Language lessons and 'Nam Noms

After a fun night of spontaneous karaoke in Ho Chi Minh City, we picked up the rest of our crew from the airport (18 in total, 9 each camp) and drove a long way (about 4 hours) to Hau Giang. Traffic is very different, and I often saw entire families of four riding one motorcycle, or one or two guys with a ton of cargo in front or behind them on the motorcycle. One guy had a cage of about 10 live young pigs in the back!

Skillfull transportation

Casual family motorbike

Our accomodations at the camp are rustic, to say the least. Our Vietnamese translators/co-teachers are also dismayed by our living conditions, including the toilet in the shower that is flushed manually using buckets of water, with no hot water, no drawers or closets, and already two blackouts in the hotel from using the (NECESSARY) air conditioning. I think it is good for us to get out of our comfort zones, though, and it allows us to really think about the aspects of our own lives that are luxurious, though we take them for granted.

Necessary mosquito net

Water bucket to flush the toilet yourself!

I am sharing a bed with a Vietnamese girl I met today, named "Humzhung" or "Yum", who is awesome and gave me Henna, loves Taylor Swift, plays competitive bingo, and made our room the party room. All of the Vietnamese girls came and played Bingo with the two of us in our room, and they were (mostly) patient teachers when I asked them to teach me Vietnamese. The 6-tone pronunciations are very difficult for me, and I am unfamiliar with many sounds. They like that I try, though!

Dung (Yoom) in the middle! (from a weekend trip)

Some of my lessons:

• My name is Allie = (phoenetically) "Thoy thun la Allie" 
• What is your name? = "Thun ko'o Baan la zhree?"
• We can do it! = |"Co Lin"

Sunday afternoon was our first introduction to our class. My class decided on the team name |"Green Tornados" and the slogan, "we are number one!" They are great, mostly participative and very good at soccer and volleyball. They are 8th and 9th graders, and I can't pronounce a single name, which is going to be a problem. I just wink and wave and smile and hope they listen to the translator, whos name sounds like "ThAow," but who we call "Snowy." We don't actually start teaching lessons until tomorrow, we just played the Human Knot, some word games, and demonstrated our sports. It's kind of funny, because a lot of us are runners or fencers or rowers, and we are not actually experts in the sports we are coaching. So the kids are actually better than us at soccer and volleyball, which was a little embarrassing but its still good for us to organize games for them and what not. I think my fellow distance runner and I (the basketball coaches) had enough basketball skill to slightly impress them though!

Some key members of the Green Tornadoes

So far, not being able to speak Vietnamese has been extremely frustrating, because I can't run the class the way that I want to. I will have to come up with another way to communicate, or hope that having more translators tomorrow will help get our instructions across more quickly. As it is, our translator struggles to understand us, which makes it a twisted game of telephone to actually communicate to the kids. And it makes explaining new games VERY difficult and slow. But as we all get to know each other, I know that everything will come more quickly! Also, the kids get workbooks for class in Vietnamese that follow exactly what we are teaching in English, so they will be able to follow us. Thank goodness!  I am looking forward to getting to know each of the classes!

In conclusion, I am sure some of you are interested in what we are eating.
'Nam Noms:
Breakfast: Banana 'Pancake' or fried egg with French bread roll and chum chum fruit or pineapple OR pho

Lunch: Beef or Pork Pho OR bowl or rice with fruit, cooked cabbage, pork knuckles, fried fish, fruit

Dinner: Rice with cooked cabbage with fruit and meat, tofu, fried fish, chum-chum fruit

Example of lunch

Dessert: Jackfruit (this taste is used to flavor Juicee Fruit gum and is tasty!)

Xin "Ciao," Saigon

In Vietnamese, Hello sounds like the words "Sin- Chow", which I remember from the Italian word for hello, "ciao." I made it to Ho Chi Minh City! It is oppressively humid and sweltering hot, but a very exciting city! 6 of the student-athletes and I got a chance to explore the zoo and botanic gardens (highlights = yawning hippos and dancing elephants) while dodging the millions of motorbikers on the streets who follow no traffic pattern or lane lines and stop for nobody. SonBinh's advice was actually correct: Don't look, just cross. They will (hopefully) go around you!

Hungry Hungry Hippo

Saigon Traffic

We made a great first impression on each other at our first meal, attempting to eat Pho, a national treat consisting of rice noodles and meat and vegetables in broth, which is by far the least flattering and delicate meal to eat, especially with chopsticks! I think we will still get along though, everyone is very nice.

By far the most sobering part of the day was our visit to the  Vietnamese-American war museum. We saw a prison camp used by Americans and French military to torture and detain prisoners of war, including the "tiger cages" of barbed wire that tightly contained 2-7 people in a very small space uncomfortably in the sun. Too many terrifying things were described for me to share them all. Think of the movie "Road to Paradise" but worse and with the US as bad gúys. Then the exhibit where you see how communist countries around the world protested the U.S. aggression into Vietnam. And possibly most horrifying was the floor devoted to Agent Orange and Napalm use by the US military. The exhibit pictured the brutal use of these chemical weapons on citizens and children, and also documented the continuing effects of this warfare, showing pictures of dramatically deformed children and citizens who never even lived during the war, but drink the contaminated water or were born to parents exposed to large amounts of Agent Orange . It's one thing to read about these injustices inflicted by my countrymen, but ít is a completely different experience to read about it as an American visiting Vietnam. Especially after we saw a man with no lower body walking on his hands in the street today. The six of us remarked on how guilty we felt walking out of the museum. Heavy stuff.

Some second generation victims of agent orange

On a positive note, we are off to Hau Giang (pronounced "how yahng" or "how zhang" depending on your region) to prepare to start teaching and coaching, and hopefully having a positive impact!

Journey Across the World part I

Palo Alto ưas just a time of preparation. Unpacking, laundry, quick hello, then goodbye. None òf anything (graduation, travelling) hit me until I got to the line in TSA with many people speaking many different languages, and looked back to seê that the 3rd goodbye wave ưas finally the lást, and my family went home to bed. (I'm typing this on a Vietnamese keyboard, which spellchecks my English words into Vietnamese, to explain the weird letters sometimes) In contrast, I went to a crowded lounge to wait for a plane to fly me across the world to a place I know little about and can barely pronounce the word for "thank you" : "Ca-am uhng".
 But aside from the inevitable culture shock, which ís what I signed up for, after all, I am totally stoked. I just got a peptalk from both high school coach and college coaches about coaching ás a fitting future êndeavour for me, and nơư I have the opportunity to teach science (physics) as well! And even better, I will exercise alternative modes òf communication because I don't speak Vietnamese. What an adventure.

So ás stressed ás I may have been about forgetting my camera charger, I know I will learn tón and hopefully someone will learn from me, and that will be a successful trip.

Other goals include learning enough Vietnamese to have a basic conversation and to make and keep a Vietnamese friendship.

___________________

Made it to Taipei, Taiwan. It ưás supposedly a 14 hour flight, but I slept for about 12 hours of it. I think I needed the sleep! Some  funny/memorable sightings:

• A little girl diva singing "apologize" by Timbaland in a heavy avvent
• A college age white kid with hís family wearing cowboy bốots, a cowboy hat, a shirt that read "classic America" and a Holy Bible in his right hand. Really? One of the people with him wore a "God's Warrior" shirt. Way to represent Amurrica in Asia.
• All other American clothing represented ưas either Chicago Bulls, Miami Heat, SF giants hats, or plastic Spiderman backpacks. If Vietnam ís as crazy about basketball as Taiwan, they will see right through my middle school level skills!