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