to their home. It was like an epic trophy that they were putting all their effort into recovering. It was partly disgusting and partly awe-inspiring.

Anyway, I wanted to share some stories from the classroom.
One of the classes I taught last week was incredibly raucous. Usually the students are relatively quiet and respectful, but sometimes they can get loud and out of hand. In America, I would just scream at them and strike fear in their hearts, but I've been warned not to yell in Asian classrooms. So I try a small hush and the few students who are watching me join in and eventually the class quiets down. Anyway, these guys were kinda out of control, and maybe it was the topic. We were talking about love, and since the students were all late teens or early 20's, it was a hot topic. One girl in particular was incredibly vocal. In one activity, they were practicing talking about likes and dislikes, and they had to write down things they liked and things they didn't, like countries, cities, food, music, etc. When we got to cities we didn't like, this girl kept yelling "HANOI! HANOI! HA-NOI!" And I said, ok, ok. When we got to food we liked, she kept yelling "KFC! KFC!"
Anyway, the topic got a little serious when I divided up the boys and girls and had them write the characteristics they look for in a member of the opposite sex. For some reason, the boys chose to list characteristics that pertained to this girl, and it was kinda funny and interesting to see what they wrote. They meant to say "talkative", but wrote "talk a tea", which is how they also say it since they don't pronounce final consonants. Well, I don't mean to make fun of them, I just find it interesting. So, the girl found out that they were talking about her but she wasn't too embarrassed. Next, she read what the girls were looking for in a man, and he had to be rich and handsome and tall. I asked them if any of the boys in the class fit the criteria, and they said "no, but maybe the teacher", so I assured them that I was not rich.

After that class, I taught a class where the topic was food. I asked them what food people eat on special occasions. I was expecting to hear something like cake. A girl tried to tell me something but I had trouble understand what she was saying, so she spelled it out for me. Even that didn't work, because they mix up how to say a lot of letters in English, like "g" and "j" and "z". Finally, I got all the letters correct and looked at what I had written on the board: dog. I laughed nervously as the students nodded.

Yesterday I taught two classes, and in one of them the power went out in the middle of the lesson. The students seemed content about the break in the lesson, but I took out my cell phone and used the flashlight function to read my book and keep asking questions, which was met with groans. The lack of A/C was starting to get to me, so I didn't think I'd be able to teach much longer in a dark, hot room, but luckily someone came up and flipped a switch to get the power going again.

I taught another class where they were reviewing for a test and had to go over a bunch of review questions. When of them was about goals in life. One girl stated that her goal was to make a lot of money, to which another replied that her goal was to find a rich husband, and the other girls smiled and nodded in agreement. For a non-capitalistic society, there sure is a lot of obsession with money.

In other news, I checked out a Greek restaurant here the other day. It wasn't exactly Greek, more Mediterranean, but it serves a lot of Greek dishes so I figured I'd give it a shot. The spanakopita is really good, at least. The gyros are nowhere near actual gyros, but as pita pockets filled with meat, they're alright. Uyen got moussaka, which I tried a taste of and it was alright. She really liked it. I've never been a big moussaka fan. For some reason, pasticio wasn't on the menu. They had a lot of dishes that sounded like shish kabob, skewered lamb and chicken and such. Baklava was on the dessert menu, but since I've been having a lot from what my parents sent me over the past few weeks, I didn't feel like trying it. I haven't ever really had bad baklava, honestly, so I don't see how they could screw it up. Overall, it's the best Greek food option in Ho Chi Minh City, so it will have to do.

Over and out.

Post-Brad

2008-11-01T02:14:00.003-04:00

Now it's November, and looking back I made 11 posts in August, and 4 posts each in September and October, so I seriously slowed down to about a post a week. I'm hoping to turn over a new leaf in November.

So after some complications, my friend Brad was able to visit for a day, and it was nice seeing a familiar face. He was really enamored with the city, even though it rained most of the time he was here. We pretty much avoided all Vietnamese food and had a nice Italian dinner at Good Morning Vietnam. He enjoyed riding around on the back of my motorbike, dodging traffic and trying not to fall over at red lights. I wasn't used to having so much weight on my bike, so it took a lot of getting used to. We finally got the hang of it, though. We checked out the big outside market called Ben Thanh, which stays open really late, bought some cheap t-shirts and stuff. We also ended up buying some DVD's, I picked up seasons 1-2 of 30 Rock, which I look forward to watching every episode of. Uyen also met us for lunch at a French cafe type place that had good sandwiches and fruit shakes.

Then, I took Brad back to the airport to go back to Singapore, and I had to teach one class yesterday at a faraway campus. It went pretty well, though, and I feel that I'm getting the hang the lessons at Elite. I just wish I could teach the same classes every week and get to know my students better.

Luckily I started picking up some classes at a journalism school, whose name I don't really know for some reason. On Wednesday nights, I teach two classes back to back which are "interpretation classes". It's a different style where I work with a Vietnamese teacher to help the students understand a passage in English. This week, we had an interview with Bill Gates, where he talked about what it's like to be rich and what his work with Microsoft is like. The Vietnamese teacher read the class the interviewer's questions in Vietnamese, and one of them had to think and translate it into English. Then I would respond slowly in English, and one of them had to think and translate it into Vietnamese for the other teacher. So, since I don't know Vietnamese well enough, all I have to do is read the responses in English and the other teacher is the one who evaluates the students. Sometimes I also explain a word or phrase that they don't understand. So, it's kinda fun and easy. There are only a few students in the class, too. Wednesday night might be the night I look forward to in the week. If I don't start getting more classes from Elite, though, then I will have to look for yet another school to pick up classes at.

One complication came this week when my motorbike wouldn't work after my classes on Wednesday. It would start up, but if I gave it any gas it would shut off. It had plenty of gas, so I was stumped, and the guards kept trying to play with it and figure it out but they didn't know either. So, the next morning I called the place I rent my bike from, and they sent a couple people over to look at it and get it serviced. They fixed it and brought it back to my house, no charge. So, there's one bit of luck I've had.

In other news, now I've finished all the other books I brought, and it's time to delve into Don Quixote.

October Surprises (not really)

2008-10-28T03:12:00.002-04:00

At the end of this week, it will be November. Can you believe it? I left home at the very end of July, and that's now three months ago.

I guess I have grown over the past few months. I've learned a lot about living on my own and juggling many different things. I've faced challenges, and I've been calm and optimistic when I face them. Ultimately, I am blessed to have family and friends who love and support me, enough food to eat, water to drink, a roof over my head. Those are the essentials, and so many people in the world are not as lucky as me to have them.

I picked up two more classes a week at another school, and they are TOEIC preparation courses. TOEIC is a test to see how well people in other countries can use English, in a business setting. They need native English speakers to help them with the speaking section, which apparently is not that important. So, it's kind of a low pressure thing. They didn't give me a book or anything, they just said I should prepare something on my own and teach it. So, I taught one class last week and I came up with some scenarios, like the students take on roles in a company and we meet at an annual business meeting and they have to give a little report on their performance at the company, and how what they're doing is helping make profits. So, I prepared these activities, then I came into the class and I found that there were only three students. That was interesting. But, it worked out, and I adjusted my lesson for them. It was easier in a way because I could cater to their individual needs. But it's also tough filling up an hour and a half with three people. Also, I know NOTHING about business.

Last weekend was fun, some of Uyen's friends were visiting from her hometown, and she invited me to hang out with them. One night I joined them at a karaoke bar, they had packed twenty or so people in a private room and were loudly belting out Vietnamese pop songs. People here usually seem quiet and reserved, but I guess if you give them a microphone they undergo a sudden transformation. I treated them to renditions of "Hello" by Lionel Ritchie, and of course "We Built this City on Rock N Roll". On Sunday night, we had a dinner at a nice place that was kinda outdoors, lots of trees and nice scenery around, like a tropical theme. I see many of these places around, but I'm scared to go in because they're usually full of large parties of locals. Anyway, now I was with the locals. The waiters kept bringing out ample dishes of different foods, chicken and squid and these fried rice ball things, and then this soup they cook in a hot pot in front of you and put meat and noodles in it. Everyone shares from the communal dishes, taking some food and putting it on their own plates. All the food was really good, and all the people were friendly and chatty. Some of her friends had studied in New Zealand and they were really good at English, so they kept talking to me about Vietnam and cultural differences and such.

Teaching in general has been going a lot better, and I've been preparing extra hard for all my classes and I try to make sure that when I wave goodbye to my students and they say "goodbye, teacher" everyone is all smiles. I talk as slow as possible in the lower level classes. The frustrating thing is that I wasn't evaluated after any of my classes last week, so the school didn't get a chance see that I had improved, and this week I was given pretty much the same amount of classes as last week. I guess the evaluations really are quite random, because I taught two classes yesterday and was evaluated after both of them. I felt confident about how I did, though.

My roommate told me that she wants to go back to Thailand, where she was studying before, and she will probably leave in the next week or so, so I'm looking for a new roommate, hopefully someone that Hien knows or someone connected with Languagecorps. I want to have someone who I can be sure will stay for several months.

Tomorrow my friend Brad is coming to visit, since he's already in this neck of the woods seeing his girlfriend who's working in Singapore. He's only spending basically two days and one night here, so I have to pack in the activities. I feel like I will be a horrible guide. I haven't even really explored half of the city. And most of the times I go out to dinner, I eat Western food, so if he wants some authentic Vietnamese then I'll have to think hard.

Then again... there is the delectable Banh Xeo... a wonderful omelette-y thing stuffed with meat and shrimp and veggies, and you wrap it up in lettuce and dip it in some sauce.
I forget that I'm horrible at describing things. Let's consult wikipedia on the topic:
Bánh xèo are Vietnamese crepe-type pancakes made out of rice flour, water and turmeric powder or coconut milk (in the Southern regions) stuffed with slivers of fatty pork, shrimp, and bean sprouts and is pan fried. Traditionally, they are served wrapped in mustard leaf, lettuce leaves, and stuffed with mint leaves, basil, fish leaf and/or other herbs, and dipped in a prepared nước mắm called nuoc cham (Vietnamese fish sauce thinned with water and lemon). In the Central region, the pancake is dipped in a special 'tuong' sauce which consists of liver, hoisin sauce and garlic. Southern style Bánh xèo are larger compared to the small pan-fried versions in the Central regions.

Sorry that I haven't been taking pictures. I'm kinda shy with my camera because I feel like if I take it out, I'll be labeled a tourist. I actually have some nice pictures of the Mekong Delta that I can upload next time I'm feeling bored. Maybe when Brad comes I'll have an excuse to take more pictures.

strikes and gutters

2008-10-20T04:05:00.003-04:00

I've had some ups and downs recently. The good news is that I'm feeling better, so my tonsillitis seems to be all gone. Once I got the right medicine, it worked really quickly to make me feel better, so I'm grateful for that. Now I'm just trying to get things back to normal.

The problem I've had recently is not getting enough classes to teach. When I was sick, I had to cancel my classes, and then I assumed I would start getting a full schedule again, but my school told me that based on some negative feedback from students, they're going to cut my hours and see if I improve. Well, I understand they want to hold teachers to very high standards, but it's very difficult for me, money-wise, to only work for a few hours in a week. Having just this one job which fluctuates so much is really too unstable for me when I'm trying to pay the monthly bills, so now I'm looking into other places to teach. Some of the other teachers here have been working for Cleverlearn, so I'll look into that, but Graham says he's been placed in public schools for some classes out of the week, and they have no air-conditioning. Considering that I am a sweaty mess before I even enter the classroom, to teach without AC sounds cruel and unusual. What I also like about Elite is that the locations were all close by, so I'm hoping to find a place to teach that is in my part of the city. Since I already signed my contract with Elite, I believe I may be obligated to continue teaching there until next July, but as long as I get another job, I should be able to get up to my goal of 20-25 hours and it hopefully will be less stressful when I have some variety teaching in two different places. At this point, I wouldn't mind also teaching some classes in the morning. I haven't had to get up early at all in the past few weeks, and it's kinda nice but I also feel like I waste the day.

At any rate, I do want to get better at teaching. I feel like I may have been slacking lately, probably because I was still feeling the effects of my illness and exhaustion from the week before. As hard as it is to maintain, I have to keep a very slow and loud voice so that the lower-level students can understand me. Also, even if I'm feeling really uninspired and just want the students to talk with their partners, I do have to plan a fun, active game of some sort that lets them practice the language as much as possible. Some of the classes I taught complained that it was too boring. I guess I had gotten discouraged from trying to do activities that students didn't understand or were too shy to get involved in. But, I can't let it get me down. Being a former student, I know that few things in life are worse than a boring class. Even if it's discouraging, I have to keep some fun injected into the lesson, because after every class there is a possibility that someone from Elite will come in to ask the students how I did, so the key is to make every class a great class. Since I'm going to continue teaching at Elite, I have to keep this in mind so I can get more classes and possibly raises in the future.

As far as other little anecdotes go, I can't really think of anything. Yesterday, Uyen and I went to a place that had Bubble Tea, which I had previously fallen in love with in the States. She referred to it as milk tea, which confused me until I saw it and I realized what it was. Apparently they use "bubble tea" to refer to just another kind of iced fruity tea drink that's kinda bubbly. I looked into it, and Bubble Tea was invented in Taiwan and spread to the rest of east asia from there, and in Chinese it has the name "pearl milk tea", so I guess that's more accurate, but now it's popping up all over America, at least in cities where there are a lot of Asians, and everyone calls it Bubble Tea over there. Oh, for anyone who doesn't know, it's like a fruity cold tea drink that has little balls of tapioca in it, and you drink it with this big straw that lets you suck up the balls as you drink. It's a strange feeling but it's delicious and I hope to drink it more often. It only costs about a dollar.

They tell me that the rainy season is on its way out, but currently it's pouring rain. Hopefully it will let off before I go to work. The downside to driving a scooter is the only protection between you and the rain is a flimsy jacket or poncho that will inevitably still leave you wet.

sickness

2008-10-11T09:10:00.002-04:00

For the past week, I've been very sick. I don't feel like writing much but I wanted to just give a quick update.

For a few days they didn't know what I had, and then a doctor examined me and said I have tonsillitis. This caused a fever, which has since gone down, and a horrible sore throat and cough, and nausea and stomacheache, and headache and dizziness. I had to cancel my class this week, except for one, and after I taught it I was completely exhausted. Elite has been understanding but wants me to get better. I don't like to disappoint them so I want to be better by Monday.

I've been taking a lot of medicine and resting but still not really feeling better. I feel alright when I'm lying down, but when I get up I feel weak and faint. The tonsillities caused low blood pressure, I guess, so I don't get enough blood going to my head.

This whole thing is very difficult and frustrating. I just want to be better.

Haircuts, etc.

2008-10-02T01:35:00.002-04:00

I really should blog more often. I always come up with ideas of things I want to say when I'm out and about, then I get back to my computer and I can't remember them!

My biggest recurring observation though is just amazement at where I am and what I'm doing. When I'm coming home from work, I stop and say to myself, "wow, I am driving a motorbike down a very busy city street in southeast asia, wearing a shirt and tie because I have just been teaching twenty young Vietnamese people how to speak English." Years ago, I would not have predicted that this would be first job after college. I'm very pleased with how things turned out, though. I like getting into the routine of it, and the fact that living in a different country, driving a motorbike, interacting with new people every day has become part of a routine is a remarkable feeling. Some people get their thrills from doing all sorts of dangerous activities like bungie jumping or sky diving or mountain climbing. To me, the most exciting thing is when what was once exciting loses its excitement and becomes part of normality. To become so used to something that once was scary and unknown is a thrill to me. I don't know if that makes sense to anyone else.

A few days ago, I went into the breakroom between two classes for a 15-minute respite and a snack. The room was crowded with Vietnamese teachers who teach English grammar to the students, whereas foreign teachers focus on speaking and pronunciation. There was one other American, though, and he immediately gave himself away as a typical American baffoon, in my opinion. Most of the English-speakers I have met in Vietnam have been British or Australian, so whenever I meet a fellow American it is a little exciting, but this teacher proved himself to represent all the negative stereotypes of our culture. He was a big guy, maybe in his 30's, and he was loudly regaling a Vietnamese teacher with a story, which I entered in the middle of. From what I gathered, he had been cut off twice by another motorbike driver, and he decided to punch him in the face. Presently he kept alternating between justifying his actions to his eager listener ("he cut me off. i had to punch him."), and commenting on the pain in his hand which was his own doing ("wow, it really hurts. i got him good!") The Vietnamese teacher who was listening kept smiling and nodding his head and asking questions, and I gazed disinterestedly on. For some unfathomable reason, I spoke, and the man immediately recognized that I was American and began bombarding me with the usual questions. Predictably, he scoffed and guffawed numerous times at my decision to major in philosophy, explaining to his audience that this field does not pay a lot of money and I would be in debt for the rest of my life. I reassured him that I was in fact going to be okay before slipping off to teach my next class.

In contrast, all the Vietnamese I have met have been exceedingly friendly, except for the crazy woman who tried to sell me two packs of gum at the zoo for $6. Everyone is very interested to hear about my life and why I came to Vietnam. One of my students in a class I taught yesterday lingered at the end of class and asked me "do you like coffee?" I responded that yes, yes I do, and he subsequently invited me to a coffeeshop, which was nice. He was 27 but looked younger than me, and we had a good conversation about anything and everything. He was very modest about his English, as all people here are, but I thought he spoke very well. The downside to this decision was that drinking coffee at 9:30 at night, especially strong Vietnamese coffee, ensured that I would not fall asleep until 4 in the morning, even after taking two Tylenol PM's. It wouldn't have been an issue if I hadn't had to wake up to be at school at 9am today to sign a contract. Which reminds me, Elite has asked me to... sign a contract! Which I guess means that I passed the trial period, they like me, and want to keep me as a teacher.

And now to the title of this blog post, the haircut. Yesterday I decided that my hair was too long, especially for this humid weather. I walked a few shops down the street to a hair salon. Every time I had walked past it, it was devoid of customers, but rife with employees, all female and wearing matching outfits. That seems to be a trend in places of business here. So, I started to turn into the salon, but one of the girls sprang up to open the door before I could even touch the handle. They were very excited to either see someone with my kind of hair or just plain have a customer. I don't know if they had ever cut curly hair before. I told them in Vietnamese to cut it short but not too short. They sat me down and bustled about, one girl getting the smock, one prepared to brush away hair that fell on the floor, and a woman a little older than the others readying her scissors. I think it was my first haircut without the use of an electric razor. She did pretty well for curly hair, but it turned out a little shorter than I'm used to. It's still alright, I can kinda push up the front and give it some style. At any rate, I think walking around will be a hundred times easier without a furry cap to trap in heat and moisture. After the haircut, they also gave me a nice shave. When it was over, they handed me the bill. It cost a whopping.... brace yourselves.... $3.75. I left a generous tip and skipped back to my house with a spring in my step.

Last week I woke up at 8am on Saturday to watch the presidential debate (9pm in America the night before). I'm trying to decide if I should do the same tomorrow for the VP debate, or just wake up later and watch the highlights. It is kind of exciting to see it live, though, and be one of the first to catch something interesting happen. Political debates are my football games.

This is Peter, saying Farewell from the Future.

Teacher, this time for real

2008-09-25T02:47:00.003-04:00

Sorry it has been so long since I last posted. Life has gotten busier.

I taught two classes last week which both went alright, but both days it started raining on my way to work, and I showed up soaking wet. I also didn't finish the lessons I wanted to teach. But, I got a better handle on the time it takes to explain and run activities.

So far this week, I've taught five classes, and I have one more tomorrow. They have been going much better. Elite has been very kind and helpful and forgiving of my mistakes. When I work two classes in a row, I have 15 minutes in between classes and they give me a free snack or drink. I've been getting fruit and vegetable shakes. Those avocado shakes are amazing. Next time I should get food, though. It's tough waiting until after 9 to eat dinner. By then I'm so tired I don't even feel like eating.

Anyway, I enjoy teaching. Some of the classes are low level and have trouble understanding things, so I have to expect that and train myself to talk slowly and loudly. I'm getting better at slowing down and being patient. It can be difficult when you have the students working on something for 5-10 minutes, and then you ask someone to share what they talked about or wrote about, and the class is dead silent. Students here are just more shy and afraid of saying something wrong. But with a little coaxing, you find that they have interesting things to say. In the higher level classes, some students are just itching to get a chance to share. One class I taught yesterday was pretty smart, and we were just flying through the activities so that I thought we'd have too much time leftover, but it ended up working out.

Yesterday I was also a little late to my classes, because I was teaching at a school I hadn't taught at before, and all I knew was that it was on the street that I live on, just in a different district. So I thought, ok, I can find this, I just drive up. Except, when I got to a busy intersection, the street turned from one way my direction, to one way against me. It made absolutely no sense. I could even see the school right there. I wanted to just drive on the sidewalk to get to the school, but the cop shook his head at me and I pleaded with him, asking "how do I get... right... there!!" and he pointed to another street going into the intersection. So, I took that up and took the next sidestreet to try to get back, but there was stop-and-go traffic the whole way, and it took me another 20 minutes to get there. Luckily I was only 5 minutes late and they seemed to understand. They also told me a much easier way to get there if I take another sidestreet and get to the school from kind of a backdoor. So, it should be easier next time.

Today is my... day off! I'm just going to be lazy today. I've been kinda tired and sick, just from lack of sleep and some stress. This past weekend we went to the Mekong Delta, which was a lot of fun, sailing up and down the rivers, visiting floating markets, eating seafood, getting caught in monsoons, and just watching how people lived their lives everyday. But, I didn't get much sleep that weekend. Last night I took some tylenol PM and slept for like 12 hours, so that helped.

Oh yea, I also got a roommate, so I can cut my rent in half. She's a Sri Lankan university student named Chethana, and her English is pretty good. She's pretty nice and I don't think we'll have any problems.

I don't think there's anything else to say, so I'll put this rambling, haphazard post to an end.

An Observation, and a Prognostication

2008-09-14T08:19:00.003-04:00

An observation on restaurants in Vietnam:

They will never give you bread before a meal.
They will always give you a moist toilette or two. If you use it, you will be charged 1,000 dong. Slightly more than 6 cents is a good price for clean hands.
They will always give you toothpicks at the end of the meal if they are not already on the table. Picking your teeth is simultaneously socially improper and a national pastime. The result is that you will see people impatiently reaching for a toothpick as soon as they've had the last bite of their meal, hurriedly cleaning all their teeth and using their other hand to cover their mouth so that you can't tell what they are obviously doing. I like to just sit there with the toothpick in my mouth, like I'm either Clark Gable with a cigarette or a farmer with a weed in my mouth, but I don't think this is proper.
Most places will also give you a free iced tea, which tastes like green tea but I think it's slightly different. I've already gotten sick of it. I crave berry and lemon teas. I should try and buy some packets so I can make some at home.
I think that every restaurant must hire three times as many people as they need at any given time. Granted sometimes I eat at odd hours, but every time I've eaten out, there have been extra wait stuff just hanging around doing nothing, gazing off in the distance, half-interestedly watching a Viet soap or melodramatic music video, or watching me eat if there's nothing more exciting to see. Maybe in the States the waiters are just better at hiding when they have nothing to do.
When you have a motorbike, parking at anywhere in the city becomes a non-issue. Just pull up front and a security guy will take the bike and give you a ticket. Half the places I've parked at so far have not charged me. The most I've ever had to pay is 3,000 dong. That's like 20 cents. Less than a quarter to park anywhere in the city for as long as I want, or at least until they close. There's one area where American cities can look to Ho Chi Minh for guidance.

This week Elite has given me two classes to teach. That's only 3 hours of work... One class Monday evening, one class Tuesday evening. I like that I don't have to get up early, and I have time to really review my lesson and plan everything out before I start. I wanted to work more this first week, but I think it would also be good to ease into things, especially since it's a new format from the one I'm used to, but with a lot of the similar ideas. The school says that depending on how I do with my first classes, I'll get more the next week, and more the next week, etc., until I'm up to 20 or so hours a week. With planning time, transportation time, etc., I think that's pretty good. If I still feel that I have too much free time, I can try to take on some tutoring.

I am looking forward to my lesson tomorrow, though understandably a little nervous now that it's an actual job. I just gotta remember that I did two weeks of teaching and it went well, so this is just kind of a continuation of what I've been doing. In the teacher's book we got, all the activities are pretty much planned out for us, but I hope that in time I'll be able to tweak things a little more and more. Some of the games and activities seem kind of repetitive and I can think of more fun ways to do things. Some of them are good ideas, though. There's a lot of stuff in the lesson plan, and I hope we get to it all in an hour and a half. There's also a CD that they provided with audio clips of conversations and such that are part of the activities, so that will help to keep things humming along. My lesson is called "have you ever broken a bone?" and is all about injuries and medical advice and stuff, with some grammatical things thrown in, like separable phrasal verbs (which I didn't even know until I took the Languagecorps course). Anyway... I think it will go well.

Wish me luck!

Alone in my Villa

2008-09-10T06:49:00.005-04:00

Picked up my motorbike today. My new wild hog.

Easy enough to use. I decided to ride it around the city a little this afternoon when traffic was light. I quickly got the hang of it. There are so many bikes on the road, that they all have to kind of go at a moderate speed anyway. Still, it was a bit frightening at times. I pictured myself as the least likely person to drive around a huge crowded city with a motorbike, but I went ahead and did it. If I can confront one fear every day, I'm sure I'll never run out of fears but at least I'll grow more confident at doing new things. I would say the hardest part about driving in this city is finding a specific place. It's alright to just drive around in circles, but looking for a certain address is an exercise in futility. Streets change names several times, many are one-way, numbers on the right and left sides of the road count up differently, and google maps utterly fails at locations outside the US. Tonight I will attempt to drive to Greta and Genessa's new apartment for dinner, and it is pretty much a straight shot from where I live, so hopefully nothing will go wrong.

These past few days I've had nothing to do, so I've had a lot of time to muse on things.

I've been sleeping very unevenly, waking up several times in the night for no reason. Probably just things on my mind.
At 5am, a rooster in the neighborhood wakes up and feels that it is his duty to cooka-doodle his heart out until I know that he's awake and I am too. It makes it impossible to sleep, so I've taken to going to bed with earplugs, which is far from comfortable but at least it lets me sleep, and if I wake up in mid-morning I can take them out because he usually settles down by then..

My maid is really nice, she's only here in the mornings so I make a point to get out of bed before she leaves so I can say hi. She brings me coffee and a breakfast assembled from whatever is in the house, like bread and peanut butter and cheese and a banana. Today she also cooked me up a chicken quesadilla, which I heated up for lunch, and it was really quite good. My maid doesn't know English too well, but she's very nice and good at what she does.

I like my neighborhood. The streets are full of peddlers of all sorts of things, like fresh fruit and coffee and other random items. There are tons of tiny little shops selling everything from rain ponchos to motorbike helmets to lamps to phone cards. Everyone gazes at me as if I'm a martian, and I try to smile back. They'll get used to me. I'm their neighbor.

I've already seen a couple people interested in moving into the extra room here. They were both impressed with the place and the smallness of the rent. They're both British folk working as english teachers who seem to be in their 30's. One is male and one is female. She said "well maybe you'd prefer a lad", but it honestly doesn't matter to me. So, hopefully one of them decides to live here. This house is kinda big for just one person.

Tomorrow is an orientation day at my new school that I'm teaching at. I don't know if that means I'm immediately teaching after that, or even the very same day. At any rate, my free time will probably diminish significantly. Right now, that's a very welcome prospect, because I am bouncing off the walls just a little.

Vacation and House Warming

2008-09-06T04:38:00.004-04:00

So from Monday to Friday we took a little vacation to the beach. First we went to Vung Tau, didn't like it too much, too busy and no good beaches, so we journeyed to Mui Ne, which was a lot nicer. It's a resort town but there weren't many people there, it must have been off season. We were able to get a bungalow at a resort for cheap, it was right on the beach and also had a pool. Most of the time we just hung out, swam, napped, read, went out to eat, repeat. It was pretty relaxed the whole time, but it was nice, especially being in such a beautiful area. It was a really nice mini-vacation before we started working.

Last Sunday I moved into my house, but today the guy who was living here before me finally got all his stuff out, so I was able to move into the bigger, better room and start making it my home. I like the house, it's really peaceful, like an oasis in the middle of the madness of the city. At some point I may have to buy some art to put on the walls so I truly feel like a young cultured professional on the rise, or something.

We got the jobs at the school called Elite. All we have to do is show up on Thursday for a training session for a few hours, and then we can start getting scheduled to teach. I'm really looking forward to it. All this free time is nice, but I need some structure, and some money. From my training and practice, I also found that I really enjoy teaching and feel that I'm making a positive impact on people. You can be surprised how well two people can communicate even when one of them is far from fluent in the language.

I've also been hanging out with a girl named Uyen who was one of the students in my practice teaching class. It seems to be slowly developing into a relationship. I am completely confused about the etiquette of Vietnamese dating customs, so I find the whole thing both terrifying and exciting, which is a good combination. I believe that I just have to relax and let things progress naturally.

And now, some pictures:

The beach by our resort.

Posing with my motorbike. We rented them for an afternoon to drive around.

My new bedroom, before I moved my stuff in.

The living room downstairs.

The curvy staircase which leads upstairs.

The view outside my bedroom window, one floor up.

Me and Uyen.

End of Training

2008-08-30T12:48:00.004-04:00

All my training is now over!
Huzzah!

Teaching was a lot of fun, and I'm really glad I had the opportunity to learn how to do it in this environment. Unfortunately, it's time to play with the big boys, and I'm moving out tomorrow and into my own house in the city, the place I talked about in another post. It has a maid to cook and clean, which is nice, it's got three bedrooms but so far I'm the only one living there, tv, internet, AC, so I think it'll be a good deal.

This morning all four of us interviewed at a school called Elite. First they gave us a little pep talk about how they teach their lessons, then we were individually interviewed, they asked us a little about our teaching style, and asked us if we had questions, etc. They'll let us know Monday if we get picked. It seems like it's pretty safe to say we'll all get chosen, since English teachers are in demand, and we made good impressions. I like the school, because one of the locations is close to where I'm gonna be living. Also, the schedule is kind of flexible, like you'll be teaching different classes at different times each week, probably 20 hours a week, and you can ask for vacation time when you want. Starting pay is usually 15-16 dollars an hour but every few months you get evaluated and may get a pay raise. The lessons follow a set order but you can make each lesson your own, and add your own creative activities to it. Mostly they need us to help students with speaking and listening, and they have local teachers for reading and writing. So, if I get hired, it sounds like a great place to work.

We've been going out to dinner at all sorts of interesting places lately. Tonight we got Lebanese food, which I loved because it reminded me of Greek food. Friday night we went to a place that served a gigantic burger where the meat itself was 1.1 pounds, and it was topped with cheese and bacon and lettuce and onion and tomato. Gen and I could only eat half, but Greta and Graham the champion eaters were able to down it all after about 35, 40 minutes. Afterwards, we all felt kinda logey and sick. But I'm proud of their great accomplishment. I guess my stomach has just gotten too small to tackle such a feat.

Not much else to really say. I've loved the training here, and the girls that work here are so amazingly nice and helpful. Like when Hien comes in and just offers me some grapefruit and keeps slicing pieces until I feel that I will have vitamin C coming out of my eyes. I'll definitely have to come back and visit from time to time.

Taking some time off before I'd like to start teaching. So Graham and I are going to beach on Monday I think, a place called Vang Tau or something. We're staying for a few days or a week or until we get bored. I don't know, I obviously don't know the details. He wants to learn to surf. I want to sit on the beach and read and contemplate. And become the center of attention for all the locals. We'll see what happens. If you don't hear anything, just assume I am alive. No news is good news!

adios for now

Time Marches on

2008-08-25T12:43:00.002-04:00

When I first got here, I was eating 4 meals a day. Now my stomach has shrunk, probably from those days when I was sick, and I'm content off just two meals. And for some reason, they can be spaced very far apart. For example, today I ate at 9am and 9:30pm. I wasn't even hungry for lunch. I don't know if this will be a continuing trend or a passing thing, but it's nice to not spend as much money.

I checked out the place I'm thinking of renting today, and everything about it seems great. It's off a main road, but down a couple small side streets so that the location itself is very quiet. It's very peaceful, and I'd have my own big balcony, although it's only a couple stories up and doesn't look out on much, but that's okay. There's two bedrooms, and no one else living there at the moment. Somehow it is only $350 a month. If i find someone else to live there, though, I can cut that in half. I do have to pay extra for my utilities and tv and internet and such, but all the monthly bills are laughably small. I met the maid, who's a very nice lady who doesn't speak English well, but I hear she's an amazing cook. I met Hien's brother-in-law, a young American guy who lived there for some years and is now moving back to America with his wife, and he gave me some good advice and gave the place an excellent recommendation. The only gripe I have is that on the main road, it's not the kind of environment that I find ideal. I like having a smattering of cafes and restaurants and such where I can go and get a coffee and a snack or whatever, but the street instead is lined with tons of tiny stores selling things I'm not even interested in, like shirts and antiques and car parts. Oh well. Beggars really can't be choosers. I think enough about the place is positive to outweigh that negative. Hien said there is one cafe right by the street, and I saw the sign but didn't peak inside, but that could become my regular hang-out place.

Anyway, teaching is going great, the city is beautiful, and there's nothing else to really say at this point.

The Great Awakening

2008-08-23T06:19:00.003-04:00

I haven't posted in a few days, but life's been busy, and I was actually sick for two days out of the week. Stomach pains, and indigestion, and actually a really bad fever worse than I've felt in years. Luckily, since our schedule is pretty flexible with class in the morning and teaching at night, I was able to lie down for a few hours and that made me feel a lot better. I took immodium and ate pretty much just bread for two days, and by Friday night I was feeling much better, and starving, so we went out to dinner at a nice tapas place. There was a guy playing lots of American songs on guitar, everything from Billy Joel to Pearl Jam to Men at Work... so it was interesting, and we had good opportunity to sing along. Exploring more of the city, taking in more of the scenery, and starting to fall in love with Saigon and its people. We walked past the Hotel Continental last night, where the "Quiet American" was written. It's very old, left over from the French colonial period, but looks to be recently renovated. I read a travel article before I left about a guy who lived there for a few months trying to write a novel, following in the tradition of the quiet american, and it was a lot more run down then, and he never ended up writing his novel... but anyway, it looks to be in better shape now.

First week of teaching is done, and it has gone overall pretty smoothly. Even the day that I was sick, I was feeling well enough during the class time to get up and help Graham teach, but by the end of class I was zonked. Yesterday, Friday, I taught a class by myself at 3pm, so I had less time to prepare, and I wasn't familiar with the class, so I had to guess what they knew. Some were really sharp, some were struggling, but I think I got the content of the lesson across. I taught them a lot of new vocab about clothes, in the context of shopping at the market. Then I decided to try some drama, and I wrote a short play and acted it out as a one-man-show for them. It was kind of a funny play where a girl wants to buy blouses, and after she haggles and agrees to buy two, she discovers they are full of holes and decides not to buy them, but the shopkeeper demands payment. So, the girl tries to run away but trips over a candle and lights her pants on fire, taking off her sandal to put out the flames. The shopkeeper cackles and says "that will teach you to mess with me!" and the girl runs away to shop elsewhere. A simple thing, but the students absolutely loved it, and they could not wait to act out their own renditions of it. I also had a game at the end of class where pictures of the vocab words for the day were on the floor, and one representative from each team was up and when I called out a word they had to be the first to stomp on the picture with their foot. They loved that one too! We have also played a game where you smack the word on the board, but it's good to change it up sometimes. I'd like to plan Monday's lesson this weekend to get it out of the way. Perhaps we will talk about accessories.

Another interesting teaching experience came when I had to talk to a student one-on-one, as part of the training program here. We talk to them for an hour, find out what they know and what they need help with, then write a lesson plan, and then for another hour we tutor them using the plan. So, last week I met with a girl, and I found that it's much easier to discover what gives people trouble in language when you can talk and listen to them directly, rather than a classroom setting. For example, mixing up the sounds "p" and "b", which I think is very common among Asian students learning English. Also, consonants at the end of words are hard for them to pronounce, especially more than one, like "porch". A lot of their words end in vowels, or single consonants which are softer and not stressed. Anyway, I think tutoring can be a rewarding activity, and it helps one to think about language and learning on a more personal level.

This weekend we were supposed to be going to the Mekong Delta, but we figured that since we just got to Saigon and have barely seen it, it would be better to postpone that and instead see the city, so that's what we've been doing. Earlier today, we were driving around and looking at apartments for rent for people. I think on Monday Hien will show me a house that has an open room where I can live, where apparently her brother and sister used to live, and her friend still lives sometimes. It would be something like $400 a month, I think. A maid kind of comes with the house. I feel kind of awkward having someone clean for me, but Hien says that the maid is happy to do it and needs the job. Also, apparently she cooks. So, it's beginning to sound like a better and better deal. I just don't like coming across as the cocky American who comes over to another country where his dollar goes further and expects to be treated like a king. But, not having to cook or go out to eat is also nice.... I suppose I will see what the place looks like, but so far it sounds promising to me.

Until next time,
Peter

Call me Teacher

2008-08-19T12:16:00.002-04:00

Because that's what my students call me! I'm trying to get them to learn my name is Peter...

Ok! So the past couple days a lot as happened and I've been absolutely exhausted. But, as I frequently find, exhausted is one of the best states of being. When one has very little to do, and can sleep as late as they want and work as little as they want, it is easy to start feeling bored, restless, lethargic... At least for me, this leads to something like existential dread, and wondering what on earth the meaning is in all of this. Without something to ground you, you're floating off in space, and there's nothing there to sustain you. I've found that, as ironic as it sounds, the busier I am, the happier I am, and the more energized mentally I become.

Anyway! Enough rambling, because I am tired and don't want to be typing forever.
We've had very long days because at 9am we have Vietnamese language class, until 11am or so. It may be a futile exercise... we've so far learned how to pronounce the letters, and what the six tones of the language are, so we can sort of stumble our way through sentences, but will we really learn to say anything and remember it after two weeks? Perhaps the important things will stick with us. I know how to order an ice coffee with milk. Cafe sua da. Except there are many more symbols and accent marks. Anyway, after the class our time is kind of fluid, and we just have to write a lesson plan for the class we teach later that day. Somewhere in there we go to lunch. The first day (Monday, ie yesterday), we viewed a demo class in the afternoon. We watched Linh, the languagecorps teacher, teach a class using the same structure we learned, and we were able to see what she did well and how she organized her lesson. After this, the girls teach a class together around 5, and Graham and I teach a class together around 7. At some point we'll have to split up and teach the class solo and observe each other.

Going into my first class, I was extremely nervous. I kept wanting to just run away and retreat to my comfort zone. Why couldn't I just have stayed at home, playing computer games and drinking hot tea that my mom served me?
But no, here I was, and I was going to go through with it. My brain told me that tons of people did this kind of thing and it wasn't that hard. I KNOW English, I speak it every day. I KNOW the way to teach, I've been learning it for two weeks. And, I think I can be pretty good with people, when I'm not being awkward. And even that awkwardness endears me to people sometimes.
During my class, the nervousness kinda melted away, and I learned that it was not nearly as hard as I thought it would be. We had our lesson plan, we just had to follow it. We had to be patient when the students had trouble with things. We had to be careful to pronounce things correctly, and speak slowly so they got the words. We had to keep energized about what we were doing, even if it was boring to us, it was completely new for them, and they WANT to learn. Our class has 12 people, age 18 to 25, mixed gender but mostly female, at the beginning level. They know some stuff, but not a lot. Frequently they hit a block and don't know the word for something. But they learn quick and are eager to know more. They're all there on their own time, it's not like it's a public school and they're forced to be there.
Anyway, the first day went great. Graham and I kinda switched off with leading things, we were both confident and energized, kept the pace moving. The class was an hour and a half long. Feels like a long time, especially when you're on your feet, but it does go by quick. Our students are awesome... some of them are shy, which is what I expected. But some are talkative and always asking questions. In fact, it's kind of hard to get them to stop talking to each other sometimes. I don't want to treat them like little kids, ya know. It's kinda weird, cuz during training we were told that teachers were very well respected in asia, and all we had to do was walk into a room looking and acting like a teacher, and we immediately had their respect until we lost it by doing something stupid. It's not like American schools where you need to earn respect first. So, I was expecting all of their eyes to be transfixed on us the whole time, but it didn't happen like that. Could be worse, though, for sure. Our first lesson we did introductions and then a lesson about professions and locations where they work. Like, doctor and hospital, banker and bank. It went well and they got the words quickly, so the second day (today) we stepped it up a notch...

Today did not go as well. I wouldn't say it was a bad day. In fact, I'm glad how it turned out because we know so much more now, and we were able to change and adapt our plan in the middle of the lesson to meet their needs.
Our new topic was traveling. We made our dialogue longer and used many more new vocabulary words, in longer sentences. We introduced a ton of names of places around the world, like Eiffel Tower, Pyramids of Egypt, Great Wall of China. I underestimated how hard some of those words are to say for nonnative speakers. So, they were really struggling, and we pared down our dialogue and the number of new words we introduced, so we made it a little better, but it was still not ideal. You could tell they were having trouble with many of the words, and it was just too much to keep track of.
The worst part was that our class was being observed today by Linh, so that made us nervous. At the end, she told us what she thought, and how we could do better. Ultimately, it helped a lot, and we got some good advice from her. We went from too easy the first day, to too hard the second day, so we need to make it simpler and have less new words, but have them learn words they don't know, so it's something new. Our plan is to continue the theme of traveling tomorrow. It's quite alright to have a 2-day lesson. We'll still talk about traveling, but slow down a little and introduce less new words so they can handle it. Luckily we still have about a third of our lesson plan from today that we can carry over and use tomorrow. So, that means less planning tomorrow!
The smiling faces, waves, and sayings of "goodbye, teacher!" as they left the class told me that even though it was a tough lesson, they would be back to learn the next day, and I would be back to better attune the material to their needs.

Without meaning to, I've typed way too much again. Body exhausted, mind is still going a mile a minute.

One more thing to add, though: the two girls who work here, Linh and the administrative assistant Hien, are some of the nicest girls ever, and they've been showing us places to eat breakfast and lunch during the day and cook us dinner after our class every night. Well, two nights in a row at least. I won't expect them to feed us constantly. But it's great to be mothered a little. The homecooked dinners are just amazing and I get completely stuffed. Rice, and spinach things, and chicken that's all garic-y, and fish, and you put it all together in your bowl and shovel it in with chopsticks. Yesterday they made us this wonderful dessert called "buh" (I don't remember what the tone is or how it's spelled), and it's made of avocado, milk, sugar, and ice. It doesn't sound like a dessert... but it's sooo good! It's like a pudding almost. They also serve us cut-up grapefruit which is 10000 times better than grapefruit in the states. It's sweet, not bitter, and comes off in slices, not little pieces that fall apart. Also, you can dip it in this chili-like substance, and somehow it works.
Ah! I could talk all day about food. I've been eating four meals a day... 9am breakfast, 12:30pm lunch, 5:30pm dinner, 10pm late dinner...
You'd think I'd be losing weight with this healthier food, but sadly no. especially not when everything is dirt cheap, even cheaper than Cambodia. I've got over 1,000,000 Dong in my pocket, and I'm living large! Things will probably (hopefully) settle down at some point, though.

Ok, time for bed soon.

Peace!

Back in Saigon

2008-08-17T11:54:00.003-04:00

We made it back to Ho Chi Minh City without any problems. It was just another long bus ride. It was drizzling lightly when we got here but it started raining harder and harder until it was a downpour. So, while we were hoping to explore the city a little more, we only really checked out a few blocks around our place. Graham and I are staying at the languagecorps school where we're taking classes, so that's really convenient. Greta and Genessa are in another hotel, and it's kinda weird to be split up after two weeks of us all living in the same house. It should be easier to communicate here, though, since I got a phone that works in Vietnam and I think they're getting phones, too.
Anyway, I'll still need a little time to warm up to the city, and maybe it will look more inviting when/if the rain stops. It already seems much friendlier and less chaotic than that first ride from the airport. Once I get a little better with the language, I think it will go more smoothly. We had kind of a tough time ordering coffee today in a place that wasn't really used to English speakers. Better to stick to more tourist-friendly places at least in the beginning. The people I see seem to be nice, and since I'll be living in this city for a year, I long to fit in with them and adapt to the culture. Of course, since I look different from them, in many ways I will always appear to be a foreigner to some of them, but just as my goal in Greece was to become an Athenian, my goal here is to become as much of a Saigonite as possible.

I finally got a chance to upload my pictures from Cambodia, and there are about 220 in total. I've got descriptions written for about half of them, and I hope to finish that another time. Check them out here: http://s334.photobucket.com/albums/m418/PetroSmith/Two%20Weeks%20in%20Cambodia/

Last Day in Phnom Penh

2008-08-16T05:07:00.002-04:00

I've been in Cambodia for two whole weeks, but it feels more and more like my home. It is a strange feeling to know that tomorrow morning I will be leaving it, to take a 6 hour bus ride back to HCMC, my home for the next 11 months. The housing situation is very odd there... apparently there are cheap, run-down 1-bedroom apartments, and then 8-bedroom spacious villas, with very little in between. It is very possible that with our group of 4 in Vietnam we will save money by living together in a big house rather than by renting individual apartments. We met a girl who had just been teaching there, and she said that each person only pays about $150 a month by sharing a house. It almost sounds too good to be true, but I'm definitely down for something like that. Our group has also been talking about working together to produce business english teaching plans for companies who want to improve their english. For example, a restaurant has a problem with its waiters getting orders wrong and misunderstanding customers, so they hire teachers to teach them english specifically tailored to their needs. You get paid to come up with a plan, and then to teach it, and the rates are very good. It could be time-consuming, but it would be good to make some extra money. Especially after I've spent a ton just trying to live these past couple weeks. For someone who has to eat out for every meal, it's not bad, especially when dinner usually costs no more than 5 dollars. But it still adds up.

Today has been a nice, lazy day. Woke up late. Lounged around and watched TV. Half of the stations are Asian and I can't understand them, but they're entertaining nonetheless. The other half show American movies and TV shows at all odd hours of the day. Then we sauntered down to the market and had brunch at this nice little French place which we have dubbed "the french place" since we cant pronounce the name. It's certainly interesting, because they have some random weird dishes. Today I tried the chicken and taragon muffins. I guess the chicken is baked into the muffins. At any rate, they were delish. Yesterday I had a breakfast and a lunch... chocolate and banana crepes followed by croque monsiour with the most delectable cheese and sauce. I don't care if they are snooty, the French know how to please.

We've been having such horrendous weather here. It's been raining every day, mostly in the afternoon, becoming a torrential downpour and flooding the streets. I definitely need to invest in a lightweight poncho. I have no extra layers here. When it rains, I put on my hat. That's my only protection. In Vietnam I have a jacket, but it's too heavyweight. I mean, it is nice when it rains if I'm inside and don't have to go anywhere. It fills me with a very peaceful feeling to see the rain steadily pouring down, and it definitely cools things off a little. When the sun is out, it can be dreadfully hot. It might also feel worse because the humidity is 94%. When I check weather.com, it says that the high is only 82 degrees, which is no hotter than a hot day in Connecticut, so it must be the humidity which makes it so uncomfortable. Yesterday we went to a water park, which really helped to cool us off. It was filled mostly with kids, who all stared at us, probably thinking 'look at those silly white people'. One of the boys just said to me: you're so pale! What do you say to that? I guess in their culture, it is not considered rude to come right out and say something like that.
Last night we ate Mexican food at a place called Cantina. The walls were lined with photographs of people with guns, and old movie posters. It felt like they got their impression of Mexico from 50 years in the past. My tacos were absolutely amazing, though. Where shall we eat tonight? If I have my way, I'd like to sway the crew toward a Greek place. It's called Steve's Steakhouse and Greek Restaurant. Usually I don't associate steak with Greek food, but we'll see. If their pasticio is up to par, it will get my seal of approval.
Yesterday afternoon, during the daily monsoon, I watched In Bruges on my laptop. One of the most hilarious films I've seen, and yet also deeply profound. Definitely on my list of favorites at the moment.

What will I miss about Phnom Penh? Tuk-tuk rides anywhere in the city for a dollar per person, coffee in a bag, amazing food, marvelous temples, monks walking around the streets with their yellow umbrellas, bargains at the market, and the friendly optimism of the Khmer people. A disproportionate percentage of the population is under 30, due to the genocide of the Khmer Rouge in the 1970's. Because of this, most of them don't remember the hardships from those times, and there is a general feeling of optimism among the youth. I'm not sure if it's the same in Vietnam, but it has definitely drawn me to the Khmer people.
What won't I miss? Getting woken up in the middle of the night by barking dogs. Trash in the street. Getting hassled by beggars. Sharing a computer with 6 other people.

Mostly, the good outweighed the bad. I am headed to a city which is ten times bigger than this one. In a word, it should be... interesting. Luckily, I should have access to wireless internet, and my first priority is getting my pictures uploaded! I'll get them all on photobucket and post some highlights on here.

Chum reap sua!

Halfway Done with Training

2008-08-14T08:56:00.002-04:00

Today was our last day of training in Cambodia. So I've had roughly 70 hours of teaching instruction and practice by now. It sounds like a lot, but I still don't feel like a "teacher". I suppose I never really will until I actually do it in front of a real class.
We have gone over a lot in two weeks, though. We learned how to make a lesson plan and budget your time, how to introduce new vocabulary, how to put together fun activities, how to use reading and writing exercises to complement the speaking lessons. Every day we have practiced a part of a lesson in front of our fellow teachers-to-be, and while it could be awkward and repetitive, I really felt more and more confident with every lesson I did. When you plan lessons, you have to follow a usual structure but you're allowed to be creative, which I like. Some schools that hire teachers expect them to strictly follow a book, while others are more relaxed. To start off, I would like a little hand-holding, but I also don't want to feel trapped. After all, if I'm going to be the one spending time with the students every day, I think I will figure out the best way to get them to learn and the material they need to focus on, rather than the administration. We shall see, I guess.
It was kind of a sad day today because two of our eleven teachers-in-training had to leave in the middle of class to catch a flight back to Thailand so they can start the next leg of their training. It's tough when you spend a couple weeks getting to know someone, and then suddenly you're cut off and you may never see them again. I really want to try to keep up contacts with the non-Vietnam folk, though. I feel interested in traveling to Thailand now that I've heard more about it, and flights between the countries here are dirt cheap. Plus, if I know someone who's already there I won't feel too lost. Soon I'll be able to show people around Ho Chi Minh City like I'm a native. Maybe.
But anyway, we've definitely had some fun times in Phnom Penh while we've been here. We found a bowling alley close to our villa which was pretty cool. It seems that bowling is universal. We went to an Indian restaurant one night, too, and I tried Indian food for the first time possibly in my life. It is now probably my second favorite food, after Greek. It's really that good. I'm astounded that I never had it before. I got this thing called Chicken Jinjaaro, which was chicken and potato and something else all in this really thick sauce and I just immediately fell in love with it and couldn't stop scarfing it down. I also got some garlic nan, which is like crispy fried bread, and that was incredible as well. Definitely gotta eat Indian more often.

Last night we actually went on a little boat cruise up and down the Mekong River, which was really fun and we had some great views of the city. It was kind of a last hurrah for my traveling companions and I, at least for the ones who couldn't stay this weekend.

As for the Vietnam folk, we've extended our stay until Sunday so we can hang out, rest up a little, and explore some more of the city while we're here. I'd love to see some museums and stuff and try out some more restaurants. What other ethnic foods haven't I eaten? I think I should just go down the list, country by country.

Anyway, here's to the weekend! Cheers yáll!

After Angkor

2008-08-10T10:29:00.004-04:00

We spent the weekend up in Siem Reap, which is the city outside Angkor Wat, checking out the temples around the place. Our hotel itself was pretty nice, with a little pool and very friendly staff who were always offering us things. It felt like a vacation from a vacation. The town itself was riddled with touristy restaurants and bars with clever names like "Angkor What?". We spent all day Saturday checking out temples, crawling around the ruins, taking loads of pictures, and listening to a goofy, awkward tour guide who barely spoke English. I would have enjoyed the experience better if it wasn't brutally hot and humid the entire time, as we had to keep huffing and puffing and climbing up and down steps and such. At every turn we were also assaulted by little kids trying to sell us bracelets and fans and silk scarves. I somehow ended up with a free fan which I kept using to fan myself down. Don't get me wrong, it's not like I had a bad time. The temples were truly breathtaking, and I was just in awe of how they could have constructed such massive architectural wonders. You're not going to see anything amazing if you stay in your airconditioned room all day, so I guess it was worth it trudging through the heat to get such amazing views.

Really, the pictures speak for themselves, and I will try to get all of them up soon, but as I said it is difficult to get the time to do it. Here is one, though, to whet your appetites, and please be patient for the rest to come!

Tomorrow begins our second week of training, beginning with a grammar test that I will hopefully not fail.

Until next time, as usual.

After Second Day of Training

2008-08-05T11:17:00.004-04:00

We've had our first couple days of training, which I was at first a little apprehensive about, but now I'm feeling more confident about it. Our job as teachers is to teach them conversational English so they can communicate, more than rules of grammar or drilling words into their heads. So, I feel like it's not a big deal if I'm not perfect at grammar and spelling. The important pieces of grammar the students will pick up just by hearing me talk. We have a couple teachers here who are training us in teaching and the finer points of language in general. For example, today we were talking about phonetics, and how to write words in other languages by their phonemes. I find it all very fascinating, after taking a few languages myself over the years.
Today we each had to practice teaching a little lesson called a "warmer", which usually starts the day's lesson. It involved a short dialogue on a certain topic to review vocab, and then getting the students to repeat the dialogue back to the teacher and then with each other. It seemed really repetitive as we did it in English, but for nonnative speakers it must be difficult to pick up. I look forward to learning more about teaching methods and such. I mean, my temperament is such that I could sit in classes all day and learn things. In the near future, though, I will have to step over to the other side of the classroom and finally be the teacher.
I find Phnom Penh more and more familiar, as I get in the rhythm of how things are done here. It's not as unbearably hot as I thought at first, and not as insanely chaotic either. Anything is manageable when it becomes more familiar. I've been trying a lot of different food at the restaurants here, many of which serve American and French food too, and I'm interested to see how they do these dishes. I'm also interested of course in trying new Asian food. Every place here seems to serve Vietnamese and Thai and Chinese dishes along with Cambodian, so it doesn't seem like I'm eating in a specifically Cambodian place. Tonight I got a soup, though, that was Cambodian which was pretty good, with fish, egg, pineapple, and tamarind sauce. For a starter, I had feta and spinach spring rolls. It was definitely nice to satisfy my feta craving.
The other LC teachers in training are all very sweet people and I'm glad to be working with them. Someone tonight observed how the whole thing is not competitive at all. I think it's because we're all pretty much starting at the same level and going through the trials of learning to be an English teacher in a foreign place.
The highlight of my day, though, was definitely the massage that I splurged on this afternoon. $4 for a one hour massage... good deal, like everything here. I had never had a massage before so I was in for a surprise. I knew they could be kind of rough, and I definitely saw that. You never could have guessed they could be rough when your masseuse is like a 90-pound girl. They use their elbows and feet and work nearly every part of your body. Sometimes it kinda hurts when they hit certain pressure points. But at the end of it, as I'm walking away, I feel like I'm years younger. Like my bones and muscles are reborn. Everything is just more relaxed and renewed. Definitely worth it.

This weekend we're going to Angkor Wat, and I'm really looking forward to checking it out.

I set up a photobucket account, but it was taking too long to upload pictures yesterday so I haven't got most of them up. A few got uploaded already, though, so I'll post the link and you can get checking for updates: http://s334.photobucket.com/albums/m418/PetroSmith/Two%20Weeks%20in%20Cambodia/

A Series of Unfortunate Events

2008-08-03T11:21:00.004-04:00

A short reflection after a couple days in Phnom Penh...

It's a much much smaller city than Ho Chi Minh City. One can traverse it with motorbike/rikshaw taxis that are all over the city. The traffic is ridiculous and seems to have no rules. There are tons of bikes everywhere honking and dashing in front of each other. On the streets, there are numerous little shops all over. At least in our part of the city, away from the center, all the main streets are lined with tiny shops and places which sort of pass for restaurants but I'm not quite sure. I remember in Greece we would complain about the uneven sidewalks. What we have here do not really even count as sidewalks. We found a couple nice cafes today to sit and chill and have a beer at. I had noodle soup for dinner last night and breakfast this morning. I think it's basically the same as pho, but they don't call it pho. It's very filling and I wouldn't mind having it all the time.

I don't really have time for a full run-down of everything I did today, but here are three unfortunate yet interesting items:

1. We were exploring the royal palace, which is full of beautiful architecture and Buddhist shrines and stuff. I got a lot of really cool pictures that I want to upload when I get a chance. I sat down on a bench in the shade and two monks sat down next to me and struck up a conversation. We chatted about what I was doing and they kept asking questions about English. They kept telling me to talk slower, and I did, but I also told them that for someone from the northeastern US, I talk very slowly. Anyway, my group had moved on, and when I finally bid goodbye to the monks I had to scramble to find them. They had just left the place and were about to leave before I ran up, but everyone was interested in the fact that I met two monks.

2. We were taking two rikshaw taxis to a welcome dinner at a nice restaurant, and one group went on ahead, so the two girls left behind and I got in the next one we saw, assuming it knew where it was going. The driver went on for about 20 minutes, all around the city, before stopping and asking where we were going, and we had no idea, nor the phone number of anyone there. We ended up going back to the languagecorps place, and someone there had the number of one of the people at the restaurant so we could get directions. We finally got there an hour late after everyone had eaten. I hastily ordered the first thing the waiter recommended, leading me to the third thing...

3. I was served a sizzling hot plate of duck and vegetables, which the waiter promptly lit on fire. The flame was enormous and continued to grow until I thought I would be engulfed, but I fearlessly gazed on stoically until it subsided. Peter: 1, Flame: 0.

All of these events I take in stride, though, and they make great stories. All in all a great couple of days. The area around where we're staying has already become really familiar to me, and I've walked up and down the main street to the market several times, coming to recognize the familiar faces and shops. This city intrigues me, and the people appear happy and eager. I can't believe how hard they work in their shops all day long. Only a few decades ago, the Khmer Rouge was committing genocide and destroying the country, and now The Kingdom of Cambodia seems to really be on the rise.

Tomorrow is Monday when our training begins. It is 10:30pm, I'm exhausted, and ready to go to bed.

10,000 Miles Later...

2008-08-02T07:14:00.002-04:00

Saturday, 6:23PM.

Good news: I’m alive! Right now I’m in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, where we’ve settled in to stay for the next two weeks of training. There is just internet on one computer, so I’m typing this on my laptop and then transferring it to there so I can post it online.

My journey here was long but thankfully luck was with me, for all my flights were on time and nothing unexpected happened. It was overall extremely exhausting, and I only fell in and out of sleep here and there. My sense of time is still really screwed up. It’s hard to believe that the days of July 31^st and August 1^st were pretty much lost to transportation and change of time zones.

I arrived in Ho Chi Minh City at 10pm Friday night. After getting through customs and obtaining my visa, I stepped outside and fully experienced the new climate. A wave of oppressive heat hit me at once. It had also been raining that day so it was incredibly humid. The weather forecast for every day from now until October: 90 degrees, 90% humidity, chance of thunderstorms.

Anyway, I figured I had to get used it. But still, nothing could have prepared me for how hot and sticky it was, even at night time. Upon leaving the airport, the other thing on my mind was that I had to find my ride from Languagecorps. However, apparently everyone in Vietnam decided to show up to watch the people who were coming outside, and I was suddenly the object of a million pairs of eyes. With my bulging, heavy backpack weighing me down, and pools of sweat forming on my brow, I sauntered off in search of my ride. The first reaction that I received, though, was that of two young girls who were in front of the crowd against the gates, who were pointing towards me and giggling, out of mockery or in sheer awe of my beauty, I will never know, but I responded in the best way possible, with a clenched mouth, noncommittal expression, and a subtle, quick raising and lowering of the eyebrows before forging off in a new direction. They responded with cries of glee or derision, but no matter, I finally found a girl holding a languagecorps sign with my name on it. Once another guy my age, Graham, showed up, we took a taxi through the city to the hotel we’d be staying at.

I’m not going to lie. My first impression of the city, as we barrelled down through the streets at night, was not the most positive. It seemed crowded, disorganized, chaotic, uncivilized. I wondered who on earth would call it the Paris of southeast Asia. It felt a lot like Athens, except I didn’t understand the language. My first observation was that most of the traffic was people on motorbikes. My second observation was that everyone on these bikes and in the cars constantly honked their horns. I guess they do it to let other people know they’re passing them, or coming into the street, or just on the road in general. I don’t know. It sure makes things noisy, though.

We got to the hotel, which is a small but quaint place in the city, and a very nice man showed me and Graham to our room. Our Languagecorps greeter gave us new cell phones and told us we’d be leaving the next morning at 8am. So, I was pretty eager to get to sleep. Unfortunately I kept waking up, even though I was really tired. Still not acclimated to the time zone. The room is nice, though, with a TV and wireless internet, and A/C which doesn’t quite work as well as I want. The next morning, Saturday morning, we repack and are on our way to Cambodia. I bring only what I need in a backpack, which is stuffed so full that I’m convinced it will explode, yet it somehow stays intact.

A man named Rick meets us at the hotel and leads us to a bus. Graham and I are joined by two girls who are a few years older than us that got there the day before us. Together we endure the 6-hour ride to Phnom Penh, complete with border check-points. We stop for lunch but it’s 11am and I’m not really hungry. Plus I think the hot weather just saps the hunger out of me. I figure I should eat something though so I pick some fried fish and spicy vegetables, and they give me some rice, too. I also get a weird citrus-y soda called Soursod or something. I don’t eat much of it, though, because the fish is riddled with tiny bones and the vegetables are really quite spicy. The whole thing only costs me $2.50, though, so it’s not much of a waste.

Back on the bus again, and for some reason they decide to show us Rambo II, which takes place in Vietnam. Followed by this are some really bad pop music videos in English by what I can only assume are Vietnamese pop stars. Our tour guide is this small, attractive girl who always seems collected and full of poise. She interrupts the programming now and again to give us a lengthy message in Vietnamese, then translates it somehow into a few sentences in English.

At Phnom Penh, we’re given a ride to the languagecorps center here, which is very nice. Each of us has a room, with pink sheets on the beds even for the guys. My room is huge but there’s nothing in it beside a bed and a dresser. It’s also partly under the staircase. The A/C works great, though. Hopefully I can sleep well tonight.

For the past couple hours, we’ve been hanging out here. We took a little tour of the area and found an open-air marketplace with fresh food and pottery and cheap DVD’s (I bought In Bruges for 2 bucks). And no trip around the market would be complete without being pestered every minute to go on a ride on a motorbike.

Later tonight, we should explore some more and go out to dinner somewhere. People in other languagecorps programs from countries like Thailand are also coming for the joint training.

It will be two weeks before I’m back in Vietnam. They told me it would be one week, but when I got here, it magically became two. Anyway, my final impression of the city will have to wait. After reflecting, I concluded that I need to remember not to judge based on appearances, and even if something appears chaotic and doesn’t fit into my idea of what a “modern city” should look like, it doesn’t mean the place doesn’t have a soul. It is hard to tell if the local people are friendly or not. Their faces seem inscrutable to me. But I should not jump to conclusions. Sometimes it takes time to get used to a new home. Once something becomes more comfortable, what once was scary is suddenly second nature.

I took a few pictures but it's not uploading now, so I'll try again some other time.

Until next time.

Leaving

2008-07-30T15:45:00.003-04:00

Tonight I leave for my trip. At 1:30am my shuttle leaves from Hartford and arrives at JFK at 5:30, for my flight at 7:10. It stops at San Francisco at 10:20am, and then I take a flight at 1:15pm to finally arrive at Ho Chi Minh City at 10pm the next day (August 1st). A long ride ahead of me, but I don't mind it much. I actually like airplanes, as long as I have a window seat and my music.

Today I've been packing, settling last-minute issues, trying in vain to straighten up my bedroom for my year of absence. It seems like time really got away from me this summer. The next thing I knew after I graduated, I was getting ready to leave. But when I reflect on it, I did do a lot that I wanted to do this summer. I spent some time working at camp, I had a big going-away party, saw some friends from school, and hung out a lot with my family. Also, I got a few books read, and I'll be taking with me the two that I'm in the middle of, "Kafka on the Shore" by Murakami, and "The Way of a Pilgrim" by an anonymous Russian monk. I also found my dad's copy of "Don Quixote", which is incredibly long, so I'm sure that will keep me busy. Hopefully, though, I will not spend all my time reading in my room, and will venture forth to explore my new country and meet new people.

A lot of people have asked me what I'm doing and why, so I figured that with this first post of my blog before my trip I will state a few things. First of all, the point of this blog is to keep people up to date on what I'm doing, with pictures and musings hopefully daily. I haven't done any blogging since my old livejournal from the high school days, so I'm a little rusty, but I think I'll have plenty to write about. Although I'm excited about my trip, I suppose my biggest fear is feeling cut off from the world and my family and friends back home, so this blog should work to keep me connected.

I decided in my senior year that I wanted to take some time off after graduating and see the world a little. Since I'm short on cash, the best solution to me seemed to be working in a different country, and I realized that the one skill I have to impart to others in the world is that I know English. Language has always been a fascinating topic for me, and even though I know practically no Vietnamese, the idea of being immersed in a completely new language and culture intrigues me. I've always felt drawn to Asian culture since it is so different from Western culture in many ways, and I feel like living and working within a new environment will help me to better understand who I am and where I'm coming from. I narrowed my search down to Vietnam when I discovered that it is one of the fastest growing economies in the region, with a strong desire to learn English and become more active in the world. The cost of living is still cheap and English teachers are paid relatively well. In America, Vietnam still bears the stigma from the war and the communist government, but it appears that it has changed a lot in the decades since, and I'd love to witness that first hand. I'm always following the beat of a different drummer, so when people say "why Vietnam?" I just think, "why not?". I'll be paving a new trail, and there may be some risks, but I'm willing to face them.

The day after I arrive there, I will be spending a week in Cambodia as part of a joint-training session. This includes a trip to Angkor Wat, an old Buddhist temple site, which looks beautiful from pictures I've seen. I'm not sure if I'll be able to get on the internet and update my blog then, so if not I'll write about it after the fact. Then, it's back to Saigon for another three weeks of training. After this, Languagecorps will help me find a job at a local language center in the city and I'll search for an apartment nearby. Should be exciting, but it is still the unknown at this point, so I'm a little nervous. From my experience, everything usually works out in the end, though.

This isn't goodbye, but "see you later", America. Here we go!