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

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

My Bicycle

Standing in between my bed and my desk in my room is my bicycle for the duration of my stay in Thanh Hoa. The epitome of a “leisure bike” with and navy blue colored frame, medium-width tires, a low seat, high handlebars, and, of course, a big basket, my bike is perfect for short trips around the town and for carrying items purchased from stores located a few kilometers away. The day after I arrived in Thanh Hoa, I was taken by motorbike (a very scary experience at the time) to purchase my bike, which the university had promised to provide me. Their budget only allowed them to purchase a used bike, so when we arrived at the store, owned by a friend of my boss, we walked to the back room to look at the selection of older bikes. Like practically all stores here in Thanh Hoa, the bicycle shop also served as the family home, with the downstairs devoted to selling bikes, but also containing the kitchen and living area with a couch and small TV. I smiled at members of the family as I walked to the back area that had been converted to a repair area and holding location for the older bikes. My boss, Dr. Hai, seriously tried to convince me to choose an incredible hot pink leisure/mountain bike hybrid but just as I was getting used to (and actually rather excited about) the idea of riding around on such a contraption for a year, he told me that “actually, it will fall apart soon… not good.” I quickly began to look elsewhere and was soon directed to the bike that would become the one sitting next to me right now.
I have had to get used to my knees practically hitting my elbows while riding and to the extremely hard seat that makes long trips really quite uncomfortable, but all in all, it has been really great having a way to get myself into the city center without walking or relying on someone to take me on a motorbike. Those trips into the city center are always eventful, usually harrowing, and definitely enjoyable as I tend to cause a scene wherever I go around here as the only Western female in the entire province and the only person who wears a helmet to ride a bicycle around here. Helmets have recently become mandatory for all adult motorbike drivers and passengers (children do not wear helmets, which is absolutely gut-wrenching) but are not required of bicycle riders, despite the fact that they share the road with the motorbikes, cars, and (in provinces like Thanh Hoa) horses pulling trailers of wood, steel poles, and other various cargo. I have a very strong attachment to bicycle helmets, however, so I wear my motorbike helmet whenever I go for a ride, which tends to provoke a lot of laughter (though I’m not sure that would go away were I to stop wearing the helmet.) I set out on my rides pedaling hard and weaving into the unpredictable mess of vehicles, people, and animals that I described earlier, making sure to keep eye contact with as many people around me as possible and to not make any sudden stops or shifts in direction. Once I make it onto the main road of traffic, I continue to pedal hard, smiling at the people that I pass and waving at the various shopkeepers along the road while keeping my eye on the drivers and riders around me.
The streets of Vietnam really provide a great portrait of the country’s entire development story—bicycles carrying produce, plastic toys, or flowers, cars laden with people, motorbikes crammed with 3-4 riders or toting live pigs, chickens, or a television, and animal-drawn trailers (with the occasional roaming cow or water buffalo thrown in the mix) weave around each other in an increasingly uncomfortable equilibrium and dance. No vehicle wants to tell the other that they don’t belong on the roads, nor are they certain of their own “place” on the road. Perhaps my metaphor is a bit confusing, but I have also talked to some Vietnamese individuals who have told me that in their opinion, in order for Vietnam to achieve many of its development goals, it will have to address corruption, the education system, and the traffic situation… all that is to say that I have plenty of thoughts to keep me busy as I pedal around here.
While most of my trips have been to the shops in the city center (primarily in search of the soft cheese I told you about earlier that appears on the shelves only every couple of weeks) a few weekends ago, Elliot and I decided to take a day trip to Sam Son Beach, located about 12km away from Thanh Hoa. While our students thought that the idea of biking such a distance down the road to Sam Son was completely ludicrous, Elliot and I were excited to get some fresh air after a week of being trapped inside either our rooms or our classrooms due to the rain and winds of the latest tropical storm to hit the area (I will be glad when this storm season is over, which I hear will happen in about a month.) We each took a bottle of water and our cameras and hit the road sometime before lunch on a relatively sunny Sunday. We weren’t in a hurry and our bikes wouldn’t have let us ride quickly even if we had wanted to, so it took us about 40 minutes of weaving around other bikes, cows, and motorbikes along a road surrounded on both sides with endless rice fields ready for the harvest to make it to Sam Son. Sam Son is a resort town that caters itself to Vietnamese, rather than Western, tourists and visitors, so while there are plenty of tall hotels in the small town, it is not a “resort” area in the way that you might typically imagine one to be. Elliot and I were there on a particularly interesting day, because there was literally no one around; the storms had made the beach muddy, the water cold, and had therefore driven away any visitors from the area. We rode onto the main street and soon found a place to lock our bikes near the beach, happy to get off of the painful bike seats. We walked around on the beach for a short time, sticking our feet in the Gulf of Tonkin and taking a few pictures before deciding quickly that since the water was so cold, it was time for lunch. We walked back to the road and picked a restaurant out at random (all of the owners were calling for us to eat at their places as it looked as though we might be the only customers in the town for the day), sat down, and asked for a menu. The menu we received was only in Vietnamese and had no prices on it, so Elliot and I put our very limited Vietnamese skills together and managed to order a fried shrimp dish, two steamed and marinated crabs, some stir fried water spinach, and two beers. The man taking our order then smiled, grabbed his helmet and took off down our motorbike. Elliot wondered out loud what in the world was going on, and I (half-jokingly) replied “Well, he probably went to go get our lunch.” Sure enough, 5 minutes later, our friend returned and had two live crabs with him on his motorbike that promptly went into a boiling pot of water… they came out with a thick brown sauce on them, and were absolutely delicious… talk about fresh seafood. The somewhat breaded and pan fried shrimp were also quite good, and the beer was quite refreshing after the bike ride. We devoured our meal and then sat and talked for a bit before walking back to our bikes and taking off down the road for a bit more sightseeing. We found a side road that ran parallel to the road we rode in on from Thanh Hoa and decided to take it as far as we could before getting back onto the busier road. Soon we were biking through a quiet countryside village, waving hello to the children who ran next to our bikes as we rode along, and attempting to take pictures with one hand while controlling the bike with the other. Soon, however, we ran into some flooding from the storm and our bike wheels were soon halfway underwater. We pedaled our way out of the acute flooded areas and found a perpendicular road to take us back to the main drag. With about 6km remaining in the ride, we were both extremely thirsty so we stopped at a roadside shop and bought a couple of bottles of water. The family who ran the shop quickly pulled up plastic chairs for us to sit down on and we began conversing with them in our very best bad Vietnamese (Elliot is actually much better than I am, having grown up in Japan and therefore having the advantage of being bilingual and thus better able to pick up languages naturally… or at least that’s what I tell myself). They kept remarking at how tall we both were, and wanted to compare their heights with ours. We happily obliged, exchanged a few more conversational sentences, and then continued on our way. With about 1km left to go, however, my bike began to show its age and I noticed that my pedal was loosening from the frame of the bike. I tried to pedal more carefully, but it kept getting more wobbly until finally the outside bolt flew off and into the road, never to be seen again, and I yelled out “Elliot, I’m going down!” Luckily, I didn’t actually end up on the ground, but managed to pull off to the side of the road and quickly stand up before any more of the bike flew into the wind. I shoved the metal bar onto the frame as best as I could and Elliot and I rode very slowly back to campus. It was no fun being unable to ride my bike for a week or so, but finally on Saturday, two of my students and friends, Kien and Đong, met me at my room at 8:00am (late in the morning by Vietnamese standards… they were surprised when I told them that I would still be asleep at 7:30) and they carried my bike down the stairs and over to a nearby shop. They told me that the bike would take a matter of minutes to fix, but in the meantime we should go sit somewhere else out of the way. We walked over to a coffee shop on the street and ended up sitting and talking for about 2 hours about life in Vietnam, our families, American and Vietnamese traditions, and lots of other subjects- it was a great opportunity for them to practice their English, and I loved being able to learn more about Vietnam and share different elements of my culture and background with them. Like all of my students and friends around here, Kien and Đong are absolutely wonderful, unbelievably kind and giving, and so much fun to be around. Around 10:30 or so we paid for our coffee and went back over to check on my bike. It was so nice to see it back in working order (I took it for a test drive into the city center today, and it was great!) and I was shocked when I found out that my repairs cost 5,000VND… the exchange rate here is 17,800VND to the USD, so the big fix cost me about $0.28, which actually makes me feel kind of guilty. The boys assured me that I should not pay any more, though, and we went on our way.
Like I said, my bike is back in good shape now and I’m ready to hit the road for more biking adventures. My blood pressure still spikes whenever I think about the crazy traffic I have to navigate (and I live in a rural province… this is nothing compared to Hanoi!) but I’m sure that I will continue to feel more comfortable (while still being ever-watchful and careful!) in the madness as my time here continues.
I hope that you are enjoying the beginning of fall over there- continue to stay well and stay in touch. You are all in my thoughts and prayers.

Love,

Hayley

My Address

Hi Friends!

A longer note is coming (hopefully) soon, but I just wanted to write you a quick note about my address here in Thanh Hoa so that if you've got a spare minute and feel like spending it writing a quick note to a girl in Vietnam, you can make that happen!(Also-- if you write a note to me, I'll definitely write you back!!)

My address is:

Hayley Robb
c/o International Education Center
307 Le Lai Street
Dong Son Ward, Thanh Hoa City
Vietnam

I do have a quick disclaimer about sending me notes and things, however:

The postal system in Vietnam is really rather horrible, and there is an unfortunately good chance that I may never see the letter, or that you might not get my return letter-- Many of my friends have been fairly lucky in terms of receiving mail, so I'm hopeful as well.

Secondly, if you want to send me a "care package" as some of you have mentioned, you'll need to be careful when filling out the customs forms at the post office that are required to ship anything into the country. I have to pay an import tax on packages I receive based upon the value assigned to the items in the box and the dollar goes a long way here so the advice we've been given is to have you all way undervalue the items on the list that you write (you can buy shoes here for the equivalent of $2-3 USD, so if you send me a shirt and say that it is worth $10 USD, thinking that is cheap, I'll be paying a lot in taxes) There are also other "fees" associated sometimes... we're not sure where those go, but like I said, they sometimes appear and sometimes don't. Finally, there is apparently a "purpose" or "condition...i.e. new, used, etc." section for each item (I haven't actually seen the forms, so I'm sorry that this isn't more helpful) either leave it blank, or just put "personal use."

Really, while care packages are amazing, I'm totally thrilled just to get letters from you all, which do not have to be accompanied with forms, etc. if you feel like staying in touch with me via the "snail mail" route... I also love emails, short or long and about any subject whatsoever... basically, I love you all and hope that we'll remain in touch during the rest of my time here.

Well, it's back to work, but like I said, I'll be in touch again soon. Stay well and warm (I'm definitely doing the latter... and the former too!)

Much Love,

H

The Mid-Autumn Festival

As many of you are already aware, a two calendar system exists in Vietnam. Culturally, the lunar calendar is followed while for all political, business, and educational affairs here, Vietnam follows the Gregorian calendar that is so familiar to all of us in the States. For the most part, this bit of information, at least to me in terms of my everyday activities here, is just that: a bit of information that explains the small numbers in the bottom right hand corners of all of the calendars here, but doesn’t really occupy my thoughts all that often. Yesterday, however, was different. The fact that yesterday was the third of October (and only the 3rd of October) to most of the rest of the world did not matter so much as the fact that in the lunar calendar, yesterday was the 15th of August and, therefore, the day of the Mid-Autumn Festival. This festival, known in Vietnamese as TÕt-Trung-Thu, is one of the most popular festival days in Vietnam and celebrated each year on the 15th day of the 8th lunar month. Similar (as are many cultural traditions in a country occupied by China for almost 1,000 years) to the Chinese mid-Autumn festival that is celebrated on the same day, the festival in Vietnam celebrates family, the moon, and most especially children and is sometimes called the Children’s Festival day. On this day, children receive gifts from their parents (often plastic toys and lanterns that sing and light up and are used in the nighttime parades) and sing traditional songs. Students and adult children often return home to their families, which gather to celebrate the harvest with a nice meal before attending the nighttime festivities, which include songs, games, and competitions for children and parades behind large star floats throughout the streets. I was asked by my students what families did on the mid-Autumn festival day in the U.S. and they were shocked to hear that we had no such thing. I told some of them that the closest thing to the festival in the States is Thanksgiving where families gather together to give thanks and eat large meals, and they agreed that the days were somewhat similar in those regards. They then asked me: what kinds of gifts do you give on that day and what competitions do you have? Again, they were surprised to hear that Thanksgiving in the U.S. really was just a day for eating and maybe watching American football on T.V. Needless to say, they were almost as excited as I was to see this extremely special day in the life of the country.
On Tuesday of this past week, Elliot (my fellow American English teacher here in Thanh Hoa--- Elliot graduated in May from GWU and is teaching here through the Volunteers in Asia Program… it has been really nice to have one other American around to talk to, vent with, bounce teaching ideas off, and sometimes just share a beer and talk about politics or books with on the outside balcony/hallway of our dormitory building.) and I were told by members of the IEC staff that we were going to be responsible for organizing a game or activity for the children of the staff of HDU on the evening of the mid-Autumn festival. After throwing a few ideas out that were rejected as either being too boring or too complicated (middle ground is sometimes hard to find here in all arenas) Elliot and I finally settled with the staff on teaching the children “Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes” and were told to arrive to the front area of the university at 6:55pm sharp.
Yesterday morning was actually very uneventful for me. As is the case for most holidays in Vietnam, I’ve come to learn, celebratory days, particularly this day, are days spent with families so, being somewhat family-less here, I was on my own for the good part of the day. Actually, this trend is seen even on the weekends here in Thanh Hoa. Many students do not stick around on the weekends but rather return to their homes (some of which are within 5km) to be with their families so the college culture that I was so used to at a place like Sewanee is relatively non-existent here and any social activities that I take part in with my students and friends here (remind me to tell you sometime about a particularly hilarious Karaoke night) take place on the weekdays and my weekends are really quiet. My weekdays are long and busy, however, so I do not mind the opportunity to “sleep in” (until about 7:30, which is 2 hours later than I normally wake up M-F to be in the academic building before, and ready to teach at 7:00am sharp), tidy my room, go to the market to buy, clean out, and cook my weekly chicken, read whatever English novel I happen to be enjoying at the time and, of course, plan for my lessons and clubs. (I’m really very cool when left to my own devices, can’t you tell?)
All that is to say, yesterday didn’t feel terribly special until it began to get dark in the evening. I was invited to eat my mid-Autumn dinner with Chinh, who had gone home but returned early, bringing with her chicken and vegetables from her home that I was eager to enjoy with her. We ate dinner and chatted about the graduate school applications I’m helping her get together and then met up with Elliot to walk over to the university’s front gates. We arrived on time and found… the beginnings of the set-up process underway. Chinh told us that from the looks of it, things wouldn’t actually get started for another hour or so, which was not terribly surprising, but frustrating since we had been told by our boss to be there “on time” and we had plans to go with Chinh to the center of Thanh Hoa to watch the main festivities after our quick activity at 7:00. We called our boss who told us that we should just wait there for him. We found a spare bench and listened to the music playing around us from the large speaker system that had already been set up. All of the songs playing were lovely Vietnamese tunes that Chinh explained to us a bit until suddenly and randomly “Oh Susanna!,” sung by high-pitched Vietnamese singers in English, came through the speakers. Elliot and I were beside ourselves with laughter, and I danced around singing “I come from Alabama with a banjo on my knee.” Brief, random, and often silly reminders of the wide reach of American culture actually happen quite a lot, but I never fail to be amazed, or amused at this reality, as I was last night.
We ended up waiting for about 45min for our boss to arrive and he showed up just about the time that everyone else (who apparently knew the “real” start time) did. Elliot and I were not thrilled at this point, less at the fact that the event began late than at the earlier insistence that we arrive “on time” but we soon began to enjoy watching the crowd gathering around us. Children, dressed in their best clothes, walked around us, singing and carrying lanterns as their parents watched, and soon everyone was corralled into one area and the event began. Students from the university sang traditional songs, and then selected a few young children to sing the songs in front of everyone else, which was absolutely precious to watch. I fell in love with a little boy that was probably 2 years old and walked around the center area freely, bobbing to the music and trying to steal the candles and fruit off of the center table. After about 15 minutes, it was Elliot’s and my turn to put on our “show” and we walked out into the center area and smiled at the crowd, most of whom were laughing at us… something I’ve gotten very used to here. (Generally, I don’t get any “cat calls” from men, but rather everyone tends to look at me, smile or laugh, and sometimes yell “Hello!” back at me after walking past me a little ways.) Elliot and I began teaching the children (with the help of Chinh, who became our de facto translator) the parts of the body in English that were necessary to sing the song. Finally, we demonstrated the song to the delight of the entire crowd, who greatly enjoyed the sight of two tall (Elliot is about 6’3”) Americans touching their knees and toes in quick succession. After a little encouragement, the children also began singing the song, and a few tries later, everyone was singing and motioning along--- not bad for having learned the English word for “shoulder” 5 minutes earlier! Elliot and I then smiled, thanked everyone, and turned to leave, when we were told that it was necessary for the activity to become a competition, so we had to watch the children sing the song and choose the best one. So, laughing to ourselves, we chose a winner and then turned once again to leave when we were asked by the persons in charge what our gift to the winner was… Considering the fact that we had learned that our activity would be a competition roughly 45 seconds earlier, Elliot and I were at a loss for words, or a gift. After a few awkward moments, one of the organizers produced a bag of candy from their supply of prizes and we handed it to the little girl, and quickly moved out of the “stage” area, laughing at what had just happened.
Worried that we had missed the main activities in town after our delay at the university, Elliot, Chinh, and I quickly found a taxi and went downtown. Major traffic jams met us in the city center and we decided to get out and walk to find a parade. This was an adventure in and of itself as we began weaving through the sea of motorbikes, cars, and bicycles, hoping that our toes would survive the evening uncrushed. Soon we found one of the many “parades,” a pedaled pushcart that carried a 10 ft tall wire-frame and paper star with a light in the middle that was being pedaled by young men and carried probably 15 adults and small children. We began walking next to it and looking up at the beautiful decorations on the start and were immediately welcomed into the group that had created the star and float. Soon, I was holding the hands of many of the women walking around the float who chatted at me while I tried to eek out a few sentences in rough Vietnamese and Chinh did her best to translate. After walking a little ways, Elliot and I were guided over to the back of the float and invited to pilot (pedal) it down the street. I hopped on the bicycle seat and they had Elliot sit on the flat wire area directly behind the seat; I then put my feet to the inside of the pedals and Elliot put his on the outside and we quickly coordinated our pedaling and were on our way, to the thrill of the children and adults on the float and in the crowd walking with us. It was a very hot and humid night last night and before too long I was pretty tired, but we kept pedaling for a good ways through the busy streets. Chinh told me that parades were different than those in the States simply because the different floats went any which way they could and because the streets were not cleared of traffic… the only concession the traffic seemed to offer us, in fact, was not literally running us over, but rather squeezing around us as quickly as possible. After a lot of pedaling, Elliot and I hopped off, drenched in sweat, and joined the walkers around “our” float; soon Chinh told us that we had been invited to celebrate with the families that had created the float and we readily accepted. A few minutes later we maneuvered the float from one side of the street to the other (an adventure in and of itself, and accomplished in part simply by staring the drivers down and putting our hands on their hoods to stop them from coming any further--- oh how much my life has changed since the days of crossing University Avenue!) and began walking down a dark alleyway, the music from our portable speakers still booming. Many of the women grabbed my arms and hands as we walked, and soon we turned a corner and I saw a line of plastic tables and chairs, covered in moon cakes (sticky rice with orange peel, lotus leaf, pieces of dried meat, and a whole bunch of other sweet and salty things in the middle), fruit, candy, and tons of orange soda with even more people waiting to greet our party. We were ushered to the tables where we sat with the children and adults, drinking our orange soda (in between toasting with almost everyone who wanted to welcome us and say hello) and eating the candy, fruit, and mooncakes. Soon, the leader of the even stood up and welcomed everyone (once again, Chinh was our wonderful translator) and the party continued as people crowded around Elliot and me, taking pictures with their camera phones and shaking our hands. I have never felt so welcome at a party in my entire life, particularly one that we literally stumbled upon as we walked down the streets. After eating and smiling for a bit, Elliot and I were asked to address the crowd. I agreed to do it, was handed the microphone, and spoke a little to the crowd, saying hello, that it was so nice to meet them, and then thanked them all very much, in my very best bad Vietnamese. They all reacted happily to what I said, so I know that I at least got the most important words right! Chinh then told me that they wanted Elliot and me to sing a song, preferably hip-hop. Elliot came to the front area where I stood, and after quickly deciding that our trying to sing hip-hop would probably be the biggest bust ever, we ended up singing “For He’s A Jolly Good Fellow” which was met with plenty of applause and laughter. At that point, we realized that we had to get back to the university because the gates close at 10:30 for curfew and we began saying our goodbyes, which mostly involved smiling for more pictures. At one point, I was tapped on the shoulder and when I turned around, I was immediately handed a roughly 9 month old darling baby so that I could take a picture with him. We finally made our way back to the main street and caught a taxi which got us back in to Hong Duc before the gate closed. We all immediately walked back to our dorm, said our goodbyes, and Elliot and I thanked Chinh for helping us to have such a great night, and then I immediately went to sleep, smiling at the wonderful events of my very first mid Autumn festival and hoping that I too could learn to be as welcoming to strangers as our new friends were to us.
Well, I think that’s all for now- I’m off to continue my Sunday afternoon of lesson planning and relaxing before another busy week begins tomorrow morning, bright and early. I hope that you all are well and enjoying your own mid-Autumns back home or wherever you may be right now. I’ll be in touch again soon.

My Weekend Getaway

Hi All!

This blog update is coming a few days later than I promised, and I apologize! I was actually in the middle of writing another post on Friday afternoon during a slow time in office hours when some of my students came into my office and announced that we were going to play football (soccer) in 15 minutes. When I arrived in Thanh Hoa and learned that many students here enjoying playing football, I told them that I also loved kicking the ball around, which was met with lots of laughter and responses such as “but women here do not play football…” That is not entirely true; in some areas of Vietnam, women do play soccer, but in areas such as Thanh Hoa, only young girls play and once they become teenagers, it is less socially acceptable for them to run around and get dirty playing such sports. Taking advantage of an opportunity to promote the Fulbright’s mission, cultural exchange, I proceeded to talk to my students about the fact that in the United States, women of all ages were welcome to play football, whenever, wherever, and with whomever. This explanation was met with surprise and a bit of laughter, but led to my male students repeatedly asking me if I wanted to play soccer “some time in the future.” I would always say, “yes, absolutely… when?” and they would respond by saying something along the lines of “well, women do not usually play… we will see… maybe in some days.” Therefore, when the invitation to play finally came, I immediately seized it, closed down Microsoft Word (without saving my blog post, naturally) and ran out the door to change my clothes. Word spread quickly that I was going to attempt to play soccer and when I arrived at the field, located about a kilometer away from the university, a healthy crowd of students were there, laughing and cheering. I joined one of the teams as an “extra man” because they thought that I would be a non-issue, and immediately set out to prove to them that I wasn’t crazy for wanting to join in the match. My teammates did not pass me the ball at all initially, so I soon realized that I would have to start chasing down loose balls if I was going to have any part in the action of the game. My opportunity came about 5 minutes into the game when I chased down a stray ball and ended up colliding with a member of the other team… he ended up on the ground, and I jogged over, picked up the ball that had gone out of bounds just past the end line for a corner kick for my team, and kicked a corner kick to the head of one of my team members--- he almost scored--- from that moment, my team started passing me the ball, and a defender from the other team was assigned to mark me and we ended up having a wonderfully fun match that ended in a tie. After the game was over, I received an open invitation to play football any time that I was free, and I happily accepted.

I do want to tell you more about my other responsibilities and activities here in Thanh Hoa, but I first want to talk about my past weekend. A couple of days after I moved into my dorm room, I met a woman named Chinh who quickly became one of my good friends here. Chinh is a students in the project that I am a part of (and will tell you more about later…) but is not one of the students that I have in class every day. Her English is quite good, and it has been so nice to have another girl around to talk with about life, family, friends, boyfriends, future plans, etc. etc. over meals and during walks around the campus. Last week, Chinh invited me to spend the weekend with her at her family’s house in the countryside, I immediately accepted, and on Saturday morning at 8:00am she and I took off on her motorbike.

The drive to Chinh’s village took about an hour and a half which is a short time in a car, but quite a long time to be sitting in the hot sun on the back of a motorbike and by the time we arrived at Chinh’s home, I was rather sweaty, and quite ready to be off of the bike. That is not to say that the ride was not fun—on the contrary, I had a wonderful time looking out at the many sights to see along the road, from the motorbike drivers laden with assortments of cargos to seemingly endless green rice fields, to the lakes that dot the entire country. I thought of you all and tried to take lots of pictures to show you—they should be going up on facebook soon.

We arrived at Chinh’s house a little before 10am and I hopped off the bike eager to meet her family and see her home. Chinh’s home was absolutely lovely and consists of a few parts. The first was the main family room/house where meals, sleeping, and visiting take place. The main room has doors all along one side that are primarily left open to help move the air and contains two beds in the corners, a small coffee table in the middle with two wooden benches on either side, an altar area that serves as the area to give gifts and burn incense to and for the family’s ancestors, and a small open floor space where bamboo mats are placed during meal times. There was also another room off to the side of this main room that contains only a bed for Chinh’s parents. Chinh has two younger siblings, Loan (M-22) and Chinh (F-24… the names look the same here, but the Chinh that I know best has a toned accent on her name, which, as I’ve learned in my Vietnamese lesson completely changes the sound to a native speaker, and therefore makes their names not really all that similar) and when they were at home, they slept in the beds in the living area. Outside of the family room there was a small concrete building that served as a bath house and had a sink and a spout closer to the ground. When it was my turn to take a bath that night, I went into the bath house, filled a basin that I was given with water, and then used another bucket to pour the water on my body and hair. The cool water felt so good after a day of sitting in the sticky heat of Vietnam and I think that I could definitely get used to cold baths were I to live in such weather conditions permanently! Next to the bath house was another water spigot that was used to wash the dishes and collect water for cooking. Behind this spigot was the kitchen building that contained a gas and a wood stove as well as the dishes used to cook and serve the food. There was also a toilet room located a small distance away from the other areas which contained a “squat toilet” which is very common in Vietnam (typically most restrooms here (including the one in my teaching building have “Western” and “squat” toilets.) Finally, there was a building that the family used to raise chickens, which ran relatively freely around the property. We ate a couple of the chickens throughout the weekend, and when it was time to have another, Chinh’s mother would simply grab the closest one to her, bleed it from the neck, and then pluck and cut it up. Here, they use and eat every part of the chicken, and we even used the blood to sauté the intestines, liver, and kidneys for lunch one day…delicious. In addition to the chickens, the family has a couple of dogs, 3 adult cats, and a couple of new litters of tiny kittens. They were about 3-4 weeks old and absolutely precious… I couldn’t stop staring at them, which made their mothers a little nervous. Chinh was surprised when I told her that I had only one cat at home and that she had had a surgery to make it impossible for her to have babies.. “why?” she asked… I told her that my parents didn’t like cats enough to take care of more than one, which is…well, very true. The animals provided most of the outside noise for the weekend, which was such a nice shift even from Thanh Hoa, which is a rather quiet city, but still has plenty of traffic noises throughout the day and night.

Chinh’s family was also just wonderful. Her father is a rather tall man who works in the local office of the provincial government and her mother is a farmer who grows rice and, as I said before, raises chickens. I did not get to meet Chinh’s brother, who is currently in Hanoi studying to be a police officer, but Chinh, Chinh’s younger sister, and her soon to be husband also came into town for a visit. (The concept of a fiancée is not a familiar one here…you are either in a relationship or married… but Chinh and her boyfriend are due to get married in either November or December of this year--- They met in January (!!) and Chinh (the younger) told me, in rather limited English, that “we meet, and then, in one week…we love!” with a huge smile on her face… I simply said “wow! Fast!” which was met with laughter by both of the Chinhs.) Chinh’s younger sister, like Chinh, is so sweet and was constantly trying to make sure that I was happy, which was easy, because I couldn’t stop smiling the entire weekend. I also met Chinh’s numerous aunts, uncles, cousins, and father’s parents when either they came by the home to see the family and meet me, or Chinh drove me to their homes. It seems that most of the townspeople are related to Chinh’s family in some way, because we made a lot of visits throughout the weekend, and we passed by a lot of houses that Chinh said belonged to her family. I particularly enjoyed the visit to Chinh’s grandparent’s home, located about a half a mile away from her house. Her grandparents are quite old but still work as rice farmers each day. The life of a farmer is hard in Vietnam, as it requires constant work and pays very little—her grandparents, she told me, eat only 2 meals per day to save money—but her grandparents built a lovely home for themselves that looked very much like Chinh’s house, but had a small man-made pond in the back with a beautiful hand-laid (by Chinh’s grandfather) wall on one side of it. There were plenty of fish swimming around in the pond that her grandparents eat on a regular basis.

Speaking of food… wow… this was a weekend devoted to eating! Chinh told me that weekends are a time in which activities revolve around cooking and eating, and I experienced this lifestyle in all of its glory for the two days that I was there. The first meal that I was there, lunch on Saturday, we cooked fish, chicken, fried pigeon (a delicacy here, so as the guest I was fed lots of it!.. it is actually quite good!) fried water spinach, and, of course, bowl after bowl of rice. All eyes were on me as the girl who occasionally spoke a fully correct sentence in Vietnamese and had hair and eyes that Chinh told me fascinated them, so my bowl was constantly being refilled with meat and rice, and I was totally stuffed by the end of the delicious meal. They were all surprised that I ate everything I was given because even the chicken and fish were cooked in a way that I was unfamiliar with, but I assured them that I was willing to try most anything. Luckily, I was not asked to eat the head of the chicken, because it is apparently a highly sought-after delicacy and will result in one becoming a successful leader so Chinh and her sister agreed to split it amongst themselves. I certainly hope one day to serve others through having a leadership role in whatever vocation I pursue, but I think I’ll risk it and not eat any chicken brains to get there! Dinner on Saturday night consisted of the leftovers from the lunch, which had been sitting out all afternoon and made me a little nervous in terms of getting sick, but I ate what I was given (and I was given a lot) and everything was fine!

The next morning, however, was the true culinary adventure of the weekend, as I woke up when Chinh did (we shared one of the beds, which was just a flat wooden surface.. not all that comfortable, but once you curl up the right way, you can sleep quite well) around 6:30 and we went out to start cooking breakfast, which her parents had already started. I grabbed my camera to take some pictures of the morning light and when I went outside, I saw Chinh and her father sitting on the ground with a bowl of snakes… yes snakes… in front of them. They were peeling the bones out of the freshly killed snakes and laughed when they saw my face (I hate snakes) and asked “will you eat snakes?” I swallowed hard, and said “absolutely!” and they smiled, and said “thank you… we are having rice soup with snake meat for breakfast and we worried you would not eat it.” As it turns out, rice soup with snake meat is really delicious, and I enjoyed my many bowls of it (Chinh’s mother, I think, put herself on “refill Hayley’s bowl any time she stops putting things in her mouth” duty for the weekend, which was so kindhearted and generous, but even Chinh thought it was hilariously excessive and tried to get her mother to stop when I got that “I’m going to literally pop” look on my face toward the end of each meal. After breakfast, we walked outside, and Chinh’s younger sister and boyfriend grabbed a bucket from inside the kitchen and walked outside. I followed them to see what was going on, and just as a stepped onto their level, Chinh accidentally dropped the bucket and about 15 still-live snakes fell out on the ground. Everyone started laughing and grabbing for the snakes in order to finish killing them for lunch, and though I did my best to be helpful in all tasks throughout the weekend, I must admit that I did not join in. Finally, the snakes were all corralled, killed, and turned into a few dishes that we ate for lunch with our rice: snake sausages, which were crushed up snakes with onions and spices and fried in a skillet (pretty good, but didn’t really enjoy the crunch of the bones as I ate them) and another dish of snake meat boiled in snake blood and then cooked with parts of the banana tree plant that I actually thought was quite good. Beyond the food being delicious, I loved mealtimes sitting cross-legged with my bowl and chopsticks with the family because it gave me the opportunity to watch them all interact through conversations, jokes, and laughter… I didn’t understand a word of what they said, but I knew what was going on and that I had joined, even for a short time, a loving family like my own, and it made me feel so safe and happy, and “at home” in a place very different from Huntsville, Alabama.

Before we left on Sunday, Chinh took me to see her village’s “town of dead people.” During my time here in Vietnam, I had seen areas in the countryside that had small buildings that looked like miniature houses or pagodas, and wondered what they were. As time went on, I started thinking that they were probably cemeteries, and I was hopeful that if they, in fact, were, that I would have the chance to learn more about them and perhaps see one up close. On our drive to her home, I saw one such sight and asked Chinh if it was a cemetery. She didn’t know what the word cemetery meant, but said that it was “the town of dead people” and told me that her village had its own “town” that I could see if I wanted. I eagerly accepted, and Chinh and I drove there in between breakfast and lunch on Sunday. Besides a cow grazing in the grass growing in the area, we were the only people visiting the cemetery that morning, but it was clear that many of the graves had frequent visitors by the sight of freshly burned incense that stood at the front of many of the gravesites. The graves were aligned from South to North, and I asked Chinh if this had any significance. She told me that it did not, and asked why I was curious about the directionality of the graves. I told her that in most cases in the U.S. bodies are buried facing eastward; she responded by saying “I guess in the United States people want the dead to see the sun rise…” I told her that she wasn’t too far off… She then told me that the towns of the dead typically face the road that they are closest to, but that there may be a deeper custom of which she was not aware. In the cemetery, each family has a burial area that is marked by stones and in most cases, there are miniature “houses” that serve as the markers of the bodies. Often there is also a gravestone or marker with the person’s name and date of birth and death. Chinh first took me to her father’s side of the family, and showed me that there were no houses or stones to mark the bodies, but only mounds of earth to show where the bodies were buried. This, Chinh told me, was because her family was very poor and could not afford to purchase homes. Throughout the weekend, Chinh told me of her plans to study abroad in order to get a good job upon her return to Vietnam so that she could support her family. The purchase of homes for her ancestors, she told me, was just one of the things she hoped to be able to do after she received her master’s degree. Chinh then took some time to pray to her ancestors, which, as I’ve written about before, is a practice of roughly 90% of the country. After visiting her father’s family, she took me to the gravesite of her mother’s side of the family. Her side, she told me, has lived in the town for a shorter period of time, and therefore only her grandmother is buried here. Rather than purchasing one of the typical houses that I saw throughout the area, Chinh’s grandfather built a cylindrical concrete home to mark his wife’s grave. Chinh told me that she did not know why her grandfather had chosen to build the home in such a way but that she had not asked him. Chinh also told me that many times in Vietnam, families bury their dead in a really unique way: the body is first buried in a coffin, but after a period of 3 years, the family has a ceremony in which the body is exhumed and the bones are removed from the coffin and placed in a new container that is then reburied. It is not until this time that a house is placed over the grave. I had never heard of this tradition and have tried to find more information about it upon returning home but found none, so I am not sure if perhaps this is a tradition isolated to Chinh’s area. In any case, it was fascinating to hear about. After spending a few more minutes looking around in silence, we walked back to the motorbike and drove home through the enchanting rice fields, and I looked out in awe at the backdrop of the beautiful Vietnamese mountains sitting in a backdrop of a gorgeous clear blue sky and could hardly believe that I’ve been given such an opportunity as this… that feeling hits me roughly once per day and it never gets old.

After our lunch and daily nap on Sunday (it is the tradition here to take a nap after eating lunch, simply because it is too hot to do anything but lie still with a small fan blowing on you) Chinh and I left to come back to Thanh Hoa City and arrived back here around 5:00pm. I worked a little on lesson planning, but was rather exhausted from the weekend and went to bed early last night. It was sad to leave Chinh’s family as they were so wonderful to me, but they invited me to come back for Chinh’s sister’s wedding, so I hope that I will get to see them again.
I’m back to my life of lesson planning, teaching, enjoying Thanh Hoa and, of course, dealing with some of the daily frustrations that have come along with this working experience that I really shouldn’t go into much at all. The next post from me will be about my working and daily life here, though I am quickly coming to learn that there is no such thing as a “regular schedule” in my life here at Hong Duc, which I am learning to laugh about, pray about, and take in stride, rather than allow my blood pressure to take a hit during the particularly tough moments. Talking with and teaching students here is absolutely fabulous and thinking about my moments with them helps me to see past acute frustrations with a bit more clarity and peace. Hearing from you about your lives is also so nice and I sincerely thank you for keeping me updated and hope that you will continue to do so. Know that you all are in my thoughts and prayers, and until next time, I hope that all is well.

Lots of love to you all!

A bit about where I'm living and what I'm eating...

Hello Friends and Family!

Greetings from Thanh Hoa City, my home for the last 2.5 weeks and the next 8.5 months! I am really very sorry that I have been so remiss in updating my blog, but things have been absolutely crazy in my life since my arrival here in Thanh Hoa and every time I have tried to set aside a few moments to collect my thoughts and write to you all, I have been pulled in a different direction or simply been too overwhelmed to think, much less write, in a clear manner. In this moment, however, I have completed my lesson plan for tomorrow, written my series of daily reports and done my food shopping for the week, so I will do my best to fill you in on the wonderful adventure that is my life right now.

I arrived in Thanh Hoa two and a half weeks ago on a hot and rainy afternoon and was taken immediately to my 3rd floor dorm room at Hong Duc University. The dormitories here are built of concrete and have open staircases and doors that open to an outside balcony. My room is long and narrow with a tall ceiling and windows on only one side. Inside, I have a bed, mini-fridge, rice cooker, and a wardrobe, as well as a desk with a computer. There is no wireless internet access here so having that computer as a source for internet has been absolutely wonderful. I have had to get used to my bed here, because most people here sleep on only a flat bamboo pad and while I do technically have a “mattress” it is still rather like sleeping on the floor because there is no padding in it whatsoever. Rather, it appears to be a piece of hard foam in a covering, giving entirely new meaning to the concept of a “firm mattress.” On the first night when I placed my bottle of water next to my head as I fell asleep and woke up the next morning after moving around a bit in my sleep and laughed when I saw that the bottle had not moved a bit. I also learned quickly not to try to “flop” into bed after a long day when I did as much and ended up with a nice bruise on my hip and a bit of a headache from hitting the hard surface. After a couple of restless nights, though, I got used to the mattress, and while I occasionally still dream about the day when my mattress is more than 5cm thick and forms to my body a bit when I sleep, I now sleep quite soundly and have learned to appreciate the fact that my bed can serve not only as a place to sleep, but also as my dining room table and a place to practice yoga, which I have attempted to take up each day for 20 minutes or so as other opportunities for regular exercise are hard to find and yoga is the perfect activity after a long and stressful day.

My bedroom was also equipped with a television, but I was told soon after moving in that there was no antennae to be found and even if there were, there were roughly two channels that I could receive and both of them were in Vietnamese. The TV, thus quickly found its place at the top of my wardrobe and out of the way. My room does have air conditioning which is a wonderful blessing in the intense heat of Vietnam and also keeps the mold somewhat at bay. I initially felt a bit guilty for having air conditioning when my students (who live around me) don’t, but I soon learned to accept it as a gift and be thankful for it, as it allows me to get a lot more work done in preparation for classes and such without being distracted by overwhelming heat and humidity. Along the back wall of my room there is a door that leads to the other “room” in my living space. This area, which has an open wall to the outside (covered by a decorative metal grate and a piece of glass that helps to keep some of the bugs out) is not air conditioned and serves as my bathroom/kitchen. On one side, there are two stalls, one of which contains my toilet and the other of which contains my shower and kitchen/bathroom sink. On the other side of the room is a countertop with a small gas stove and a hanging rack that has my dishes: two small plates, six small bowls, a spoon, a knife, and lots of chopsticks. (As you may have guessed, I’ve gotten quite good with chopsticks in the time since I’ve arrived and yesterday I impressed my boss by being able to pick up and eat small roasted peanuts with them… I’ve also really come to enjoy using them regularly and have decided that any future residence of mine will have chopsticks as a dining utensil option.)

I will take pictures of my room and post them soon so that perhaps you can get a better idea of what I’m talking about—I don’t know if my description really makes a whole lot of sense. What you should know, regardless of whether or not you understand the specifics of my room’s layout and contents, is that I am quite comfortable and very much enjoy my living area.

Across the street from the University, there is an open market where I go to buy all of my food except for yogurt and “cheese” (actually more of a faux cheese spread, but it’s the closest thing they have to cheese here and I love it!) which I purchase at the small grocery store in the middle of the city. The market is absolutely lovely and I look forward to the 2-3 times a week when I walk over to buy my food. I have become a “regular” at a handful of the stands and the women there all smile, wave, and return my “Chao Chi” greetings with affectionate “Chao Em!” responses. [As a side note to explain the difference in greeting: In Vietnam, it is quite customary for people to ask you for your age soon after meeting you, regardless of how old you may appear. This is because one’s relationship to you in terms of your age dictates the manner in which you will greet each other and refer to each other and oneself throughout the conversation. Most commonly, the personal pronouns used are: Em (for the younger person), Chi (for females who are older), Anh (for males that are older), Ong (for people the “age of your grandfather”--- I still have yet to receive any specific clarification on just how old this actually is--- I tend, therefore to defer to anh), and Ba (for females “the age of your grandmother”). It seems as though I learn a new word, though, each day, that is “better” than these more common words. When I think about how to determine if and when to use these words, which requires me knowing whether the man I am speaking to is older or younger than my father, my head starts to hurt and I generally just give the person trying to (re)explain the system to me the “I’m totally lost” look.]
Okay, back to the market…
Once a week, I visit the lady who sells me my chicken. She usually sees me coming, waves me over, and grabs a freshly killed and plucked (well, a few feather remnants usually remain) chicken, cuts off the head and feet, puts it in a plastic bag, and I give her 60,000 VND (about $3.30), exchange a few sentences in my still-horrible Vietnamese, and go on my way. Once I return home, I stick the chicken in the kitchen sink, scrub it with soap, and then put it in a big pot of water and boil the entire thing. Unlike most of the chickens found in the States, chickens here are actually free to run around during their lives and therefore tend to be leaner and tougher. I’ve found that cooking the entire chicken in the skin makes the meat nice and moist. After it cooks completely, I pull it out and grab any piece of meat I can find off of it, and put it into my Tupperware container that I bought recently at the store. I then throw the pieces into my rice or stir-fry at the last stage of cooking to warm them up and it is delicious! Usually the chicken lasts a good 4 days or so (I eat it for lunch and dinner) and when I run out, I cook a pot of lentils for my protein for the rest of the week… then it’s back to the market! Speaking of which, I still need to talk about the rest of my market shopping. Vegetables here are unbelievably cheap, and I usually purchase tomatoes, carrots, zucchini, pumpkin, potatoes, garlic, onions, and a plant called rao muong, or “water spinach” at the market. Muong, I’ve been told, is seen as a weed in parts of the United States, but I think it is delicious when fried in oil and garlic and I can buy an entire bushel for 1,000VND, or $0.05. Because my American stomach is quite vulnerable to parasites and bacteria, I have to be really careful with the vegetables that I buy, and everything has to be soaked in a special wash, then rinsed with clean bottled water, and cooked well, so I’ve come to enjoy the taste of cooked carrots and tomatoes. There are also many varieties of cooking oils here, which make cooking easy and delicious. Interestingly, most of the oils sold here are rich in Omega-3s (the only word I can read on the label)--- I think that there was a big push for added nutritive value to the oils here at one point recently simply because they are used by people in almost every meal. I don’t usually buy any fruit at the market because there is a wonderful woman who lives downstairs in my dorm with her husband and sells fruits to the students every day. Most evenings when I return home from work, she calls out to me “Chao Em!” and grabs a nearby watermelon, cuts a slice for herself and me and we sit eating together. She speaks no English, and as I said before, I am still totally helpless when it comes to Vietnamese, so most of the time we just stand and enjoy the watermelon together in relative silence, smiling, and spitting seeds onto the dirt area in front of the building. After a couple of slices, I usually buy a couple of pieces of fruit (I have to buy fruit with peels here for food safety reasons, so I usually buy dragon fruits, which are gorgeous and delicious, oranges, and pommelos (a grapefruit-like fruit that I love!)) and then head upstairs to my room to begin cooking dinner.

Like I said, I cook all of my meals in my small kitchen, which I enjoy most of the time because those moments are times when I can reflect on the day or (very often) daydream. Sometimes, though, cooking for one gets a little tedious and the cleaning process is complex because I have to first scrub all of my dishes and then boil water to sterilize them, etc. etc. Luckily, though, I’ve made a nice system out of it, and I hardly think about it being a hassle anymore. I’ve also made some good friends in the building who I eat with and/or cook for at times, which is really nice. I have also come to love my rice cooker (although I put too much water in it at lunch today which led to a bit of an explosion of water and steam… huge mess) and I have rice or stir fried potatoes at every meal. Most of the time I stir fry some vegetables, but on other days I’m content with just eating a bowl of rice with some chicken and maybe a bit of the faux cheese spread I was telling you about earlier, stirred in. While I love the food I’m eating here, I do miss things like chips and salsa (especially because it’s football season), oatmeal chocolate chip pecan cookies, bread—tricky to find around here, pizza, cereal—non-existent in Thanh Hoa, fresh salads, the ability to grab an apple and sink my teeth into it, and finally, dark chocolate!... As time has gone on, I’ve really stopped craving all of those things too much, which is a good thing, since it will be awhile until I have them again… needless to say, though, you know what things will be on my “menu” when I come back home!
Like I said before, I do have to be careful to clean up after each meal because I share my living area with lots of ants, plenty of long-legged spiders, and… rats. Yes, massive scary rats that love to tear into bags of garbage, and have made it necessary for me to take out any garbage I have after each meal. I have yelled into the holes from which they come that as long as they stay out of my bed and don’t give me the plague I won’t use any noxious chemicals against them, but I still squeam every time I see “remnants” of their scavenging (though lately to no avail!) presence in my kitchen each morning when I wake up and walk out that way. I think (hope) that they will soon realize that I have stopped leaving any food in that area, though, and will stop coming to look so they may become a non-issue in the coming weeks.

There are lots of other things going on here besides sleeping and eating that I am actually more excited to write about, but I think I’ll leave that for tomorrow. I’ve got to get home and get started on dinner, and my office hours are coming to an end (I’ll tell you a great story about an hour I spent with one of my students this afternoon when I write next… oh I love teaching!)

Until tomorrow, stay well and keep in touch!

Love,

Hayley

a full week

Hi again!

It has been about a week since I last posted, and as I sit down to write this post, I am daunted by the prospect of trying to do justice to all that I have seen, experienced, and felt during the past 7 or 8 days without writing an entry that might take you as just as long to read. In essence, I'm beginning to realize once again why the idea of journaling and blogging is such a scary one to me. I've set aside some time right now, though, so I'll try to do my best---

Last Saturday morning, we got up extremely early and traveled together, along with Chi Diu and Dr. Thao (the project assistant (and our resource for just about anything we need) and director of the Fulbright Program in Vietnam, respectively) to Hai Phong Private University in the city of Hai Phong, roughly 2 hours northeast of Hanoi. For the next couple of hours, we were participants in a forum for students beginning their final year in university that were looking to the future and curious about our experiences as recent graduates. We weren't sure what to expect coming in and were surprised by the great numbers of students there (and by the video cameras present!) The room was just large enough for us (and the ever-present golden bust of Ho Chi Minh at the front of the room) and it was exciting to see the level of enthusiasm shown by all of the students present. The university system in Vietnam is really interesting, as all schools, public or private, are required to follow specific curriculum guidelines established by MOET (the Ministry of Education and Training) rather than the educators employed by each individual university. For a few reasons, I won't say anything more about this, except that I am really interested to see this top-down style of educational policy on the ground level when I begin working at Hong Duc in about a week and a half.

After our time at Hai Phong, we continued on to Halong Bay and boarded a wooden "junk boat" that took us on an hour-long cruise en route to Cat Ba Island. The cruise itself was marvelous. Halong Bay is a World Heritage Site and I was amazed by the rock formations that we saw as we sailed through the water. I sat in silence at the front of the boat for awhile, enjoying the warm breeze, peaceful waters, and relative quiet. When we arrived at Cat Ba Island, we checked into our hotel and immediately changed and walked to the beach, located on the Gulf of Tonkin. The beaches were crowded with Vietnamese tourists, but the waves were fantastic and the water was warm and we enjoyed a nice hour or so splashing around in the water. It was really strange playing in the waters of a gulf whose name is so bitterly and unfortunately ingrained American history and as we bobbed up and down in the waves we talked about the strangeness we all felt and the the fact that at times throughout this first month, particularly at times such as those, we have all been hit by the sense that this experience is enormously surreal, unnerving, and yet also beautiful and enlightening.After a nice Vietnamese dinner that night, we went to bed early, listening to the sounds of late-night karaoke (an extremely popular nighttime activity here) as we lay in bed... thankfully the power went out (a pretty normal occurrence here) after an hour or so, because the music was loud and the singing, as is true at most karaoke events, was not terribly ear-pleasing.

The next morning, we got up and went to Cat Ba National Park, where our guide told us that he would be leading us in a "light trek" for the morning. We should have known from our experience at the Perfume Pagoda that the concept of a "light trek" is slightly different in Vietnam that in the U.S., but we instead set out thinking that we would be hiking around a bit in a park-setting before heading back the hotel for lunch and the trip home. As it turned out, the "light trek" was another climb up a mountain, only this time without the "luxury" of stone steps or even solid footing. The ground was completely muddy from the rains the day before and after a bit, we found ourselves grasping for roots and vines to help pull up up the trail. The hike also involved a great deal of bouldering and climbing up rusted ladders, which became extremely slippery when it started raining about halfway up. It was a wonderfully fun hike, but I couldn't help but think that one us would not escape without a broken appendage and that I was breaking a lot of "yes, of course I'll be safe" promises that I made to friends and family before I left. Miraculously, we all made it to the top relatively unscathed, and looked out in awe at one of the most beautiful mountain landscape that I have ever seen. The rain stopped falling just as we reached the top, and after a brief bit of fog rolled through, the skies cleared and it was absolutely gorgeous. After resting a bit and taking some pictures, we all held our breath, and began the climb down, which turned out to be a bit more scary than the trek up. Once again, though, we made it back okay (actually, only our guide had a really bad fall, and he was also unhurt) and stumbled into our bus, exhausted but so happy to have taken the hike. On the bus ride back to the hotel, we determined that the mountain would thereafter be known as "Mud Mountain." We also learned that the mountains and caves in that area were the locations of hospitals and hideaways for many of the North Vietnamese leaders during the American War and we responded that even after spending just a few hours there, it was no wonder to us that they chose such a spot.

After getting cleaned up (well, even after I showered and thought I was clean, I toweled off and the towel turned brown with residual mud) we had lunch and then caught a hydrofoil boat back to Halong Bay. We were all pretty excited about riding in a hydrofoil, but the ride actually turned out to be a little unpleasant, especially compared to the junkboat ride the day before. It was extremely crowded and hot on the boat, and I was in the back row, out of reach of the small air conditioner. The waters were pretty choppy, and so almost as soon as the ride started, people started getting seasick around me. It broke my heart to see and hear lots of babies and small children getting sick, and I started to feel ill in the closed, hot, and crowded cabin area. Realizing that I was headed down an unpleasant path, I told myself to pull it together, pulled out my ipod and put on a fun mix at a loud volume, and closed my eyes... before I knew it, I felt much better and by the end of the ride, I was enjoying looking out the window at the beautiful scenery. I was extremely happy, however, when the ride was over and we got off the hydrofoil and onto the bus that took us back to Hanoi.

After such a wonderful, but tiring, weekend, it was hard to go back to work and training at the Embassy on Monday, but the week soon began to fly by. Vietnamese is still hard, although I was able to use mine to direct a taxi driver two days ago (he was totally surprised) and to find seats at a local Bia Hoi (a street restaurant that serves delicious cheap food and beer (they cost roughly 33cents per glass) for 6 people... huge successes in my mind, although the prospect of moving to a city where English speakers are few and far between in a week is totally daunting. The highlight of my week, however, took place on Wednesday when we were responsible for co-teaching (in groups of 5) a 2 hour speaking and listening English class to Vietnamese students aged 16-54 at the Embassy. We were all a little nervous during our preparations (in part because we learned that we would be teaching the class at 4:00pm the day before) but my group soon came up with a good plan that worked out very well the next day. Though there were obvious areas in which we could have improved our lesson, it was a general success and I was so excited throughout the entire 2 hours (which felt like only 15 minutes.) At the end of the time, the students were presenting their group work to the class and I stood watching a 54 year old woman, who had been required to learn Russian when she was in school, excitedly explaining her menu (the theme of the lesson was food and we had the class create and present restaurant menus using the vocabulary we learned) using every single vocabulary word that we covered, and I couldn't stop smiling and wishing that I was already in the classroom at my university. During our debriefing, Helen, our instructor, told us that not all students that we had would be so excited to learn, and I am certainly being realistic about my expectations regarding my teaching experience for the next 9 months, but I am also so excited to be in a classroom and hopefully bringing a level of energy to the subject that my students can transform into excitement about learning. I am also eager to continue learning about teaching pedagogy, the Vietnamese education culture, and perhaps even the grammatical subtleties of my own native language during my time here. I know it will be a great challenge full of hard days and occasional "busts," but I am approaching those "learning moments" with and open mind and a healthy dose of humor... I'll certainly tell you all about them as they occur!

By the end of the week, we were all completely exhausted and scrapped any traveling plans we were thinking about making in favor of a relaxing weekend in Hanoi. Yesterday, my friend Sofia and I went to the Temple of Literature, a Confucian temple and the site of the first Vietnamese University, founded in 1076. It was an absolutely gorgeous setting and after visiting the temple, we went for a walk in the garden area which was also beautiful. It was also so nice to walk around in an area where we didn't have to worry about being hit by motorbike. After that, we went to a cafe and I read about 100 pages of The Count of Monte Cristo and enjoyed some time to decompress from our whirlwind month. Last evening, we all went to a restaurant called KOTO, which stands for "Know One, Teach One" and is a non-profit restaurant that supports street and impoverished children in Hanoi, training them in the service industry and cooking and helping them find educational opportunities in Vietnam and abroad. The dinner was absolutely delicious and the atmosphere was wonderful. After dinner, we all went to a traditional Vietnamese water puppet show which was also incredible. The puppets are controlled by men and women that stand behind a darkened screen, out of sight of the audience, waist deep in water and control the puppets using bamboo poles and strings. It was absolutely incredible to watch these wooden puppets move on the surface of the water stage and to listen to the voices of women singing along to their movements.

This morning, we slept in again and then a group of us took a taxi over to the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum to see the embalmed body of the country's hero. Our experience there was incredible. We waited in a long line with thousands of people for about 45 minutes before and had to turn in our cameras, cover our arms and legs, and take off any sunglasses before being shuffled into the huge building. The inside of the building was surprisingly devoid of any major propaganda, and the room in which Ho's body lay was impressive in its lack of formal decoration. Four guards dressed in white stood at the corners of the glass case that held the body, which was dressed in a rather plain fashion. We were pushed through the room quickly by other guards and the wave of people coming in behind us, so we only got a quick view of the body, before moving back out to the sunlight again, but it was an absolutely fascinating experience. Strangely enough, I thought about the scene in E.L. Konigsburg's book From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler when Claudia and Jamie, the runaway brother and sister, first go to see the angel statue in the Met. Konigsburg's language describing the strictly choreographed movement of the crowd around the angel was a spot-on description of our movements today, and I laughed to myself at the fact that such an experience would bring to mind a scene from a book that I read, and loved, quite a long time ago. Beyond comparing the experience to a novel scene, I also thought about the fact that such a tribute is perhaps the last thing that Ho Chi Minh would have wanted. In reality, he desired for his remains to be cremated, split into 3 parts that would be spread in the north, central, and southern parts of the country, to symbolize a united Vietnam. He also ordered that no major landmark to his memory be made... clearly, his wishes were not followed, and his portraits and quotations made by him adorn Hanoi and are apparently present at every school and university. The fact that the wishes of the most important man in modern Vietnamese history and culture were so blatantly ignored is rather ironic, but also not terribly surprising considering the Vietnamese cultural tradition of glorifying particularly adored political and military leaders. Ultimately, our trip to the mausoleum was well worth the sweltering heat and long wait, not only for the chance to see Ho Chi Minh, but also because of the culture that we experienced in the waiting and watching while there.

Tomorrow begins our final week of orientation in Hanoi before we leave for our respective host universities. We're all excited to be finished with the 8 hour days that take place in a windowless room in the U.S. Embassy but sad to be leaving one another-- our group is fantastic, and I am so happy to have made such good friends over here so quickly. I am also excited to see what the next nine months in Thanh Hoa has in store for me. Besides being the site of ancient ruins, which is very cool, Thanh Hoa does not really make it into guidebooks for tourists visiting the country and is often described to me as being a poor industrial city that was completely destroyed during the American War and then quickly and unimpressively rebuilt in the aftermath. Roughly 200,000 people live there, but it is supposedly a small city in terms of square-mileage which means that it will still appear quite crowded while I am there. There are not any touristy "hot-spots" or fancy restaurants (besides one 3 star hotel) in the city, and sometimes food selection is quite limited due to its location. I also had to get a Japanese Encephalitis shot as a precautionary measure, and I will need to take care in putting on plenty of mosquito repellent to avoid contracting dengue fever in the areas outside the city center. All of these things are certainly nerve wracking to a certain degree, but I also feel lucky to be getting a true immersion experience ... and who knows? maybe everything that I have heard is completely off-base! I'll find out in a little over a week, and will be writing to let you know all about it as I get settled in.I miss seeing all of you and hope that all is well. If you'd like to see any of what I've talked about so far (because I promise you, my words aren't doing this place justice) please come visit me and I'll take you on a tour! Know that I am having a wonderful time and feeling so lucky to have gotten such an opportunity. I'm sorry for the length of this post-- I thought this might happen-- but finding time to blog has been difficult, so it looks as though these marathon once-weekly updates may become my MO. Until next time, stay well, and let me know how you are-- I'd love to hear updates!!! I've posted stable links to my pictures on here, so if you get the chance, take a look.

Lots of Love,Hayley

Links to Pictures

Links to some pictures that I have taken so far---

1. http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2033213&id=44701566&l=828e97d0b0

2. http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2033428&id=44701566&l=509d93a9a1

3. http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2033546&id=44701566&l=f426d1b2ba

hope you enjoy!

Perfume Pagoda

Hello friends, I hope that this post finds you well! It has, and will continue to be, a very busy week, but I wanted to take the time to write a little bit about a trip that eight of us took last Sunday to the Perfume Pagoda and Cave, a famous pilgrimage site in northern Vietnam. Located in the Ha Tay Province, the Perfume Pagoda is named after the spring blossoms that make the air smell sweet (a nice change from the streets of Hanoi!) We hired a van to drive us the 60km distance which took us about an hour and a half and through Hanoi traffic and rough (and water buffalo and cow cluttered) country roads and villages along green rice fields. After being dropped off, we (with the help of our tour guide, Chung, or “River,”) hired small iron row boats to take us to the Pagoda site. We traveled, four to a boat, along the smooth and beautifully quiet waters for an hour, seeing only a few other fishermen in boats and appreciating the quiet atmosphere- a great contrast to the ever-present noises in Hanoi. Sunday was a particularly hot and humid day and we were quite sweaty by the time that we arrived at the base of the mountain that held the Pagoda and prepared to hike. Thinking that it would be a relatively simple jaunt, we decided to forgo the very inexpensive cable car ride up to the top of the mountain and began our ascent. As it turns out, we were not at all prepared for the trek that awaited us.

Our “light hike” turned out to be a steep march up a very long series of ancient stone stairs that took roughly 45 minutes to climb. I don’t know if I have ever sweated so much in my life and at a couple of points on the way up we all had to stop for a couple of minutes to catch our breath. There were stalls at various places along the stairs that sold water and hot beer but we couldn’t purchase the water because there are only a couple of companies that can be trusted to adequately purify their water (none of which were present in the vendors’ booths) and we didn’t get the hot beer…for obvious reasons! Even before we stopped stair-stepping at the top, we could smell the incense burning in the Perfume Cave (or Huong Tich Cave) and when we reached the end of our “hike” found ourselves at what is known as the “Dragon’s Mouth,” or entrance to the grotto. Inside the grotto was an ornate and spectacular shrine, predominately gold and red in colors and shining in the heavy, incense-filled air. After standing in awe for a time we walked out of the cave and promptly took the cable cars back down the mountain, so as to avoid walking back down all the stairs we had recently ascended. The trip down was absolutely beautiful and offered great views of the mountains and surrounding areas. When we reached the bottom, we ate a large lunch, looked around at some more temples in the area, and then returned to the boats. Our boat ride back was extremely enjoyable as we let our exhaustion and dehydration turn to silliness and sang songs for the entire 45 minute ride, covering everything from Row, Row, Row Your Boat, Leavin’ on a Jet Plane, and Disney Songs, to the Backsteet Boys… One of my fellow Fulbrighters, Mark, and I also discovered a shared love of the song “Come Sail Away” by Styx and belted out a classic duet… our guide couldn’t decide whether we were fun to be around, or just crazy. Many of our musical “treats” ended up on camera, unbeknownst to the rest of us until we were a good 10 songs in, and are now posted on facebook if you are interested in listening to the off-tune musical stylings of the Fulbright Foundation’s best and brightest…After a long, sweaty, but wonderful day, we were happy to return to Hanoi and begin our second week of orientation.
It is hard to believe that now, almost a week later, we are halfway through our time in Hanoi and two weeks away from arriving at our host institutions. We are still struggling through Vietnamese lessons, although my pronunciation is improving and I can successfully tell you my name, where I am from, and my age, and can make basic comparisons and speak in the present progressive (with about 5 verbs), so there has been improvement! The trickiest part of the language is definitely dealing with the various tones that can make a word like “I”/”Me” turn into “lie down” or “guilty” very quickly with lazy pronunciation! Our instructor, Thuy (pronounced Tuwee, with an upward, crescendo-ing inflection) is extremely patient with us while also giving us a hard time and making sure to laugh with and at us when we make particularly horrible mistakes. Yesterday, for instance, I managed to somewhat inadvertently say “This horse is from China,” and Thuy almost fell down laughing.

Today we traveled to a temple dedicated to “Mother” or ancestor worship here in Hanoi for a class on Vietnamese Culture. Most people in Vietnam practice ancestor worship in addition to another religion (predominately Buddhism or, to a smaller degree, Christianity) and today’s service was organized by a family in order to try to improve their luck or financial situation. When families organize ceremonies, they are responsible for purchasing copious amounts of desserts, beer, fruits, cigarettes, and other goods as offerings to the gods during the ceremony, which can last for hours. Men are chosen to act as vessels of the gods of each individual temple, and often represent multiple gods throughout the ceremony, changing their clothes and makeup as is necessary. We received permission to come to this ceremony today and entered just as the temple god was making an offering at the altar, which involved swinging a large flame around in the small and crowded space. We were standing precariously close to the flames as they swung past us, and each of us held our breath until the last embers were stamped out by boys assisting the older men. There was also beautiful music playing and the room smelled deeply of incense and was ornately decorated. We unfortunately could not stay until the end of the ceremony, when all of the food and drink there would be given out to all those present from the family in order to increase their luck.

As I write about this experience and think about the many that I have had and do not have time to write about, I feel so lucky to be here and wish deeply that all of you could experience this fascinating place with me because my descriptions of it are not doing it justice. I did take plenty of pictures of our trip to the Perfume Pagoda, which I have posted on facebook, and that you should be able to see if you click on the following link http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2033213&id=44701566&l=828e97d0b0 perhaps even if you don’t have facebook (I don’t know all of the logistics!)

Tomorrow morning we are leaving at 6:00am for a weekend excursion to Hai Phong Private University where we will meet with university students in a forum and then to Halong Bay, a world heritage site that is certain to provide me with many more picture perfect images and stories to share with you all. Until then, stay well and know how much I miss and love you!