"This is neither fun nor easy!"

I've made it to my homeland, Can Tho. My mom was born in a village not far from here, so I'm visiting it tomorrow morning at 6 am with my students. There's a big floating market there, called Cho Noi, and I'm pretty excited to see Cai Rang. One of my students is from there and he said he'd take me around.

I was in Saigon for three days. It was cool- more about that city when I go back there in three weeks. Vi and I got to our guesthouse on Sunday afternoon after taking a car and an unexpected ferry ride here- it took about four hours from HCMC. Our guesthouse, which we later nicknamed the Hell House, was essentially the worst possible lodging the university could have given its foreign volunteers. The plumbing kept breaking, we had no fridge (although we had a toaster oven and a sink of cockroaches), the fans worked intermittently (obviously no a/c), and we were missing some walls, as in Vi's bedroom had three walls and a scrim that didn't even cover the hole. Also no internet and holes in the walls (purposeful, for ventilation). It was pretty awesome. We also had a kitty and the university gave us two bicycles.

This week has flown by. Teaching English and the TOEFL is a blast. We both teach two classes, one at 7:30-9:15 and the other 9:30-11:15. At first I was very very nervous, but making lesson plans takes very little time and reading essays and homework is pretty fun. I adore my students, almost all of whom are older than me, who call me Teacher. After the first few days we started hanging out with our students, but the Hell House took a lot of energy out of us. Vi got crazy sick from eating duck fetus egg (after riding on the back of my students' bicycles, an experience from which the title of this post is derived) and on Wednesday I scoped out hotels and we moved into one. We lasted three days in Hell House, but it seemed like so much longer...

After Vi and I get on the backs of Minh and Thuy's bicycles: "See, it's easy to ride on the back of a bicycle? See? Easy! It's fun!"

Several seconds of telling myself I won't die and clutching the seat of a badly wobbling bike in need of air later: "No, Minh! This is neither fun nor easy!"

Possibly the best advice I've received in Can Tho so far: "Just think about what I'm saying! Don't think about the bicycle!"

I hope to rent a motorbike tomorrow. I already have my awesome helmet that Adrian got me in Hanoi, and although I don't have a license I can always pull the "American!" card.

Pictures: me on the back of Minh's bike, the unexpected ferry ride, banh xeo (one of my favorite Vietnamese dishes), hot vit lon (duck fetus egg) in tamarind sauce, Old Man Monkey who sits outside a restaurant that we like, and my room in Hell House. Pretty, isn't it? Looks can be deceiving.

good bye hanoi

I'm leaving in 13 hours for the airport to get out of Hanoi and head to HCMC, where I'll be for a few days before shuttling to Can Tho and starting my teaching English stint. I am crazy sad to be leaving this city, which is sort of a hole anyway, but awesome. I feel very strongly toward Hanoi, toward its traffic and streets and lakes and food and people and buses and xe oms (motorbike taxis) and haggling and markets and libraries and restaurants and my friends, my very good friends I've made during the past almost-month.

I spent the last weekend in the provinces. Well, first on Saturday morning I gave a kickass speech to the American Center English Club at the American Embassy, then we motorbiked out to Bac Ninh, the smallest province in Vietnam just a bit out of Hanoi. Hieu is the slowest, most careful driver I've ever met. It's pretty damn terrifying actually. Passing on the right is the worst idea ever. Anyway, Bac Ninh, or more specifically the village of Que Vo (Huong and Hieu's hometown) is awesome! I learned to plant rice, plow a field with a water buffalo, harvest shrimp, pick rau muong (don't know what its English name is), and drive a motorbike. Oh plus we went to another village, Phu Lang, and I learned how to make do gom, or their traditional pottery. We painted ceramics, put stuff in a kiln, designed pots, and hung out. Oh and I got some tailored Vietnamese shirts for free. Villagers kick ass.

Tourist traps don't. Halong bay is beautiful, but I would've preferred going in an American tour group just so I could know exactly how much I was going to pay beforehand. Oh but we did go paragliding, which was awesome!

I don't fit the clothes here but I needed shorts to learn to motorbike so I now have a fantastic pair of boy shorts. Pockets are freaking amazing!

In sum, I am crazy sad to be leaving my friends from the American Center, IVCE, Duke, Princeton, the hotel, family, and the randoms e.g. library. I had an absolute blast here and my Vietnamese has improved like no other. I'm excited for the future, but sad to be leaving the past behind. Off go more sheets from my page a day calendar of life.

stolen, and a weird dream

My tape recorder is missing. Luckily I have almost all the files I'd recorded on my computer now, but still. It's an expensive-y piece of equipment and a pain to replace. For now I'll just take notes, at least tomorrow with the students. Oops forgot to call the professors... do that tomorrow.

Obviously, I'm not the best at scheduling my time. I'm not used to having nothing to do but what I make myself do. It's very interesting. Plus it'll be tough to adapt to Can Tho, where I'll be teaching classes at set times and all.

Also, I had this crazy dream last night that I'm sure accurately depicts my subconscious reactions to everything going on here and all I've been told throughout my life. It was a continuation from a previous dream a few nights ago, the night I went to Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum to watch the soldier's take down the flag and sing the anthem. In that dream you could only play traditional Vietnamese music in stores, or else the government would censor it. So in most recent dream, I was in my car driving around Hanoi playing pop music, and suddenly Ho Chi Minh's smiling face was beeping projected-like all around me and I got arrested! The jail was very nice, and was actually the British Council room in which I'd seen a debate on Friday night. It was plastered with HCM everywhere, and we prisoners had to paint busts of him. That's it.

Basically, I'm still keeping busy. Trying to be touristy while working, as usual. Hanging out with the Princeton and Duke kids here, and saw Adrian last week too to get my Yale fix in!

Photos: HCM's mausoleum at night, a dragon on a pagoda, silkworms and their silk from the silk village, one of the Princeton Viet roommates and a baby.

Also, while I was bargaining down a price for a motorbike taxi today, the men told me that I'd find it hard to find a husband. Original price: 40000. Final price: 15000.

an uneasy truce

Mr. Daddy long legs gets the back of the toilet. I get the front.

That said, Vietnam is fantastic! I've been here for almost two weeks now, which is hard to believe. My hotel room is quite homey now, with my map on the wall and post-it notes of places, bus routes, people, things to do, etc, and a fridge full of stuff. Lots of delicious food and delicious adventures.

I've been failing at keeping up with myself. I'm supposed to write down everything that happens and everything I observe in order to conduct this anthropology project really well, but I've just been so in the moment. Whenever I have free time I grab my laptop and head to the national library and start typing up notes and journal-y stuff.

Wow.. there's just so much to say that I'm speechless. I've met so many people and done so many things in these past two weeks. I love motorbikes and bought my own helmet yesterday. The rain hits hard and suddenly, but luckily with some warning- you know it'll rain when the sticky humidity gets absurdly oppressive. The heat isn't so bad though. I don't understand how everyone here wears pants all the time and I wear skirts and people stare at me. People stare at me a lot.

People also love me a lot. I speak a lot of Vietlish/French added in just for kicks and giggles. I talk to people a lot more here than I did in France. Have made friends very quickly. A newspaper article was about me. Everyone knows who I am. May be slightly famous. Photo exhibits, museums, temples, libraries, seminars, film screenings, architecture debates, lunches with directors of things, interviews, interviews, research, more interviews, living, living, life. It all moves quite fluidly.

Photos: the lake of the Restored Sword (Ho Hoan Kiem), middle of Hanoi. Me on a motorbike with a math student I interviewed. A cat statue at a monument of sorts. Delicious food at this girl's house.

eek

Better now, after spending the day wandering a few blocks, eating delicious food, taking a terrifying motorbike ride with the guy who works at the front desk to buy a phone, and looking through family photos of people I've never met. Curiously enough, my biggest challenge to living alone so far seems to be the two daddy long legs in the bathroom. Wish to shower, do not know what to do.

Here is a photo of me in my traditional Vietnamese wedding dress and my brother in the limo on the way to his wedding last weekend.

I did it

I'm here, in Vietnam. In a big hotel room with air conditioning that costs $15 a night. By myself. After sixteen hours of flying. I've never been more scared in my life.

More updates to come.

picnics but no pictures

So I'm going home in exactly one week, 11 am on Friday, May 30. I'll get home around 5:30 pm that day. This month is the only one where I've spent the entire time in Paris, and I love it so much- climbed the towers of Notre Dame, hung out at Sacre Coeur, saw the view from the top of the Arc de Triomphe, went out to clubs on the Champs Elysee and in the Marais, grabbed infinite cafe au laits at so many cafes (haven't been to the same one thrice!), crammed for my finals and wrote papers in French (so much easier now than six months ago), planned my Vietnam trip, and wrestled with the worst allergies I've ever had- it wouldn't be Europe if I wasn't sick at least once a month, would it?

As Lex and I were saying the other night, for all our complaining and emo-ness, we love Paris and we're really really going to miss it here. I'll miss the triangle shaped park at the end of Ile de la Cite and the quais along the Seine and picnics there; I'll miss the gaudy but glorious sparkling of the Eiffel Tower at night from the Champs de Mars; I'll miss the tiny chambre de bonne that became a room of my own in a big big city; I'll miss wandering and discovering ever more crooked streets that run by Notre Dame and Chatelet and the Pompidou; I'll miss the museums and plays and movies and language and people and all of it; I'll miss all of it.

May has been a month of picnics (see photo for typical example)- on the banks of the Seine, on the Pont des Arts (pedestrian bridge), on the Champs de Mars (in front of the Eiffel Tower), in the Luxembourg Gardens, everywhere. Jarod and Mike visited for four days or so and we did a Paris blitz, including another trip to Versailles. Last Saturday was the Europe-wide Night of the Museums with free museums and special exhibits from 6 pm-1 am. We went to Musee de Quai Branly (archaeology), Galliera (fashion), Rodin (Rodin), and Invalides (Napolean's tomb). The map is my trip with mom across all of France, from which I last blogged.

Sitting here with my plain yogurt with jam and a big mug of coffee after grabbing a cafe with Deanna after a night out at the Tower, it doesn't seem real that I'll be home next week, or that I'll be 20. I guess we'll see what happens. This post brought to you by the association for non sequiturs.