Be forewarned: this is a completely insignificant post. But in the past 24 hours I have proven to be more of a helpless, hapless handful than I thought was possible, even for me, and I can't help but be a little amused at myself. Thank God I have Alice here to supervise.
Number 1. Last night, after a long, leisurely dinner with Alice, Sam and Thi Bay, I decided to attempt to make my own chili salt. Here in Vietnam it is common to eat fruit dipped in this delicious concoction - sounds bizarre but it is SO good. A lot of times you get a little packet when you buy fruit, but we had none on hand. Thinking the recipe to be pretty self-explanatory, I got after it. In my cooking naïveté I failed to realize that chilis can burn your skin as well as your mouth (duh). I don't know what I did while I was chopping them. Rubbed my hands all over my face and arms maybe? Because a mere five minutes later my hands and everything from the neck up was on fire. I tried everything you would normally do to stop the burning of spicy food - rubbed bread on my nose, soaked my nose in a glass of milk, Alice even suggested putting butter on it - nothing worked. So for the remainder of dinner I sat there holding huge ice cubes up to my face until it went numb. It was quite the picture. My hands and lips are still stinging a little today.
Number 2. This morning I made a complete fool of myself playing tennis with my friend Duy. Never again will I doubt the athletic prowess of the Vietnamese. In I marched, looking quite the part of the sporty American chick, ready to dominate. An hour later, I had lost 3 sets in only 18 games. I think I maybe won a total of 5 points. (Un)Fortunately for me, my tennis partner happens to be the only person I've met thus far in Vietnam who has mastered the art of sarcasm. "Julia, do you like the fence? Do you like the net?" Ha. Ha. Ha. Duy did ask me to be his doubles partner in an upcoming tournament. "It is a tournament for teachers. Lots of bad players, so, you can be my partner, yes?" Thanks, so flattered!
Number 3. This is the second time in a row this week that I have remembered that I need to take my malaria medicine, gotten out the bottle of pills, filled up a glass of water, continued eating lunch...and then come back 5 minutes later wondering whether or not I actually took the pill. Short term memory loss - it's a doozy. So today I counted my pills and figured out I accidentally double-dosed. Freaking out I debated between trying to make myself throw up and calling my dad in the middle of the night for his expert medical advice. I opted for the latter, and he reassured me I would be fine. Still unconvinced (because he was half-asleep when I talked to him), I wouldn't rest until Alice had verified this on several different medical websites. I'm happy to say that I have now survived an hour and a half beyond this unfortunate incident, so things are looking good...
I guess you win some days, you lose some days. Gold stars to Garabrant for putting up with my silliness. If it weren't for her I'd probably be curled up in the fetus position right now, clutching my chili-burnt face and bemoaning my doxycycline "overdose." Chao for now.
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
One Monkey, Three Massages, and Tons of Mangoes on the Cheap…
Before the events of last weekend fade into distant memories in the whirlwind that has become life in Vietnam, they need to be mentioned in all their gloriousness.
To start it all off, we had a little visitor in our front yard. Yep, that’s right, a monkey. We’re not sure where he came from – there’s the possibility that he’s a pet of one of our Vietnamese neighbors. Either way, he showed up in our yard just as Sam and I were biking home from class. Which was super cute and all…until he pounced. We ran shrieking into our house and stayed there through lunch, images of Outbreak running through our heads. Our friend An, who is incidentally not much bigger than the monkey itself, was brave enough to chase it away for us, narrowly missing a nip on the leg from the little bugger.
Amusing happening number two of the week occurred when on Friday afternoon, after a long week of teaching, Alice, Sam and I decided to try getting massages. After negotiating the price in botched Venglish/Vietnamese, we were led upstairs to a tiny little changing room (where we were told to strip down and grab a towel) and then a dimly lit room with three tables and three masseuses. Sam has had some massage experience back in the States, but this being the first time for both Alice and I, most of what we know about massages comes from watching Phoebe on Friends. I don’t know what we expecting exactly, but both being pretty steeped in “Puritanical” American standards of public modesty, we erupted into nervous giggles when the masseuses climbed up on our backsides and pulled down those towels. Hello world, yes, that would be my @$$! Of course this made Sam laugh hysterically as well. Which in turn made the three Vietnamese girls catch the infectious giggles – apparently not all of their clients find massages so hilarious. This went on for about half an hour, until we calmed down enough for them to give us impromptu lessons in what I’m pretty sure was cursing in Vietnamese. To top it all off, Frank called us in the middle of this giggle-fest, wondering where we were to let him into our house and very confused as to why we found his phone call hilarious.
By far one of the highlights of the weekend was a trip to Cai Rang, the famous floating market just outside the city, with a group of my students on Saturday morning. I had talked to a few of the members of my Thursday afternoon class (by far my favorite, sorry, but it’s true!) about wanting to see the market the “Vietnamese” way – traveling there by bicycle and then renting a boat from a local instead of taking an organized tour. One of my students, whom we shall call “Tom the Tour Guide” said he could probably swing that, just for me. This was the first week that I had gotten enough sleep to bear the thought of getting up at 4:45 on a Saturday, so we made the plan.
Alice, Frank and I met up with three of my students bright and early the next morning. Though we were running on just four hours of sleep (thanks to a farewell party for our German friend the night before) the trip definitely proved well worth the agony of the early morning. We were able to convince a local man to take us out on the water just in time to watch a magnificent sunrise, and wove our way through boat after boat of fresh produce. Personal highlights of the trip for me included stopping at a grab-n-go coffee boat (a boat-thru, I guess?) and buying as much fruit as we could bicycle home (Mangoes! Mangoes! Mangoes!) for cheaper than cheap. The morning finished off with a delicious breakfast of hu tieu (vegetarian noodle soup), and we were even done in time for a late morning nap. I also enjoyed getting to know my three students a little better outside the constraints of the classroom. The mood of the morning was pretty relaxed – we joked around, raced on our bikes, etc – and I felt like a student again myself. Tom the Tour-Guide has offered to take me to his home province, An Giang, soon, and I’m looking forward to another spectacular tour!
On to amusing happening number four, by far the best. Earlier in the week, Sam had informed me that our dear friend Mr. Ly has recommended us to be the main attraction at the English Department’s opening ceremony on Saturday night. What was this to entail exactly? Dancing. We were to choreograph a short dance, perform it in front of the whole department, and then choose ten students from the crowd to compete in a dancing contest that we were to judge. Now Sam used to be a ballerina, but how exactly was I qualified to do this? Apparently because I am such an enthusiastic “recreational” dancer. Ha! I could have killed Mr. Ly.
On Saturday afternoon Sam and I met to choreograph our little dance. In keeping with the general theme of ridiculousness, we settled on Britney Spears “Gimme More” as the most appropriate song selection. I must say I was pretty pleased with the result of our efforts – we managed to incorporate the sprinkler, the awkward shoulder dance (a shout-out to the Paine twins for that one), the moonwalk, a lot of hip-shaking and even a corny high-five into our little number, all in the span of about a minute. It was all I could do to keep from bursting out laughing on stage, but the students LOVED it. They went nuts, and now I’m pretty sure they think Samantha and I are professional dancers. I’d like to say that this is because of my mad DP skillzzz, but I’m pretty sure it has more to do with the relative comparison – as my good friend Duy commented, “When I see Americans dance, I think that Vietnamese people maybe do not dance so well.” Nuff said.
But by far the best part of the evening was the dance contest. Just picture this: me as MC, Sam as model dancer, and ten Vietnamese students gettin’ down on stage with the sprinkler and the awkward shoulder dance, all to the tune of “Hooo-ah, ha ha ha, hooo-ah, ha ha ha.” Actually, don’t picture it – watch the video I uploaded (copyright Alice S. Garabrant). In the words of Frank, “the guy in the blue is really killing it.”
I’m starting to think I should rename this blog “Vietnam: Where You Too Can Become a Star.”
To start it all off, we had a little visitor in our front yard. Yep, that’s right, a monkey. We’re not sure where he came from – there’s the possibility that he’s a pet of one of our Vietnamese neighbors. Either way, he showed up in our yard just as Sam and I were biking home from class. Which was super cute and all…until he pounced. We ran shrieking into our house and stayed there through lunch, images of Outbreak running through our heads. Our friend An, who is incidentally not much bigger than the monkey itself, was brave enough to chase it away for us, narrowly missing a nip on the leg from the little bugger.
Amusing happening number two of the week occurred when on Friday afternoon, after a long week of teaching, Alice, Sam and I decided to try getting massages. After negotiating the price in botched Venglish/Vietnamese, we were led upstairs to a tiny little changing room (where we were told to strip down and grab a towel) and then a dimly lit room with three tables and three masseuses. Sam has had some massage experience back in the States, but this being the first time for both Alice and I, most of what we know about massages comes from watching Phoebe on Friends. I don’t know what we expecting exactly, but both being pretty steeped in “Puritanical” American standards of public modesty, we erupted into nervous giggles when the masseuses climbed up on our backsides and pulled down those towels. Hello world, yes, that would be my @$$! Of course this made Sam laugh hysterically as well. Which in turn made the three Vietnamese girls catch the infectious giggles – apparently not all of their clients find massages so hilarious. This went on for about half an hour, until we calmed down enough for them to give us impromptu lessons in what I’m pretty sure was cursing in Vietnamese. To top it all off, Frank called us in the middle of this giggle-fest, wondering where we were to let him into our house and very confused as to why we found his phone call hilarious.
By far one of the highlights of the weekend was a trip to Cai Rang, the famous floating market just outside the city, with a group of my students on Saturday morning. I had talked to a few of the members of my Thursday afternoon class (by far my favorite, sorry, but it’s true!) about wanting to see the market the “Vietnamese” way – traveling there by bicycle and then renting a boat from a local instead of taking an organized tour. One of my students, whom we shall call “Tom the Tour Guide” said he could probably swing that, just for me. This was the first week that I had gotten enough sleep to bear the thought of getting up at 4:45 on a Saturday, so we made the plan.
Alice, Frank and I met up with three of my students bright and early the next morning. Though we were running on just four hours of sleep (thanks to a farewell party for our German friend the night before) the trip definitely proved well worth the agony of the early morning. We were able to convince a local man to take us out on the water just in time to watch a magnificent sunrise, and wove our way through boat after boat of fresh produce. Personal highlights of the trip for me included stopping at a grab-n-go coffee boat (a boat-thru, I guess?) and buying as much fruit as we could bicycle home (Mangoes! Mangoes! Mangoes!) for cheaper than cheap. The morning finished off with a delicious breakfast of hu tieu (vegetarian noodle soup), and we were even done in time for a late morning nap. I also enjoyed getting to know my three students a little better outside the constraints of the classroom. The mood of the morning was pretty relaxed – we joked around, raced on our bikes, etc – and I felt like a student again myself. Tom the Tour-Guide has offered to take me to his home province, An Giang, soon, and I’m looking forward to another spectacular tour!
On to amusing happening number four, by far the best. Earlier in the week, Sam had informed me that our dear friend Mr. Ly has recommended us to be the main attraction at the English Department’s opening ceremony on Saturday night. What was this to entail exactly? Dancing. We were to choreograph a short dance, perform it in front of the whole department, and then choose ten students from the crowd to compete in a dancing contest that we were to judge. Now Sam used to be a ballerina, but how exactly was I qualified to do this? Apparently because I am such an enthusiastic “recreational” dancer. Ha! I could have killed Mr. Ly.
On Saturday afternoon Sam and I met to choreograph our little dance. In keeping with the general theme of ridiculousness, we settled on Britney Spears “Gimme More” as the most appropriate song selection. I must say I was pretty pleased with the result of our efforts – we managed to incorporate the sprinkler, the awkward shoulder dance (a shout-out to the Paine twins for that one), the moonwalk, a lot of hip-shaking and even a corny high-five into our little number, all in the span of about a minute. It was all I could do to keep from bursting out laughing on stage, but the students LOVED it. They went nuts, and now I’m pretty sure they think Samantha and I are professional dancers. I’d like to say that this is because of my mad DP skillzzz, but I’m pretty sure it has more to do with the relative comparison – as my good friend Duy commented, “When I see Americans dance, I think that Vietnamese people maybe do not dance so well.” Nuff said.
But by far the best part of the evening was the dance contest. Just picture this: me as MC, Sam as model dancer, and ten Vietnamese students gettin’ down on stage with the sprinkler and the awkward shoulder dance, all to the tune of “Hooo-ah, ha ha ha, hooo-ah, ha ha ha.” Actually, don’t picture it – watch the video I uploaded (copyright Alice S. Garabrant). In the words of Frank, “the guy in the blue is really killing it.”
I’m starting to think I should rename this blog “Vietnam: Where You Too Can Become a Star.”
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