Hàng Ngày

Last night I attended the performances in celebration of the founding of the Ho Chi Minh communist youth league (76 glorious years). This consisted of performances similar to Teacher’s Day and Spring Festival. The whole school was involved, and my third years were selected to perform their Teacher’s Day award-winning dance for the event. After watching their great performance (the fourth and final time that I will see this dance), we went to have something to drink at Song Huy coffee shop.

I was sitting across from Thai, the monitor (who’s a few years older than me, married with a one year old son) and Vien, who prefers to call me “sister” rather than “teacher,” even when addressing me in English. They were making jokes and word-plays in Vietnamese (noi lai, it’s called) and trying to make me say them and understand them for fun. It was all fun and jokes for a while. Then Thai told me he wanted to teach me a “ca dao,” Vietnamese proverb, about being away from home. Roughly translated, it goes like this:

Wherever you are, you will always miss your homeland,

You miss the food,  you miss the land,

You miss the ones you love.

A very poignant proverb for me, seeing as I’ve been confronting the decision of whether to stay or not to stay, as everyone around me knows all to well already…I told him how meaningful the poem was for me, because I knew that I would really miss everyone here when I went home, but that ultimately, being home, or at least in my home country, was where I wanted to be. He nodded his head, and looked me in the eyes and said soberly “ky niem.” This is a word I have come to know and appreciate well in my time here. The dictionary translates “ky niem” to “memories” in English, but it seems to carry so much more weight in Vietnamese, which I think is why the friends and students have always said it to me in Vietnamese and not English. I guess if I were Langenscheidt pocket dictionary, I would translate it more as “a memory that remains etched in your mind and will forever change the meaning and course of your life.”

This weekend I went to Dalat with my third year students and got to experience the city in a whole new way. The first time I was there working, the second time, just being a lazy American tourist wandering the streets aimlessly, and this third time I was a Vietnamese tourist. To sum up the experience, I think all I can say is Vietnamese tourism is hard-core. What do I mean by this???

We departed LX at 10 pm on Wednesday night. We rented a bus, loaded bags, boxes, and 22 students and two teachers onto the bus and set off. About 10 minutes into the drive we stopped by the side of the road to…that’s right, pick up passengers. “But!” you might think, “Didn’t the students rent this bus privately??” Yes, in fact, they did. But the new passengers were supposedly the driver’s relatives…who knows. Two women, an old man, and two babies…and two motorbikes and a lot of luggage later, we were off again. We stopped twice more to pick up some friends of the students along the way.

We arrived in Dalat on Thursday at about 2 pm. Our first visit was before we even reached the city limits: Deo Prenn, a large mountain tourist park, on the outskirts of the city. Here we saw a large waterfall, climbed the mountain, and had a chance to take our pictures wearing traditional ethnic minority clothing (only the girls. As you can imagine, I had real issues with this, but held my tongue).

In the afternoon we just relaxed, went to the market to eat, and walked around the city a bit. Thursday evening we rented tandem bicycles for a few hours and went speeding around the lake and the city. We stopped for coffee at an interesting place called “1000 rooves” coffee shop. It was similar to the “crazy house” that I visited in Dalat in December. There were winding stairs up to different alcoves and rooms, each of which had only one table made of large chunks of wood, and decorated with plants, fake cave-structures, etc. Very interesting. We went to bed early Thursday night: the bus ride had taken everything out of us, and we had to prepare for the marathon of tourism the next day.

I don’t even remember where all we visited on Friday. We began at 7 am, onto the bus led by our middle-aged tourguide “Chu Son.” Chu Son was a very dynamic character, and told us stories about the city, which I understood fairly well, surprisingly. The first stop was a waterfall about 2 km outside of the city. We walked down to the spring, and it was absolutely gorgeous. And so began the endless picture taking that would characterize the rest of the trip: apparently the purpose of traveling, especially in a beautiful place, is to take so many pictures (and model-style pictures) that you will have enough to adorn every cranny of your house for the rest of your life. We took photos at the waterfall before traveling on to the Truc Lam pagoda: a popular tourist location that I actually had visited before. More photos. Our last stop for the morning was the former emperor Bao Dai’s palace, where we donned these cool elf-like socks over our shoes to protect the floors. I played Bao Dai’s piano (way out of key) and we took more pictures.

The afternoon was another packed period: first the Valley of Gold, a new tourist site, apparently. It was beautiful: truly breathtaking, reminded me of Southwestern Colorado. It was clean, uncrowded, overcast, and breezy. I felt so homesick…the girls all wore skirts for the occasion of mountain hiking (i.e. more photograph taking) and I got some good shots of the group. We next traveled to the Valley of Love, which wasn’t really much to see: they were doing construction, so the fake stream at the bottom of the valley was dry and full of construction equipment. We rode around in some bumper cars, and then went on to buy souvenir artichoke tea, and dried fruite (specialities of Dalat).

Friday evening was an exciting night because I got to try the wine that comes out of a clay pot for the first time: apparently it’s “dried liquor” in these clay pots, made by the ethnic minorities living in the mountainous areas surrounding Dalat. You add water to the various herbs and concotions, stick a few straws in, and suck the vile liquid out. It was potent stuff: two swigs and I was pretty drunk, as were the rest of the students. Needless to say, the party lasted a mere hour before we all passed out after an exhausting day of tourism.

Saturday AM I rose early again to run around the lake with my students, and we started our tour late (at 7:30 AM). We began with the Dalat flower park, which was pretty, but nothing compared to the Valley of Gold. Our last stop was a beautiful lake on the other side of town where a young couple of lovers committed suicide a long time ago: a sort of Romeo and Juliet romance, I guessed from Chu Son’s stories. We got back to the hotel around lunch time, and everyone took off in various groups to buy souvenirs: flowers, vegetables, and little knick-knacks for family and friends. I went for a walk around the university, which always makes me wonder why they stuck me in An Giang where it’s hot as death all the time, and not somewhere cool and pleasant like Dalat…

Saturday night we took the tandem bikes out again, this time in search for the haunted house that Chu Son had told us about. Unfortunately, after asking directions to said house and driving about 2 km to the outer limits of the city, we realized that we would have to take the treacherously dark and steep road to HCM in order to traverse the last km to the house. We voted to turn back (heavily influenced by Lillian the teacher, who saw a fatal accident on this road the last time she came to Dalat).

We finally left at 4 am on Sunday morning, piled our new stuff, old stuff, and selves into the freezing bus and were speeding down the mountain by 4:45. It was hard to leave because the bus was surrounded by vendors trying to sell us the last bunches of flowers and strawberries as we were boarding the bus…it was agonizing for me, who just wanted to get home. The bus ride was fine until about 10:30 am, when it became horribly hot and unpleasant for basically the rest of the time. We arrived home at about 6 pm, exhausted, sweaty, smelly, and of course, vui.

So, some asshole who was visiting for a few days and staying in the guesthouse decided to go and get his bicycle stolen out of the garage…this is the second bicycle that’s been stolen out of the garage this year. Someone decided that extreme measures were necessary, and so in the course of our 1.5 hour Vietnamese lesson yesterday, we saw a group of young men swiftly erect a chain-link fence cutting the guesthouse off from the rest of campus.

Of course, I and some of the other foreigners were appalled by this: we come here to be with students, to engage in cultural exchange, and to be a part of the community. We don’t come here to live in a foreigner bubble: the guesthouse is already enough of a foreigner bubble, in my opinion. So, we’re talking to IR about it, and hopefully it will be torn down soon, barring our agreement to put bikes in the garage and always lock the garage when coming and going (an agreement we must put in writing and sign…legally binding, mom?) In the meantime, we decided to have a little fun with the fence…

Today I was crossing over Hoang Dieu Bridge (the taller of the two bridges in the main part of Long Xuyen city) and there was this poor xe loi driver (a xe loi is a bicycle with a cart attached to it that holds lots of heavy things and is usually peddled by a very wiry middle-aged to older man) walking his bike up the hill with a mountain of goods piled twice as high as his head. This is a fairly common occurance in Vietnam. All of a sudden, to my right, a guy appears on a motorbike who is steering the bike with his left hand while he holds a large gas tank (for stoves) on the back of the bike with his right hand (also a fairly common sight). All of a sudden, this motorbike guy just puts his foot on the back of the xe loi and starts using his bike’s power to push the xe loi over the hill. The xe loi driver quickly noticed what was happening and sped up to a moderate jog. When they reached the top of the bridge, the motorbike driver removed his foot, the xe loi driver said thanks, and the motorbiker sped away. I’ve seen plenty of motorbikers pushing xe loi drivers with their feet before, but this was the first time I saw it happen with two complete strangers. Or maybe, all the times I’ve seen it before have been complete strangers too, and there is this amazing circle of random kindness that I just discovered today…

Thursday, the 8th of March, was International Women’s Day in Vietnam. In my efforts to plan class around this special day, I discovered some interesting information about International Women’s Day. First of all, it is only officially recognized in 15 nations around the world: all former Soviet-Bloc. Second, it actually started in the US, in 1908. It was begun by a group of militant socialist women, who connected women’s liberation to the proletarian revolution. I guess that’s why the US doesn’t recognize it…

On this day, women receive flower and gifts from the men in their lives, and the men do special things for the women. The women look beautiful (I know, this seems a bit counter-the-ideals to me, but…) by dressing in ao dai. The men in my third year class got fruit and sang songs for the women. In the evening my second years came over for a small party in which I showed them how to make banana bread. The girls did most of the work, and the three boys stood by and watched. They did wash the dishes, after I told them it was only proper if they did so.

On Friday there was a big celebration in commemoration of this special day: it began with a mock “Price is Right” comptetition (between women, of course) between departments. The main event was a cooking competition, banh xeo (vietnamese savory pancakes) being the dish of choice. Each department was in a corner of the main building’s entryway, hovered around a hotplate with the sizzling cakes. The men tried, I’ll give them that. It was mostly women yelling at men telling them how to make the banh xeo and the men screwing up for a while before getting the hang of it. All the preparations were done by the women: I met one friend earlier in the day and she said she had spent hours going to the market, to prepare for the cooking of the banh xeo. I asked why the men hadn’t done it. She laughed and said that they can’t, and the said a little more seriously that she hates this day.

The banh xeo was delicious, however, and it was fun to have the whole school there together: I wish we did it more often! But I guess the women who prepared would not want to do so more than once a year, and the men, well…I don’t know if they could handle it either.

After much talk about “wouldn’t it be great to have a playground on the roof of the guesthouse?” yesterday I finally had some free time and was bored, so set about achieving this mission. The afternoon began with a trip to the rope store. The rope guy remembered me from the time I bought rope for the pinata, and asked me why I’d stayed away so long. After some chit-chat, and rope-cutting, he asked me what I needed so much rope for. Of course, I didn’t know the word for ’swing’ in Vietnamese…so I had to demonstrate by picking up the chair I had been sitting in and swinging it back and forth across the room. This caused outbursts of raucus laughter from the four people present, and they all started talking to each other, presumably about what I was doing and why on earth…

I asked the rope man where I could get a nice solid plank. (I indicated this by pointing to the outside of a nearby drawer, and making the swinging motion again). He thought for a minute, then made a phone call. He told me to wait a minute. OK. So, I waited, and a few minutes later this woman shows up on a motorbike: she will take me somewhere to get wood, he says, go with her. I hopped on the motorbike, abandoning all American-born fears of being kidnapped, murdered or subjected to some strange form of torcher (I would never get in a car with a random person in the US!) She took me down by the ferry and along a small dirt road to a warehouse full of wood. She explained to the guys there what I was doing and we chose a pice of wood. They sanded it down, drilled holes in it, and we were all set. I got back to the rope shop safe and sound, and the job was more than half done.

Once home, the construction was fairly simple: throw some ropes over the concrete beams on the roof, tie some knots, voila. The boys helped me by getting the rickety old ladder from the second floor (more like a taller version of a crappy bar stool) and testing the swing’s weight-bearing ability. Pretty good.  The kids loved it, and so did the “bigger kids.” I’m sure I’ll be spending plenty of time up there in the next few weeks and months.

Jenna with Kalla and Aspen on the swing

After Tet holiday, I decided to change my exercise location and start running circles around campus B at 5:15 every morning. I thought it would be more boring to run around the school at first, but I was also bored with running circles around the nearby subdivision where I used to exercise, so I figured new boredom was better than old boredom.

But I was pleasantly surprised on the third morning that I was running circles around campus by myself, when one of my second year students appeared near the volleyball court and asked to join me. Of course! Running with a buddy is always better than running alone! And I figured, it would help my motivation when I didn’t want to get out of bed at 5 AM if I knew a student was waiting for me. After about three days of running with Luan, passing by other joggers and walkers on campus, we were joined by another student…a first year female student at that! Usually the first years are very nervous about talking to me or even looking at me, so I was really surprised that she wanted to participate.

So now, we have a team of three, we run every morning. Chau stops when she gets tired, but she’s getting stronger, and I have a feeling that soon enough we will have more and more students joining. We invite them every day and it’s only a matter of time. It’s a great opportunity to get to talk to them more one-on-one. Who knows, maybe I’ll even start them on some speed work or plyometrics sometime soon

Well, Erick told me, when he was here visiting, that I should express my feelings more in my messages to people so that they would unerstand when I’m sad, happy, conflicted, etc. So, here it goes. I’m not very good at this…

This past Thursday was the day that I had to choose whether I would stay here in Long Xuyen for another year or not. I know that I came in thinking “of course, I’ll stay for two years,” thinking that two years would be the necessary amount of time to really learn/understand anything. But for the last month or so, I’ve been feeling really conflicted about this choice, feeling really homesick, missing New York, thinking about my future interests and path (grad school, other work, etc.), recalling friends and loved ones in the US. And I told Christine on Thursday, by email, that I would not renew my contract (it doesn’t help that it’s now the “con re” season, which means little nasty flies come out at 7 pm every night and swarm anything and everything in their paths). I also talked to many friends and family members about this, with various ideas and advice, making a pros and cons list for myself, remembering my loneliness during the holiday. That’s right, although I enjoyed the time with students, most of the Tet holiday was spent on my own or in uncormfortable situatoins with alcohol and the guys and random Vietnamese men. I hate these situations with a passion, and they make me want to hop the first plane to the US. It just feels like they contain so many conflicting pressures in terms of me as a woman, as an American woman, as a teacher, as a friend, and I don’t know what I’m supposed to do to balance my respect for others and my self-dignity. Anyway…tangent.

So, my decision for Christine was to leave after the summer program in Augsut. I sent her a long and detailed email about my thoughts and reasons. She shot one back to me with two quotations from my email about my interest in staying “if only…” and asked me if I could perhaps change my situation. So, she’s given me extra time, and now I’m back in my state of indecision. Today i went to the Khai Tri school for disadvantaged children, which reminded me completely of Mai Am Tre Xanh, where I volunteered in Ho Chi Minh City when I was a student. During the Tet holiday, one of the kids from Mai Am Tre Xanh actually called me! and told me he’s working in Binh Duong, north of the city. It was amazing to hear from one of the kids: i didn’t think I would ever see or hear from any of them again…and another friend from HCMC called me recently. Which makes me realize I do have a life here, as much as I want to believe that this is just a temporary location, not a real job, and that I’m not making real connections.

There is potential for me to work here in another capacity next year. I’m waiting to hear from the higher-ups about whether it will work or not. It would mean teaching a bit (my favorite class, most likely ), and also helping with editing and english capacity for the Center for Social Science Research. This would mean getting to know their staff, who seem really great from first impressions, and are working on some interesting projects in the community. I’m also interested in getting more involved in setting up student activities outside of class, such as a newspaper, a volunteer organization, and possibly a choir. Unlike my college experience, with a seemingly infinite number of groups and extracurricular activities to join, these students have very little to do outside of class in order to relax and connect with each other. Hence the myriad coffee shops around the university…so, it’s something I might be willing to stay and work on. As much as I’m apprehensive to invest myself here, I read Eric’s blog today (another volunteer here, who’s been here more than two years now) and I started thinking about this idea of investing myself here only to leave in the future. The more I invest, the harder it will be to leave. I looked at Eric’s blog after seven months, and this is exaclty what he said. And I wonder, if he had had the choice to leave at that point, would he have done it? Am I just going through a phase of self-doubt, and fear of the unknown, and fear of what I’m missing out on, and fear of making real connections here that will be painful to leave in the future? When I think about going back to NYC, I get excited, but there aren’t really any known opportunities there for me. A year is a long time, but on the other hand, it is not, especially not when I’m young. I feel like a large chunk of me is still pressured by that Barnard-bred, achieve-something-in-your-life mentality: I need to get back to “reality” to start working on my real accomplishments in life. But, am I not accomplishing anyting here? I think I am, but I just doubt myself at times (now being one of those times).

And so, friends and family, those are my thoughts. There are more, they could fill a book, in fact. On another note, I was waiting to get my hair cut until I got back and someone could cut it “properly” (my hair’s really hard to cut). Today, I caved, and cut it myself (my mom will kill me ) It actually looks ok. So, what does it mean, that I decided I couldn’t wait to get a “real” haircut in the US?