Among the elephants

I had four more days in Chiang Mai after my day trip. I spent most of that time hanging out with traveler friends and being pampered (drinking smoothies and getting massages). The Brits left on Tuesday morning and I wouldn't be leaving until Thursday morning. I debated what to do with the time I had left. At first I thought about just relaxing in air-conditioned places; I felt like I had made a pretty thorough tour of the city's offerings. However, I got a sign -- literally. I was headed to breakfast one day when I saw a sign for elephant training courses. I had already heard about this activity, but for some reason I actually stopped to read more about it this time, and it piqued my interest. Here was something I could do that was very local (elephants are a big part of Thai culture) and was not something I could easily do somewhere else. I investigated and I committed. So, I spent my last day in Thailand canoodling with elephants.

Wednesday morning I got picked up, and on the way to the elephants we stopped at an orchid farm. It was pretty small, but still pretty.

Then came the main event. Only two other people, a honeymooning couple, had booked an elephant day, so we had a nice small group. First we fed the elephants pineapple and bananas and learned that each elephant consumes 250kg  of food per day. After we got on their good side with food, it was time to get up close and personal. They taught us the commands that mahouts use when riding the elephants and then it was our turn to test our skills.

Commands, spelling approximated:

• Bone - raise your trunk so I can put food in your mouth
• Song - help/let me get on you
• How - stop
• Toy - move backwards
• Pai - go forward
• Pe - turn
• Chalon - let me down

The biggest test, though, at least for me, was just getting onto the elephant to begin with.  In order to get on the elephant, it puts out its bent leg and you use its angles as steps, meanwhile using its ear as a handhold. The problem is that the leg only gets you so high, and when you're my height and not a nimble mahout you still need a big boost. I worried about hurting it but then I realized that I am about 1/50 of its weight, and am therefore a fairly insignificant addition. Once on, you sit on the neck so as not to be wobbled around by the shoulders when it walks. In conjunction to verbal commands, you gently use a dull hook on key parts of the head and shift your weight and use your feet, e.g. nudging the ear opposite the direction you want to turn. When you're ready to get off you shout 'chalon!' and the elephant lowers its head until you can jump/slide off the front.

Out of focus but still illustrates my questionable description
of how one gets on an elephant

Attempting to turn right

Preparing for landing

The three of us tried this a few times, and by the time we were done it was time for lunch. In contrast to the questionable buffet lunch provided with my Chiang Rai tour, which I was actually worried would make me sick, this lunch was both abundant and delectable. Spring rolls, chicken and potato curry, noodles and shrimp, and a glutinous rice dessert. Once we were fed and our stomachs were settled we were ready for a jungle walk. Though we had been practicing our commands, we were all relieved to know that elephant control would be up to the mahouts when we went up into the mountain. My elephant and I were clearly meant to be paired together, as she took every opportunity to eat, displaying the impressivene strength and dexterity of her trunk by ripping off the leaves of everything in her path. Most impressive was when we stopped in a bamboo grove and the elephants snapped the plants down to get at the leaves that were out of their reach.

Eating

 

Eating

Eating!

Our walk ended in a river, where we dismounted and washed our respective elephants. I don't know whether the wash made much of a difference, but the elephants certainly seemed to enjoy it.

Don't the elephants look joyful?

Splash!

Then it was time to feed them one last time and say goodbye. We went to visit a week-old elephant nearby and went to a factory that makes paper out of elephant dung, as it is mostly just fiber.

Mom and baby

Baby up close

It was a great, special day. Just in case you haven't seen enough photos of me and elephants, I leave you with one more that sums it all up pretty well. By the time this is posted I'll be in the air and on the way home, but still with more stories coming your way.

Insect's-eye view

A collection of the critters I managed to photograph at the spice garden. Not pictured: a spider that would have been quite at home in my Ben Tre bathroom and a butterfly that landed on my camera.

Invaders!

This weekend was so dull that the few things worth writing about are mostly bug appearances. It seems that the rainy season is injecting a new vigor into my visitors, or maybe it is just pushing them into my nice, dry home.

A few nights ago there was a millipede crawling on the outside of my mosquito net when I went to bed. When I woke up, it was on the inside of my mosquito net. This might have been alarming, but I was recently caught describing millipedes as snuggly. Of all of the critters that might make it under the net, this one is one of the least unwelcome, as long as it doesn't try to snuggle with my face or any of my orifices.

I had another spider. It was one my bathroom door, and the similarity of colors made it so it took me a while to notice it. Finding a big spider after having been in a room for several minutes is like suddenly realizing that someone is watching you when you've been doing something embarrassing. Alarming, but not the end of the world. You just wish you'd noticed sooner.

Oh hello there! The flash really captures your leg hairs
quite nicely, don't you think?

Two nights ago I was greeted by a very busy-bodied tiny red and green striped hemipteran. I tried to take a picture, but it was too small and moving too fast. But those red and green stripes packed quite the graphic punch.

Crappy photo of my design conscious invader

Next, a host of psychotic ants seems to have taken up residence in or under both of my door frames. The result is that at certain times of the day, whenever I open my door, hundreds of tiny angry ants stream out and rush around in a frenzy. They cover everything within a certain radius of the door frame, and that tends to include my oblivious feet. In case you didn't know, those are attached to my legs. I don't notice the ants until I feel the now-tell-tale tickle on my legs that informs me that I am being bum rushed by ants at an impressive speed. Commence stomping around and swiping at my legs. Luckily, it doesn't seem like they bite. Also, trying to get rid of them makes me sweep more often.

What with the ants, last night I felt like I was being beset by the plagues of Egypt when I got my next set of insects. I heard a strange but persistent sound outside of my bedroom. Buzzing would be too gentle and rattling too harsh. Actually, razzling would be a pretty perfect onomatopoeia. Anyway, it wasn't long before two of the sources of that razzling sound made it into my room, and proceeded to awkwardly fly around, fluttering against me and any other surface that a good flier would normally avoid. I went to look outside to try and figure out where they came from, and there were about a hundred of them hovering around the light right outside my room. Where had they come from? How many more would make it into my room? It seemed if I attempted any catching and releasing I'd probably let 30 more into my room. The plague! I decided to wait it out. Maybe half an hour later, I'd gotten rid of the two in my room and the razzling from outside was replaced by loud thuds. I went to look again. The bugs were gone! More accurately, they were now covering the floor outside, dead or dying. The thuds were courtesy of a cat, who was pouncing on the ones that still quivered. Apparently several of those were clinging to my door, so for a while it sounded like the cat was trying to break its way into my room.

In non-arthropod news, I ate the pineapple my student gave me. Even though no one else would see it, I went all tropical homemaker on it and cut it in the fancy Vietnamese way. It was whitish rather than yellow, and I was worried that it wouldn't be good, but it was perfect. Possibly the best pineapple I've ever had.

This razzler drowned in the delicious juicy remains of my pineapple

Oh right. And the other big news is that I've started buying tickets for my June travels. Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, here I come!

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.

Cats and unexpected crunch

Sunday night, I was awoken by a very strange sound. At first it sounded like a baby, but that's not a sound I'm used to hearing on campus. But there were two sources of the sound. Was it two babies? It kind of sounded like a cat. Was it a baby and a cat? Two cats? I tried to close my ears and go to sleep but the mysterious duet was persistent and insistent. I untucked my mosquito net, got out of bed, and went to peer outside. This is what I found.

The end of the video sounds more like what I was hearing at the beginning. It went on and on and on. I had to use my iPod to drown out the two cats who managed to sound like babies crossed with cats crossed with Donald Duck. This second video is harder to hear, but it has more of the weird sounds.

Monday morning I taught Speaking. The day's topic was learning styles, and the students took a quiz to find out what their learning style was. I took it with them and was surprised when the results revealed that I was not just a visual learner but also a haptic (kinesthetic) learner. To be fair, my scores in each category were within five points of each other, but auditory was the lowest. As we tallied the class's results, I wished that this chapter in the textbook had been one of the first. It would have been an ideal exercise at the beginning of the year. It would have helped me teach better, and students could have put the relevant study tips to good use earlier on. Seeing that most of my students were auditory learners, I wondered whether they'd become this way after a lifetime of lecture-heavy education, or if it just happened to be that way.

Today I had my Vietnamese lesson. It got off to a rough start, mostly because Trang kept trying to just talk to me and I had no idea what she was saying. However, it ended up being a very interesting conversation (mostly in English), even if it wasn't the best lesson. We talked about our favorite Greek myths, and I corrected her pronunciation of Zeus, whom she was calling Juice. Eventually we got back to the whole Vietnamese lesson part of it. Tidbits include the fun to say "bóng bóng" (bubble) and "đạo tin lành" (Protestantism, literally religion of good news). We discussed the many terms for family members, and when we got to mợ, an uncle-in-law on your mom's side, it became the fourth item of the multi-toned 'mơ's I have gathered, so I decided to finish the set. Behold the perils of tone:

• mỡ - greasy
• mở - open
• mơ - dream
• mợ - uncle-in-law
• mờ - dim
• mớ - sleep talking

Additionally, I learned that there is no distinction between cousins and siblings. If you want to be specific your siblings are your anh/em ruột, literally meaning intestinal brother or sister, and your cousin is your anh/em họ (brother or sister of the same family name). When the people around us reacted to Trang saying the words for 'great grandmother', she explained that it is often uttered to insult someone. This segued into me telling Trang about 'yo momma' and yo momma jokes. That's definitely not something I ever expected to be teaching in Vietnam.

Trang and I went to the milk tea place for our lesson. The first time I went, I made it my goal to try as many flavors as possible. I certainly haven't tried all of the options yet, but I think I will have soon tried enough to confidently settle into a couple of favorites. The milk tea comes with an assortment of tapioca balls. My favorite kind is filled with passion fruit juice and bursts when you bite it. Today, I experienced a kind of tapioca I had not previously experienced in any of my visits. It was crunchy. Some sage or perhaps just curious part of my faculties decided to take it out of my mouth and look at it. It was not tapioca. It was a big, dead fly. I have intentionally eaten larvae here in Vietnam, and they were delicious, but it is another thing entirely to find an unexpected protein additive in your tea. I can't decide if this makes it better or worse, but I was actually enjoying the flavor of the impostor tapioca before I took it out of my mouth and found out what it was.

And on that note, let me close by telling you that there are only 50 days left until the official end of my term as a Fulbrighter. Whoa.

House of Horrors

To be fair, Quyen's house is not horrible. But but but we will get to that. Quyen picked me up at three and took me to her and her parents' house. She is one of the people in the teacher's English club -- one of the good ones. She always calls me 'my teacher' and has such a soft and high-pitched voice that the first time she ever called me on the phone I thought there was a child on the other end of the line. Anyway, she arrived and it was drizzling, courtesy of Tropical Storm Pakhar, I assume. I wondered if we'd make it to her house and get stuck there for longer than planned if the rain intensified. Probably not the best mindset to have before visiting someone's home, but such it was. Quyen tried to talk to me as she drove, but it made me incredibly nervous because it made her drift and weave as she looked over her shoulder at me instead of looking at the road ahead.

We got to her house and got straight to fruit picking. She has a milkfruit tree that she's been telling me about for weeks, and she was eager for me to have some fruit from it. The garden was full of beautiful flowers, and I scampered around taking pictures while Quyen wielded her bamboo picking tools. She picked enough fruit to fill a horn of plenty (and of course all of this eventually came home with me) before it started raining hard enough to drive us inside. I met her sister, who was one of my FCE students way back when, and her nephew. Like Sunny, he couldn't stop staring at me. Unlike Sunny, this little boy showed his affection by punching me and throwing chunks of watermelon at me.

Picking milkfruit

These reminded me of prosciutto

We ate an assortment of fruit, including my first time tasting cacao, and rice porridge with chicken. There were three dogs near us during the meal. One small, long-haired dog sat at my feet giving me puppy dog eyes the whole time I ate. Partway through the meal, a box across the room started moving, and I realized there were cats in it. Three cats, to be exact. They emerged from the box in that slinky way cats have of moving, and took interest in our meal. I have never considered myself an anti-cat person, but Vietnam has done much to change my mind. I do not appreciate having my personal space invaded and being rubbed by animals of dubious cleanliness, and cats here seem to be attracted to my very opposite sentiment. Before I knew it, I had one cat perched on my armrest, eying me at eye level, and another cat sitting in the chair across the table from me, staring me down. The thing about this second cat was that it was blind. Maybe that would inspire sympathy and affection from someone else, but something about this blind, scrawny, tabby cat made my skin crawl. Having it come over and sit next to me took away my appetite and gave me more heebie jeebies than any of my other animal encounters here in Vietnam. I'll take a ten inch centipede or a spider bigger than my hand over that cat any day. I almost wish I had a picture for you, but unlike my default reaction to bugs, I had no desire to look at it, let alone preserve its image.

Cacao seeds, the seed coat tastes like floral perfume

Five months later

Friday morning I awoke to a surprising phone call: 'Please come to the office. You have a package.' Who could have sent me a package? No one had told me to expect one. What could it be. I got to the office and got an even bigger surprise. It was the package my dad and Sandra had sent for my birthday, five months ago! By now we had all assumed it would never make it. I celebrated with grits for breakfast.

September 15, 2011

In the late afternoon, Violet arrived. We had planned for her to visit me this weekend before my spontaneous visit to Tra Vinh last weekend. The last time she came was for my birthday weekend, about five months ago. Back then I had yet to discover all of the awesome nooks and crannies of Ben Tre, and I didn't have a way to take us around. This time, I have more local knowledge and she has a motorbike, so we got to be more adventurous. Violet came to my door and a snake joined me in greeting her. We went out to my favorite hu tieu place and then came back and enjoyed a bottle of wine that I had received in my Tet gift basket from the college.

The snake did not like having its picture taken

On Saturday we had the luxury of sleeping in. I hadn't woken up so late (past 10) in at least a month. We went out for bun thit nuong and then went to a nice outdoor cafe to relax for a while. After that we took a quick tour of the city center, and Violet saw the supermarket, the market, the Ben Tre River, and the lake. We came back to my room and Violet asked me to cut her hair. I was happy to comply, though slightly apprehensive about having so much responsibility thrust upon me, given that it was my first time cutting anyone's hair other than my own (not counting haircuts using clippers). Lucky for both of us, I'd say it turned out well.

Final result

It's alive!

We went out for bo la lot for dinner, and since it was still light outside I got my first decent picture of the delicious dish. After that we went on a mini road trip to My Tho to visit it's bustling night market. We made it to My Tho easily, but one wrong turn on the way to the night market got us turned around for quite a while. I was wondering at what point it would be better to give up when I saw a sign for it. Hooray! I ended up buying a rare Adelina-sized dress with serious bargining tactics. A few other items caught my fancy but were just not reasonably priced.

Typical night market 'English'

This morning Violet went back to Tra Vinh, and I stayed in catching up on all of the grading and lesson planning I put off while she was here. It's amazing how quickly the weekend goes by when you have things to do and someone to do them with.

Mom + Vietnam: Corner of Heaven

Happy thanksgiving!

Originally, my mom and I were going to go on a river tour today. However, at the monthly schedule meeting, Trang decided that we should spend the morning at her parents' house and feast on her mother's bánh xèo. I had been there when I first arrived in Ben Tre, back when my camera wasn't working. A few days ago my mom asked me where was my favorite place in Vietnam, and it was the first thing that came to mind. So, I was more than happy with this change of plans.  

On the way there

We were a five-motorcycle caravan of women, and our first stop was an orchid farm just around the corner from the house. Trang had forgotten about its existence, though it is owned by her favorite cousin. Upon arrival I discovered that my battery was on its last legs, but thankfully it still had enough juice to get me through the whole morning, albeit with slightly more judicious camera use than usual.

A pot of one of these now brightens up my bathroom

I had a Georgia O'Keeffe moment

Naturally, I went looking for spiders, and delighted in my success.

Just around the bend was the muddy unpaved path to her parents' house. We were greeted by a big-screen viewing of my karaoke contest performance.

Cooking was already underway when we arrived, but my mom got to try her hand at making a bánh xèo. Oil, pork, and shrimp went into the wok first. Then the rice flour and coconut milk mixture, then the filling of soy sprouts and cassava. When the thin thin thin 'pancake' (literal translation of bánh) was ready, it was time to fold it over and slide it onto a plate.

This was just the first few of many plates that made their way to the table

 To eat it, we tore off pieces of piping hot bánh xèo, wrapped it in lettuces and herbs, and then dipped it in fish sauce. I remembered that it was incredible, and today's reality did not fail to meet my memory's expectations. My mom dubbed it her favorite Vietnamese dish. We concluded the meal with coconut water and pomelos.

Lastly, my mom convinced Trang's dad to serenade us. He started singing Cuando, Cuando, Cuando, and gradually everyone joined in, even if it was just for the chorus. Then, altogether too early, it was time to go. But I was thankful: thankful for my mom, thankful for the family I was welcomed into, thankful for the company and friendship of my fellow English teachers, thankful for a memorable thanksgiving, thankful for this slice of life that I have been blessed with. Our goodbye was received with a request to come back soon, and that's a request I will be only too happy to fulfill.

The whole group and a great house

We spent the afternoon resting off our big lunch, which, by the way, started around 9am. Later, Trang came by to say goodbye, since she'll be at a conference until after Mom leaves. In the evening, Mom and I paid a visit to Anh Thư, aka Pajama Mamma. She is a spoonful of sugar in my Vietnam experience thus far, and someone for whom I am also very thankful. We had a nice, long, surprisingly fluid chat; and Mom ended up with some new pajamas. Then, we tried to go to bed early before our weekend trip to Hanoi.

But not without meeting a (relatively small) visitor first.

Weathering the storm

In the classroom, hinges creaked and glass rattled as windows and doors slammed open and shut. The wind swirled leaves across the courtyard cement. The sky was a steely gray that matched the courtyard concrete, where the wind swirled dry leaves. All that was missing was a grizzled old timer sagely murmuring "storm's a-comin'." But the wind blew on through and despite a few near-misses of Marilyn Monroe steam vent skirt flying moments while teaching, the rain never came.

I was a little frustrated with my classes today. With my 3rd year listening class, I pretty much had to give up on soliciting answers. My questions were met with the inscrutable silence that can just as easily indicate lack of understanding, lack of desire to participate, or just shyness. Was the audio just particularly challenging today? Even the class standouts sat there looking disconnected. Yet, when I stopped asking questions, and just asked them to tell me something they heard, they could answer. One of them could recite the audio back almost word for word. Is it possible to remember every word but not understand it enough to answer basic comprehension questions? This didn't happen at the beginning of the semester, but it has been happening more and more in the last few weeks. I've had to resort to rewriting key phrases of the audio, which turns listening comprehension into reading comprehension, and then playing the audio again so that they can at least pick out the words I have already told them are there for them to hear. If I knew what the problem was, I could brainstorm ways to fix it. But I'm at a loss.

My 2nd year speaking class's behavior was not so different from usual, but maybe because of what had preceded it it was further disheartening. Though it seems that in Vietnamese culture it is not considered rude to talk when others are speaking -- indeed, this happens during meetings, during assemblies, when the rector is making a speech -- that doesn't mean that it is not distracting and disruptive in a classroom. Students usually keep quiet when I speak, but the second it is their peers' turn to talk, the parallel conversations start up. Today it was so bad I caught myself not paying attention to the speaker because I was trying to count how many people were speaking at the same time. When more than half of the class is talking, you can't just move someone across the room or send someone home. Equally frustrating was that when I asked them to come up with imaginative possible Halloween costumes, only five of the answers were ones that were not part of the lesson's vocabulary. And this is not a limited vocabulary issue; they know enough people and objects to come up with costumes beyond witch, ghost, spider, bat, vampire, mummy, etc. Instead of teaching being the uplifting experience it usually is, today it was a drain on my already low energy.

This morning things went slightly better. Even though it was delayed by almost an hour, I had my first (sort of) real Vietnamese class in over a month. It was gratifying to be a student again, to add to my small trove of vocabulary, and to realize I can understand whole sentences that I haven't specifically learned.

In other news, mostly from yesterday:
I finally found a palatable flavor of chè. It doesn't look like much, but if this blog has taught anyone anything, it should be that chè never looks like much.

Corn chè: gelatinous but not powdery

I have an industrious new guest in my bathroom.

Meet Mr. Mud Dauber

I spent the better part of 10 minutes trying to tap and poke and prod this guy out of my door frame so I could close the door without crushing him. After all of my efforts, the next time I opened my door he was still lurking just outside the door. Given that he fits under the bottom of the door, I'll give you one guess as to where he probably ended up.

This guy seemed to think that puffing up would be a good way of intimidating
my shoe.

A minor in Pictionary is a prerequisite for becoming a language teacher. And yes, I did not deal with the goat or the dog, but this post demonstrates my goat-drawing 'prowess'.

This was for the teachers' English club. I was
half-tempted to teach them to ask 'what's your sign?'.

I feel the need to recognize a milestone of my internet existence: this blog has hit over 2500 page views. Thanks for the love and attention!