and we're on to number 5!...
5. Learned How to Make Bánh Khoai:
Every Tuesday evening from 5:30-7:00 I teach a free community pronunciation class at the university where I work. My students range in age from 9-45 with skill levels from virtually no English background to upper intermediate/bordering on advanced, both of which add plenty of excitement and challenges. This class is pretty exhausting to teach for a few reasons beyond the great variety in the class makeup. First, teaching English pronunciation is just plain hard. As a native English speaker, I obviously have no difficulty pronouncing English words (besides, perhaps “accompaniment”—I’ll just never get it right) or using the correct rhythm, stress, and intonation when I speak, but the fact that I picked up these things naturally and never officially learned them in a class setting makes them a challenge to teach. Just as I expected when I came to Vietnam, therefore, I have learned a lot (particularly about my own mouth) while teaching students how to distinguish a voiceless sound from a voiced sound, that you must put your tongue between your teeth to make both of the correct “th” sounds, and many, many other tricks and rules to help students make their thoughts in English heard. Even though I am always tired after a very long day when I go into my evening class I always have fun trying to make pronunciation a fun (and not just extremely difficult) thing for the students, which usually involves candy, games, and, last week, a James Taylor song. Another one of the exhausting elements of teaching this class is simply that I’m usually hungry by the time class starts! Well, I suppose I should say that I was always hungry, until the bánh khoai club started…
Many of my students during the day attend my pronunciation class (which regularly has about 30 students crammed into a small classroom) so they were also quite hungry at the beginning of class, until we all found ourselves complaining about it one evening on the way into the classroom. Loan, one of my more hilarious students, suddenly started jumping up and down and talking excitedly and rapidly in Vietnamese to the other students around her, and, upon receiving their enthusiastic approval, turned back to me and said that the next week we were all going to go eat a snack before class started. I told her I was already looking forward to it. The next Tuesday, Loan, Van, Duong, Trang, Hue, and Minh all arrived at my office around 4:30 to get me to walk over to get a snack. On the way over, they told me that we were going to eat bánh khoai, which I correctly translated (to their great delight) as meaning something like “potato cake.” As it turns out, bánh khoai is one of the most delicious snacks I’ve ever had—essentially, it is sliced sweet potatoes dipped in a flour, water, and sugar batter, and then deep fried in a pot of oil boiling over bricks of charcoal on the sidewalk. Usually, it is eaten with this sweet and spicy hot sauce that is also really delicious. YUM. We sat and talked about life, laughed at each other for the silly things we had done and said that day, and enjoyed some time sitting on small plastic seats on the side of the road in Thanh Hoa before we had to go back into the building to go to class. I told them that this was the beginning of a weekly tradition, and they agreed wholeheartedly. Since then, we’ve gone almost every week to eat and enjoy one another’s company—I absolutely love those 25 or so minutes of sitting and chatting—sometimes in English, others in Vietnamese--- while eating deliciously fried food.
One Friday a few weeks ago, I was drinking smoothies with some of the students in one of my classes and Loan and some others asked me if I wanted to learn how to make bánh khoai. I responded with something like “absolutely!” and a plan was hatched on the spot. The next day, a group of girls came to my door around 3:30 and we went over to the market to buy the needed supplies—sweet potatoes, all purpose flour, a liter and a half of oil (we used it all) and sugar--- (plus some bananas, because you can do the same thing with bananas, but as many of you know, bananas are probably my least favorite fruit…) and then came back to my room to begin the preparations. I learned how to correctly slice a sweet potato (apparently I’ve been doing it all wrong for years…) and watched as the girls mixed the flour, water, and sugar simply to taste—no real measurements. Then, the frying began! During all of this, I did my best to spread the word around the dorm that we were having a spur of the moment “small party” in my room to make and eat bánh khoai, calling various students and inviting everyone I saw. Soon, my room was packed full of my students, all taking turns to cook (the boys who showed up actually really got into it!), and eat the delicious snacks that were being cooked on my two small burners as quickly as possible. I turned on some music, and we all stood out in the area in front of my door (it was too hot in my room) and listened to the sounds of the Avett Brothers, Indigo Girls, Van Morrison, and, of course, the Beatles, while we talked, laughed, and ate. Around 7:30, everyone pitched in to scrub my kitchen, which had become a slippery, oily, dirty, wonderful mess and then went back to their rooms for the night, and as I did some cleaning after they left, I thought about how lucky I was to have been placed among such incredible, funny, and caring students—it was truly one of my favorite nights since I’ve been in Vietnam, and I came out of it with the ability to make bánh khoai… if you’d like to learn (or maybe just enjoy eating it with me) I’ll be happy to share my food, and cooking duties with you… so long as you slice the sweet potatoes correctly.
Well, I still have one or two things I’m planning on writing about during this streak of blogging, but I’m leaving town tomorrow to visit Cần Thơ, a city on the Mekong River in the south of Vietnam tomorrow (it is one of those “you must see this place before you leave Vietnam” places, and, thought it is hard to believe, I’m to the point in my stay here that I’m going to have to really start checking off places on the list if I’m going to get through it!) and I’ll be leaving my computer behind. Don’t worry though, I’ll be back in touch at the beginning of next week when I’m back in town.
Lots of love to you all,
Hayley
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Number Four: A Vietnamese Wedding Singer
I'm back again with another thing done/learned/seen here in Vietnam-- enjoy!
4. Singing my repertoire of… 1 Vietnamese song at 10 or so weddings around Thanh Hoa:
The arrival of mid-November marked the beginning of wedding season in Vietnam- a truly spectacular time. Unlike in the United States when a wedding date is chosen based upon convenience or the fact that Sewanee just looks gorgeous in the summer and early fall, most Vietnamese couples turn to fortune tellers to find out if, and when they should get married—down to the time of day when the man should leave his home to begin the caravan to his wife’s home to pick her up and bring her to his house to officially seal the union. Due in large part to the cooler weather that prevails in the winter months, but most primarily to the fact that it is often deemed auspicious for couples to be married just before the end of the lunar year, November, December, January, and February are often full of Vietnamese weddings and all that those events entail.
Although I have spent lots of time talking to students and friends here about the wedding process and seen plenty of weddings myself, I still don’t funny understand all that happens for wedding celebrations here, but I’ll do my best to talk briefly about what I do know. First of all, it is ideal for the man to be two years older than his wife and the truly preferable marriage ages are 26 for the woman and 28 for the man, as getting married when your age is an odd number is not very lucky, but does certainly happen. Once all of the formalities of being the right age and deciding to get married and then settling on a date with the fortune teller are out of the way, the preparations for the big event begins.
I am always particularly amused at the wedding photos that are taken in Vietnam in preparation for a wedding. Wedding photos take about 6 hours to orchestrate and involve the future bride and groom posing around various lakes, bridges, and tea sets and wearing sometimes up to 8 different outfits. The bride wears her wedding gown in many of the pictures, so the Western tradition of keeping the wedding gown a secret until the big day is not followed. Traditional wedding attire in Vietnam was red, as the color red (still a predominant color at wedding festivities) is a lucky color. In contemporary times, however, many Vietnamese brides have chosen to wear a Western-style gown instead of their traditional dress. These gowns, however, usually involve a lot more “poof” than is the style in the States today, and many of the dresses happen to be accented with some bright neon color—they are a thing to behold. But I digress… back to the photos. Once these photos have been taken, they are touched up and airbrushed to the point that the bride and groom are sometimes unrecognizable compared to their real selves and then blown up to life-sized or larger pictures to be hung in the wedding tents that are set up in the days leading up to the wedding itself. Oftentimes, families keep these wedding banners (complete with the bride and groom’s names and a few of the pictures of the bride and groom looking longingly into one another’s eyes) hanging on the sides of their shops facing the street for weeks and months after the wedding has taken place.
I mentioned wedding tents earlier, so I’ll talk about those now. Typically, the culminating wedding celebration itself takes place at the husband’s family’s home and a tent extending from the home or shop entrance (many Vietnamese families live in the backs or on the 2nd floors of their shops) where tables, flowers, tea sets, and massive speakers are set up. A few days before the wedding these speakers are turned on, and earsplitting techno music is blasted from them almost around the clock until a day or two after the wedding takes place. I have attempted to sleep in a hotel near one of these wedding tents and it is almost impossible—even when the tent is completely and totally empty the music blasts on, telling the world (or at least a 400 meter range) that someone is getting married. The tricky part about these speakers is that they make it almost impossible to carry on a conversation with anyone around you once you are inside of them and trying to figure out what is happening with the bride and the groom at that time (the music—techno Vietnamese music with the occasional techno English song thrown in-- continues throughout the entire ceremony, only quieting during the lunch that is served afterward.)
On the day of the wedding itself, the groom and his family travel by caravan to his wife’s hometown or, if they both happen to live in the city, home, bringing with them gifts for his wife’s family. These gifts, including betel leaves, fruit, cigarettes, wine, tea, cakes, etc. are carried on trays covered in red cloth by 5 or 7 (it must be an odd number) unmarried young men and presented to the wife’s family. Then, the groom and his family enter the bride’s home and toast to the wedding with rice wine while also officially asking for final permission for the wedding to take place. When this is granted, the bride and groom are (after usually being showered with confetti) taken to the groom’s home where the family and friends invited to attend the wedding are crowded into the tents, tapping their feet to techno music and drinking green tea while waiting for them to come. Once the bride and groom arrive at the wedding, they take their place at the head table and the emcee for the event steps out and essentially commences what I like to call the “open mic” portion of the wedding in which friends and family are invited to sing a song for the couple. (Yes, this is where I come in, but I’ll get to that in a minute.) After a series of very loud and mostly off-key songs are sung, the mother of the groom comes forward and places a necklace on the bride and the bride and groom exchange rings to great applause. Then, the crowd usually chants “kiss her!” in Vietnamese and at every wedding I’ve been to, the bride always acts very coy and usually refuses to allow the groom to kiss her in public, to the great amusement of the friends and family there. Then, the confetti that has been stored at the top of the tent is dropped all over the bride, groom, and guests, and the ceremony itself is over. The bride and groom leave briefly so that the bride can change into an ao dai to greet her guests and the tables are quickly converted from tea and candy tables to lunch tables, as the groom’s family cooks a large meal to celebrate the event. Lots of eating, drinking, and toasting accompany the lunch that follows and after the food and rice wine is gone, people head on their ways, giving the bride and groom an envelope of money for a gift (rather than giving house ware or other gifts traditionally given in the States, people give money here in Vietnam.)
As I said earlier, I’ve had the chance to attend roughly 10 or so weddings during my time in Thanh Hoa and I have been amazed and amused at each and every one. Probably one of my favorite weddings was that of two of my students. These students met on the first day of my class in September and, as they told me later, fell in love at first sight. After a few weeks of watching their relationship, I took to calling them “The Lovers” in a reference to Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and tried to counsel them away from referring to one another as “my darling” or “my lover” while in the classroom for reasons of propriety and the fact that the other students were practically falling backwards in their chairs from rolling their eyes so far back in their heads at such remarks. I just about fell backwards, however, when they told me excitedly that they had decided to get married and that they hoped I could come to their wedding in December. I told them that I would, of course, be there, and I, along with our entire class was sitting nearest the head table on their big day, grinning from ear to ear.
I had been asked, casually, on the way over to their wedding whether or not I would be willing to sing a Vietnamese song at the wedding, and I said that I would think about it…when the time came for the “open mic” portion of the wedding, however, I suddenly heard my name being called out and my class went crazy and told me that I was singing the Vietnamese love song duet that I had sung for them before. This song, “Lời Của Gió” means “Whisper of the Wind” and is an extremely popular love song that I first sang at a Teacher’s Day celebration in November. I said goodbye to my pride, stood up, took the microphone, and belted out my best version of the song to wild laughter, massive cheers, and great applause…. And so began my stint as a Vietnamese wedding singer for the duration of the wedding season. Quite a few of the students from the IEC got married during this time, and as a teacher at the university, I was invited to all of their weddings. Once word got around that I knew a Vietnamese song, I was asked by all of the brides and grooms to be to sing Lời Của Gió because it was certain to bring good luck to the marriage if I did. Not wanting to prevent any luck from being bestowed upon a young couple, I always agreed, and even began saying something like “I’m so happy to be able to come to this wedding for my two friends. I wish you the best of luck and much happiness” in Vietnamese to begin my song. The family and friends at the wedding always found my singing to be hilarious, and I knew to expect all of the various mothers present at the wedding to come and sit with me after I was finished, pouring me tea, feeding me mini oranges and rice and chatting with me happily. Usually the conversation would involve me telling them that I was an English teacher… 22 years old… from America… oldest child of 3… loved Vietnam… and then came the inevitable question: “Em lấy chồng chưa?” (Are you married yet?)
Me: “Chưa, nhưng em có người yêu sống ở nước
Mỹ (no, not yet, but I have a boyfriend who lives in the United States)
The Mother: Ối Giời Ơi, em muốn người yêu Việt không? (Oh my goodness! Don’t you want a Vietnamese boyfriend?!”
Me: Không, cảm ơn cô, em chỉ cần một người yêu! (No, thank you ma’am, but I only need one boyfriend!)
All of this would end in lots of laughter from the women, and after stroking my hair they would leave and I would be free to be teased by my students.
I must admit that by the end of my wedding tour, I was a little tired of singing the same song over and over again, and I always felt a little weird at the fact that I, just by nature of being the foreigner, was always brought forth to bestow “luck” on the new couple, but I tried not to let such thoughts bother me too much… it got in the way of my singing range!
Wedding season is over now, and while there are still some weddings taking place, the volume of weddings is down significantly. It is weird to think that I will already be long gone by the time the next season rolls around, but I know that come next December, I’ll be thinking about the tents, confetti, techno music, and joy seen at such events while I hum Lời Của Gió to myself.
Another post soon to follow.
Love,
Hayley
4. Singing my repertoire of… 1 Vietnamese song at 10 or so weddings around Thanh Hoa:
The arrival of mid-November marked the beginning of wedding season in Vietnam- a truly spectacular time. Unlike in the United States when a wedding date is chosen based upon convenience or the fact that Sewanee just looks gorgeous in the summer and early fall, most Vietnamese couples turn to fortune tellers to find out if, and when they should get married—down to the time of day when the man should leave his home to begin the caravan to his wife’s home to pick her up and bring her to his house to officially seal the union. Due in large part to the cooler weather that prevails in the winter months, but most primarily to the fact that it is often deemed auspicious for couples to be married just before the end of the lunar year, November, December, January, and February are often full of Vietnamese weddings and all that those events entail.
Although I have spent lots of time talking to students and friends here about the wedding process and seen plenty of weddings myself, I still don’t funny understand all that happens for wedding celebrations here, but I’ll do my best to talk briefly about what I do know. First of all, it is ideal for the man to be two years older than his wife and the truly preferable marriage ages are 26 for the woman and 28 for the man, as getting married when your age is an odd number is not very lucky, but does certainly happen. Once all of the formalities of being the right age and deciding to get married and then settling on a date with the fortune teller are out of the way, the preparations for the big event begins.
I am always particularly amused at the wedding photos that are taken in Vietnam in preparation for a wedding. Wedding photos take about 6 hours to orchestrate and involve the future bride and groom posing around various lakes, bridges, and tea sets and wearing sometimes up to 8 different outfits. The bride wears her wedding gown in many of the pictures, so the Western tradition of keeping the wedding gown a secret until the big day is not followed. Traditional wedding attire in Vietnam was red, as the color red (still a predominant color at wedding festivities) is a lucky color. In contemporary times, however, many Vietnamese brides have chosen to wear a Western-style gown instead of their traditional dress. These gowns, however, usually involve a lot more “poof” than is the style in the States today, and many of the dresses happen to be accented with some bright neon color—they are a thing to behold. But I digress… back to the photos. Once these photos have been taken, they are touched up and airbrushed to the point that the bride and groom are sometimes unrecognizable compared to their real selves and then blown up to life-sized or larger pictures to be hung in the wedding tents that are set up in the days leading up to the wedding itself. Oftentimes, families keep these wedding banners (complete with the bride and groom’s names and a few of the pictures of the bride and groom looking longingly into one another’s eyes) hanging on the sides of their shops facing the street for weeks and months after the wedding has taken place.
I mentioned wedding tents earlier, so I’ll talk about those now. Typically, the culminating wedding celebration itself takes place at the husband’s family’s home and a tent extending from the home or shop entrance (many Vietnamese families live in the backs or on the 2nd floors of their shops) where tables, flowers, tea sets, and massive speakers are set up. A few days before the wedding these speakers are turned on, and earsplitting techno music is blasted from them almost around the clock until a day or two after the wedding takes place. I have attempted to sleep in a hotel near one of these wedding tents and it is almost impossible—even when the tent is completely and totally empty the music blasts on, telling the world (or at least a 400 meter range) that someone is getting married. The tricky part about these speakers is that they make it almost impossible to carry on a conversation with anyone around you once you are inside of them and trying to figure out what is happening with the bride and the groom at that time (the music—techno Vietnamese music with the occasional techno English song thrown in-- continues throughout the entire ceremony, only quieting during the lunch that is served afterward.)
On the day of the wedding itself, the groom and his family travel by caravan to his wife’s hometown or, if they both happen to live in the city, home, bringing with them gifts for his wife’s family. These gifts, including betel leaves, fruit, cigarettes, wine, tea, cakes, etc. are carried on trays covered in red cloth by 5 or 7 (it must be an odd number) unmarried young men and presented to the wife’s family. Then, the groom and his family enter the bride’s home and toast to the wedding with rice wine while also officially asking for final permission for the wedding to take place. When this is granted, the bride and groom are (after usually being showered with confetti) taken to the groom’s home where the family and friends invited to attend the wedding are crowded into the tents, tapping their feet to techno music and drinking green tea while waiting for them to come. Once the bride and groom arrive at the wedding, they take their place at the head table and the emcee for the event steps out and essentially commences what I like to call the “open mic” portion of the wedding in which friends and family are invited to sing a song for the couple. (Yes, this is where I come in, but I’ll get to that in a minute.) After a series of very loud and mostly off-key songs are sung, the mother of the groom comes forward and places a necklace on the bride and the bride and groom exchange rings to great applause. Then, the crowd usually chants “kiss her!” in Vietnamese and at every wedding I’ve been to, the bride always acts very coy and usually refuses to allow the groom to kiss her in public, to the great amusement of the friends and family there. Then, the confetti that has been stored at the top of the tent is dropped all over the bride, groom, and guests, and the ceremony itself is over. The bride and groom leave briefly so that the bride can change into an ao dai to greet her guests and the tables are quickly converted from tea and candy tables to lunch tables, as the groom’s family cooks a large meal to celebrate the event. Lots of eating, drinking, and toasting accompany the lunch that follows and after the food and rice wine is gone, people head on their ways, giving the bride and groom an envelope of money for a gift (rather than giving house ware or other gifts traditionally given in the States, people give money here in Vietnam.)
As I said earlier, I’ve had the chance to attend roughly 10 or so weddings during my time in Thanh Hoa and I have been amazed and amused at each and every one. Probably one of my favorite weddings was that of two of my students. These students met on the first day of my class in September and, as they told me later, fell in love at first sight. After a few weeks of watching their relationship, I took to calling them “The Lovers” in a reference to Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and tried to counsel them away from referring to one another as “my darling” or “my lover” while in the classroom for reasons of propriety and the fact that the other students were practically falling backwards in their chairs from rolling their eyes so far back in their heads at such remarks. I just about fell backwards, however, when they told me excitedly that they had decided to get married and that they hoped I could come to their wedding in December. I told them that I would, of course, be there, and I, along with our entire class was sitting nearest the head table on their big day, grinning from ear to ear.
I had been asked, casually, on the way over to their wedding whether or not I would be willing to sing a Vietnamese song at the wedding, and I said that I would think about it…when the time came for the “open mic” portion of the wedding, however, I suddenly heard my name being called out and my class went crazy and told me that I was singing the Vietnamese love song duet that I had sung for them before. This song, “Lời Của Gió” means “Whisper of the Wind” and is an extremely popular love song that I first sang at a Teacher’s Day celebration in November. I said goodbye to my pride, stood up, took the microphone, and belted out my best version of the song to wild laughter, massive cheers, and great applause…. And so began my stint as a Vietnamese wedding singer for the duration of the wedding season. Quite a few of the students from the IEC got married during this time, and as a teacher at the university, I was invited to all of their weddings. Once word got around that I knew a Vietnamese song, I was asked by all of the brides and grooms to be to sing Lời Của Gió because it was certain to bring good luck to the marriage if I did. Not wanting to prevent any luck from being bestowed upon a young couple, I always agreed, and even began saying something like “I’m so happy to be able to come to this wedding for my two friends. I wish you the best of luck and much happiness” in Vietnamese to begin my song. The family and friends at the wedding always found my singing to be hilarious, and I knew to expect all of the various mothers present at the wedding to come and sit with me after I was finished, pouring me tea, feeding me mini oranges and rice and chatting with me happily. Usually the conversation would involve me telling them that I was an English teacher… 22 years old… from America… oldest child of 3… loved Vietnam… and then came the inevitable question: “Em lấy chồng chưa?” (Are you married yet?)
Me: “Chưa, nhưng em có người yêu sống ở nước
Mỹ (no, not yet, but I have a boyfriend who lives in the United States)
The Mother: Ối Giời Ơi, em muốn người yêu Việt không? (Oh my goodness! Don’t you want a Vietnamese boyfriend?!”
Me: Không, cảm ơn cô, em chỉ cần một người yêu! (No, thank you ma’am, but I only need one boyfriend!)
All of this would end in lots of laughter from the women, and after stroking my hair they would leave and I would be free to be teased by my students.
I must admit that by the end of my wedding tour, I was a little tired of singing the same song over and over again, and I always felt a little weird at the fact that I, just by nature of being the foreigner, was always brought forth to bestow “luck” on the new couple, but I tried not to let such thoughts bother me too much… it got in the way of my singing range!
Wedding season is over now, and while there are still some weddings taking place, the volume of weddings is down significantly. It is weird to think that I will already be long gone by the time the next season rolls around, but I know that come next December, I’ll be thinking about the tents, confetti, techno music, and joy seen at such events while I hum Lời Của Gió to myself.
Another post soon to follow.
Love,
Hayley
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Number Three: Biking Through the Ruins
Xin Chào, Xin Chào,
Actually, such a greeting is somewhat ironic as this post is about the one time since I’ve been out of the U.S. that Vietnamese was not at all useful to me!
We've come to the third item on the list of things done/seen/learned since December:
3. Biked Through the Angkor War Ruins--- enjoy:
While for all official state business Vietnam follows the Gregorian calendar, the lunar calendar, as also followed in China, is extremely important in the social and cultural lives of the people of Vietnam. Therefore, the lunar, or Chinese, New Year is much more widely celebrated than the January 1st turn of the year. In the weeks leading up to the New Year, I probably said and heard chúc mừng năm mới (happy new year!) over 200 times and heard Abba’s “Happy New Year” played even more. [As a side note, Abba is spectacularly popular over here in Vietnam—not a karaoke night goes by without at least one Abba song being played and at one point when I was being filmed by the Thanh Hoa television for a game show—that’s a whole other story--- I had to sing “Dancing Queen” in the middle of the very busy campus at the top of my lungs--- oh, memories.] The new year, called “Tết,” is a time devoted to celebrating the arrival of spring with family and there are many traditions associated with the holiday such as preparing special foods, praying to the ancestors, cleaning one’s home, giving “lucky money” in small red envelopes to children, among other things. Additionally, everyone in Vietnam considers themselves a year older on the day of Tet. Interestingly enough, my birthday, February 14, happened to be New Year’s Day this year, so I suppose I just got a double-whammy of aging. I was particularly excited for Tet over here because with it came my first official break from teaching since I arrived in Vietnam. For the week prior to, and the week after Tet, schools are closed in Vietnam, and I was free to get some much needed traveling done! When I arrived in Vietnam in August, I was told that everything closes down for the holiday, so if I was going to take some time out of the country (we were allotted 10 days total out of Vietnam during the course of our grants) the Tet break would be the time to do it since finding food and lodging might be dodgy during the few days surrounding Tet itself and I decided to take the advice and head down to Cambodia.
Again, I found myself really lucky to have a visitor over here when Tyler flew in the day after I began my break from school. Learning from my mom’s luggage troubles, Tyler arrived with only carry-on baggage (all accounted for) and despite having the slight hiccup of accidentally entering China without a visa for a short time (don’t ask me how he did it…) he, too, looked pretty great for having just spent 48 hours traveling. After a couple of days in Hanoi, and 3 phenomenal days on Phu Quoc Island in the south of Vietnam staying at a place called “Freedomland,” where we met incredible people, ate the best food I’ve had in years, played lots of cards, took cold showers, and killed some of the biggest mosquitoes I’ve ever seen, we began our journey to Cambodia.
The bus ride to Cambodia from Ho Chi Minh City could be a post in and of itself, but I’ll try to keep it short because my work day started at 7am today and finished at 7 pm, and I’m quickly fading! We bought tickets on a bus service called Mai Linh in advance and were on our way in a comfortable, air conditioned bus at 6:30am on the day we had scheduled. Our trip through customs in Cambodia was remarkably easy (and resulted in a gorgeous Cambodian visa sticker in our passport books) and we felt as though we were in great shape for the rest of the trip through Cambodia and into Siem Reap…. And then we arrived in Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia. There, we had a scheduled change of bus, and so we arrived at the bus station, loaded our things off of our bus, and waited for the loading time of the 2nd bus. As we waited and ate some bread and cheese that we had brought with us to eat for lunch, Tyler and I talked about how easy the bus ride had been, and how we had really lucked out…. But then it came time to get on the 2nd bus. Our seats were located at the very back of a completely full bus whose air conditioner had probably died sometime in the late ‘90s. Because we were in the back, there was no overhead space for our luggage, so we had to put our feet on top of our bags, which actually turned out to be a blessing because we were located on top of the engine which eventually got so hot as to partially melt the bottoms of our Chacos. The traffic was also horrible and it took about an hour just to get out of Phnom Penh, by which time we had run out of water and sweated everything we had to drink that day out. And so began the 7 hour trip from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap…
After awhile, we were able to find the humor in our ridiculous situation and took to finding unique ways to try and get comfortable while also enjoying the beautiful Cambodian countryside through which we were traveling. Our real triumph of the day, however, came at one of the “rest stops” when we were trying to find something to drink, but felt a little nervous about the water bottles being sold that had clearly been used and then had their tops glued back on… we began digging through the coolers set up in the stop area and came across a strange black can labeled as “Black Panther.” Intrigued, we looked at the can a little more closely and realized that Black Panther was a Cambodian extra stout beer, which we decided we had to try for hilarity’s sake. As it turned out, Black Panther tasted like chocolate milk--- absolutely phenomenal! --and we looked for it everywhere we went in Cambodia from then on! Around 8:30 that night when we were just about at our wit’s end, we finally arrived in Siem Reap and were picked up in a “tuk-tuk” (a motorbike-drawn carriage of sorts) by our hotel. After a delicious dinner in town, we went to bed excited to see the ruins the next morning.
After a great breakfast the next morning, we rented bicycles for $1 each and started biking toward the ruins. Both of our bikes—zero gear cruiser style bikes, mind you—looked as though they were about 24 years old and had seats way too low for our tall American builds—but we were excited to be on them! We had looked at a guidebook for suggestions of places to see in the ruins, and a few key spots stood out, including, obviously, Angkor Wat, Angkor Thom, and then this place called Banteay Srei, located a little ways (I thought) away from the other ruins and we set off in search of Banteay Srei. I, unfortunately, had misread the map and thought that the trip would be about 37km roundtrip, which was a good deal of biking, but not too much. In reality, the map said that Banteay Srei 37km one way from Angkor Wat (which was another 10km or so from Siem Reap, where we were staying)... so yes, we biked a total of 94km (roughly 60 miles) through the scorching Cambodian heat on cruiser bikes not well suited for a 2 mile bike around the neighborhood in one day… whoops! The biking was absolutely exhausting, physically, mentally, and yes, at times, emotionally, but we survived and didn’t kill each other, and if I do say so myself, seeing Banteay Srei was well worth bonking 12 miles from home (luckily we found some fruit and an oatmeal cookie we had brought with us at that moment).
All of the ruins, really, were positively breathtaking—so much so, that I am really finding it hard to write about them. For three days, Tyler and I biked through these architectural masterpieces and usually found ourselves speechless standing at the foot of the statues, temples, and staircases to the ancient hallways, all of which were adorned with the most intricate and exquisite stonework that one could possibly imagine. I hope you will take a look at some of the pictures we took at and in the ruins on facebook for a better idea of what I’m talking about---here’s the stable link—you don’t need a facebook account to access these-- http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2037655&id=44701566&l=39a89097b1
While our rear ends ached from our first day’s mistakes (Tyler had to lift me off of my bike at points), we pedaled through the pain and along some wonderful wooded trails to see the big and small remnants (all spectacular) of the ancient Khmer kingdom and felt as though we could have spent days more exploring without even seeing all that Angkor has to offer.
In addition to enjoying the ruins themselves, we also really loved spending time in the town of Siem Reap. Outrageously touristy and western-oriented, Siem Reap still retained an intrinsic charm that, combined with phenomenal food and a fun-loving atmosphere of different restaurants located on the streets, made it a wonderful place to spend a vacation. (So... if you’re keeping up, you’ve got Sapa and Siem Reap on your SE Asia “places to go” list). We also celebrated my 23rd birthday while in Siem Reap--- seeing the Angkor Wat temples themselves was just about the best birthday present a girl could ask for—and I really enjoyed the time away from lesson planning and 10-12 hour work days that are a part of life in here in Vietnam. After three full, and wonderful, days in Cambodia, we hopped back on the bus (thankfully air conditioned the entire way this time) back “home” to Vietnam….. and here I am still!
Well, that’s all for now—I’m off to bed (way past my bedtime!) Tomorrow, I’ll write about the joys of (singing at) Vietnamese weddings—because yes, it has been done roughly 12-13 times….
Lots of love to you all,
Hayley
Actually, such a greeting is somewhat ironic as this post is about the one time since I’ve been out of the U.S. that Vietnamese was not at all useful to me!
We've come to the third item on the list of things done/seen/learned since December:
3. Biked Through the Angkor War Ruins--- enjoy:
While for all official state business Vietnam follows the Gregorian calendar, the lunar calendar, as also followed in China, is extremely important in the social and cultural lives of the people of Vietnam. Therefore, the lunar, or Chinese, New Year is much more widely celebrated than the January 1st turn of the year. In the weeks leading up to the New Year, I probably said and heard chúc mừng năm mới (happy new year!) over 200 times and heard Abba’s “Happy New Year” played even more. [As a side note, Abba is spectacularly popular over here in Vietnam—not a karaoke night goes by without at least one Abba song being played and at one point when I was being filmed by the Thanh Hoa television for a game show—that’s a whole other story--- I had to sing “Dancing Queen” in the middle of the very busy campus at the top of my lungs--- oh, memories.] The new year, called “Tết,” is a time devoted to celebrating the arrival of spring with family and there are many traditions associated with the holiday such as preparing special foods, praying to the ancestors, cleaning one’s home, giving “lucky money” in small red envelopes to children, among other things. Additionally, everyone in Vietnam considers themselves a year older on the day of Tet. Interestingly enough, my birthday, February 14, happened to be New Year’s Day this year, so I suppose I just got a double-whammy of aging. I was particularly excited for Tet over here because with it came my first official break from teaching since I arrived in Vietnam. For the week prior to, and the week after Tet, schools are closed in Vietnam, and I was free to get some much needed traveling done! When I arrived in Vietnam in August, I was told that everything closes down for the holiday, so if I was going to take some time out of the country (we were allotted 10 days total out of Vietnam during the course of our grants) the Tet break would be the time to do it since finding food and lodging might be dodgy during the few days surrounding Tet itself and I decided to take the advice and head down to Cambodia.
Again, I found myself really lucky to have a visitor over here when Tyler flew in the day after I began my break from school. Learning from my mom’s luggage troubles, Tyler arrived with only carry-on baggage (all accounted for) and despite having the slight hiccup of accidentally entering China without a visa for a short time (don’t ask me how he did it…) he, too, looked pretty great for having just spent 48 hours traveling. After a couple of days in Hanoi, and 3 phenomenal days on Phu Quoc Island in the south of Vietnam staying at a place called “Freedomland,” where we met incredible people, ate the best food I’ve had in years, played lots of cards, took cold showers, and killed some of the biggest mosquitoes I’ve ever seen, we began our journey to Cambodia.
The bus ride to Cambodia from Ho Chi Minh City could be a post in and of itself, but I’ll try to keep it short because my work day started at 7am today and finished at 7 pm, and I’m quickly fading! We bought tickets on a bus service called Mai Linh in advance and were on our way in a comfortable, air conditioned bus at 6:30am on the day we had scheduled. Our trip through customs in Cambodia was remarkably easy (and resulted in a gorgeous Cambodian visa sticker in our passport books) and we felt as though we were in great shape for the rest of the trip through Cambodia and into Siem Reap…. And then we arrived in Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia. There, we had a scheduled change of bus, and so we arrived at the bus station, loaded our things off of our bus, and waited for the loading time of the 2nd bus. As we waited and ate some bread and cheese that we had brought with us to eat for lunch, Tyler and I talked about how easy the bus ride had been, and how we had really lucked out…. But then it came time to get on the 2nd bus. Our seats were located at the very back of a completely full bus whose air conditioner had probably died sometime in the late ‘90s. Because we were in the back, there was no overhead space for our luggage, so we had to put our feet on top of our bags, which actually turned out to be a blessing because we were located on top of the engine which eventually got so hot as to partially melt the bottoms of our Chacos. The traffic was also horrible and it took about an hour just to get out of Phnom Penh, by which time we had run out of water and sweated everything we had to drink that day out. And so began the 7 hour trip from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap…
After awhile, we were able to find the humor in our ridiculous situation and took to finding unique ways to try and get comfortable while also enjoying the beautiful Cambodian countryside through which we were traveling. Our real triumph of the day, however, came at one of the “rest stops” when we were trying to find something to drink, but felt a little nervous about the water bottles being sold that had clearly been used and then had their tops glued back on… we began digging through the coolers set up in the stop area and came across a strange black can labeled as “Black Panther.” Intrigued, we looked at the can a little more closely and realized that Black Panther was a Cambodian extra stout beer, which we decided we had to try for hilarity’s sake. As it turned out, Black Panther tasted like chocolate milk--- absolutely phenomenal! --and we looked for it everywhere we went in Cambodia from then on! Around 8:30 that night when we were just about at our wit’s end, we finally arrived in Siem Reap and were picked up in a “tuk-tuk” (a motorbike-drawn carriage of sorts) by our hotel. After a delicious dinner in town, we went to bed excited to see the ruins the next morning.
After a great breakfast the next morning, we rented bicycles for $1 each and started biking toward the ruins. Both of our bikes—zero gear cruiser style bikes, mind you—looked as though they were about 24 years old and had seats way too low for our tall American builds—but we were excited to be on them! We had looked at a guidebook for suggestions of places to see in the ruins, and a few key spots stood out, including, obviously, Angkor Wat, Angkor Thom, and then this place called Banteay Srei, located a little ways (I thought) away from the other ruins and we set off in search of Banteay Srei. I, unfortunately, had misread the map and thought that the trip would be about 37km roundtrip, which was a good deal of biking, but not too much. In reality, the map said that Banteay Srei 37km one way from Angkor Wat (which was another 10km or so from Siem Reap, where we were staying)... so yes, we biked a total of 94km (roughly 60 miles) through the scorching Cambodian heat on cruiser bikes not well suited for a 2 mile bike around the neighborhood in one day… whoops! The biking was absolutely exhausting, physically, mentally, and yes, at times, emotionally, but we survived and didn’t kill each other, and if I do say so myself, seeing Banteay Srei was well worth bonking 12 miles from home (luckily we found some fruit and an oatmeal cookie we had brought with us at that moment).
All of the ruins, really, were positively breathtaking—so much so, that I am really finding it hard to write about them. For three days, Tyler and I biked through these architectural masterpieces and usually found ourselves speechless standing at the foot of the statues, temples, and staircases to the ancient hallways, all of which were adorned with the most intricate and exquisite stonework that one could possibly imagine. I hope you will take a look at some of the pictures we took at and in the ruins on facebook for a better idea of what I’m talking about---here’s the stable link—you don’t need a facebook account to access these-- http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2037655&id=44701566&l=39a89097b1
While our rear ends ached from our first day’s mistakes (Tyler had to lift me off of my bike at points), we pedaled through the pain and along some wonderful wooded trails to see the big and small remnants (all spectacular) of the ancient Khmer kingdom and felt as though we could have spent days more exploring without even seeing all that Angkor has to offer.
In addition to enjoying the ruins themselves, we also really loved spending time in the town of Siem Reap. Outrageously touristy and western-oriented, Siem Reap still retained an intrinsic charm that, combined with phenomenal food and a fun-loving atmosphere of different restaurants located on the streets, made it a wonderful place to spend a vacation. (So... if you’re keeping up, you’ve got Sapa and Siem Reap on your SE Asia “places to go” list). We also celebrated my 23rd birthday while in Siem Reap--- seeing the Angkor Wat temples themselves was just about the best birthday present a girl could ask for—and I really enjoyed the time away from lesson planning and 10-12 hour work days that are a part of life in here in Vietnam. After three full, and wonderful, days in Cambodia, we hopped back on the bus (thankfully air conditioned the entire way this time) back “home” to Vietnam….. and here I am still!
Well, that’s all for now—I’m off to bed (way past my bedtime!) Tomorrow, I’ll write about the joys of (singing at) Vietnamese weddings—because yes, it has been done roughly 12-13 times….
Lots of love to you all,
Hayley
Monday, March 22, 2010
Number Two: Climbing Mountains
Well hello again! In keeping with the promise that I made to you all and myself, I worked hard to get all of my lesson planning done early today so that I could write you the next installment of the things I’ve learned/seen/done since I wrote you in December—we’re on to number 2 now:
2. Climbed a Small Mountain in North Vietnam with Mom:
My Christmas present arrived in Vietnam 2 days after Christmas day itself, but it was well worth the slight delay. My mom landed at the Noi Bai airport in Hanoi looking wonderful for having traveled close to 48 hours and through several major U.S. and East Asian airports and I couldn’t have been more excited to see her. Unfortunately her luggage decided to remain in Los Angeles (or maybe Denver…. perhaps Seoul…. or possibly even Taiwan, depending on who you called at the baggage services desk back in the States…) so we embarked on our adventure together with 3 pairs of pants and 2 sweaters to share and a great sense of humor about it all. We definitely hit the ground running as soon as she arrived as I didn’t even let her sleep in a comfortable bed her first night in the country after such a long trip! Instead, we caught a night train to Sapa, located in the far north of Vietnam, immediately made friends with a very funny Vietnamese man who thought the fact that I could speak Vietnamese was absolutely hilarious, and then attempted to sleep on the swaying and creaking train. At 5:30 the next morning we arrived in Lao Cai, a city located about an hour away from Sapa, and were greeted by a van service to our hotel, the Topas Ecolodge. I had been to Sapa before with my friends for Thanksgiving so I was really excited when we arrived in the town itself, but then to my surprise our van kept driving right through the town and onto some very questionable roads. Remembering that the lodge had told me that it was located outside of the city, I told mom that it would only be a few minutes more until we arrived… 45 minutes later, after traveling on rocky dirt roads, through running waterfalls, and precariously close to cliff edges in the morning fog, and narrowly avoiding a dozen or so water buffalo in the process, we arrived at our destination. If any of you are planning a trip to Vietnam and are trying to think of places to go and hotels to stay in, let me recommend this Ecolodge to you. Located, as I think my description of the trek has probably led you to imagine, on the bluff of a mountain in a remote area of the country, the Topas Ecolodge is a beautiful series of bungalows overlooking a series of fabulous rice fields and valleys.. Each bungalow is very private and quiet, is beautifully but simply decorated and is run on solar power. On top of all of this, the food was absolutely phenomenal—everything from homemade (and usually warm) bread and jams for breakfast to delicious traditional Vietnamese dishes at dinner—we ate very well! I think the best part of our time in Sapa, however, was spent hiking and walking through the surrounding areas and villages.
The Vietnamese population is made up of 54 different ethnic groups and many of the minority groups are located in the northern regions of the country and in the villages surrounding Sapa. These groups face many of the same issues and hardships related to poverty, social discrimination, and access to education as is common to many minority groups throughout the world but the continually increasing stream of tourists to the Sapa region has led many of these groups, particularly the women and children, to become quite the entrepreneurs. As a result, they speak absolutely incredible English from mingling and bargaining with tourists all day. On our first day in Sapa, mom and I met our tour guide, Thang, who was about 28 years old and a very nice guy. We had opted for a trek to the top of Mt. Silverstone, which Thang told us would take about 3 hours to reach because the mountain’s peak was about 1600m and the hike was very steep. He also told us as we began our walk that many of the Red Dao (Pronounced Red Zow) minority women would probably hike with us and try to get us to buy some of the things that they had made to sell. Sure enough, as soon as we exited the lodge area, the women came running up to us, saying hello, asking us how old we were, where we were from, if we were married, and would we buy something from them. While the Red Dao speak their own language, they also speak Vietnamese, and so I surprised them all by responding to one of their questions in Vietnamese, simply out of habit! Soon, the attention was taken away from trying to get us to buy their goods and onto my Vietnamese abilities, and I spent a good portion of the first part of the hike doing my best to carry on an intelligible conversation. As the hike progressed and the mountain did indeed get steeper and muddier, many of the women dropped off in search of non thrill-seeking tourists but about 6 of the women, aged 18-60(!!!) continued with us the entire way. Mom and I both charged up the mountain in typical Robb form, and Thang soon took to calling us the long-legged women who wouldn’t slow down. We made it to the top of the mountain in about an hour and a half—slightly faster than had been predicted! At the top, we stopped for awhile to admire the gorgeous views of the mountains, valleys, and terraced rice fields that stretched as far as we could see before eating our lunch of bread, ham, and fruit. We then took a break to relax and talk with the women who had made it to the top with us before agreeing to buy some of their beautiful wares (I first made an agreement in Vietnamese that they wouldn’t try to get us to buy anything the next day if we bought from them that day—and sure enough, the next day when they saw us, they told their friends not to try to sell us anything, and didn’t walk with us on our hike—it was then that I realized I had finally achieved a “working survival” level of Vietnamese!) Since we were so ahead of schedule, Thang and two of the younger girls who had been walking with us decided to take a new way down the mountain that would let us see more of the valleys and farms and we soon set off excitedly. As it turns out, Thang had never actually gone down the mountain this way, and the girls had, as I heard them say to Thang, forgotten exactly how they had gotten down before. Mom and I thought that the prospect of being somewhat lost (really, all you had to do was go down and at some point you would hit a road that would lead you back to the lodge) was absolutely hilarious, and we happily walked along with Thang et al. through a few farmer’s backyards and chatted with some friendly water buffaloes on the side of a hill. After a few wrong turns, we finally found a reasonable path down to the road and made our way back to the Ecolodge, stopping first to drink a well-earned Tiger Beer at a small shop with Thang.
The next day, we set out again with Thanh and visited a Black Hmong village and had the opportunity to see more of the beautiful countryside. While we didn’t climb any mountains that day, we did have a few steep inclines to navigate and at one point I managed to gracefully step off the path and into calf-deep cold, muddy water with one of my feet. We also had the opportunity to have tea with a woman who invited us into her home and I loved telling her about myself and my family in Vietnamese and hearing a little about herself. Finally, mom got the opportunity to experience the joy of motorbike riding as we traveled into the town of Sapa itself via xe oms, did a little shopping, and then got picked up by the shuttle bus and taken back to Lao Cai where we caught the night train for Hanoi.
The rest of mom’s stay was also wonderful as we saw the sights of Hanoi, climbed to the top of the Perfume Pagoda (see previous post for a description of that place) in record time, ate delicious Vietnamese food, celebrated the new year in Hanoi (well, we were technically already in bed by the time the new year came, but it’s the thought that counts!), saw the water puppet show, and did some much-needed catching up. I hated having her leave (along with the luggage that came the night before her flight out!) but I felt so lucky to have had her here with me. My dad and grandmother (my mom’s mom) are coming this way in about 3 weeks, and I can’t wait for the adventures we’re sure to have--- I doubt they’ll involve climbing any mountains, but in Vietnam you just never know…
And speaking of active vacations—my next post will be about another one that I took more recently through the ruins of Angkor Wat—stay tuned, my friends!
Until then, stay well.
Lots of Love,
Hayley
2. Climbed a Small Mountain in North Vietnam with Mom:
My Christmas present arrived in Vietnam 2 days after Christmas day itself, but it was well worth the slight delay. My mom landed at the Noi Bai airport in Hanoi looking wonderful for having traveled close to 48 hours and through several major U.S. and East Asian airports and I couldn’t have been more excited to see her. Unfortunately her luggage decided to remain in Los Angeles (or maybe Denver…. perhaps Seoul…. or possibly even Taiwan, depending on who you called at the baggage services desk back in the States…) so we embarked on our adventure together with 3 pairs of pants and 2 sweaters to share and a great sense of humor about it all. We definitely hit the ground running as soon as she arrived as I didn’t even let her sleep in a comfortable bed her first night in the country after such a long trip! Instead, we caught a night train to Sapa, located in the far north of Vietnam, immediately made friends with a very funny Vietnamese man who thought the fact that I could speak Vietnamese was absolutely hilarious, and then attempted to sleep on the swaying and creaking train. At 5:30 the next morning we arrived in Lao Cai, a city located about an hour away from Sapa, and were greeted by a van service to our hotel, the Topas Ecolodge. I had been to Sapa before with my friends for Thanksgiving so I was really excited when we arrived in the town itself, but then to my surprise our van kept driving right through the town and onto some very questionable roads. Remembering that the lodge had told me that it was located outside of the city, I told mom that it would only be a few minutes more until we arrived… 45 minutes later, after traveling on rocky dirt roads, through running waterfalls, and precariously close to cliff edges in the morning fog, and narrowly avoiding a dozen or so water buffalo in the process, we arrived at our destination. If any of you are planning a trip to Vietnam and are trying to think of places to go and hotels to stay in, let me recommend this Ecolodge to you. Located, as I think my description of the trek has probably led you to imagine, on the bluff of a mountain in a remote area of the country, the Topas Ecolodge is a beautiful series of bungalows overlooking a series of fabulous rice fields and valleys.. Each bungalow is very private and quiet, is beautifully but simply decorated and is run on solar power. On top of all of this, the food was absolutely phenomenal—everything from homemade (and usually warm) bread and jams for breakfast to delicious traditional Vietnamese dishes at dinner—we ate very well! I think the best part of our time in Sapa, however, was spent hiking and walking through the surrounding areas and villages.
The Vietnamese population is made up of 54 different ethnic groups and many of the minority groups are located in the northern regions of the country and in the villages surrounding Sapa. These groups face many of the same issues and hardships related to poverty, social discrimination, and access to education as is common to many minority groups throughout the world but the continually increasing stream of tourists to the Sapa region has led many of these groups, particularly the women and children, to become quite the entrepreneurs. As a result, they speak absolutely incredible English from mingling and bargaining with tourists all day. On our first day in Sapa, mom and I met our tour guide, Thang, who was about 28 years old and a very nice guy. We had opted for a trek to the top of Mt. Silverstone, which Thang told us would take about 3 hours to reach because the mountain’s peak was about 1600m and the hike was very steep. He also told us as we began our walk that many of the Red Dao (Pronounced Red Zow) minority women would probably hike with us and try to get us to buy some of the things that they had made to sell. Sure enough, as soon as we exited the lodge area, the women came running up to us, saying hello, asking us how old we were, where we were from, if we were married, and would we buy something from them. While the Red Dao speak their own language, they also speak Vietnamese, and so I surprised them all by responding to one of their questions in Vietnamese, simply out of habit! Soon, the attention was taken away from trying to get us to buy their goods and onto my Vietnamese abilities, and I spent a good portion of the first part of the hike doing my best to carry on an intelligible conversation. As the hike progressed and the mountain did indeed get steeper and muddier, many of the women dropped off in search of non thrill-seeking tourists but about 6 of the women, aged 18-60(!!!) continued with us the entire way. Mom and I both charged up the mountain in typical Robb form, and Thang soon took to calling us the long-legged women who wouldn’t slow down. We made it to the top of the mountain in about an hour and a half—slightly faster than had been predicted! At the top, we stopped for awhile to admire the gorgeous views of the mountains, valleys, and terraced rice fields that stretched as far as we could see before eating our lunch of bread, ham, and fruit. We then took a break to relax and talk with the women who had made it to the top with us before agreeing to buy some of their beautiful wares (I first made an agreement in Vietnamese that they wouldn’t try to get us to buy anything the next day if we bought from them that day—and sure enough, the next day when they saw us, they told their friends not to try to sell us anything, and didn’t walk with us on our hike—it was then that I realized I had finally achieved a “working survival” level of Vietnamese!) Since we were so ahead of schedule, Thang and two of the younger girls who had been walking with us decided to take a new way down the mountain that would let us see more of the valleys and farms and we soon set off excitedly. As it turns out, Thang had never actually gone down the mountain this way, and the girls had, as I heard them say to Thang, forgotten exactly how they had gotten down before. Mom and I thought that the prospect of being somewhat lost (really, all you had to do was go down and at some point you would hit a road that would lead you back to the lodge) was absolutely hilarious, and we happily walked along with Thang et al. through a few farmer’s backyards and chatted with some friendly water buffaloes on the side of a hill. After a few wrong turns, we finally found a reasonable path down to the road and made our way back to the Ecolodge, stopping first to drink a well-earned Tiger Beer at a small shop with Thang.
The next day, we set out again with Thanh and visited a Black Hmong village and had the opportunity to see more of the beautiful countryside. While we didn’t climb any mountains that day, we did have a few steep inclines to navigate and at one point I managed to gracefully step off the path and into calf-deep cold, muddy water with one of my feet. We also had the opportunity to have tea with a woman who invited us into her home and I loved telling her about myself and my family in Vietnamese and hearing a little about herself. Finally, mom got the opportunity to experience the joy of motorbike riding as we traveled into the town of Sapa itself via xe oms, did a little shopping, and then got picked up by the shuttle bus and taken back to Lao Cai where we caught the night train for Hanoi.
The rest of mom’s stay was also wonderful as we saw the sights of Hanoi, climbed to the top of the Perfume Pagoda (see previous post for a description of that place) in record time, ate delicious Vietnamese food, celebrated the new year in Hanoi (well, we were technically already in bed by the time the new year came, but it’s the thought that counts!), saw the water puppet show, and did some much-needed catching up. I hated having her leave (along with the luggage that came the night before her flight out!) but I felt so lucky to have had her here with me. My dad and grandmother (my mom’s mom) are coming this way in about 3 weeks, and I can’t wait for the adventures we’re sure to have--- I doubt they’ll involve climbing any mountains, but in Vietnam you just never know…
And speaking of active vacations—my next post will be about another one that I took more recently through the ruins of Angkor Wat—stay tuned, my friends!
Until then, stay well.
Lots of Love,
Hayley
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Remember me?
Dear All,
I bet you thought that I had forgotten about this blog, huh?
Well, in a sense, you’re sort of right. Since the last time I posted (yes, all the way back in December) I have been completely swept up in all of the madness that is life, work, and travel in Vietnam which, coupled with completely unreliable and sometimes nonexistent internet, led me further and further away from even the thought of blogging. With work continuing to pile up here in the final stretch of my stay over here, I had somewhat resigned myself to the fact that my blogging days were over since the choice between making over to the market before sundown and gutting a chicken to eat for dinner and writing a post after a 10 hour work day clearly led to my stomach (and tired mind!) winning out. However, my guilty conscience, egged on by a few of the more vocal readers of this blog, has led to me taking a few moments on a misty Sunday afternoon to write you all again. Please don’t take my tone for bitterness, sarcasm, or unwillingness—I love sharing my stories and it makes me feel so blessed to have a group of people who are eager to read and ask for more and if I had the time (or the energy during my little free time) to write more, I certainly would!
So I suppose that the very obvious start to this post is to say that a lot has happened since I wrote you last. Rather than give you a minute by minute update of my life, I’ve decided to make list of some of the things I have done, seen, and learned during the past three months that stand out in particular to me. I’m going to post either one or two at a time so that the posts themselves won’t be too long, and so my writing goals are a little more manageable. I hope you’ll enjoy (and that I stick to my promise of making it through the list!):
Number One: Had the opportunity to buy cotton candy and other carnival-esque souvenirs at the Christmas Eve service in Thanh Hoa:
In the week leading up to Christmas, my students were unbelievably excited to learn about the secular Christmas traditions in the U.S. and I happily shared stories of Santa, Rudolph, and Tiny Tim (I actually acted out a short one-woman version of A Christmas Carol probably worth a Tony award to rave reviews from my audiences), gave presentations on holiday traditions in the States, and showed my class one of the only Christmas-related movies I could find in Hanoi: Home Alone. While, as I’ve mentioned before, Christianity (or rather, Catholicism) is somewhat tolerated in Vietnam and practiced by a small minority of its population in beautiful and large cathedrals built by the French, we, as teachers and employees of the State Department, were told to steer clear of any religion-based discussions for obvious reasons, so I kept everything I talked about related to the secular elements of the holiday which was very strange for me. I really missed being a part of a church community all throughout the beautifully contemplative season of Advent, setting up the crèche in my family’s living room, and preparing All Saints’ Chapel for the Festival of Lessons and Carols, and there was no one here with whom I could share those memories, or the feelings of sadness associated with missing out on such a season and process. Throughout the week, one or two of the students asked me “Ms. Hayley, do you believe in Jesu?” to which I responded with a smile and a simple “yes” and they often said in turn “you must be feeling very funny (a word misused for happy all the time here) at this time.”
After teaching my classes on Christmas Eve, I made packed my things to depart for Hanoi the next day and had just started making dinner when I heard my name being called from the street outside of my cooking area. I looked outside and saw my friends Chinh and Loan standing in the street and calling for me to come down and meet them. I put my dinner plans aside and went outside and they told me that we were going to the church for the Christmas service. Neither Loan nor Chinh is Christian so I was a bit surprised at their decision to go to the church until they told me that this was something almost everyone in the city did on Christmas Eve, regardless of whether they were Christian or not. Soon, I was excitedly sitting in a cab driving through the packed streets (they weren’t kidding—everyone was out that night!) When the streets became too crowded, we got out of the cab and started walking toward the church.
Some of the most fascinating things that I saw on the way were the Nativity scenes that were set up in the storefronts in the Christian area of Thanh Hoa (Chinh and Loan told me that a lot of the Christians—“believers in Jesu”--- lived nearby one another in the city). Rather than depicting the birth of Christ in a stable, Mary, Joseph, Jesus, and the whole gang of angels and animals were in caves in the Vietnamese scenes—I was absolutely floored and thrilled when I saw this because it serves as a perfect example of what I’ve discussed in my religion classes and on the front porch of Stirling’s with friends at Sewanee about a culture telling the story of Jesus in such a way as to have it make sense in their context—something that has certainly happened in Anglo-American societies and that was so exciting to see here in Vietnam. There are far more caves than areas for stables and mangers in Vietnam, so of course Mary and Joseph would have relocated to a cave in this setting! I stopped to study these scenes a few times and Chinh and Loan had to pull me along so that we would make it in time. When we arrived at the entrance to the church I took another moment to just stand in awe of all that was going on around me. Down the block there was a techno music party of sorts going on in celebration of the big night and all around me at the entrance to the church were vendors selling cotton candy, popcorn, t-shirts, toy Santas, and balloons with big Santa faces on them. People were also walking around taking pictures of everything and all of this combined for a rather carnival-esque feel to the whole event. Once inside the gates of the church I was met by a huge trailer on the back of a parked truck that had lots of small children wearing angel and Santa costumes in it and had a large neon-lit plastic star on a pole inside. Since there were literally thousands of people there, the church itself was closed and the service was being held outside on a stage that had been constructed for the event. A band was present, and there was a huge cave Nativity scene as well. We had to stand so far back from the stage due to the crowds that it was hard to see the priests in any detail but luckily there was a sound system that allowed people to hear what was going on even from so far back. Most of the people there were not all that interested in the service, but were attending out of curiosity’s sake or simply because it was a fun and interesting thing to see once a year, so the focus where I was standing was not on the service. We edged up a little ways, stood on our toes, and continued to watch as the Eucharist began. The mass was said in Vietnamese which I know precious little of, but I have seen the motions of a Eucharist being celebrated so many times that I knew what was going on and could appreciate its power even in such a strange setting. Chinh and Loan turned to me and said, beautifully, “we understand the words, but we think you understand what is being said—what is happening?” I did my best to explain what they were seeing in the simplest way possible and in response they smiled and said “do you miss your family tonight?” I gave them both hugs and said that while I did, I was so happy to be with friends and wouldn’t change this Christmas Eve for the world.
While I must admit that being at home for Advent and Christmas this year is one of the things I’m most excited about in terms of coming home, this experience, strange as it was, was also, as I told Chinh and Loan, truly unique, eye-opening, and a time I will never forget and that I am happy to have gotten to share with you. Well, I suppose that’s all for now—coming up next: Climbing a small mountain in the far north, and biking through the Angkor War ruins! I hope you are all well, and I can’t wait to be in touch again soon! Feel free to comment or write me an email directly (I do respond to those pretty quickly!)
Lots of Love,
Hayley
I bet you thought that I had forgotten about this blog, huh?
Well, in a sense, you’re sort of right. Since the last time I posted (yes, all the way back in December) I have been completely swept up in all of the madness that is life, work, and travel in Vietnam which, coupled with completely unreliable and sometimes nonexistent internet, led me further and further away from even the thought of blogging. With work continuing to pile up here in the final stretch of my stay over here, I had somewhat resigned myself to the fact that my blogging days were over since the choice between making over to the market before sundown and gutting a chicken to eat for dinner and writing a post after a 10 hour work day clearly led to my stomach (and tired mind!) winning out. However, my guilty conscience, egged on by a few of the more vocal readers of this blog, has led to me taking a few moments on a misty Sunday afternoon to write you all again. Please don’t take my tone for bitterness, sarcasm, or unwillingness—I love sharing my stories and it makes me feel so blessed to have a group of people who are eager to read and ask for more and if I had the time (or the energy during my little free time) to write more, I certainly would!
So I suppose that the very obvious start to this post is to say that a lot has happened since I wrote you last. Rather than give you a minute by minute update of my life, I’ve decided to make list of some of the things I have done, seen, and learned during the past three months that stand out in particular to me. I’m going to post either one or two at a time so that the posts themselves won’t be too long, and so my writing goals are a little more manageable. I hope you’ll enjoy (and that I stick to my promise of making it through the list!):
Number One: Had the opportunity to buy cotton candy and other carnival-esque souvenirs at the Christmas Eve service in Thanh Hoa:
In the week leading up to Christmas, my students were unbelievably excited to learn about the secular Christmas traditions in the U.S. and I happily shared stories of Santa, Rudolph, and Tiny Tim (I actually acted out a short one-woman version of A Christmas Carol probably worth a Tony award to rave reviews from my audiences), gave presentations on holiday traditions in the States, and showed my class one of the only Christmas-related movies I could find in Hanoi: Home Alone. While, as I’ve mentioned before, Christianity (or rather, Catholicism) is somewhat tolerated in Vietnam and practiced by a small minority of its population in beautiful and large cathedrals built by the French, we, as teachers and employees of the State Department, were told to steer clear of any religion-based discussions for obvious reasons, so I kept everything I talked about related to the secular elements of the holiday which was very strange for me. I really missed being a part of a church community all throughout the beautifully contemplative season of Advent, setting up the crèche in my family’s living room, and preparing All Saints’ Chapel for the Festival of Lessons and Carols, and there was no one here with whom I could share those memories, or the feelings of sadness associated with missing out on such a season and process. Throughout the week, one or two of the students asked me “Ms. Hayley, do you believe in Jesu?” to which I responded with a smile and a simple “yes” and they often said in turn “you must be feeling very funny (a word misused for happy all the time here) at this time.”
After teaching my classes on Christmas Eve, I made packed my things to depart for Hanoi the next day and had just started making dinner when I heard my name being called from the street outside of my cooking area. I looked outside and saw my friends Chinh and Loan standing in the street and calling for me to come down and meet them. I put my dinner plans aside and went outside and they told me that we were going to the church for the Christmas service. Neither Loan nor Chinh is Christian so I was a bit surprised at their decision to go to the church until they told me that this was something almost everyone in the city did on Christmas Eve, regardless of whether they were Christian or not. Soon, I was excitedly sitting in a cab driving through the packed streets (they weren’t kidding—everyone was out that night!) When the streets became too crowded, we got out of the cab and started walking toward the church.
Some of the most fascinating things that I saw on the way were the Nativity scenes that were set up in the storefronts in the Christian area of Thanh Hoa (Chinh and Loan told me that a lot of the Christians—“believers in Jesu”--- lived nearby one another in the city). Rather than depicting the birth of Christ in a stable, Mary, Joseph, Jesus, and the whole gang of angels and animals were in caves in the Vietnamese scenes—I was absolutely floored and thrilled when I saw this because it serves as a perfect example of what I’ve discussed in my religion classes and on the front porch of Stirling’s with friends at Sewanee about a culture telling the story of Jesus in such a way as to have it make sense in their context—something that has certainly happened in Anglo-American societies and that was so exciting to see here in Vietnam. There are far more caves than areas for stables and mangers in Vietnam, so of course Mary and Joseph would have relocated to a cave in this setting! I stopped to study these scenes a few times and Chinh and Loan had to pull me along so that we would make it in time. When we arrived at the entrance to the church I took another moment to just stand in awe of all that was going on around me. Down the block there was a techno music party of sorts going on in celebration of the big night and all around me at the entrance to the church were vendors selling cotton candy, popcorn, t-shirts, toy Santas, and balloons with big Santa faces on them. People were also walking around taking pictures of everything and all of this combined for a rather carnival-esque feel to the whole event. Once inside the gates of the church I was met by a huge trailer on the back of a parked truck that had lots of small children wearing angel and Santa costumes in it and had a large neon-lit plastic star on a pole inside. Since there were literally thousands of people there, the church itself was closed and the service was being held outside on a stage that had been constructed for the event. A band was present, and there was a huge cave Nativity scene as well. We had to stand so far back from the stage due to the crowds that it was hard to see the priests in any detail but luckily there was a sound system that allowed people to hear what was going on even from so far back. Most of the people there were not all that interested in the service, but were attending out of curiosity’s sake or simply because it was a fun and interesting thing to see once a year, so the focus where I was standing was not on the service. We edged up a little ways, stood on our toes, and continued to watch as the Eucharist began. The mass was said in Vietnamese which I know precious little of, but I have seen the motions of a Eucharist being celebrated so many times that I knew what was going on and could appreciate its power even in such a strange setting. Chinh and Loan turned to me and said, beautifully, “we understand the words, but we think you understand what is being said—what is happening?” I did my best to explain what they were seeing in the simplest way possible and in response they smiled and said “do you miss your family tonight?” I gave them both hugs and said that while I did, I was so happy to be with friends and wouldn’t change this Christmas Eve for the world.
While I must admit that being at home for Advent and Christmas this year is one of the things I’m most excited about in terms of coming home, this experience, strange as it was, was also, as I told Chinh and Loan, truly unique, eye-opening, and a time I will never forget and that I am happy to have gotten to share with you. Well, I suppose that’s all for now—coming up next: Climbing a small mountain in the far north, and biking through the Angkor War ruins! I hope you are all well, and I can’t wait to be in touch again soon! Feel free to comment or write me an email directly (I do respond to those pretty quickly!)
Lots of Love,
Hayley
Saturday, December 19, 2009
making friends with strangers
Last Friday, I had my final meeting with my first class, officially known as “3-C,” here in Vietnam. The International Education Center, where I work at Hong Duc University has found a company that is willing to “officially” (i.e. through the means of a specially trained ESL TOEFL teacher far more experienced and qualified than myself) prepare my class for the TOEFL-ibt and on Monday, the torch will officially be passed from me to the new teacher. I, meanwhile, will begin teaching a new group of beginner-level students to prepare them to meet the qualifications of a test-prep company. While I am excited at the prospect of meeting and developing relationships with new students and to working with a different book (I was told to create a brand new course again, so I took advantage of the opportunity to try out a new book—let the syllabus construction begin!) I am also sad to say goodbye to my current group, with whom I have grown so close and learned so much. In my last blog post I said that I was in the middle of writing an entry about a particularly poignant lesson that I learned from my students in class one day so I’d like to share that story now, as I say goodbye to my first students (well, in a sense—I told them that I would still be a big part of their lives whether they liked it or not!) and look ahead to my newest teaching challenge and opportunity.
Every morning, I began my class by giving my students a “warm-up” speaking exercise to get them thinking and talking since 7:00am is quite an early time to begin studying a foreign language. I wrote a prompt on the chalkboard, made sure everyone understood the question, gave them between one and four minutes to organize their thoughts, and then had them, one at a time, speak to their partner for one minute without stopping. When I first began using this exercise in class, many of the students would either not speak at all or speak for maybe ten seconds before stopping and looking quite lost. After countless explanations and re-explanations of how to approach this sort of activity (one that will appear in test-question for on the TOEFL-ibt), lots of encouragement, and plenty of “okay, let’s try this again”’s, the room buzzed each morning during each of the partners’ minutes and I walked through the room listening and smiling. There were always a couple of confused faces, and lots of grammar issues that we then went over as a class, but ultimately the exercise turned into a success and the students were soon creating their own “warm-up” questions to go over with me individually.
Many times my questions asked the students whether they preferred one thing or another, and I then used their responses as a springboard for a class debate (a favorite activity of my students’.) Other questions, however, asked the students to describe a personal experience or individual in their lives. A little over a month and a half ago, I asked the students to describe an important skill that they learned from their mother or father as a child (questions about family, romance, or the environment tended to elicit the most creative and enthusiastic responses.) After completing the timed response section of the activity, I asked for the students to tell me which skill they talked about in order to check that they had provided supporting ideas and examples in their response. Many of the students said things like, “My mother taught me how to cook,” or “my father taught me how to fix a motorbike.” We discussed each of these, and a few other examples, and then I asked if anyone else had anything different to add. One of my quieter students, Trang, said “strangers” to which I immediately replied “yes! So your mother or father taught you not to talk to strangers,” repeating the mantra that is ingrained in most American children’s minds from a young age. Trang and others in the class looked back at me confused, and many of them responded at once saying, “No, they taught us to make friends with strangers.”
That response hit me like a ton of bricks or a breath of cool fresh air (and probably both) as I was reminded yet again of how wonderfully different Vietnamese culture is from American culture in many distinct ways. Every house I have visited in Vietnam always has a large insulated jug, with lots of boiling hot water at the ready, sitting near to a table in the main gathering area of the residence. This water, refilled and reheated throughout the day, is used to make tea which is given to all visitors, regardless of who they are, upon their arrival at a home. The water is kept hot and the teapot and cups are sitting out throughout the day because individuals and families in this culture are constantly anticipating, and glad to receive, friends and strangers, who will soon be friends, into their homes. This custom, and the meaning behind it, has been one of my favorite things to learn of and about during my time here and I was thrilled to learn and be reminded again of this societal mindset by my students that day in class. After a few brief moments of happily stunned silence, I smiled and said “of course. You’re absolutely right. That is how we should treat strangers and what a great skill for your parents to teach you.” I often think about this lesson from my students—one of many, I assure you-- as I walk along the road or through the market, exchanging greetings and smiles, and especially now as I prepare to soon meet a group of 22 strangers who will become my students and friends. I wonder what I’ll learn from them?
Well, my bed and a good crossword puzzle are calling my name, so until next time, my friends, stay warm and well, and say hello to the next stranger you see for me—who knows… maybe they’ve got some tea ready for you to drink on a cold winter’s day.
All my love,
Hayley
Every morning, I began my class by giving my students a “warm-up” speaking exercise to get them thinking and talking since 7:00am is quite an early time to begin studying a foreign language. I wrote a prompt on the chalkboard, made sure everyone understood the question, gave them between one and four minutes to organize their thoughts, and then had them, one at a time, speak to their partner for one minute without stopping. When I first began using this exercise in class, many of the students would either not speak at all or speak for maybe ten seconds before stopping and looking quite lost. After countless explanations and re-explanations of how to approach this sort of activity (one that will appear in test-question for on the TOEFL-ibt), lots of encouragement, and plenty of “okay, let’s try this again”’s, the room buzzed each morning during each of the partners’ minutes and I walked through the room listening and smiling. There were always a couple of confused faces, and lots of grammar issues that we then went over as a class, but ultimately the exercise turned into a success and the students were soon creating their own “warm-up” questions to go over with me individually.
Many times my questions asked the students whether they preferred one thing or another, and I then used their responses as a springboard for a class debate (a favorite activity of my students’.) Other questions, however, asked the students to describe a personal experience or individual in their lives. A little over a month and a half ago, I asked the students to describe an important skill that they learned from their mother or father as a child (questions about family, romance, or the environment tended to elicit the most creative and enthusiastic responses.) After completing the timed response section of the activity, I asked for the students to tell me which skill they talked about in order to check that they had provided supporting ideas and examples in their response. Many of the students said things like, “My mother taught me how to cook,” or “my father taught me how to fix a motorbike.” We discussed each of these, and a few other examples, and then I asked if anyone else had anything different to add. One of my quieter students, Trang, said “strangers” to which I immediately replied “yes! So your mother or father taught you not to talk to strangers,” repeating the mantra that is ingrained in most American children’s minds from a young age. Trang and others in the class looked back at me confused, and many of them responded at once saying, “No, they taught us to make friends with strangers.”
That response hit me like a ton of bricks or a breath of cool fresh air (and probably both) as I was reminded yet again of how wonderfully different Vietnamese culture is from American culture in many distinct ways. Every house I have visited in Vietnam always has a large insulated jug, with lots of boiling hot water at the ready, sitting near to a table in the main gathering area of the residence. This water, refilled and reheated throughout the day, is used to make tea which is given to all visitors, regardless of who they are, upon their arrival at a home. The water is kept hot and the teapot and cups are sitting out throughout the day because individuals and families in this culture are constantly anticipating, and glad to receive, friends and strangers, who will soon be friends, into their homes. This custom, and the meaning behind it, has been one of my favorite things to learn of and about during my time here and I was thrilled to learn and be reminded again of this societal mindset by my students that day in class. After a few brief moments of happily stunned silence, I smiled and said “of course. You’re absolutely right. That is how we should treat strangers and what a great skill for your parents to teach you.” I often think about this lesson from my students—one of many, I assure you-- as I walk along the road or through the market, exchanging greetings and smiles, and especially now as I prepare to soon meet a group of 22 strangers who will become my students and friends. I wonder what I’ll learn from them?
Well, my bed and a good crossword puzzle are calling my name, so until next time, my friends, stay warm and well, and say hello to the next stranger you see for me—who knows… maybe they’ve got some tea ready for you to drink on a cold winter’s day.
All my love,
Hayley
Sunday, December 6, 2009
getting back in touch
Hello Friends!
It has been (way) too long since I've last posted, and I am so sorry for my relative negligence of this blog. Work and life is crazy over here and in addition to all of my teaching and traveling adventures, I've also been dealing with a really touch-and-go internet situation for the past couple of weeks which made even checking my email tough. Luckily, the internet gods have given me a slight reprieve so I'm taking a break from writing comments on tests to put pictures on facebook (which is a task in and of itself with the new government block of the site... I've also become tech savvy since I've been here... okay, okay, I'm still pathetic at all things computer related-- I just have friends here that are tech savvy)and update this long-forgotten blog. Seeing as it has been almost 2 months since I last wrote, this post will really just be a sort of "get reacquainted" update with a few reflections on my time since you last heard from me.
As I alluded to earlier, time is flying for me here in Thanh Hoa. In fact, I'm actually fairly certain that we skipped November over here. In all seriousness, though, I really don't know where the time is going. When I sat down to write this blog, I looked back at my last post and thought "hmm... October 18th... well, that's not such a horrible gap since I last wrote, right?" Then I looked and noticed that it was December 6th, which absolutely blew my mind. As is true for most experiences abroad or in a new place, time has been progressively moving faster. Gone are the days of September and October when on certain (though certainly not all) days (particularly those when I had the swine flu...) I was totally and completely intimidated by the idea that I was somehow going to have to make time pass all the way until next June. Beginning in mid-October, really, I finally got my work assignment squared away with my university administration, was able to fall asleep easily on my bed, speak enough Vietnamese to purchase a train ticket and feel comfortable in the market, and really get into the groove of life over here. These days, as I look ahead to my remaining 6 months, I still feel sad that I am currently missing Lessons and Carols on the Mountain, or slightly weirded out that I will still be in Vietnam during all of Lent and the 50 days of Easter, but I am just as equally certain that I probably won't have enough time to visit all of the places on my "Vietnam Bucket List," that June will be here before I know it, and that my experience is so incredible that I am planning on continuing to live in the moment as time flied by me as I have been doing for the past month and a half... hopefully I'll also remember to update my blog a bit more...
I also suppose that now is probably an appropriate time to answer a question that many of you have been asking me in your emails and messages (thanks for those, by the way- I love hearing from you!): How is teaching?
Teaching is wonderful. Before I was comfortable anywhere or doing anything else in Thanh Hoa, I was comfortable teaching and getting to know my students and I look forward to being with them each and every day (which is saying a lot because my teaching day begins Monday thru Friday at 7:00am.) My class of 26 students was at a very, very beginning level when I met them for the first time. I had one-on-one meetings with each of the students just to assess the class's general level and a good half of them could only say "hello" and "my family has 5 people...mother, father, brother, sister, me"... which was a little scary and forced me to readjust my mindset and expectations-- I was really unaware of the English instruction that most Vietnamese students receive in high school and college-- very written grammar intensive with little to no listening or speaking practice. All of my students were so welcoming, friendly, and hard-working, and I fell in love with all of them immediately. (Yes, on occasion I also get so frustrated with them that I want to scream, but those moments are rare and fleeting... teaching is hard... but ultimately as I said before, teaching is wonderful.) Due to some complicated, bureaucratic issues that it would be unwise for me to go into now, I did not have a syllabus or any course materials when I began teaching, which was wildly frustrating at the outset, but ultimately a blessing because I eventually talked my administration into letting me choose a text and write my own curriculum that allowed for the class to move at a reasonable pace. My students, as I said before, have worked really hard, and we have had a lot of fun together, and I have seen immense and beautiful improvements in all of them in just the few months that we have been together. Last Friday I gave a speaking test, which involves each of the students coming into my office and answering a few questions I pose to them, and all of them were able to at least answer a bit of the questions-- some of them did an incredible job-- which was such a change from our first meetings together. While more administrative "drama" has crept up in recent weeks and I am not sure what or who exactly I'll be teaching after the new year, I hope that it will be this current group and that I will continue to get to watch them improve by leaps and bounds.
I have also loved learning from my students. I'm actually halfway through a forgotten draft of a post about a particularly poignant learning moment that I had earlier this semester that serves as my favorite example of learning from my students, so be on the look-out for that sometime soon. I think that what my students have taught (and continue to teach) me the most is flexibility... which is something (my mom will back me up on this) I have definitely always needed more of. About a month ago I had a class period that was just an absolute bust. I think it was a Monday morning, the students were tired, it was rainy outside, and I did a really crummy job of presenting the material (which was a hard unit, to top it all off)... all of those factors combined to make it a pretty lousy hour and 45 minutes for all of us. I couldn't see why in the world they were having so much trouble with the material and didn't seem to care about my examples and by the end of the class, I was absolutely exhausted.. a rare feeling for me, as I usually finish class with more energy than I start with. I dismissed the class by telling them that that afternoon we would be having the lesson again if they wanted to join me (the afternoon sessions are optional extra-help times, since I am technically only allowed to teach a certain number of hours.) I went back to my room and stewed a bit over the failed class (it had seemed so perfect in my plans!) but then calmed down and forced myself to think about the material again. That afternoon I asked the students to walk me through the lesson and I played the role of a follower, explaining the material according to how they saw it, and they ended up doing a great job of grasping the lesson and moving forward to the next unit. That afternoon is still one of my favorite teaching experiences to look back on.
Those lessons in flexibility also come out of the classroom. My day today, for instance, is a great example of this... I spent a good part of the early morning and early afternoon yesterday with the students, playing football, eating, and chatting so I had planned to spend today sleeping in (which these days means sleeping until about 7:15am), doing tons of laundry (because I have to do my laundry by hand in a small plastic tub, I choose to put it off until I am out of underwear, which leads to hours of scrubbing roughly twice a month), cleaning my kitchen/bathroom, grading tests, writing this blog, and reading a book. The day started out as planned and I was elbow deep in laundry when my cell phone rang... I wiped my arms off and ran to pick it up. One of my students greeted my "hello" with, "hi Hayley, we are all waiting for you," to which I replied "well, hi Loan! waiting for what?" She said "you are coming to Trang's (another student in the class) home to meet her parents and cook lunch and visit today, remember?" Well, no.. I didn't remember being told this, and I told Loan that, and she said "I told you on Friday, at the end of the day... remember?" I certainly believe that Loan did tell me about this plan, but I also know that she probably told me right in the middle of my trying to usher a student who had suddenly started crying about a mistake she made on a test in the middle of a crowded hallway out of the crowds and into my office to talk about things--- not the best timing. Nevertheless, I didn't want to suddenly renege on my apparent "commitment" to this event because I knew that Trang's parents, who are both farmers in a rural area just outside of the city, had probably planned to make this occasion special, so I told Loan to give me 10 minutes to get ready. I hung up the phone and felt like I wanted to scream because I could see my day's plans completely unraveling-- visits to parents take lots of time here, and I was standing in the middle of lots of wet clothes and bedding and really wanted nothing more than to just do my "own thing" today. After lots of grumbling (literally), I rinsed out my clothes as best as possible, threw on a pair of jeans, and walked out the door, still steaming a little bit. When I got downstairs and met the students, I couldn't help but smile at their excitement about my joining them, and as I rode on the back of Duong(another student's) motorbike to Trang's house, looking out at the rice fields, and enjoying the cool breeze on my face, I was able to begin to laugh at myself for getting so frustrated. Soon, I was helping to cook prawns and use chopsticks to turn home-made spring rolls in the frying pan-- I actually have a really lovely blister on my pinky finger from some large droplet of rogue oil-- and by the time we sat down to our enormous lunch (all of which was grown or raised on Trang's family's property)and I talked with her parents, I was really kicking myself for having gotten upset over being asked to come at the last minute. I had a great time, and made it back with plenty of time to finish laundry and clean my kitchen/bathroom area and having learned yet another lesson in flexibility and patience.
I am also really enjoying learning Vietnamese. While I would still call my language skills pathetic, my teacher has bumped me up from saying "Em noi tieng Viet khong tot" (I don't speak Vietnamese well at all) to "Em noi tieng Viet mot it" (I speak a little Vietnamese)-- which I viewed as a huge accomplishment. Recently, in fact, a fellow Fulbrighter and friend, Sofia, and I traveled to Ninh Binh for a weekend and upon learning that we could speak a little bit of Vietnamese, the staff of the hostel where we were staying decided to only speak to us in Vietnamese (their English was much better than our Vietnamese, mind you), which meant that getting things done took about 3x as long, but we all had a great time. Because my job is to teach English, I really don't have much time to practice Vietnamese, but I absolutely love fumbling around with it at the market, while waiting for the train, or even with my students on the weekends. I would say that I am definitely to the point where I could survive in Vietnam with my language skills, but am not any further past that point. I have also managed to accidentally learn a couple of really bad words in Vietnamese-- the hazards of a tonal language.. one innocent word can become something really really bad with at the drop of a tongue... but luckily my most egregious mistakes have been met with plenty of laughter. I've been told that I'm almost to the "plateau" point that many people who living in foreign countries for short amounts of time reach in terms of their language skills, and it is certainly frustrating to simply not be able to say what it is I'm trying to say, but I'm enjoying the frustrations right along with the triumphs, and definitely cultivating a greater sense of empathy and admiration for my students in their English-learning processes.
Essentially, my experience thus far has been one of surprises, frustrations, joys, challenges, laughter, a few tears, and general thanksgiving for being given such an opportunity. Some days are breathtakingly fabulous, other days are really hard and infuriating, while many others are just normal routine days, but I do give thanks each and every day for my wonderful life and for the people in it-- my students and friends here, and you all back home-- whose friendship, love, and support sustains me during the good, and not so good days.
Okay, I've got another busy day ahead of me tomorrow, so I'm off to bed-- until next time (which will be soon, I promise!) stay well and enjoy this season of Advent.
Lots of love,
Hayley
P.S. Here are the stable links to the pictures I have taken since being in Thanh Hoa... in order from earliest to latest--enjoy!:
1. http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2034251&id=44701566&l=ce2948dfcb
2. http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2034732&id=44701566&l=1150c40eff
3. http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2035308&id=44701566&l=91355a2b18
4. http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2035811&id=44701566&l=442ab9172b
5. http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2035735&id=44701566&l=d4373c53d3
It has been (way) too long since I've last posted, and I am so sorry for my relative negligence of this blog. Work and life is crazy over here and in addition to all of my teaching and traveling adventures, I've also been dealing with a really touch-and-go internet situation for the past couple of weeks which made even checking my email tough. Luckily, the internet gods have given me a slight reprieve so I'm taking a break from writing comments on tests to put pictures on facebook (which is a task in and of itself with the new government block of the site... I've also become tech savvy since I've been here... okay, okay, I'm still pathetic at all things computer related-- I just have friends here that are tech savvy)and update this long-forgotten blog. Seeing as it has been almost 2 months since I last wrote, this post will really just be a sort of "get reacquainted" update with a few reflections on my time since you last heard from me.
As I alluded to earlier, time is flying for me here in Thanh Hoa. In fact, I'm actually fairly certain that we skipped November over here. In all seriousness, though, I really don't know where the time is going. When I sat down to write this blog, I looked back at my last post and thought "hmm... October 18th... well, that's not such a horrible gap since I last wrote, right?" Then I looked and noticed that it was December 6th, which absolutely blew my mind. As is true for most experiences abroad or in a new place, time has been progressively moving faster. Gone are the days of September and October when on certain (though certainly not all) days (particularly those when I had the swine flu...) I was totally and completely intimidated by the idea that I was somehow going to have to make time pass all the way until next June. Beginning in mid-October, really, I finally got my work assignment squared away with my university administration, was able to fall asleep easily on my bed, speak enough Vietnamese to purchase a train ticket and feel comfortable in the market, and really get into the groove of life over here. These days, as I look ahead to my remaining 6 months, I still feel sad that I am currently missing Lessons and Carols on the Mountain, or slightly weirded out that I will still be in Vietnam during all of Lent and the 50 days of Easter, but I am just as equally certain that I probably won't have enough time to visit all of the places on my "Vietnam Bucket List," that June will be here before I know it, and that my experience is so incredible that I am planning on continuing to live in the moment as time flied by me as I have been doing for the past month and a half... hopefully I'll also remember to update my blog a bit more...
I also suppose that now is probably an appropriate time to answer a question that many of you have been asking me in your emails and messages (thanks for those, by the way- I love hearing from you!): How is teaching?
Teaching is wonderful. Before I was comfortable anywhere or doing anything else in Thanh Hoa, I was comfortable teaching and getting to know my students and I look forward to being with them each and every day (which is saying a lot because my teaching day begins Monday thru Friday at 7:00am.) My class of 26 students was at a very, very beginning level when I met them for the first time. I had one-on-one meetings with each of the students just to assess the class's general level and a good half of them could only say "hello" and "my family has 5 people...mother, father, brother, sister, me"... which was a little scary and forced me to readjust my mindset and expectations-- I was really unaware of the English instruction that most Vietnamese students receive in high school and college-- very written grammar intensive with little to no listening or speaking practice. All of my students were so welcoming, friendly, and hard-working, and I fell in love with all of them immediately. (Yes, on occasion I also get so frustrated with them that I want to scream, but those moments are rare and fleeting... teaching is hard... but ultimately as I said before, teaching is wonderful.) Due to some complicated, bureaucratic issues that it would be unwise for me to go into now, I did not have a syllabus or any course materials when I began teaching, which was wildly frustrating at the outset, but ultimately a blessing because I eventually talked my administration into letting me choose a text and write my own curriculum that allowed for the class to move at a reasonable pace. My students, as I said before, have worked really hard, and we have had a lot of fun together, and I have seen immense and beautiful improvements in all of them in just the few months that we have been together. Last Friday I gave a speaking test, which involves each of the students coming into my office and answering a few questions I pose to them, and all of them were able to at least answer a bit of the questions-- some of them did an incredible job-- which was such a change from our first meetings together. While more administrative "drama" has crept up in recent weeks and I am not sure what or who exactly I'll be teaching after the new year, I hope that it will be this current group and that I will continue to get to watch them improve by leaps and bounds.
I have also loved learning from my students. I'm actually halfway through a forgotten draft of a post about a particularly poignant learning moment that I had earlier this semester that serves as my favorite example of learning from my students, so be on the look-out for that sometime soon. I think that what my students have taught (and continue to teach) me the most is flexibility... which is something (my mom will back me up on this) I have definitely always needed more of. About a month ago I had a class period that was just an absolute bust. I think it was a Monday morning, the students were tired, it was rainy outside, and I did a really crummy job of presenting the material (which was a hard unit, to top it all off)... all of those factors combined to make it a pretty lousy hour and 45 minutes for all of us. I couldn't see why in the world they were having so much trouble with the material and didn't seem to care about my examples and by the end of the class, I was absolutely exhausted.. a rare feeling for me, as I usually finish class with more energy than I start with. I dismissed the class by telling them that that afternoon we would be having the lesson again if they wanted to join me (the afternoon sessions are optional extra-help times, since I am technically only allowed to teach a certain number of hours.) I went back to my room and stewed a bit over the failed class (it had seemed so perfect in my plans!) but then calmed down and forced myself to think about the material again. That afternoon I asked the students to walk me through the lesson and I played the role of a follower, explaining the material according to how they saw it, and they ended up doing a great job of grasping the lesson and moving forward to the next unit. That afternoon is still one of my favorite teaching experiences to look back on.
Those lessons in flexibility also come out of the classroom. My day today, for instance, is a great example of this... I spent a good part of the early morning and early afternoon yesterday with the students, playing football, eating, and chatting so I had planned to spend today sleeping in (which these days means sleeping until about 7:15am), doing tons of laundry (because I have to do my laundry by hand in a small plastic tub, I choose to put it off until I am out of underwear, which leads to hours of scrubbing roughly twice a month), cleaning my kitchen/bathroom, grading tests, writing this blog, and reading a book. The day started out as planned and I was elbow deep in laundry when my cell phone rang... I wiped my arms off and ran to pick it up. One of my students greeted my "hello" with, "hi Hayley, we are all waiting for you," to which I replied "well, hi Loan! waiting for what?" She said "you are coming to Trang's (another student in the class) home to meet her parents and cook lunch and visit today, remember?" Well, no.. I didn't remember being told this, and I told Loan that, and she said "I told you on Friday, at the end of the day... remember?" I certainly believe that Loan did tell me about this plan, but I also know that she probably told me right in the middle of my trying to usher a student who had suddenly started crying about a mistake she made on a test in the middle of a crowded hallway out of the crowds and into my office to talk about things--- not the best timing. Nevertheless, I didn't want to suddenly renege on my apparent "commitment" to this event because I knew that Trang's parents, who are both farmers in a rural area just outside of the city, had probably planned to make this occasion special, so I told Loan to give me 10 minutes to get ready. I hung up the phone and felt like I wanted to scream because I could see my day's plans completely unraveling-- visits to parents take lots of time here, and I was standing in the middle of lots of wet clothes and bedding and really wanted nothing more than to just do my "own thing" today. After lots of grumbling (literally), I rinsed out my clothes as best as possible, threw on a pair of jeans, and walked out the door, still steaming a little bit. When I got downstairs and met the students, I couldn't help but smile at their excitement about my joining them, and as I rode on the back of Duong(another student's) motorbike to Trang's house, looking out at the rice fields, and enjoying the cool breeze on my face, I was able to begin to laugh at myself for getting so frustrated. Soon, I was helping to cook prawns and use chopsticks to turn home-made spring rolls in the frying pan-- I actually have a really lovely blister on my pinky finger from some large droplet of rogue oil-- and by the time we sat down to our enormous lunch (all of which was grown or raised on Trang's family's property)and I talked with her parents, I was really kicking myself for having gotten upset over being asked to come at the last minute. I had a great time, and made it back with plenty of time to finish laundry and clean my kitchen/bathroom area and having learned yet another lesson in flexibility and patience.
I am also really enjoying learning Vietnamese. While I would still call my language skills pathetic, my teacher has bumped me up from saying "Em noi tieng Viet khong tot" (I don't speak Vietnamese well at all) to "Em noi tieng Viet mot it" (I speak a little Vietnamese)-- which I viewed as a huge accomplishment. Recently, in fact, a fellow Fulbrighter and friend, Sofia, and I traveled to Ninh Binh for a weekend and upon learning that we could speak a little bit of Vietnamese, the staff of the hostel where we were staying decided to only speak to us in Vietnamese (their English was much better than our Vietnamese, mind you), which meant that getting things done took about 3x as long, but we all had a great time. Because my job is to teach English, I really don't have much time to practice Vietnamese, but I absolutely love fumbling around with it at the market, while waiting for the train, or even with my students on the weekends. I would say that I am definitely to the point where I could survive in Vietnam with my language skills, but am not any further past that point. I have also managed to accidentally learn a couple of really bad words in Vietnamese-- the hazards of a tonal language.. one innocent word can become something really really bad with at the drop of a tongue... but luckily my most egregious mistakes have been met with plenty of laughter. I've been told that I'm almost to the "plateau" point that many people who living in foreign countries for short amounts of time reach in terms of their language skills, and it is certainly frustrating to simply not be able to say what it is I'm trying to say, but I'm enjoying the frustrations right along with the triumphs, and definitely cultivating a greater sense of empathy and admiration for my students in their English-learning processes.
Essentially, my experience thus far has been one of surprises, frustrations, joys, challenges, laughter, a few tears, and general thanksgiving for being given such an opportunity. Some days are breathtakingly fabulous, other days are really hard and infuriating, while many others are just normal routine days, but I do give thanks each and every day for my wonderful life and for the people in it-- my students and friends here, and you all back home-- whose friendship, love, and support sustains me during the good, and not so good days.
Okay, I've got another busy day ahead of me tomorrow, so I'm off to bed-- until next time (which will be soon, I promise!) stay well and enjoy this season of Advent.
Lots of love,
Hayley
P.S. Here are the stable links to the pictures I have taken since being in Thanh Hoa... in order from earliest to latest--enjoy!:
1. http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2034251&id=44701566&l=ce2948dfcb
2. http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2034732&id=44701566&l=1150c40eff
3. http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2035308&id=44701566&l=91355a2b18
4. http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2035811&id=44701566&l=442ab9172b
5. http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2035735&id=44701566&l=d4373c53d3
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