Happiness to every body!!!!!!! ^_^

Soooooooo I haven’t written in a while. The days go by fast and I am always doing fun fun things. When I do find the time I’m still tired from jet lag. I’ll try and recount:

Monday: First four hour session of Vietnamese!!!!! It was intense. We move very fast. I think I have learned more Vietnamese in 5 days than I did in a whole term of Arabic at Union (granted it was somewhat of a joke). Vietnamese is hard but fun too. It has 6 tones, meaning each word must be said in the pitch that it needs to be or else it could mean something else. Depending on how you say “ma” is could mean ghost, rice seedling, tomb, but, horse or mother. Additionally there are a lot of sounds that we never make in English. All of this will require a lot of practice… but besides that Vietnamese is nice because all the words are one syllable and it has relatively simple grammar. It is also in the Latin alphabet, thanks to the French. Anyways I really like my teacher Co Thrinh (Co means teacher and Thrinh sounds like a cross between “chin” and “gin”). She is so great! She tells us dirty and politically incorrect riddles everyday before class. She is much more lively than the other teachers. She actually makes me want to be one… which is what I have been contemplating for a while. If I were a teacher, I would want to be like her, sans the politically incorrect riddles. I don’t know if I could get away with them. Later that evening most people were in the mood for some western food after mild tummy troubles. Alas, we found ourselves at Sheridan’s Irish Pub… I got risotto. Note to self: do not order an Italian dish at an Irish restaurant in Vietnam. It will probably not be very gastronomic.

Tuesday: Another language class, in which I almost cried in frustration. I was a little tired.


Wednesday: Had lunch with Van and My after 4 hours of Vietnamese… they showed us where we could eat lunch from the Lunch Lady (she was featured on Anthony Bordain). On the way we saw a little boy, probably around 8 years old, sitting at the side of the busy street, crying with his hands on his head. Nearby lay a metal serving tray and on the side of the street was a large pile of fried something; it was obvious that his day’s income had just been lost by the slip of a few fingers when a motorbike passed by too close. He worried about what his mom would say. A few of us gave him money… I gave him 20,000 dong (about a dollar) and we continued on. At a place nearby we had an interesting pink noodle soup complete with chicken skin, pepper pork sausage, a chunk of ham with the fat, a shrimp. Also My had us try sour meat. Sour meaning tasting sour. But I am pretty sure it was uncooked i.e. bad life choice. Not wanting to be impolite I took a teensy taste and still got a mouth full of hot pepper. Yum.


Thursday: I felt the repercussions of sour meat and interesting soup. I got a stomach ache, and, well, some other gastrointestinal complications. Alaina and I went to a very western café called Highland Coffee for some toast with butter and jam for dinner… something a bit more neutral. In Vietnamese class I learned how to spell my name in Vietnamese: “Ilaigio“ (without accents) !!!!!!!!!! And I also learned how to ask for my banh mi or muffin in the morning… or anything really…without any packaging (Meghan would be proud): Xin bo vao tay toi, Toi khong can hop (again without vietnamese accents).

Also, I have it so easy. I can eat 3 meals a day with snacks for like 100,000d or around $6. It's fun... except that I learned today that most construction workers only make around 35,000d a day. And this does not change with inflation. Not to mention every other Vietnamese person making lower and scraping for funds to feed their families.

Vietnamese noodles and Bah Bah Bah equates to Pizza burps

The day started at 4:30 am, when Maggie and I both stirred awake due to jet lag. It seemed to be happening to everyone, so we all gathered and went hunting for our breakfast at around 7:00 am. Life for Saigonese Vietnamese seems to run from 5 am to 10 pm. Luckily we didn’t have to venture far outside the confines of the university gates to find a Banh Mi (Vietnamese sandwich) stand. Man, was this the best breakfast I think I have ever had, not even kidding. Lily was the first to order and got a baguette (made with rice flower) filled with mayonnaise, pickled vegetables, basil, cucumbers, some interesting spicy soy sauce, baby bell cheese, and a fried egg. Actually sounds rather disgusting but it was a flavor explosion. We were standing, stuffing our faces, when we realized that no one else, meaning Vietnamese people, were eating standing up. So we found some little miniature stools (which everyone sits on in the sidewalks to eat) and sat. And ate our miniature feast. We supplemented it with some Vietnamese ice coffee, which is extremely strong coffee with a generous amount of sweetened condensed milk on the bottom. The coffee was so strong it almost tasted alcoholic.


Later we had our orientation. We walked around HCMC and went to the market. It was an interesting experience, to say the least. It’s at the beginnings of the backpacker’s section of the city, i.e. tourist/white westerners central, and thus we are targets for their business. The market was especially draining. The vendors will come up and touch you and say “Miss nice shirt for you? Very nice, many colors…” Over and over. We walked through the covered alleys and every single vendor would grab and say “Miss, miss…” It was actually hard. I am not the kind of person to shut people out or say no to people. I want to be polite. But if you are polite and show more interest in talking to them they will pull you over and show you more and you just dig yourself deeper and deeper. I hated saying no because I knew that they need my money more than I actually need it. But its not like I can buy everything from every single Vietnamese woman/man who approaches. We were eating lunch and like 15 counterfeit Ray Ban sunglass vendors walked by and asked each of us to buy. So I have learned how to smile and say "không."

We walked, we got some noodles for lunch, some sugar cane juice, some beer (called “Bah Bah Bah”, meaning 333), some strawberry Fanta, and I bought some undies. Actually, one pair. In the biggest size they had. By US standards I am a skinny girl, not stick skinny, but, you know, thin. By Vietnamese standards I am giantess. I got XL which just fit me. Made me feel great. At least they didn’t say I was fat.

I will write more but I am exhausted


Ok, 6:54 in the am now, so Im good. Last night we went for our orientation dinner to meet our Vietnamese "buddies" and also ate a traditional Vietnamese meal, family style, as they always do (which is great). We had some sort of sour chopped up salad on rice cakes, chicken (with the heads), snail patties, a sort of fried salad with shrimp, another sour chopped up salad with pork, and then fish, rice and crab soup as the main course. Dessert was pineapple, watermelon and other fruit with this mixture of salt and chili pepper to go on it. It was all very interesting... my favorites were the snail patty, which tasted sort of like a leaf covered meat ball although the texture was a bit off, and the fish was great. My favorite part of the whole meal however was talking with the Vietnamese students, who are our age. I sat next to My who is really peppy and outgoing, we talked about Britney Spears and I explained the sexual connotation of "if-you-seek-amy." She's so cute, I can’t wait to spend more time with her. She also likes to dance and when she asked me how I like to dance in America I jumped up and down, waved my arms and my head and she was so happy. I also met a girl Vân who is also very sweet-- she reminds me of a Vietnamese Aiko (a very good thing). She had a nice temperment and was easy to talk to. On the other side of me was Huu Anh, who was very smiley guy, shorter than I and probably a size -2. I'll just have to get used to being a giantess. Anyhow he was very sweet and we talked a lot, and would get me food whenever a new dish was brought to the table. He told me that I hold my chopsticks very funny and showed me how to do it. I'll still have my training wheels a while, Maggie and I are going to do some conditioning to strengthen out chopstick grip. Pho, the traditional Vietnamese noodle soup, is the best way to do this, which we will probably be eating every day, so I have high hopes of becoming chopstick master. I also met Quyên, who I didn't get to talk much to, but she loves the color red and is also great.
The one thing thus far that has thrown me off about living here is my sustainable habits. In the US I purposely try to not buy containers that aren’t recyclable, I don’t buy bottled water ever, I try not to eat meat, I recycle any paper I have, I unplug appliances, you know. But here I can’t even think about the first four things on that list. If you get street food, which is what I can see myself living off, they come in Styrofoam or plastic containers that, well, can’t be recycled. Also, there are no recycling bins, and I felt a little bit naïve inquiring about that. Alice, one of our Vietnamese CET people, said that often people go through the trash for them, but not necessarily as much anymore because of inflation. Also I naturally can only recycle paper by reusing it. The meat here is local, naturally, and the food too, so that’s cool. But basically I have to through that whole environmentally conscious side of me out the window for the next 4 months, which is very, very hard. I practically shiver whenever I have to throw a can or bottle in the garbage. It’ll be ok though. They Vietnamese seem to use and re-use everything, very little goes to waste.

This is going to be a great term, Vietnam is a great place.

I'm Here!!!!

At the moment I am sitting on the last leg of my trip, headed straight for Ho Chi Minh City, slightly drunk off sleep deprivation. I’ve had a long— but very exciting— journey (which technically began yesterday at 9 am, but since I crossed over the international date line on my way here I skipped a day and thus it’s been “2” days since I left) I keep glancing out the window hoping to see my first glance of Vietnam.

I began the trip in Orlando, Florida, strangely. My family is in the process of moving from Maine to Florida so I was down there with my sister, dog and mum. Saying good-bye to my mom was harder that I anticipated. It happened very fast and I wanted to cry but was headed through security. I didn’t want to be tearing up on them as they bark instructions. She looked very sad as we said our goodbyes and I watched her walk briskly away, crying I’m sure. I cried too, a little. But like I said, I swallowed them up.

From Orlando to New York I had a 2 hour flight and then a 9 hour or more delay before the actual flight to Hong Kong. That was rather annoying since there was only one Cathay Pacific flight headed out that night—mine—and the desk didn’t open up for check-ins until 5:30, but I had been there at 2:30. The flight left JFK at 11:10 and then headed to Vancouver, where we disposed of old passengers and refreshed with some new ones. Lauren and I got a greasy bleach blonde Canadian male seat-mate, donning a Hong Kong t-shirt. He was headed for Beijing and considers China to be “the second Mother Land.” Lauren and I stayed up for the first 5 hours, ate two dinners, and then I Tylenol PM-ed myself to sleep which was off and on for the rest of the trip, with periods of in flight entertainment in between.


We landed in Hong Kong 20 hours after initial departure (!). A few of us went exploring and ran into a Cantonese candy shop, also conveniently supplied dried fish and many kinds of rice cakes. We purchased a big assortment of candy, our favorite flavor yet being red kidney bean. Naturally I was trying desperately to document the entire thing via camera until the

AHHH I JUST SAW VIETNAM

…. Nice cashier said “sorry no picture.” The packaging was just so cute and colorful and Chinese. I wanted all of it. Forever in a picture. That’s ok though. There are plenty of other chances. We explored a bit more, exchanged some dollah billz into Vietnamese Dong and headed back, boarded, and voila, on plane, destined for Ho Chi Minh City. We did get to eat some mediocre Chinese cuisine on the airplane—I got chicken and noodles with hot chili sauce and some interesting fruit that looked like an albino kiwi. Lauren, being lactose intolerant, got a special meal consisting of potatoes and vegetables with some ban curd dessert, which was essentially sweetened, silken tofu. The texture was interesting but it wasn’t bad. Like watery, more gelatinous pudding.

And here I am now, writing, eyes heavy, belly bloated, hair a little poofy, but also excited/nervous/exhausted. It all feels so surreal and indescribable—I can only attempt to explain by relating what I’ve done and seen. But the emotions don’t seem to seep through. As we were landing in Hong Kong, Lauren and I kept laughing and whispering “ahhh we’re in Asia, ASIA!!!!!” Yes, I’m in Asia, but it has happened so fast, it hasn’t hit me. I keep expecting to feel this sudden feeling of “so this is Asia, so this is where I am, so this is what it is like, you are in ASIA, you are in VIETNAM” but I don’t know when that will actually come, or if it will… I’ve noticed in the times I have traveled before that it sometimes doesn’t fully hit me that I am thousands of miles away from my home and family in a different culture. Yet, since my last experiences were in much more “Western” places, Switzerland and Brazil, maybe perhaps in Asia I will finally feel like I am in a completely foreign place. We’ll see… in a few minutes ☺

This trip has also showed me just how small the world really is. Our tiny little planet. I can’t fathom that I’ve traveled half of it in the past 24 hours.

motorbikes!

our room!

quotes

Some interesting quotes to think about...

From Vietnam and Other American Fantasies by H. Bruce Franklin:
1. “While the war was going on, Reagan unambiguously defined what he meant by victory… ‘It’s silly talking about how many years we will have to spend in the jungles of Vietnam when we could pave the whole country and put parking stripes on it and still be home by Christmas.’”
2.After the Tet Offensive the US became desperate: ‘It became necessary to destroy the town to save it.’ 'Better dead than Red.'

From The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien
1. “Briefly, in the rain, Lieutenant Cross saw Martha’s gray eyes gazing back at him. He understood. It was very sad, he thought. The things men carried inside. The things men did or felt they had to do. He almost nodded at her, but didn’t.”

From Iraq and the Lessons of Vietnam: Or, How Not To Learn From The Past edited by Lloyd C. Gardner and Marilyn B. Young
1.“(Basically McNamara’s project sends young recruits (who would normally not be accepted into the military) to the war when they were in need of more men) Project 100,000 was touted as a liberal effort to uplift ‘the subterranean poor’ who had ‘not had the opportunity to earn their fair share of this nation’s abundance.’… despite the high-minded rhetoric, Project 100,000 merely served to send many poor, terribly confused, and woefully uneducated boys to Vietnam, where their death rate was twice as high as it was for American forces as a whole. This was a Great Society program that was quite literally shot down on the battlefields of Vietnam.” (Appy 138-39)
2.“Iraq is not Vietnam, and 2003 is not 1975 or 1968. Saddam Hussein was driven out of power and his regime collapsed last spring. The is no independent sanctuary named ‘North Iraq’ for his Baath Party henchmen to fight from, no Soviet Union to keep them supplied with arms and fuel, no equivalent of Laos or Cambodia in the Middle East for whole divisions of his loyalists to hide in, no Ho Chi Minh trail that suicide bombers can use to drive to Baghdad. Nor is there an allied Iraqi government yet, elected or otherwise.” Craig Whitney, New York Times (Elliott 21)
3.“Convincing peasants that the United States was on their side was one aspect of counterinsurgency, and counterinsurgency greatly interested Kennedy and his advisors. Proud of their knowledge of how the enemy operated— not necessarily the Vietnamese, but any enemy— they quoted Mao: the guerrilla is a fish swimming in the ocean of the people. Dry up the ocean and the problem is solved. No one paused for very long over the metaphor: what, after all, would it mean to dry up the ocean?” (Young 217)

On an entirely different note (and tone and mindset), is it weird that I am actually rather excited for my 20 hour flight across the world? I can just sit on my butt for almost an entire day and no one can give me crap about it. I also get lots of "free" food (with the option of Asian OR Western), in-flight entertainment, attractive stewards, good books, diphenhydramine, a blow-up neck pillow...

three days left

I'm leaving for Vietnam in three whole days. Actually. Thats a lie. If today were tomorrow it would be three days.

My itinerary: Beginning Tuesday September 8th, I'll leave Orlando at 11 am for JFK, arrive at 2-ish pm, meet the crew. Hang for a while. Peruse the airport facilities, eat food. At 10:40 pm take the 20-hour flight from New York to Hong Kong and get in Thursday, Sept 10th at 7 am (Wednesday 7 pm Eastern Standard time). Take connecting flight to Ho Chi Minh City, arrive 10:20 am.

I'm going to use this blog to record my journal entries required for my Vietnamese Life and Culture Course. Having them online will prevent them from being erased somehow on my computer (or if it crashes) and will also allow all of my fans to read them, or just my mom. (love you mom)