A Vietnamese Date...and other things from a busy week.

I had my first Vietnamese Date this week! I wore my shiny dress and heels, we went by taxi, he payed for everything, we had great seats at the Opera House for a famous Italian pianist, we sat in the same room as the PRESIDENT of Viet Nam, we even got ice cream afterwards. It was great!

Too bad he's 12 :)

It actually was an amazing performance! It was in honor of the upcoming visit of Vietnamese President Nguyen Minh Triet to Italy, the first of it's kind in 36 years. My family got 2 tickets from their conductor friend, and I think in their attempt to inspire Minh to keep up his piano practicing, had us go together. We had an excellent time.

My date added to what was already a really busy week. MCC hosted a workshop in Tam Dảo, a mountain region about 70km outside of Hanoi. The office was hectic all week preparing for it, we had about 40 of our Vietnamese partners from the Provinces where we actually do most of our work come to share about their experiences with the environment and development. MCC is phasing out of a few districts and beginning in new ones this year so the plan was to give people a chance to interact. In my opinion it was quite a success!

This week was also Hannah's birthday. As you know, I LOVE LOVE LOVE birthdays, even other people's. All of Wednesday was taken over by celebrating. I made sure MCC bought her the ugliest cake possible (imagine GIANT frosting cats!) and we went to dinner with friends and then on the Duck Boats (paddle boats in the lake by the Zoo). I was lucky enough to share a boat with the birthday girl herself. Together we acted like 5 year olds, laughing hysterically, paddling in circles around the other boats, in general being a nuisance, and yet loving life :)

A Thanksgiving Craft

I spent all day Saturday hanging out with Vàng and Minh. Yep, I had a lot of fun playing with my 12 and 7 year old friends!

First, we walked to the store. Vietnamese people don't seem to like walking very much, so this was a feat in itself.

The trip to the store was to find supplies for an idea I had for later in the afternoon. I wanted to make a Thanksgiving craft. I like crafts, and they like learning about American things, so it seemed like a great combo to me! And I've been trying to find new things to do with them. It should come as no surprise that the store didn't have anything like construction paper. I don't know why I thought it might. So we made due with sharpies (rumor has it they have crayons or markers or something, but when the time came to use them no one seemed to know what I was asking about), and recycled school papers.

I did most of the craft myself. Truthfully, they had little interest in it. I think it was more for me. I wanted to feel like I was participating in the holiday season that is beginning this week, even if it isn't happening in my corner of the world. But Vàng loaned me her hand for the feathers and was at least entertained watching me make a silly hand turkey.

Vàng does not like being in pictures. The only way I got her to be in this one with me was by promising to play cards with her. Some of you may know me as a not game loving person. Well, that was the old me. The new me plays games ALL THE TIME. Seriously. On Saturday I think I played at least 20 times. We got through a variety of Vietnamese and American games. It's fun, for the first few hours...but to get her to be in a picture, a few more games was totally worth it!

Turns out our little Turkey friend will soon be famous. Minh is going to take him to school (English Class) to show his class about Thanksgiving. Mission accomplished :)

Chúp Mừng Ngày Giáo!

Happy Teacher Day!

Today Vietnamese class was cancelled because it is Việt Nam's Teacher Day. Classes for all students are cancelled and teachers get lots of presents. Directly translated, people say that today they have a "rest" instead of what we would call a day off.

Yesterday for class, Calah and I took our teacher out for coffee. We also had a little mini-photo shoot with her. Here is our group photo:

I realized that I haven't written about learning Vietnamese in a while. Well, if you've been wondering, I LOVE Vietnamese. I still say it's the most challenging academic learning I've done, maybe ever. But it's fun! Class is my favorite time of the week. In part because our teacher is so wonderful. We spend most of the class just chatting. I love that I'm encouraged to interrupt the book learning with whatever commentary comes to mind, as long as it's in Vietnamese! Cô Giang is incredibly patient and remarkably she understands a lot of what Calah and I attempt to say, despite the fact that I have no doubt we say things wrong the majority of the time. We have a chance to tell stories, chat about random things, ask about Vietnamese culture, ask about her life, and anything else that comes to mind! It's great!

What's funny is that I'm still horrible at Vietnamese. At least half the time I forget about the tones and ask questions through with my voice rather than with words, a big no-no in this language. I feel accomplished when I know words in my head for things or remember something close to the word even when I don't know the accurate tone, which normally means no one can even guess what I'm trying to say. Last weekend my family had a party and twice in one day I was told, "You really should just speak English, no one can understand when you try to speak Vietnamese". There goes any confidence I was beginning to build!

But then there are those moments. A brief time where I say something and the person responds normally; no look of confusion, no questioning stare, no interrupting because they got bored while I attempted to tell a story, just a normal response. Or maybe they ask a question and I can answer. Whatever the case, it is so rewarding! Recently my host mom has been understanding me a lot more often, not so much other members of the family, but at least there is one! I may not be able to express much to people here, either for lack of ability or lack of understanding at how things are expressed, but I can hope that at least my attempts at Vietnamese show that I'm trying and that I care. And that I'm enjoying Viet Nam!

A trip to the Post Office

I heard a rumor about a month ago that my family was sending me package. It was about the same time that I sent them a card, which they received maybe 2 weeks ago. I was starting to get worried that it got lost on it's journey between Portland and Hanoi, somewhere in the:

11,012 Kilometeres or 6,843 Miles or 5,946 Nautical Miles
(I was just going for the distance in miles, but when google gives you all of that information, why not use it!? And I'm working on my understanding of the metric system anyways---another sidenote: according to Wikipedia, the US, Burma and Liberia are the only countries that have not adapted the Metric System! Sometimes the US is so weird.)

But never fear! Today I got a letter from the Post office and a package was waiting for me. There happens to be post office on the main road right by my work, so I waited until I thought for sure it would be open (past nap time) and rode my bike over.

But oh wait, I don't actually speak Vietnamese. I walked in and realized that the different counters were labelled, but I had no idea what label was for me. So I just held my package notice in my hand and walked to a random counter. The women pointed me to the next one over, perfect. Then I had to wait in line. Hmmm...lines are an interesting thing in Viet Nam. Meaning that they don't really exist. You can't wait politely for it to be your turn or it will never be your turn. So you slowly push your way to the front and make sure the woman notices you. Once she did notice me, I didn't know what to tell her. So again, I just handed over my slip of paper and ID, assuming she'd want that at some point. That seemed to do it. I signed a couple of things and then waited.

Through the glass at the counter I could see her searching. She seemed confused. And the "line" around me was growing. She then pulled a package out, set it aside and kept looking. She even called another woman over. They seemed concerned. Eventually she just handed me the first package that she had found. I wasn't sure if that was all I had to do or not, so I waited there for a few more moments, then left. Not before paying the little man out front for "watching" my bike. It's only 1,000 VND, which is about .05$, but it's just strange to me sometimes.

I think I found what concerned them:

There seems to be a hole in the box. A hole that attacked my mm's! Hmmm....suspicious. Possibile scenarios:

1. Someone needed to verify the contents of the box so they cut a little peep hole that happened to also damage the mm's bag. The holes are strikingly similar in shape.
2. Someone "needed to verify" the contents of the box and stole some of the treats. There definitely is not half a bag's worth of mm's floating around the box
3. The most likely, and least favored possibility---a mouse. Yep, my coworkers seem pretty sure a mouse got in the box. Or attempted to. It had been suffiently re-wraped in tape.
   

Eh, oh well. I'll probably (and by probably I mean that I already started to) eat them anyways. Mm's are SO expensive here, I would not waste them on such a silly concern :)

The rest of the package is in tact and FULL of fantastic treats! I'm going to be eating candy for weeks and weeks to come. Two bags of halloween pumpkins. My favorite!!! And I can now afford to make brownies (also VERY expensive!)! How lucky am I!!!

So thanks Meeko! And the Temple Family that houses her!
(for those who don't know, Meeko is our cat. As it happens, the card in the box is signed from her. Maybe this is to make up for all the time's she has attacked me or trapped me on the stairs!)

Afterwork Snacks

Most of the time when I get home from work it's about 5pm and I'm hungry. But often my family doesn't eat until much later. I can never figure out what kind of snacks people eat, it seems like you just eat a lot at each meal and not at all in between, unless it's fruit, which my house doesn't have a lot of. So a few weeks ago I attempted asking my family if they had any ideas of something small and not too filling that I could eat as a pre-dinner snack. I suggested something like peanuts. They looked at me like I was crazy. Eventually Cô Sa (host mom) said she would get some cracker things for me, which she did and they've been just great.

Fast forward to two nights ago. It was just Cô Hue (house helper) and I at dinner and there was this peanut mix thing that you can put with your rice. Cô Hue and I struggle to understand each other most of the time, her Vietnamese being quite different than many other peoples and much faster. My Vietnamese on the other hand is just so bad that she never has any idea what I'm trying to communicate. At this meal though, we rather successfully talked about a few different things. One being that I think peanuts are "ngon" (delicious, the only word one uses to talk about food!). The next day when I got home from work she had made me a bowl of roasted peanuts! I'm not sure why a month ago what was a crazy idea is now perfectly normal, but I really appreciated it. Despite our sparse communication, and her sometimes intimating demeanor, Co Hue is a really sweet woman. It is moments like that where I feel like I'm a part of a family.

Giants Steps

This is one of those times where it feels like there is so much to say and too many events to describe and in the process of thinking about what to blog things keep happening which consequently only makes my decision of what to write more challenging and in the end nothing ever gets written down. And being that I don't want to overwhelm one post with too much information about every thought I have had this last week and the things I have done maybe I'll just go with this:

Last night Derek and Ana hosted an MCC dinner at their home. It was a chance for all the service workers here in the city to just get together; a kind of team building event one might say if one was viewing it from the pragmatic view of a program administrator. This was the 2nd one since I've been here. The first one was right at the beginning, while Calah and I were still living at Derek's house, before we were even over our jet lag. In fact, I remember being proud of our ability to stay awake through dinner--even if it was just barely. Now it is almost three months later. Sitting around the table last night the conversation was much livelier than before. The company was much more familiar: Derek, Ana, Hannah, Calah, Max, Hiro, and Sawako. The food was much more appreciated: chicken (not boiled and with flavor added!), green beans (yes Lauren, I eat green beans now and I greatly enjoy them!), pasta with basil and tomatoes, and 3 types of bread (I had no point of comparison for the bread from the good bakery before, how could I have known that the bread you saw everywhere only looks good and in actuality is quite tasteless?). Overall, I was much more comfortable and felt able to relax and be myself.

We sat around the table for a while after the meal, enjoying tea, fruit and delicious home made peanut butter cookies. We laughed and joked. Calah and I have decided our new goal is to provide Derek with a plethora of stories after we're gone. I think our best ideas so far include China, this man we've met from Africa, an oversized lamp and a desperate call to Derek from a foreign country for money. Tell me that doesn't sound like the makings of an epic story?! We'll see how it goes...

I think this meal felt significant because it provided a really good tangible example of how much can change without one realizing it. Well, that's not exactly true. I realized it to some extent. But that first week seems like a distant blur. All along I've felt like I was taking baby steps towards adjusting, but as it turns out, I've been taking giant steps! Now Viet Nam is not a destination, but a normal fact of my everyday life. So much has happened since then! It was encouraging to be reminded of that.

Another Eventful Morning

I am always amazed by the amount of things that can happen before 9am. Somedays at 9 I feel like I'm barely awake, other days it's like I've already run a marathon. Today was one of the marathon running days!

I got up earlyish to talk to my fabulous Kansas City friend. Our Skype date was set for 7:30. I didn't actually get out of bed until 7:15 and was pleasantly surprised at my ability to move extra speedy this morning: get dressed and ready, eat breakfast, have my things ready to go for class and have my computer set up by 7:30. The internet stuck around long enough for me to verify the time we had agreed on, then it was gone. The little internet box only had three of the five flashing lights necessary, not good. I tried the few tricks I know that might fix it--essentially just restarting it and waiting for various periods of time. Nothing. Still only three lights. I was starting to get so sad! How am I going live vicariously through my friends and their post-college, English-speaking, equally as strange but in a very different way, American lives if my internet won't even work? And on top of that, I was ready for Vietnamese class almost an hour earlier than necessary. What to do...

Thats when I had a brillant idea! There are about 10million internet cafes in Hanoi, three within walking distance of my house. I would go there and if it was too late to Skype, I could at least send a message explaining my absence. So I rush out of the house, grab my bicycle and ride down the block. I stop at Trung Yen Cafe because it's one of my favs. Not the cleanest, but good, cheap coffee and internet I've used before. First I try sitting outside, no wireless connection. So I move inside, still nothing. I ask the server if he knows why I can't get it (ask being a very relative term, a few Vietnamese words and some pointing to convey my confusion is more like it). He rushes up the stairs to see if he can find out. He and I then began a 30-minute journey of trying to solve the missing internet conundrum. His iPhone (yes, his iPhone) says there is internet, but it can't seem to reach my computer. He tried some things on the computer, nothing. Then he takes my laptop and starts wandering around the cafe, searching for service like in the "Can you hear me now" commercials. At this point it is almost time for me to go to class, so I pay my 12,000 VND bill (about $.67) and pack up my things. But just then, he gets a ethernet cord and plugs my computer in. Even this takes a few attempts, but finally, success! I quickly send off my email and leave. Not so quickly that I didn't see the rat running across in front of me though...

I arrived at Vietnamese a few minutes early to find Calah sitting at the cafe across the street. Before it was even 8:30 I sat down at my 2nd cafe of the day. At this point I was more entertained than anything at the course my morning had taken. Seriously, it was a marathon of a morning.

Switching Roles

Back in March I thought a lot about what I wanted to do in life after SPU. I knew I wanted to travel, but how and for what purpose were details I was still unsure of. In my decision to come with MCC, particularly to Viet Nam, a big part of it was that I wanted to experience culture in an entirely different way. I wanted to be in a place where I wasn't a part of the majority; where I could maybe start to understand what life would look like without my white, middle-class American assumptions. Not that I don't feel fortunate to have been born in the situation I was, but I know it isn't how the entire world is. And on my quest to learn and understand people and the world, I knew I needed a way to see beyond my own foundational assumptions.

So I moved to Asia. And I guess if I stop to think about it, I have found what I was looking for. But man, I don't like it. I really hate that there is no way for me to blend in. Granted there are certain parts of the city that I can go to where I can blend in with the tourists, but that is not where I tend to spend my time. There are so many things about me that make me stand out: my brown hair, along with the fact that it is curly (very rare here!), my light eyes, my lighter skin, the shape of my body, the cloths I wear, etc,. Any of these facts alone would signify to a Vietnamese person that I am not from here. I am different. Put them all together and there is no way to mistake it. I stand out.

I'm not used to standing out. The novelty of everyone wanting to talk to me has warn off and at moments it exhausts me. I feel used by people as soon as they start on the scripted questions (name, age, where one's from, and if you have a boyfriend). At home I very comfortably blend in and I never realized how much I enjoyed that. I can ride the bus in peace. I can ride my bike without motos following me (that is, if I actually was brave enough to ride a bike at home...). I can talk to people without feeling used for my "otherness".

And it is not that I feel threatened or like I am actually in any risk. If some of those things were to happen at home I might be tempted to consider it harassment, but here it is just what people do. Logically if I talk myself through it I know that people genuinely do just want to practice their English. Like a woman told me last week after running after me as I pulled up to the front gate of my house, "I've been looking for a foreigner friend". People have good intentions. They make assumptions about me and my culture, whether that regards my wealth, my tastes or my langauge just as I make assumptions about them. Both are probably wrong.

All I keep thinking is that I got what I asked for. It may be challenging, and frustrating but it is a different experience of the world. Maybe I just need to change the way I view these interactions, have a little more fun with them rather than dreading them. Maybe I'll start only responding in Vietnamese. Or, better than that, only respond in some made up language! :) That could make it interesting...either way, this living in Viet Nam thing is definitely a learning experience.