Say my name say my name

On a lighter note from the last blog, and still in the personal range. I used to hate my name. I hated it hated it hated it. Yen is great. Nuh-gock is not. Nor is Dwong. But then I came here.



Everytime I say my full name to someone, they say it's a beautiful name. Duong Ngoc Yen. (Yu-ung Nghup Ee-en is the best I can to write it phonetically) The director of the national math institute told me that it's the name of a beautiful woman very skilled at martial arts and poetry in Chinese folklore. After seeing my grandfather's grave with Duong An engraved on the headstone and thinking about my dad, who was an only child, I realize that I haven't given Duong enough credit, because I'm so close to my mother's side of the family, the Hos. But I love and am proud of my name, and of being a Viet Kieu and having different ways of pronouncing it. I prefer the Vietnamese sound for my middle and last names.



Speaking of being a Viet Kieu, more on that. I have a definite advantage now because I know more Vietnamese, but even if you don't you're still welcomed back to the home country. People are generally very excited to meet me and talk with a Viet Kieu My (American overseas Vietnamese). We get the Vietnamese, not the tourist, pricing, and extra friendliness and real conversations because we're Viet Kieu. That also means that some tourists think we're Vietnamese from VN and treat us as such, which is... interesting. Especially when people speak louder and slower in hopes that I'll understand more e.g. "do you know LAKE? Hon Kim LAKE?" "Well actually it's called Hoan Kiem lake, named after the restored sword in the legend, and it's down this street and hang a left. Bye."



Then there are many other tourists who love talking with me because I've got an inner look at Vietnamese culture; I've been to houses and chatted with shopkeepers etc. And there are many Vietnamese who aren't as friendly to Viet Kieu too. We're in between: Vietnamese know we aren't Vietnamese from VN, and foreigners think we are. It is a home but not my home, it is a unique experience which is great, but then makes it harder because we relate with neither group but with ourselves alone.



Hungary in a week! I was definitely not expecting myself to keep blogging.

Heartwrenching homecoming

I've been trying to write this blog since coming to VN like I did in France, but it's too personal here. This is my home country, and it's my first time coming back. I've walked the street my dad used to walk with his cousin to school everyday at dawn, I've floated along the river my mother swam in as a child. I've visited her university, his old house, her cousins, his half-siblings. I've seen things in Vietnam that neither of them have seen and done things neither of them have done. I so wish that my first time here could've been with them, so that I could hear their stories as we made new ones together. Instead I'm here alone, meeting family I never knew I had and making close friends knowing we can never fully understand each other because they cannot understand the part of this sentence preceding 'and'.

I don't know how to write this blog- so much goes on, but there's so much to say about the emotions here. So much more than my previous trip. I wish my parents were here, but I've got a teddy bear and box of tissues instead.

It all started the Saturday morning I went to Cai Rang floating market and my mother's village at 7 am, and I felt a huge lump in my throat as my students from Cai Rang told me to tell my mom about the new bridge, and how that special tree was torn down to widen the main road, and how big the town is now. All I could think was that I wish I didn't have to tell her, I wished she was there with me and telling me about what it was like when she was a little girl growing up among the sampans in a clear blue river and wobbly bridges and a smaller street.

The rest of the week was a blur of class and enjoying my new motorbike, and then I went to Phu Quoc, Vietnam's largest island, for a long weekend with five of my students. It was a few hours of bus and then a few hours of boat and then we were at our resort for a rainy beach weekend full of motorbiking and touristy things. First off, I don't do well in large groups. I prefer travelling by myself or with one other person, with the whole independent thing. Second, for my entire life I've been called chau, em, con, and occasionally chi (niece, little sister, child, or big sister). But Vietnamese culture respects teachers, so I spent a weekend being called co (teacher) and getting way too much attention. Third, again, I missed my parents, especially when I turned around in the ferry and saw all these elderly Vietnamese men laughing at the comedy we were watching and I thought about my dad's smile and wished I could share this experience with him.

It was a heartfelt, heartbreaking, and wonderful weekend. My students now know about this blog and they already know how I feel about being taken care of. We went to so many places and had such a cool time together, pearl farms, night markets, sea eagle sanctuary, old US military prison museum, beaches, motorbiking everywhere on rutty fun roads and taking lots of pictures. Shared a lot of personal experience, memories, and thoughts and heard a lot which has changed my perspective in many ways (which no, are not being shared here).

These are things I need to write about: Vietnamese massages, parties at students houses, attitudes towards drinking, attitudes towards children, pizza in Can Tho, the expat lifestyle, finally visiting my grandfather's grave and being the first of his grandchildren to light incense for him, motorbikes, eating out in Can Tho, Vietnamese junk food, well-meaning but misunderstanding extended family, giant class party, karaoke. But right now I need to put the tissues away and sleep. I'll figure out the pictures later.