BYOTP

Our first week of camp is over, having culminated in an exciting but exhausting day of competitions and tests for the students. We (the American and Vietnamese coaches) are currently taking a relaxing weekend trip to the city of Can Tho, an hour north of Hoa Anh (highlights: Can Tho floating market, street food like Banh Mi and purple sticky rice, and Karaoke). When we got to the hotel and exclaimed at the newfound luxuriousness of flush-toilets and hot water, it made me think about how expectations and things that we take for granted can be adapted very quickly. For instance, just one week has passed and most of the Americans are very comfortable with the necessity of BYOTP. My friend Kathryn, a fellow B1G Cross-country runner from U Minnesota, coined this term: "bring your own toilet paper." TP is not widely used in Vietnam, so if we want to use it we bring it everywhere we go. Its easy enough, and serves as just one more example of stepping out of the American comfort zone.

Can Tho floating market

I want to emphasize how much participating in Coach for College has been thus far. Coaching kids in basketball is a lot of fun, and most of them catch on very quickly to the rules and techniques. I definitely challenged them quite a bit when I started a tournament of "ultimate basketball" in which no dribbling is allowed and 5 passes are required to score a point, and one of those passes must include a girl. At first (despite my pleading in English to spread out), the kids would clump up and grab the ball away from each other and throw it up underhand in the air so that catching was a free for all. This resulted in only a few minor injuries, and after they figured out that this strategy was totally ineffective, some excellent passing ensued. I was very proud of their progress.

Friday started out as a nightmare. At 7:15 am we started the 9th graders on their test of the academic subjects taught throughout the week. My 9th grade class, the green tornados, are an exceptionally rowdy bunch. They are quite athletic, and won more than half of the sports contests, but they are also quite goofy and tend to make fun of the fact that Devon and I can't really speak or understand Vietnamese. As many times as we demanded "Im Lang" (be silent), the students continued to ask each other questions about the test and cheat very obviously. They were not subtle at all about looking at each others' papers and saying the multiple choice answers "a, b, d, etc..."  , which sound very similar to the English letters. I seperated them, I sat between them, I scolded them, but it was pretty  miserable. My fellow Vietnamese coach and translator is a rather timid and very tiny 19 year old girl, and she didn't quite understand my outrage. From what I understand, cheating on a test in high school or middle school is not nearly as big of a deal in Vietnam as it was where I grew up. In the end, I took tests away before they were finished and probably cost our team some points in the contest, but I valued honesty more than winning in this situation. I think the other Vietnamese coaches thought we were being a bit too  harsh, but I felt very disrespected by the students. Again, this is probably just a difference in expectations, and I did not even think twice about imposing my own values on them. I am going to have to have some discussions with our Vietnamese directors to figure out what the proper treatment would be.  Once sports began, the kids and I were back to our fun, buddy-camp counselor relationship, but I am still pretty upset about the academic test.

9th graders goofing off as always

With Snowee and the good kids! (Nhu and Dat)

Our 8th graders, who competed in the afternoon, were absolute angels and did not even consider cheating, nor did they speak at all during the test or move. They study much harder than the 9th graders, and try much harder to please their coaches. I'm proud to say I have finally learned their Vietnamese names, which was an intense struggle due to many of them having names that are spelled the same, but pronounced with different pitches. For instance: Thanh= both "Thaaanh" and "Thahnh".
For the entire day, our team cheered loudly about every 3 minutes: "Green Tornados! We are Numba one!!"

Some of the funnier interactions we have witnessed occur everytime we ask boys and girls to touch each other. For a few of the demonstrations for physics, we have asked the class to hold hands (i.e. to demonsrate a complete circuit). The boys and girls FREAK OUT when we suggest they hold hands, and are totally repulsed. Ah, the days of cooties. They often either hold each other by the pinky, or hold a fan or water bottle between them instead. The lengths they go through to avoid each other is pretty hilarious, especially for 9th graders!

The classrooms in the school are pretty dirty and consist of wooden tables and benches and ceiling fans that do not function. The farm right outside the windows often burn grass, and the smoke gets through the windows and forces us to either move classrooms or to simply breath smoky air while we are playing sports. I was very surprised that the farmer was not addressed about this, especially when it comes to school children.

Uncle Ho is watching in every class room!

Also, the lack of flush toilets where we are staying has really increased my awareness as to how much water is necessary to flush a toilet. We have to fill up 3 or 4 buckets of water to flush properly, which ends up being a lot over a whole day! Something to think about.

When I signed up to come to "rural" Vietnam, I expected houses to be spread out and far apart, with a small population just like rural towns in America. Instead, Hoa Anh is still fairly densely populated and the kids live quite close to the school. Their parents and neighbors have small farms (relative to USA agribusinesses) or rice paddies. They transport everything from hay bales to CAT tractors to their produce using 2-3 ft wide and maybe 10-15 ft long shallow wooden boats that motor down the river network to market. I saw a "barber shop" consisting of 4 wooden poles and a tarp on 3 sides next to the river, complete with a typical barber's chair. This barber is in business every morning!  One thing that rural America and rural Vietnam definitely have in common is the abundance of loose dogs that yip at our heels on early morning sunrise runs. Like everything else, however, these dogs are much smaller in Vietnam than in America.

Everyone transports their goods by boat or motorbike

Large tin riverside home

The one thing that is much bigger in Vietnam than in America is the price tag. I am not used to shelling out 100,000 of anything for material goods, so dropping 25,000 Vietnamese Dong on toilet paper the other day seemed quite alarming. The sticker shock is intense, but 20,000 Dong ~ $1, so the actual value of most goods are relatively quite inexpensive. It is extremely helpful to have our Vietnamese friends bargaining for us at the markets, because prices change dramatically for foreigners compared to locals.

We are all grateful for this period of rejuvination, but we are looking forward to seeing our students again. Cam Ang to everyone who helped support this program!

Green Tornados and Yellow Sunflowers

Our constant state of being in Vietnam is STICKY. Sticky with sweat, sunscreen, mosquito repellant and dirt. We revel in our stickiness at the end of the day, cheerfully yelling "Tot Lam" and "Tam Biet," to which the Vietnamese kids respond "Bye Bye!"
Each day of class goes better than the last, thanks to familiar structure and intense preparations the night before. Having coached 2 years of Skyhawks summer sports camps for basketball, the coaching part is my JAM and I'm grateful that the program lets us come up with the sports lessons plans ourselves. I also really enjoy teaching physics because physics is quite applicable to their lives and non-verbal demonstrations are necessary and fun. The theme for fun teaching here is non-verbal, because translating slows the lesson down a lot and loses the kids' attention. 

Many of the kids (8th grade and 9th grade) are very smart and very skillful (both boys and girls), and many are also very shy at first. The 8th graders are VERY small, with our smallest 2 boys and girls standing a generous 4'0". We also have a "life skills" class every day in which we are teaching about college and career goals this week. Aside from the expected doctors, engineers and teachers, we have a larger than expected number of students who want tot be pilots and flight attendants (especially girls). Only about half the class included that their goal was to graduate college, though after a few days they all raised their hands when we asked if they were planning on attending college. Everyone's main goal was to  have a happy family when they grow up.

In basketball, all the students play barefoot or in flip flops on an uneven stone court. Thanks to many kind donations, the kids have new balls to use and sports courts for every sport, which is quite unusual in an area like this. Nevertheless, the opportunities to learn these sports (other than volleyball, badminton and soccer) are extremely limited.

Barefoot basketball

Barefoot soccer during monsoon season

 

Some highlights of our camp so far have been:

• Being named "Ly" (a Vietnamese flower) by the kids, and giving them American names. It is much easier to address them with American names because we cannot pronounce their names correctly
• Teaching our whole class how to do the macarena and the song "hey Mickey you so fine..." because one of our students has the American name "Mickey." . He is adorable! 

• Watching the kids ride away with 4 kids on one bike!
• Receiving gifts of coconut leaves skillfully made into the shapes of helicopters and locusts

Andy's awesome helicopter!

I had a very interesting conversation with my roommate, pronounced "Yoom", about the experiences of Vietnamese expatriots in America. she talked about how her friends come back to Vietnam and show off their green card to anyone who will look, yet she is skeptical as to the benefit of a green card because these people have lost the social status they had in Vietnam and had to start over in America, facing discrimination and a language barrier. Apparently, a lot of Vietnamese migrate to Australia instead (due to simpler bureaucracy) but the racism there is even more pronounced.

The Vietnamese coaches were very surprised that we (the American coaches) could not physically do the squat that everyone here constantly assumes, with feet flat on the floor and butt just barely off the ground. They thought it was hilarious how much we struggled with something so natural to them!

Mispronunciations have been a theme for me thus far. I have not been paying close enough attention to my intonation when speaking Vietnamese, because I exclaim "good job" (Tot Lam) all the time, but my intonation changes when I try to express excitement. Unfortunately, a different pitch for the word "Lam" means "Good misunderstanding" instead of "good job." Definitely NOT what i was trying to say! The older kids give me a hard time for it, which I accept good-naturedly. 
Another mis-statement to watch out for is "Tam Chyoom" instead of "Tap Choom." The latter means "focus," which we need to use constantly (as with any middle school group). The second has the rather unfortunate meaning of "lets take a shower together," which has the potential to create either very awkward or very hilarious situations if I mess up!

Happy 4th of July from Vietnam!!

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!