Six-Week Sound Bites

Hello dear readers, Julia the bad blogger here. So these past few weeks, my teaching schedule came and hit me square in the face. One-hundred and fifty students is a lot to keep up with, apparently. In other news, the downside to, well, having friends here is that my weekends have become busier and less prone to idle rumination.

So on that note I don’t have time for a full post right now, but in an effort to pretend like I actually write in this thing on a regular-enough basis I leave you with some six-week sound-bites.

#1 A brief update on my efforts to assimilate…

My appearance. Since I’m sitting here in my second pair of day clothes, complete with bedazzled fingernails (first time I’ve worn blue polish since I was 10, thanks very much!) and pimpin’ Detroit hat, I think it is safe to say that I have mastered the art of “Vietnam chique.”

As for adopting the local schedule…I cannot. I tried my best to wake up at 5 a.m. to run this week, and it made me into a miserable human being who hated life. No one should get up when it is still dark out. Ever. Because of my penchant for sleep, running without losing half my body weight in sweat doesn’t seem to be an option here. Instead I’ve decided to pursue another path of Asian assimilation by doing yoga every day so hopefully when I come back to the States I’ll be freakishly flexible.

I have, however, succeeded in biking around a bit more to find the best of the best in local cuisine. I now have favorite places for pho (FUH) and curry, and a couple of great vegetarian stands to get bún cha gìo (BOOM cha YO) or noodles with veggies and fried spring rolls. Last week a German friend took us on a long bike ride out of the city to eat lunch. After winding through alleyways and over bridges, we pulled up to what was essentially someone’s home with a few lawn chairs set out on the patio, and proceeded to feast on the most delicious bánh xào (BUHN say-oh) I’ve ever had. A Can Tho specialty, bánh xào consists of rice made into crêpe-like wraps stuffed with shrimp and vegetables. You take some of this crêpe and wrap it with mint and other herbs in a huge lettuce leaf doused with spices, then dip it all in special sauce. SO good.

#2 Speaking of which…

After being around for a while I’ve decided that the Vietnamese are schizophrenic eaters. What do I mean by this? On one hand, meals in general are pretty lean – rice and noodles, broths, small quantities of meat, and vegetables, vegetables, vegetables. For the first few weeks of living here I ate so many dishes like this that my body was crying out for grease. I thought I was the only one besides Alice with an inner fat kid. And then I discovered it – the underbelly of Vietnamese cuisine. Hidden beneath the healthy façade of greens and rice are layers and layers of fried, sugary deliciousness. You can pretty much fry anything here. Bananas. Plantains. Sweet potatoes. Sticky rice. Dough. Chicken. Squid. It’s like the American South on steroids. It is also safe to assume that sugar has been added to anything you drink. Hell, you can even drink sugar, straight from the cane.

#3 It was bound to happen sometime…

That’s right, ladies and gents, my first traffic accident. Ironically just this morning I commented on how comfortable I was starting to feel biking around, and mere hours later I found myself face-planted on the asphalt with bruised knees and palms. To my credit it was not actually my fault. The turn through the university gate is always kind of a crap shoot, with tons of motorbikes and bicycles bottlenecking onto the shoulder going the wrong way down the street. Anyways, today as I was turning in some little punk came up alongside me and cut me off – his rear wheel knocking into my front wheel, overturning my bicycle and sending me flying. Luckily I was close enough to the side of the road so I was more shaken up than anything. And mad, as the expression on my face betrayed apparently. He helped me pick up my bike but was looking at me the whole time like I might bite him. So I just grabbed my stuff and said “BE CAREFUL” in a tone that made it the Vietnamese equivalent of an expletive-deleted. It was kind of nice to show emotion in public, even if I did lose a little face.

#4 Nothing is creepy in Vietnam.

It’s true. I’ve decided that you can approach anyone, anywhere without feeling any qualms about beings construed as socially awkward or intruding on their privacy. Take for example my new friend who we will call “John.” One day as I am bicycling home from school, John rides up alongside me and greets me with a cheerful “Hello Julia, where are you going?” Oh great, I thought, this is one of my students and I don’t recognize him. I try to play it cool and casually asked him could he please remind me what section of my class he was in again? “Oh no, I’m not in your class. No no, I just like to make friends with the foreign teachers to practice my English. I knew Nathan and Mark (last year PiAers) and heard that the new foreign teachers were Julia, Alice and Samantha. And I knew you were Julia because of your hair. You are famous because of your hair.”

Or take this excerpt from an email I recently received. I met its author “Tammy” while having coffee outside the school library. She said she had heard of our orphanage project and wanted to join us, and would we be able to give us our contact info? A few days later I received a note from her (Subject line: Making friends!) in which she again expressed her wish to join the project (which was very sweet). But then she comes out with this…

“Another thing I'd like to let u know is both my parents and I are vegan for many years.I think we can obtain many benefits from changing into an alternative living by reducing meat consumption.Meat is delicious but poisonous. Ucan be healthy if u limit eating meat.Take it easy, i don'tmean to convince or force u,just invite and encourage u to lead a better life without violence to animals and other species frommyown experience.
By the way, I'd like to introduce to u these 2 websites,u can visit them when u r free.I m sure it can bring u many benefits:
www.Godsdirectcontact.org
www.SupremeMasterTV.con”

I’m not sure what about my appearance screamed “raging carnivore,” but I do think it is one of the better arguments for vegetarianism that I have heard, and I can’t wait to visit these websites…

#5 It does get “cold” here!

I’m quickly discovering that the “rain” I experienced during my first weeks was only a taste of the joys of the rainy season to come. It has poured and poured and poured over the past few days to the point that my super-sweet poncho never has time to dry before I need it again. Last night on the way to a birthday party we had the pleasure of encountering just such a nasty spot of weather. Only a short distance away from our destinaton, we decided to forego pulling over to throw on our ponchos. Big mistake – within five minutes we were soaked through and had to sit through dinner in our wet clothes.

But the upside of the rain is that the heat subsides, and we even get days that are cool with nice breezes. Who would’ve thought? It might also be that I have just gotten accustomed to obscene temperatures. I now have to bring a sweater/jacket with me whenever I go someplace air-conditioned because I get too cold. My student Cherub (FYI not a made-up name) tells me that it even gets down to a "freezing" 25 degrees Celsius in December…

#6 Music to my ears?

Jack warned us on arrival that the Vietnamese seem to have a somewhat different conception of what constitutes appropriate volume. In my short time here thus far I have found this to be overwhelmingly accurate. Note to self – bring headphones whenever you travel, because 4 hours in a mini-bus blasting music at 12 decibels can get tiresome.

I’m also starting to wonder if the Vietnamese have different melodic standards as well. Maybe the somewhat nasal quality of the language also shapes music tastes? Because every song that I hear seems to have the same medley-of-a-dying-cat sound – makes me all the more psyched for my first karaoke experience! I’ve also noticed this even in everyday sounds. I.e. when a truck is backing up, the noise it makes is not the usual “Beep, beep, beep” but instead some variation on “It’s a Small World After All,” “Happy Birthday To You,” or “We Wish You a Merry Christmas.” It’s like every truck is the ice cream truck.

Vietnamese techno, on the other hand, is fabulous – as I am reminded every time I pass a clothing store blasting it at full volume. So maybe not all hope is lost for my continuing musical education…

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Turns out that this was not the short post I originally intended. I’ll write again soon with a real update. In the meantime, best to everyone!