First Impressions

The idea of "blogging," or rather, being a "blogger" has always sent shivers down my spine. Growing up, I went through numerous journals and diaries... and by that I mean, I dutifully completed roughly one entry in each of new diary before allowing it to collect dust in various dark corners in my room and closet along with the rest of the one-entry journals I had let “go by the wayside.” It is with this uninspiring and pitiful background in recording the events of my life that I begin this series of reflections on my coming months in Vietnam. I very much hope that my great desire to stay in touch with all of you reading will outweigh my current bad habit of letting such things fall by the wayside, and I am certainly excited to tell my story to you, and perhaps even me.


I arrived in Hanoi, Vietnam on Sunday morning, after a brief bout with food poisoning in the Denver airport, a 10 hour flight from Los Angeles to Tokyo, followed by a 7 hour flight from Tokyo to Bangkok, and a night spent sleeping in a chair in the Bangkok airport. Though I was completely exhausted, I immediately perked up during the 30 minute drive from the airport to the hotel as the streets of Hanoi were unlike anything I had ever seen before. In Hanoi, traffic lines, lights, and even directionality are mere suggestions and the traffic here is generally considered to be some of the worst in the world. Driving takes more than a steady grip on the wheel, but requires drivers to regularly use their bright lights to tell other drivers to speed up and their horns to announce their presence as they speed into the oncoming traffic or try to push the swarms of scooter drivers, motorcyclists, or bicyclists out of their way. (During our security briefing at the U.S. Embassy, we learned how to survive as pedestrians: walk out into the traffic at a steady pace, keeping eye contact with the drivers while also looking in both directions (drivers often come in more than one direction even on one side of the street), and don't slow down or speed up as drivers are adept at swerving around you at the last minute so long as your path and speed are predictable. I say a little prayer of thanksgiving each time I make it across even the narrowest of streets.) I was also amazed at the power and telephone lines along the sides of the street. Unlike the relatively ordered set of lines in the States, here in Hanoi power lines resemble tangled spider webs. Finally, the cargo in the baskets behind the moto-bikes was an impressive sight: drivers carried not only other passengers (including babies propped up on the steering column) but also bundles of beautiful flowers, fruits and vegetables, meats, pipes, and in one particularly interesting basket, 7 baby pigs. Needless to say, I was totally entertained.

The hotel where we are staying during this month of orientation is absolutely lovely and the staff has been so welcoming. The owner, Ginger, is actually a former Fulbrighter who met her husband over here.

Each morning around 7:45 we catch taxis to our orientation and training at the U.S. Embassy. Typically we spend 3 1/2 to 4 hours each morning doing language training while the afternoons are devoted to ELT (English Language Teaching) training. I am extremely impressed by how organized everything is in terms of our training, and while I leave the Embassy around 5pm each day completely exhausted, I feel as though I have learned so much already.

Vietnamese is an extremely difficult language, involving a lot more of one's mouth and throat than are active in speaking English. The language is tonal in nature, which means that the inflection in your voice as you say a word or sound is critical and can completely change the meaning of a word. Needless to say, we are all struggling, but I am now able to say simple phrases and I am beginning to understand a bit about basic sentence construction. Ultimately, the Fulbright program hopes that we can come away from our training with a "survival level" knowledge of Vietnamese since our jobs will be to help train students and faculty in English rather than to learn a new language ourselves. It has been fun to say "hello," "thank you," "goodbye," and "how are you?" in Vietnamese to the hotel and Embassy staff and I am excited to learn more throughout the rest of the month. We have a test on what we have learned so far on Monday, however, which has us all a little nervous.

While I am certainly enjoying living in Hanoi and getting to know my 9 wonderful, funny, and supportive fellow Fulbrighters, it will be nice to move into a more long-term living situation where I can cook for myself and move our of my suitcase. So far we have had to be careful (and thus boring) with our food choices because it is unsafe to each any fruits or raw vegetables off the streets. We'll be able to eat fruits once we are in our own small flats and we can soak them in a diluted chlorine bleach solution. All of our vegetables will have to be washed, soaked, and cooked in water that has been pre-boiled to ensure that it is safe to drink and use. Therefore our diets this week have largely consisted of noodles, rice, and chicken, although a few of us tried a series of lightly cooked vegetables the other night (and our stomachs are still upset with us.) Tonight, however, we all walked around the corner to a street restaurant and sat in small plastic chairs reminiscent of picnics and tea parties of my youth and ordered a series of fried vegetables, some cooked beef, and steamed and fried rice which was all absolutely delicious. I can't wait to get creative as I settle in and my stomach acclimates itself to the environment.

I am off to bed now, but I hope to write more soon. We are all going to buy cell phones tomorrow and will perhaps take a day trip to a beautiful perfume pagoda on Sunday. I hope that all is well with you and that you will shoot me a line or two of email to let me know how things are.

Until next time, stay well.