Lover's lane

With her many visits to Ben Tre and her champagne personality, Violet has developed quite the fan club among my student friends. So, naturally, I had to spread the news that she would be spending one last day in Ben Tre on Monday. We were supposed to meet at four but the rain had something else to say about it and we had to wait it out until almost 445. But, our spirits did not exhibit the same dampness as our clothes, and we had a great time at Kim Nhi, our habitual milk tea place. It has gotten a facelift and now, instead of teenage graffiti, posh international motif wallpaper coats the walls. I feel like it has lost its youthful ambiance, but the drinks are as good as ever.

Our next stop was the supermarket, for another round of photoboothing. Hijinks ensued while we waited for an awkward couple to finish their own photo shoot. We took our pictures and hung out for a good while, and then decided it was time for dinner. Violet wanted to try the gà ác (black chicken/silkie), so we all went there. Since I'd already had it, I decided to try another unusual specialty served at that restaurant: pork brain soup. It was delicious and left me wanting more, though that was mostly because the portion was rather small. We were going to go home after that, but we were besieged by a second rain (breaking the rainy season rules!) and tried to wait it out, but eventually just bought a raincoat and went home, where we were met by a second uprising of the insect plague.

The plague!

Tuesday morning, Violet joined me and Trang for our routine breakfast of bun bo hue. Originally, we had hoped to have Violet participate in my Vietnamese lesson, but we were delayed by rain (noticing a pattern?) and so Violet had to head home to Tra Vinh right after breakfast. In the evening I had the English club, and for once it actually had a positive impact on my mood. I had asked them to prepare to tell me about their moms since it had been Mother's Day on Sunday. After that, I initiated phase one of my sneaky plan. I taught them cooking vocabulary and asked them to prepare a Vietnamese recipe in English to bring to class next week. However, they one-upped me with their own cleverness and decided that instead of having a class next week we will have a cooking lesson/farewell party at someone's house. I am perfectly pleased with this turn of events. Naturally, we women will start cooking in the early afternoon and the men will show up to eat once the food is ready.

Wednesday morning was the moment of truth: my Vietnamese exam. I was a little irritated to discover that most of the vocabulary and the oral part of the test was based on the material I learned back in Hanoi. It did not help my persistent feeling that I have made negligible progress in learning Vietnamese since then. But then, the reading comprehension part was practically incomprehensible. In the end I did about the same as I'd done on the practice tests. I passed decently, but certainly not with flying colors.

Afterward, I went to lunch with Trang's sister. This time, we had frog legs, shrimp, and morning glories. The frog legs were good but my stomach has been ribbiting ever since, so perhaps my innards disagree. I also tried a new fruit, bòn bon. It tastes a lot like a guava, but with a totally different consistency. On the way back into town, as we were crossing the bridge, we saw that we were about to cross into a major afternoon rain.

Frog leg platter on the lower left

 

I had a small Vietnamese triumph when I was getting dinner. I went out to get spring rolls, and after asking the woman at the cart for them, I stood there waiting. Then I heard someone else talking. Suddenly, I realized that I understood what she was saying and that she was talking to me. Maybe it doesn't sound significant, but the fact that I could understand something with half-attention felt good.

In the evening, it was time for the English club. Only four students showed up, the same four who have been consistent for the last several months. Not even the teacher who is supposed to come unlock the classroom showed up. We got the key eventually, and we also talked about mothers and Mother's Day. Somehow this segued into talking about childhood memories and misbehaving, and one particularly mischievous student shared several hilarious stories of her youthful indiscretions. With such a small group, the club just felt like a long chat, and it was nice. Like last week, I invited them out for sinh tos after about an hour, but this time I made sure to declare, "I'm inviting!" so that no one would try to pay when the time came. We had a great time quizzing each other on fruit names in English and Vietnamese, and just generally chatting.

Luckily, I had nothing on my schedule today. I say luckily because I have been sick all day. Boo. Hopefully I'll be well enough to enjoy my first going away party tomorrow. In other news, a skink seems to have taken up residence under my washing machine. I see it several times a day, and it always scuttles away under the washing machine. Also, my bathroom is starting to feel like a cheap motel. I keep coming across languidly copulating millipedes.

Westward in the Delta

“Bizarre travel plans are dancing lessons from God.” – Kurt Vonnegut

 Friday morning I wore an ao dai to teach. I don't have many more chances to wear them so, despite the heat, I'll be wearing one for my last few classes. I guess I hadn't worn one to teach my first years yet, so when I walked in I was literally greeted with a round of applause. During class, I kept seeing phones popping up and I realized that students were taking photos of me. I wanted to get a group picture with the class anyway, so I asked them to wait until the end of class, and then after the group picture I was swamped with students wanting to get a picture taken with me. Not only that, they all wanted my autograph. I signed notebooks, textbooks, and dong bills. I reminded them that I wasn't leaving yet, but that didn't seem to matter.

First years, class one

First years, class two

This Sunday, I was to be a judge at the final round of a delta-wide English speaking competition co-organized by Fulbright and hosted by An Giang University. Violet and I decided to make a weekend trip of it. We would meet in Can Tho on Friday, visit the famous floating markets on Saturday morning, and then go to An Giang in the afternoon to be there in time for rehearsal.

You may recall that when my friends came for my birthday back in September, they each had some sort of minor horror story, mostly revolving around the fact that despite their college or university's insistence that a bus could bring them to Ben Tre, they were told that there was no such bus on the day of their intended departure. Andrea, the ETA who lives in Long Xuyen, An Giang, had one of the most stressful and protracted treks that weekend. I have been fortunate enough to not have encountered this kind of frustration, mostly because I can rely on Violet's wheels for any adventures that do not route through HCMC. So, it was high time for me to have my own overcomplicated multi-part transit experience.

Last week I was told that there was a 130pm bus to Can Tho. Perfect. I finish teaching at 11ish on Fridays, so I would have time to lunch and relax before catching one easy, direct bus to my destination. Kim Long took me to the bus station at around 115 but we couldn't find the bus. A seemingly random man who might have been the driver informed us that the bus was having some kind of mechanical trouble and wouldn't be leaving until 330 at the earliest. This was not ideal, but there might still be a bus. Kim Long took me home and took me back to the bus station a little before three. The bus was still nowhere to be found and she set out trying to get more information. I overheard someone say something that sounded like the bus was gone, but Kim Long was busy talking to people and perhaps trying to trouble shoot to keep me abreast of transportational issues or developments. Finally, she reappeared and told me that there was no bus. She called Trang to ask her to explain the situation to me. However, Trang's explanation was very confusing and the result was that I'm not sure whether there was actually no afternoon bus to begin with or whether there just wouldn't be a bus that afternoon. I was about to have Trang arrange for a xe om to take me to Can Tho, when Tammy, a woman from the international office appeared. Rapid fire Vietnamese ensued and a local bus was flagged down and I was still in the dark, though it seemed that a solution might be presenting itself. She told me that her hometown was on the way to Can Tho, and that if I went with her on this bus I could catch another bus that would take me to Can Tho. I was a little skeptical but she was insistent and I figured I didn't have anything to lose. Onto the bus.

Tammy (her real name is Tâm, which means heart) came to Ben Tre College just a few months ago, and at the time I considered her a chatterbox and a busybody, but now she was my travel agent and guardian angel. She told me all about the interesting sites in the delta and she called a bus company to make sure I would have a way to get from Vinh Long to Can Tho. I was less skeptical of her plan, but this is Vietnam so I wasn't counting my chickens just yet. We passed her hometown and she stayed on the bus with me for another hour to accompany me to Vinh Long. She had intended to accompany me to the bus company office, but by then it was almost five and she wouldn't be able to get back home, so she set me up with a xe om driver who was to take me across the ferry, into the city, and to the bus company. Surprise surprise, when we got to the bus company offices and they said there were no more buses. There were also no more buses from the company next door. So, I asked my xe om driver to take me the rest of the way. Despite the fact that I was speaking to him in perfectly comprehensible Vietnamese, he held up his fingers to indicate the price. Sigh. Off we went.
  
He stopped for gas twice, and asked me for more money. Somehow, though he thought it was necessary to use fingers to communicate numbers, he thought I would understand his explanation of why I should give him more money. Since he didn't think highly of my Vietnamese comprehension, I decided to play along, pretend I didn't understand, and evade giving him more money than we had agreed on. On the road, the bus from Vinh Long that supposedly did not exist passed us -- on the way and on its way back. We made it into Can Tho, but since he was from Vinh Long he didn't know how to get around. He tried to drop me off on a random corner because he didn't want to be bothered to find my hotel. When I just sat on the back of his bike, though, it finally occurred to him to ask someone for help. Finally, after every leg of the trip went unaccording to plan, I made it. 

Violet and I decompressed for a while in our golden-yellow room at the Xoai (Mango) Hotel, which gave us mango when we checked in. We went to the riverside to check out the night market and to build a dinner composed of street snacks: bánh tráng trộn, sinh tố thạp cảm, hoành thánh chiên, and xôi gà.

assembling our bánh tráng trộn

luminous hoành thánh chiên (fried wontons)

The next morning we made the effort to wake up at six (sort of early, but not as early as the recommended time of 4am) to visit the floating market. After a short boat ride downstream, we encountered the clot of boats selling produce and snacks. Boats hung or speared produce on tall poles so that you could see what they were selling, even from far away. There were also a couple floating gas stations for convenience. People tossed fruit back and forth. It must have been quite bustling at four.

Dragonfruit in the foreground, fruit poles in the background

Pumpkin boat

Small boat with assorted fruit

Coffee and beverage boat

Tossing watermelons

Hat provided by our boatman, who was concerned for Violet's skin

Back on dry land, we took a walk to look for breakfast and wandered through a non-floating market before getting on the road to Long Xuyen, An Giang. The rain caught us twice but we made it in relatively good time. We got to see Andrea's comparatively luxurious lodgings and went out to dinner with the many officials and faculty members involved in the competition.  

The final round of the competition started on Sunday morning. 32 groups from several delta colleges and universities competed, and today we would evaluate the final six groups. I hate to say it, but the caliber of the students competing in the final round made it clear to me why none of the groups from Ben Tre made it.

First and second place winners

On Monday morning, we had one last breakfast together before Kelly, Violet, and I hit the road towards our respective homes. It took me and Elliot four hours to make it to Long Xuyen by bus when we were going to Phu Quoc, and I was curious how long it would take with Violet at the helm. By some miracle we avoided the rain. The skies were gray all around us, but a clear bright patch stayed above us the whole time we were on the road. We passed through Sa Dec, a town mostly known for being the setting of The Lover, a famous novel.

Sa Dec Post Office

We were just 16km from home when we got a flat tire. Luckily, motorbike repair shops line most roads, and we didn't have to walk very far before we found someone to patch us up and get us back on the road. Even with that delay, we made the whole trip in just under four hours, and less than half an hour after we made it home the patient sky opened up and unleashed the afternoon rains.

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.

Cravings

Speaking of what's become normal, last night I dreamed that I walked into a bank asking for dollars. The thing was that I was speaking Vietnamese but none of the people there were Vietnamese and so no one understood me.

This morning I had my Vietnamese lesson. Trang met me and told me that she had a surprise for me, and that she hoped it wasn't terrible. Then she asked me where I wanted to go to breakfast, because she wanted me to be in a good mood before my surprise. That did not bode well for this surprise. Over breakfast we discussed the food cravings of pregnant women. Trang told me that many pregnant women in Vietnam eat clay pots. Clay pots. They crave them so intensely that they usually finish eating the lid by the time they get home from buying one at the market. She also told me that people think that if a woman craves sour food, she will have a daughter.

After breakfast we went to get bubble tea. Trang said it was time for my surprise, and again said she hoped it would be ok. I was going to say that the only surprise that would be a bad surprise would be a test, but just as I was about to say it I saw her reaching into her briefcase and I realized that that was exactly what my surprise would be. Vietnamese pop quiz! The first page was pretty rough. I had to label pictures of objects that I should know but for some reason don't (pen, chair, that sort of thing). If I had been asked to label pictures of fruit I would have rocked it. I also had ten questions with four words each, and I had to circle the word that didn't fit in each set. This was challenging if I didn't know more than two words in a set. Next, I had a short answer section. This one was much easier. I felt pretty clever when I confronted "What do you do at [time of day]?" I recognized that the word stood for a time of day, but couldn't remember what time of day it was. My answer? I eat pho. Perfectly suitable at any time of day. On the back I had to answer some multiple choice questions and read a short passage and then answer some reading comprehension questions. This side was a breeze. I scored 23 out of 40. Not stellar, but not totally abysmal.

After that I had a regular lesson, and I've gotten pretty comfortable telling stories in Vienglish. Too bad I can't get away with that on my final exam. I learned the word for 'dimples'. At first I misunderstood Trang's English explanation and thought that she was saying that it was the same word as corn, but it turns out that it is the same word as coin, dòng tiền. Neither makes too much sense to me. I also learned that if you don't look good in a photo, people say that you didn't eat the photo. Bạn không ăn ảnh. In other turns of conversation Trang told me that her senior students now email her in English, and she credits me for this change. I figured out how I ended up with a bug in my previous milk tea. It turns out it was a bee, not a fly. Forgive me for misidentifying it; I had already chewed on it. The place where they prepare the drinks is outside, and they line up glasses full of the tapioca to have them ready for whenever customers place their orders. Meanwhile, bees buzz in and out of the glasses. I guess they don't always make it out before the drink makes it in.

English club was in the evening. For the last several weeks, only first years have come, so I was pleasantly surprised to see three seniors, especially since this is their finals week. We talked about family. First I asked each of the students to describe their families in detail. Names, ages, occupations, et cetera. Then I made a big elaborate family tree on the board. Then the students asked me a ton of hypothetical questions. If I could choose between having an older brother or an older sister, which would I choose? What would I do if one of my children was a bad student? Would I like to have twins? It was nice to have the seniors there to make the club less of a lecture and more of an exchange, but looking at the first years' faces it sometimes looked like they were feeling left out.

From your great grandparents to your grandchildren, and in-laws too

Trang and I went out to dinner. It's been a long time! We got there and she sprung another test on me. Really? But thankfully it was a take home test, not a dinner test.

Let's hit the road

I need a pair of passport photos for my visa for when I go to Cambodia in two weeks. In order to accomplish this mission, Kim Long took me to a bridal photo studio yesterday. It was a pretty straightforward experience, but it was kind of thrilling to walk into one of these establishments. The thing you have to understand is that bridal photography in Vietnam is an art form unto itself. It takes the Vietnamese love for having their photo taken, bedazzled clothes, and general campiness, and turns it into an extravagant post-processing skin-whitened montage. Photos are taken before the wedding -- an advantage to not being superstitious about the groom seeing the bride in the dress before the wedding. There are several costume changes and location changes (and usually several hair pieces) and the whole thing could be called an ordeal or an experience. If you want more details, you can read this western blogger's account of her own wedding photography experience.

As far as they go, it was a very modest establishment.

Still, it was like walking into a life-size Barbie closet.

I got lassoed into going out for coffee with a man I've met before but whose name I can't remember but didn't want to ask. At first I wasn't in a good mood, given the semi-sneak attack that lead up to us having coffee, but I tried to stop counting the minutes and enjoy the time I would be spending with him. He started off by telling me that he would soon be teaching English, and pulled out a workbook, asking what I thought of it. I thought he was going to ask me to 'help him with' (do) his lesson plan, but he didn't. He is a tour guide, and he speaks some of the fastest English I've encountered in Vietnam. That isn't necessarily a good thing, though. With that speedy delivery come the same grammatical errors and pronunciation problems that everyone else has, so it just meant that I had less time to figure out what he was saying. As a tour guide, he is one of the few people in Ben Tre who gets to speak English to native speakers almost every day. He told me that he loves learning idioms, and then quizzed me on whether I'd heard of all of the ones he's learned. I'm not sure why, but he seemed surprised that I knew all of his idioms. He told me that he particularly loves 'hit the road'. He also talked to me a lot about coconut mice. Apparently there are mice that only eat coconut, and they make a hole in the fruit while it is still on the tree, and then they eat all of the meat out of it. This negatively affects crops, and when you've got a towering coconut palm you can't really tell whether your coconuts have been pillaged until you've already gone to the trouble of getting them down. On the upside, he claimed, coconut mice are absolutely delicious.

He decided to crash the student English club, but he didn't really participate. We talked about jobs, and brainstormed a huge list of jobs, talked about childhood dream jobs, and the jobs students plan on getting after they graduate. At the end, I told each of them to imagine that they had a certain job, and think about what their daily life would be like. Each of them came to the front of the class, talked about their hypothetical job and life, and answered questions from the rest of us. One girl, a first year, made my jaw drop when she said "If I were a pilot, I would...". This is a structure that I rarely hear even from my third years, even when I remind them to use it. Our hypothetical chef said he would have a world famous restaurant serving fried chicken in HCMC, but that it would be reasonable priced so even poor people could enjoy his food. Now he's been conscripted to bring snacks for next week.

After getting through my classes tomorrow morning, I'll be catching a bus, ferry, and motorbike to spend the weekend visiting Violet in Tra Vinh. 

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.

Famous on Friday

Friday's classes were an invigorating experience after Thursday's struggles. I had no desire to try to wring another lesson relevant to our current unit, Traditional and Modern, so I just did something else. I made a survey for students to use to interview their classmates. There were eighteen questions, and they had to find a different person who fit each question (e.g. someone who doesn't know how to swim, someone who has eaten pizza, etc.). We worked on structuring the different necessary questions: have you ever...?, do you...?, and are you...?, and then we went outside and let the surveying commence. The students took on the task with great enthusiasm, and I only had to remind them to use English a few times. Funnily enough, the hardest task was to find someone who wanted three children. One girl, in playful frustration, started running through the group shouting, "Do you want three children?" and everyone else shouted back, "No!"

When we got back inside I started to poll them, to find out which of their classmates fit each criteria. After a while of struggling to figure out what names were being shouted at me and how to spell them correctly, I decided to appoint a scribe to write down people's names on the board. Then I used this list to ask for the backstories from students who had broken a bone and students who had met a famous person. One of the students said that the famous person she has met was me. I smiled and replied that I think I'm only famous in Ben Tre. But it was a sweet moment. The students asked me if I had ever met a famous person. I guess I have, but no one who would be famous to them came to mind.

Violet arrived in the evening and we went out for milk tea with Thy and Nhu. After about an hour of hanging out and breaking the ice, the four of us went to the coconut festival. I was glad we were going with them, because unbeknownst to me there were three different locations. We tried to go to see the performances on the stage on the lake in the city center, but when we got close we discovered that they had closed off the street and weren't letting people in anymore. This was the first sign that this festival might be an even bigger deal than I had imagined. We headed to the outskirts of town to see the fair.

Not this way

This way!

Considering that up until about two weeks ago, no one had been able to tell me the dates of the festival, it was hard to imagine that this would really be a big deal. I imagined something along the lines of flower street during Tet -- lots of coconuts laid out on a closed-off street, and people insisting that it was magnificent -- plus that stage in the lake for performances. Well. Well, well, well. I was wrong. When we got to the fairgrounds I saw more people than I have ever seen at once in Ben Tre. It took about ten minutes just to park. The fair reminded me a lot of the livestock show and rodeo back home, except that it was about coconuts instead of cows. There was one big tent full of coconuts, coconut crafts, coconut products, coconut candy, free samples of coconut wine, and informative exhibits.

People waiting to get in

Inside the coconut tent

Me, Nhu, and Thy with a tiger made of coconut

Coconut candy girls

Coconut packing machine

Pyramid of coconut varieties, plus coconut flowers on top

Outside of the coconut tent there was a food court, where some of my students were working. There was another tent full of merchants selling everything from mattresses to pots and pans to electric fans (which provided a nice, breezy break from the heat). We passed a stage with people pretending to be statues and, naturally, a karaoke stage.

Cow mascot inviting people to try free samples of juice.
Our photo-op spared him from a horde of toddler boys
pommeling him in the udders.

Living statues

Musicians in rainbow sombreros

And now let me tell you about the most magical and memorable moment of the evening. Our wanderings led us to the main stage. We had passed it earlier and seen people competing in a blindfolded feed-your-partner-hot-dogs contest, but now someone was singing. I used my crowd navigating skills to bring us closer to the stage, and we had a great view of Nguyễn Hoàng Nam's  stellar moves and deep dimples. Violet, my students, and I were all rather smitten. He had clearly mastered the smoldering eyes required for a pop ballad and the pelvic wiggles necessary for an upbeat song. In addition to his vocal styling, his styling styling was of note. Not many people could accessorize with sheriff's badge, a single glove, a leather cuff, a wallet chain, and pirate boots and still look attractive. Here are a couple of his more popular music videos: 1, 2.

Just look at that stage presence!

Just look at those accessories!

For some reason, I wished I could go on stage and dance. (If you clicked on the video links you'll note that they're ballads, but he mostly performed upbeat songs at the concert.) I quickly dismissed that wish -- never gonna happen. But then I had a second thought. If it would happen anywhere, it would happen in Vietnam. Before his next song, Nam called out to the audience, asking for people who wanted to join him on stage (which I understood courtesy of my students' translations). Violet, fearless soul that she is, seized my hand and raised it high into the air. We, along with about four other people, were chosen.

On stage, no big deal

We got on stage and suddenly realized that from now on we would have no idea what was being said, or what we might be expected to do. Was it a contest? Were we supposed to copy his moves? Who knew. He started singing, and everyone seemed to be doing their own thing, and so we all just let loose and danced around on stage. Nam came over to dance with me. I had given my students my camera, but sadly they did not see fit to photograph my one-on-one time with him. Nevertheless, I assure you that it happened, and it was unforgettable. When the song ended, an MC came out to ask Violet and I if we were foreigners visiting the coconut festival. Despite the fact that this exchange occurred in English, we somehow ended up telling him that we were from Tra Vinh. All of us who went on stage received a gift for participating and got to shake hands with Nam before we left. We all received hanging clocks in boxes that looked deceitfully like pizza boxes, and for some reason I also received a six pack of bottled green tea soda. Off stage we reunited with my gleeful students and worked our way back through the crowd, who looked upon us with a mix of envy and admiration.

Part of me wished I had saved my Friday morning survey for next week. If I had, I would have a famous person that is actually famous to my students, and had a great story to go with it.

Rough patch

Wednesday morning I had my rescheduled Vietnamese lesson. We definitely spent more time speaking English than Vietnamese, but I did claw my way through telling a somewhat elaborate story. Today's mispronunciation jewel is rằng (that, as in 'She said that...') v. rặn (push, specifically as in pushing a baby out of your loins). Bonus: răng is teeth. The main thing I got out of today's lesson was a lot of introspection about language. In trying to tell my story, and working from the English in my head and trying to make Vietnamese come out of my mouth, I was hyper-aware of the level of detail and nuance we can express, which I cannot express in Vietnamese. Part of me marveled at it, and part of me wondered if it is superfluous, overcomplicated, if language could be a lot simpler and just as useful.

The evening's English club was music themed, and I played snippets of songs from different genres and asked the students to talk about their reactions to and opinions about the songs. One girl described rap as relaxing, and another said jazz was just confusing noise. In general, they disliked rock and jazz and liked pop, dance, techno, and country. They all agreed that reggae was very strange, though for some it was strange in a good way and for others it was not.

This morning I taught Listening and things went smoothly until the end. We had listened to an interview with a woman who heard voices in her head that told her to go to the doctor because she had a brain tumor, and the voices even gave her an address that turned out to be the address of the brain scan department of the hospital. Thanks to the voices, she was able to be cured. As part of the post-listening discussion, I asked students to talk to their partner about where they thought the voices came from. After giving them time to organize their thoughts, I called on some students to share their opinions with the class. I called on Tiên and that's when I hit a brick wall. Her reply, after an eternal 30 seconds, "I'm sorry, I don't know." I told her that it was an opinion question, so there was no wrong answer. Another eternity passed and she said "I'm sorry, I didn't listen." I repeated the question. "I'm sorry, I don't know." It's an opinion question. "I'm sorry, I didn't listen." In the past, I used to feel guilty about making everyone uncomfortable by keeping a student in the hotseat, but I had given everyone time to prepare their answers and at this point students should know the system. We kept going back and forth and after five minutes I had to let her sit down, though what I really wanted was to send her out of the class. It's one thing if a student is trying but struggling, but it's another thing if the student is refusing to try (and also demonstrating that she had not been following instructions). I interrupted the lesson to explain to them why I ask them to discuss with their partners: both to practice speaking and to make sure everyone has an answer, and that I therefore expect everyone to be able to answer the question if I call on them. My mini-lecture was lost on the most intended listener, though, as she and the girl next to her resumed whatever non-class related work they'd been doing as soon as she sat down. I resisted the urge to call her out and tell her that I was talking to her. I asked the next discussion question and went around listening to different students share their ideas with each other. I made sure to visit Tiên and hear what she had to say. Guess what her reply was when I asked for her thoughts. "I'm sorry, I didn't listen." So, once again, I repeated the question and stood in front of her, expectantly. This time the girl next to her (who was still working on something that was not for class) saved her by whispering an answer in Vietnamese, and Tiên was able to reply. I told her that in the future I expect her to listen and participate and be able to answer questions, and that I do not like it when I see her doing things unrelated to class. These things should be able to go unsaid, but here's hoping that they inspire some change.

This weekend I'll have some ETA visitors who will join me in exploring the offerings of the coconut festival. I have no idea what that might entail, but I have seen a massive stage set up in the middle of the city lake and have had to walk around festival-related rehearsals on campus for the last month. I'm looking forward to finding out what's in store for us. 

Curvy, creative, and cute

Saturday was the death anniversary of the first king of Vietnam, and so most people had the day off on Monday. For some reason, the college decided to have the day off on Friday, and so we were the only people working yesterday. Now that I'm not teaching Translation anymore, my Monday workday doesn't start until 9:55. It felt very strange to wake up so late but still have to go into work. When I got to class, only 18 of my 40 students were present. Apparently, more than half of them stayed home out of concern for the storm. However, rain never even made an appearance, and it was just a pleasantly cool day instead. I decided to take advantage of having a small class, and spent the last 45 minutes using my speed dating conversation activity. It got off to a slightly rockier start than it did when I used it in English club, which makes me wonder if those who attend the club regularly have gotten a leg up or if attendees are more capable and confident to begin with. When the conversations kept hitting lulls at around 3:30 minutes during the first round or two, I decided to write a few conversation starters on the board to help students if they got stuck. I worried that they would just ask each partner the same questions and end up exchanging canned answers instead of having a more natural conversation, but it seemed to help. One girl managed to look sleepy and bothered through most of the activity, but by the last few rounds I was happy to finally see here smiling and engaging with her partners. I don't usually ask my students if they enjoyed class or a certain activity -- it feels needy and I don't trust that it would generate sincere answers -- but I did ask this time. I was happy to receive an enthusiastic and resounding 'yes!' The best thing about this activity for me is that it is a sign of progress; I don't think it would have been possible six months ago.

Below, the rabble of casual English.

I was supposed to have a Vietnamese lesson this morning but Trang texted me about half an hour before we were supposed to meet because it was raining and asked if I wanted to reschedule for tomorrow. Since it took me about three rounds of falling back asleep with my phone in my hand and dreaming that I responded before I actually texted her back, it seemed like a good idea to reschedule.

At eleven I went out for lunch with Thuy (Trang's sister). She insists on taking me somewhere nice and always refuses to let me pay, even when I'm the one who initiates the going out. Last time I tried to pay for our milk tea but she took the money out of the cashier's hand and gave it back to me. I told her that if we were going to go out for food and drinks she should at least let me pay for drinks, but she told me that if I was going to pay for drinks we just wouldn't go out for drinks anymore. So. So we had lunch today: grilled shrimp in tamarind sauce, soup with fish meatballs and bitter melon, and clams in fish sauce. I wore my new heels and had a funny realization. If I wear four-inch heels in the US I am just less short; wearing four-inch heels in Vietnam makes me a towering giant.

My precious(es)

We had milk tea after lunch, but we went to a new place this time. Walking through that doorway was like walking out of Vietnam. There was effective air-conditioning. There was wi-fi. There were foreigners inside! It was surreal. It was the kind of place I sometimes wish for, but didn't know existed, much less within reasonable walking distance from the college. I don't know that I'll feel the need to go back, but it's nice to know it exists.

Much to my surprise, the teacher's English club went rather well today. I think my steadily decreasing expectations have as much to do with my satisfaction as any potential improvement might. I went in with the seed of a lesson plan, and it blossomed pretty nicely as I went along. I asked them to brainstorm words we can use to describe someone. They started with physical descriptors, and then I ushered them towards personality traits. After getting a good word bank I asked them to choose three words they would use to describe themselves. When we shared answers, with their help, I ended up being dubbed 'curvy (my word, for the sake of expanding vocabulary), creative, and cute (their suggestion). I probably would have finished my three with 'optimistic', but I liked the alliteration and wanted to honor their contribution. Next was three qualities they liked about themselves and three qualities they didn't like. Next was five words you think other people would use to describe you. I asked them each to give one word to describe me, and I was lovely, enthusiastic, confident, kind, and creative. It sounds like a short lesson, but between explaining new words and discussing with partners and then sharing with the class, it easily filled the time.

Now that's a word bank if there ever was one

Future and foreigners

"The future used to be such an abstract idea. The dream was enough, ... and now the future has the nerve to show up, and it’s expecting us to do something" - Kurt, on Glee

These days it feels like I'm buckling under stress about the future about as often as I was overwhelmed by homesickness in my first several months in Vietnam. Most of the time I feel like I have a good idea of what I want, but burrowing into the world of job searches brings me down when I can't find what I want or find it but don't feel qualified for it. Onward and upward, right?

Last night I spent another hour sucked into the drain that is the teacher's English club. As proposed by the administration, five students showed up to help the teachers. This happened to work out to one student per adult. I tried discussion again, using the discussion questions one of the teachers proposed (Why do people lie? Is it ok to tell white lies?), and it went about as (un)well as usual. Some of the teachers actually engaged with their student partners, but some just giggled or stayed silent the whole time, even when I encouraged them to talk to each other. Some teachers ignored their partner and chatted with another teacher instead. Given that there were only five adults, this left us with about two who actually discussed with their partners. Then, when I asked each pairing to share their opinions with the whole group, the adults wanted the students to talk for them. Clearly, the purpose of having student helpers/partners is not so the people for whom the club exists can eschew participating. Why do they even come? I felt bad for the students (and for myself), for whom it felt like a waste of time, but I consoled myself with the thought that at least they're getting some extra time to practice English and maybe even get to feel like a bit of an authority on English. Given that everyone has acknowledged that the club is a failure but refuses to cancel it or let me make any productive changes, I am resorting to the silent protest of ending the club early. Honestly, I'm pretty sure the teachers are perfectly happy to go home early, anyway.

After the English club I went out to dinner with Thy, Trúc, and Ngoc Mai. We had bun bo hue, my new favorite soup, and I discovered that there is a special night market already set up to accompany the upcoming coconut festival. Ben Tre's normal night market is just one block, but this one covers several blocks on several streets. We did some window shopping but didn't buy anything. It made me laugh inside when my students were shocked to realize that I could understand what the shopkeepers said.

I've been having wrist pain for over a week now. When it started I assumed I'd slept on my hand funny, but it didn't go away and yesterday I could barely move my hand, so I went to the doctor today. Trang was busy so another English teacher, one with significantly lower English skills, took me. Visiting the doctor was an experience. I pad four dollars for an x-ray... with no lead apron and with my teacher/translator in the same room. At first I thought that no one was even going to talk to me or look at my wrist, but I did end up seeing a doctor. He asked if I was Philippina. When he found out that I was an English teacher he asked if I would like to visit his house/teach his children. He prescribed anti-inflammatory medicine and, for some reason, heartburn medicine (proving to me that my compulsion to look research every medicine I am prescribed in Vietnam is well-founded). I had to pay $18 for this medicine! It may not sound like a lot, but compared to how much I have paid for medication here and how much I paid for the x-ray, it seems exorbitant. Later in the evening, I got this slightly confusing email from a concerned administrator:

Hi Adelina,
This afternoon your doctor what results, did not cut myself off, if you need I will use tomorrow's Chinese hot oil to remove the pain of you watch out?

Tonight I had the student English club, which was the complete opposite of the teacher English club. We started out with a discussion of the appeal and dangers of playing video games, and even though I knew that gaming and e-cafes are really popular, I didn't realize just to what degree. All of my students spend time playing computer games, whether it be 10 minutes a day or an hour a day. After about half an hour of discussion it was clear that they were itching to talk -- but not necessarily about the topic they'd selected, so I decided to do the conversation speed dating again. They loved it, and we decided to do half discussion, half conversation next week.

"Our subjest iso't cool but he fakes it anyway..."
Excellent shirt belonging to one of my students

On my way back to my room after the club meeting, I saw two foreigners on campus. Two! Foreigners! Near my age! It felt like a mirage. I walked up to one and found out that they're Australians and they're helping students learn choreography for the coconut festival. Why they're here doing that is unclear, but they'll be here for about two more weeks and we're going to try to meet up tomorrow. I'm still in disbelief.

Rational thoughts

It's often intriguing to me the topics that my English textbooks teach (ahem, telepathy), and today's listening lesson centered around an interview with a man who claimed to have been picked up by a UFO. The man saw bright lights, went outside, and saw a UFO and a pair of aliens. The two aliens spoke to him and instructed him to go with them. They took him into their craft, but when they discovered that he was 74 they said he was 'too old for their purposes' and booted him out. As part of the post-listening activities I asked the students if they believed the story. Most of them said they did not. Several said it was because they didn't believe in aliens. What stood out to me, however, was the second most common reason. It seemed absurd to them, too unlikely, that these aliens would speak English. Wouldn't the aliens speak their own language? And English is so difficult! It wasn't the existence of aliens that they took issue with, it was the probability of English-speaking aliens. This stood out to me because I don't think it would have been a common answer or even an answer at all in the US. The general population seems to expect the rest of the world to speak English for them, so why wouldn't aliens speak English, too?

I had the rest of the afternoon free, or so I thought. I got a text from Thy, one of the girls I went out with last week for milk tea. They'd told me that they wouldn't be free tonight, but apparently things changed, so we made plans for later. Then I got a call from Hong, asking if I'd meet with her to take pictures for some project. I didn't quite understand what it was for, but I agreed to meet her at four. I'm still not exactly sure how they will be used, but it was nice getting pictures with her and some of my other students. They are participating in the upcoming speaking competition I've mentioned, and somehow the pictures are relevant. They also asked me to talk to them about ambition (part of the theme, Ambition and Challenges). I get the general feeling that my potential interpretations of this theme are not the same as the intentions of whatever Vietnamese person came up with it, especially since the theme doesn't really make sense to me to begin with. I tried my best to be helpful.

From the photoshoot

A few hours later I met up with Thy, Nhu, and Túc, a new addition. We went out for milk tea aka bubble tea and this time I tried kiwi instead of strawberry. I also actually remembered to get pictures with the girls. We started out with me editing what they've prepared for the speaking competition and then we relaxed and chatted. They asked me what fruits I've tried in Vietnam and we ended up spending a good while brainstorming fruits and making a parallel list of their English and Vietnamese names. I'm pretty knowledgeable about fruit in Vietnamese, but we had to pictionary a few that I didn't know. Túc had been quieter than the other two, but near the end, out of the blue, she asked me if I have a religion. It turned out that she's Catholic too, and it looked like we hit upon a topic she wanted to discuss. All of a sudden she was dominating the conversation, although the other two, who are Buddhist and agnostic, also participated. Túc told me about how she goes to church with her mom every Sunday, and how much she enjoys the (Vietnamese version) of the Christmas pageant. I learned the word for angel (thiên thần) and taught them the word 'Bible', which they previously just called the 'holy book'. We called it a night at 9pm and to my surprise they even let me pay for everyone. Here's hoping for a repeat next week.

Drinking milk tea with tapioca at the graffiti-covered hangout

On Friday I taught speaking to the first years. The new unit is Traditional and Modern, and strengthened my conviction that this textbook is not really adequate for this level of students. For starters, the unit vocabulary in the warm up included words like avant garde and fuddy-duddy. Additionally, because students can't afford textbooks, they have photocopied versions that often obliterate the images that the book provides for activities. Instead of having students compare one black square that used to be a picture of something modern to a fuzzy square that should be a picture of something traditional, I decided to try and have some discussion. I introduced an easy application of 'traditional v. modern' regarding clothing, and asked students whether they prefer wearing traditional or modern clothing and why. Then I took it to the next level, and asked them to think about cultural manifestations of 'traditional v. modern,' for example, seeking matchmakers versus dating. Then we moved on to discussing woman's role in traditional and modern society. It gave me teacherly satisfaction to hear my students using English, no matter how limited, to talk about something more academic than their weekend plans. 

I did the same thing with the second group of first years, but they were treated with a visit from a foreigner, Violet, who had come to purvey adventure. I was a little disappointed by how few of my students took the opportunity to ask her questions, even though I had given them time to prepare questions before she came, but a few of them stepped up and asked her a whole slew of them.

Teacher Violet and my first years