New roles

My internet has been on vacation for the last few days. On Tuesday night, Mr. Luan presented me with a fruit called the Uncle Ho (as in Ho Chi Minh). It is a very large citrus. I thought that, since it was named after him, it might resemble him somehow, but aside from being the size of a human head, it bore no particular resemblance to the noted figure. It turns out that it is named after him because -- allegedly -- all of these fruits are grown from the seeds of a tree that originally grew in Ho Chi Minh's garden. Mr. Luan has one such tree in his back yard, and often bragged to me about it, though I had never understood the significance. I can now report that Uncle Ho tastes more or less like any other pink-fleshed citrus, and that its size is mainly due to the incredibly thick peel, as the fruit itself is more or less large grapefruit sized.

That's a full-sized plate

Thursday night I went out to dinner with Thuy, one of my seniors. She told me once that she has wanted to go out with me but she has a job and is too busy, so it was a pleasant surprise to get her text message inviting me out. We had pho, just the two of us, and then we went to milk tea, where Nhu joined us. Since my senior classes ended several weeks ago, I haven't really gotten to see or spend time with most of them, so it was particularly nice to just hang out. Even though it was partly a social call, it was also a bit of a business meeting. This coming Monday, the English department will be holding it's annual conference/workshop/seminar, and the seniors are currently going through finals and simultaneously having to prepare for the conference. Originally, I was supposed to make a presentation, be an MC, be a judge for a competition, and participate in a play. Then it was decided that I should just present and judge, and now it has been decided that I will be in the play, too. So, Nhu and Thuy and I discussed the script over our milk tea.

Vanessa Hudgens smiled at us from the dental clinic across the street

On Friday morning, I was not in the mood to teach. I briefly but seriously considered calling in sick, but the voices of reason (one of whom is named Elliot) prevailed, and I stepped up to the plate. I'm glad I did, because the lesson plan I had prepared went quite well. I'm still struggling with the level-inappropriate textbook I've been given. I appreciate the relative freedom a useless textbook provides, but I'm still bound to teaching the same topic for three weeks, and that's the tricky part. We started the new unit, childhood, and I decided to use milestones as a jumping off point. I introduced the word and concept to my students, and asked all of them to prepare to share a memory relating to one of the following milestones:

• First day of school
• Learning to ride a bike
• Learning to swim
• Losing their first tooth
• Birth of a younger sibling
• First family vacation
• First Tet they can remember

Most of them chose to share the story of their first day of school, and most of those stories followed the same general outline of feeling scared, making friends/getting candy from the teacher, getting used to a new environment, and eventually loving school. However, I also got some very unique stories. One student shared the sad story of her grandmother dying on Tet. Some shared fun and detailed memories of their first family vacation. One student shared his story of (sort of) learning to swim. He taught himself in a shallow pool, then was hanging out with his friends who decided to swim across a big river, and about halfway across he realized he wasn't going to make it. If his friends hadn't turned to look at him he would have drowned, because he was too weak to call for help. As a result of this, he decided (illogically, in my opinion) that he would never swim again.

Thuy (Trang's sister) and I went out for lunch. We went to a place in My Tho, the city in the province across the bridge, that is famous for its fried chicken. The chicken was indeed worth the drive. I also had a mysterious but delicious marinated beef dish, bò lúc lắc. It is the first time I've had beef in Vietnam other than in meatball/patty form or thinly stir fried form. These were tender, flavorful, melt in your mouth chunks. 

The two of us at a lakeside cafe after lunch

In the late afternoon, I had play rehearsal. In the early evening, I went out with Thy and Tuc. We started with shopping, because they think I need a new dress for the conference on Monday. However, they failed to notice or account for the fact that I need clothing of a very different size than they do. They kept encouraging me to try on dresses that I knew wouldn't fit. I would sausage myself into them only to confirm the fact that they were in fact too short and wouldn't zip. Eventually they got the picture and started only suggesting dresses with a lot of stretch and elastic. After a couple of shops and no purchases on my part, we decided it was time for dinner. However, Tuc's motorbike suddenly wouldn't start. We went to the mechanic together, and then she insisted that Thy and I go on without her. Thy had told me we were going to have hu tieu chay, vegetarian noodle soup, and I wasn't too excited about it but I was going to go along with it. She must have changed her mind, though, because she took me to a place that sells banh cuon. I was very excited by this change of events. Banh cuon is a northern dish so it's harder to find in the South. I had tried it once before and liked it, and wished I could have it again, but even Trang didn't know where to find it in Ben Tre. Success! It was a satisfying end to a sweaty evening of shopping.

Sewn onto an otherwise perfectly normal and wearable shirt

Lately, it seems like nature has been trying to restake its claim on my living space. A creeping vine has started winding itself onto the grid that postures as a bathroom wall, and it is growing at the impressive rate of at least a foot per day. Over these last few months I have shared with you stories and pictures of the many creepy crawlies I have played host to. This week, an unexpected breed of visitors has finally caused me to draw the line. I allow spiders the size of my hand to watch me when I use the bathroom. Cockroaches wave their antennae at me while I brush my teeth. Wasps built a nest on my bathroom door. Frogs lurk in corners. Millipedes creep along on the wall above my bed. Geckos emit demonic cackles while I try to sleep. All of these I have borne with patience and minimal slaying. But now I am waging war. Crickets. Crickets I will not abide. A few nights ago I woke up to what I thought was a fire alarm. I waited to hear screams or at least hurried footsteps from upstairs, but there was nothing. It was only then that I realized that if this place had fire alarms they'd go off every afternoon during the trash burnings. It was a cricket. And in case you think crickets are charming, soothing hallmarks of the peaceful countryside life, let me correct you. They are not. Having a cricket in my room is like having a whistle-happy referee who has perfected circular breathing as my house guest. Not ideal for watching TV, sleeping, or generally keeping my sanity after sunset. So, last night, I went to war. Using my built-in audio tracking devices (ears) and state of the art cricket trap (cup) I rounded up all of the crickets trying to maximize their mating calls with my bathroom's acoustics and threw them out the window. It was amazing how much of a difference it made. Best of all, I finally got a good night's sleep.