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