Details

"The truth of the story lies in the details."  - Paul Auster

As much as I try to focus on the positive here, I can't pretend that I don't get homesick, sometimes more often than I'd like to admit. It can be hard to be forthcoming about it because I know that this is a once in a lifetime opportunity (an expression I taught my students the other day), and that I should be grateful for it and make the most of it. But I can be appreciative and homesick at the same time, right?

In Vietnamese culture, the idea of someone being alone is inextricably linked with their being sad. So, people here go out of their way to make sure I have company. The thought that people here care about me and want to spend time with me does indeed make me happy, but sometimes I just need some me time. When the day draws to a close and I am ready to finally exhale, it can be frustrating to suddenly discover that I will have to keep smiling for another hour. In these moments, culturally (mis)informed efforts to lift my mood have the opposite effect. Moreover, they make everything else that people do out of kindness (e.g. feeding me or cleaning or rearranging) all the more frustrating, augmented by the fact that I lack the vocabulary to politely ask them to stop.

I ask myself altogether too often whether I made the right choice in coming here, and whether I am really cut out for this. I remind myself that things are barely beginning, and that in a few months I will probably feel much more confident, comfortable, and capable. But for now, being limited in language, schedule, and space isn't easy.

I am reluctant to write this because I don't want people to think that I am generally unhappy. Most of the time, I am not. I laugh at my misadventures and know that they will make for a better story. Everything that I have written in past posts, the outlook that I have represented in those posts, it is all true. But this is true too.



Moving on to the better part of the day:
I had the luxury of sleeping in today, and waking up at 1030 felt like waking up at noon. I reluctantly turned down Trang's lunch invitation but this gave me a nice big chunk of me time that, as you can judge from the above, I really needed. I had the meat moon cake for lunch instead, something that greatly distressed Trang, since the idea of lunch without rice was as atrocious to her as the idea of ice cream for breakfast is to an American parent.

Moon cake, view 1

Moon cake, interior view

In the afternoon it was time for my scheduled bike-riding practice with Ms. My. I was very pleased that she let me bike on my own this time. Even though it seemed like the entire college community was at the canteen or hanging off of balconies to watch my stuttering starts, I pedaled on. I am finally starting to believe the expression "it's just like riding a bike." Straight lines are my forte, but my starts are still wobbly and my turn radius needs to decrease. Thinking about how to improve my wide turns, I remembered when my mom took me to practice u-turns when I was learning to drive. I found myself a small patch of cement (bonus points for being out of the public eye) that was ideally suited to biking in circles. If I didn't turn, I would have to stop or fall into a ditch. I couldn't string a lot of turns together, but I definitely improved. My future goal is to do figure eights in that space. As I biked I explored some areas of campus I have yet to visit on foot, and discovered a bridge over a river that I want to photograph tomorrow. On several instances, I relived variations of my mom's childhood story of almost running down her teacher while riding a bicycle, except in my case it was a small child, a teacher, and a parked motorcycle. No one was injured, and no collisions took place.

When I finished my bike practice, Mr. Hung Vũ (one of the teachers, if I mis-tone Vũ it becomes the word for nipple) treated Ms. My and me to some refreshments at the canteen. She ordered a glass of yogurt and ice. It seemed odd yet enticing. I'll have to try it one of these days. Afterward, Ms. My came over to help move my furniture. Last week I got that armoire that seemed too big to fit anywhere, but Ms. My was durn-tootin' determined to fit it in my room between my bed and my desk. I had tried it earlier that day when I was doing my daily furniture rearranging workout, and it didn't fit. I tried to tell her this, but she went to get her measuring tape to prove that it had to fit. Measuring tapes don't lie, so with some shoving and nudging of furniture we got it to fit. Things are so snug now I think my days of rearranging are over.

Tonight Trang took me and Ms. My out to dinner, and we had vegetarian bánh cuốn nông. It was kind of like a bunch of small warm spring rolls under a pile of sprouts and leaves and crunchy things, with a few slices of imitation meat. But, imitation meat aside, it was much better than my description makes it sound. I even mixed in about half of the generous dollop of chili on the side of my plate. Biking and voluntarily making my food spicy -- all I need to achieve my trifecta of life skill goals is to start cooking for myself. To wrap up the meal, Trang ordered us a very unphotogenic Thai banana with some sort of pudding/tapioca/coconut sauce.

Bánh cuốn nông

...dessert...