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.
