getting ready to move on

We're down to our last week in Tam Ky. I can't believe it. It has been an experience that I will never forget and I think I can safely say that my kids would agree. I am incredibly sad to be leaving when I have only just connected with these kids. If I could find a way to stay, I would, it's not possible. I have to go find a way to make some money, so on Monday morning we set off Ha Noi. If all goes right, I will have a couple of rooms in an expat house waiting for us to occupy. It will be nice to have a place of our own, but still among others. The kids have grown to love having housemates (and someone besides me to talk to!), so I'm hoping that it will work as well there as it has here. Keep your fingers crossed for me in both the housing and job search.

Yesterday saw another adoption, this time with two girls going to one family. The are 7 and 8--one a real tomboy and the other very girly. I think the joint adoption will be very good for them, giving them someone to lean on when things are tough. The adoptive parents are from somewhere in America, but we were not given the chance to speak to them. They were brought in, introduced to the girls and rushed into a room to sign papers. I brought some photos of the girls and their friends at the orphanage that I had taken, then had printed out. They were given to the director who (I can only hope) passed them on to the family. It was an intensely emotional experience for me as a mother. How exciting and scary and wonderful it must be for those parents. I'm sure they have put in a lot of effort and emotion and money to be to this point. It was a bit like watching a baby being born as the greeted each other wide-eyed and optimistic, just the kids are a lot older. :)

The tears tripped over the rims of my eyes and I had to turn away, wiping them, pretending the scene didn't affect me, but it did. It still does. Oh, how I wish I had the ability, the money, the home to take in a kid or two. I'd do it, despite all my assertions that two children is plenty. My two are plenty for me, but when I know these kids and how much they need to be loved individually and intensely... well, I wish it could be me that was getting into that van with a couple more kids. Saying goodbye to them all... it's not gonna be easy. The eyes fill just thinking about it. How I wish I weren't just some poor hick, but actually had the means of helping them.

I can't say goodbye forever just yet. Visits down to Tam Ky will be few and far between (the travel costs are a bit prohibitive), but we will be back.

It wasn't too bad, really

Since our arrival in Viet Nam, we've avoided much that has to do with the American/Viet Nam War, but I felt like it was time. Tam Ky is quite close to the site of the My Lai Massacre (more on Wikipedia) and since our volunteer time finishes this week, we needed to do it now. Sunday was set apart as the day we would go, along with Hannah and Mette. Despite the Vietnam Railways website listing trips between Tam Ky and Quang Nhai, including prices (only 18,000 VND), the train station here confirmed our interpreter's assertion--there is no way to catch the train between the two cities. Instead we went by bus.

And when I say bus, I use the term lightly. Really it was a mini-van rigged to fit up to 22 people. We hailed the first one that came by with a man hanging out the door yelling "Quang Nhai! Quang Nhai!" The five of us piled in as the driver continued to roll along very slowly; as soon as Mette's foot left the ground, the speed picked up and the yelling man had to run and jump into the van (a la Little Miss Sunshine). And for all that fun we paid 50,000VND each. A total rip-off, we were sure. That's nearly $4 for a one-hour ride!

The ride was tight, but we'd learn (on the ride home) just how tight it could get. We had 12 people in the van on the way to the crossroads where we disembarked and were immediately accosted by ten men, all wanting us to motobike taxi out to Son My (the site of the My Lai Massacre). "Khong, cam on. Taxi." After several failed attempts to call the local taxi company, a nearby woman called for us and within minutes, a taxi was there for us and we drove the 12 km or so to the site.

The museum on the site is well done and worth the 10,000VND entry fee. There's the requisite list of the dead: 504 in total with ages ranging from young to old, but mostly at the two ends of the spectrum. It was so very sad to see all the names listed that were followed by an age of less than 5. I stopped counting at 100.

There were artillery shells and bombs that had been dropped, as well as a lot of other artifacts that were left (although given that there were a bunch of homes and families there and all that was left were shells and some ceramics, it isn't much). There were a number of grisly photographs, but you can find those on the web yourself. It was a heart-rending visit, knowing that these people had just been slaughtered without a care and that the man who had ordered the killings (and brutal ones, at that) served 5 days in jail. 5 days. It was hard being an American.

The famous statue of the woman holding her dying baby and others fallen around her was quite powerful in person despite its Russian rigidity. The grounds are beautiful to walk among the grass field and coconut trees, but it's impossible to forget the terror that occured. There are numerous reproductions of the villager's homes, their slaughtered animals and markers for the mass graves.

Our ride home put my limited Vietnamese skills to the test, but we made it (squished in with 14 other people, some standing the entire way from Quang Nhai to Tam Ky). In the end, we paid more than we would have paid Mr Hanh to take us (600,000VND round-trip) but it proved to be impactful and I doubt any of us will forget the site or that ride.

Com ga

As requested, here's Mrs Hanh's recipe for com ga (rice chicken). The measurements are all estimates because she doesn't use measuring spoons or measuring cups. So put a big "approximately" in front of each ingredient. If it doesn't sound right to you, change it. I've also included the MSG that she uses, but suggest that you avoid it. After watching her cook, though, I'm surprised I don't have an extra 10 lbs. on me due to sodium-induced water retention. Of course, she did get me almost back to my departure weight, so there may be some truth to the water retention bit. :)
Com Ga
yellow rice, vegetables and chicken

Yellow Rice
1/2 tsp. MSG
1 tsp. salt
2 garlic cloves, minced
1/2 tsp. turmeric
2 cups rice
3+ cups chicken broth
Saute garlic in oil, add in MSG, salt and turmeric. Saute another 30 seconds, then remove from flame. Using cold water, rinse rice well (several times). Pour in sauted garlic mixture and chicken broth. Mix lightly and cook in rice cooker (about 20 minutes).

Vegetables
1/2 cup minced onion
2 garlic clove, minced
1/2 cup diced pork
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. pepper
1 Tbsp. sugar
1 Tbsp. MSG
4 cups diced veggies (use 2 or 3: carrots, green beans, squash, broccoli stems, etc.)
In hot frying pan, saute 2 Tbsp. onion and 1 tsp. garlic for one minute, then stir in everything but the vegetable. Continue cooking over med-high heat, stirring constantly, for 1-2 minutes. Stir in vegetables. Cook for another 3-4 minutes, until vegetables are crisp-tender (cooked, but still crunchy). Set aside, keep warm.

Chicken
2 cups shredded, cooked chicken (room temperature or warm)
1 tsp. soy sauce
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp pepper
2 tsp MSG
juice of 2 small lemons, separated
1 cup thinly sliced onion
1 Tbsp. sugar
1 cup rau ram (don't know the English name for this and haven't seen it in the States before, but you could probably use spinach or another leafy vegetable, sliced in strips)
In a small bowl, mix onions with sugar and juice of one lemon. Stir and let it sit for a few minutes. Meanwhile, in another bowl, mix the first six ingredients, including the juice of another lemon. Stir in rau ram (or equivalent) and onion mixture. Stir well.
Scoop each thing (rice, vegetables, chicken) into separate bowls and serve. An di! (Eat!)

There's some truth to the saying: "There's a first time for everything," but there are certain firsts I would rather avoid. Like today's.

Traffic accidents are fairly obvious when they happen; just like in America, people slow down to gawk and hypothesize the exact actions. The mass of motorbikes stopped along the road as we approached Tam Ky signaled another crash. We'd seen the remnants of one only 20 minutes before (with a policeman measuring the distance between the fallen bicycle and motorbike). Mr Hanh slowed to a crawl as we made our way through the crowd. Stuart noticed the heavily bent wheel first. "Ew, bad crash." Then we both noted the shoe left near the bike, then we saw the blood.

Until today I'd always managed to miss any traces of real injury, but the small puddles of blood left on the road, beside the twisted bike and the abandoned shoe were incontrovertible evidence to the severity of the crash. The horror of knowing that just minutes before someone had hit something (a car? another moto?), fallen and lain on the asphalt, bleeding hit hard.

Stuart and I were both left speechless, horrified by what we'd seen. I assume it was a head-injury, quite possibly (probably?) fatal. We'll never know. Unfortunately the image of that wreck will always be with me and with Stuart, despite his admonition: "Just try not to think about it." I can't seem to stop, the image replays again and again while I am left to wonder: what if the rider had been wearing a helmet? does his/her mother know yet? could it be me next time?
For some (too many) the start of the New Year is full of sadness. We've witnessed the aftermath of four accidents in the last five days. We went the first month without seeing any, then two over a couple of weeks (at the intersection of front of our house), then four more just this week.

Shouting "Chuc mung nam moi!" seems so inappropriate now.

Getting ready for Tet

Tet Nguyên Đán begins on Saturday, 17 February and everyone is getting ready. The market is crowded, the stores are packed with sweets (and not very good ones, if I may add my opinion), the flowers are being delivered... it really is pretty amazing. I'm not an authority on Tet by any means, so I thought I'd throw a few lines up for you to check it out yourself.

Here's Wikipedia's entry.

What is Tet? with info about Tet food (yum--pig ears!)

and a kids' one at Adopt Vietnam

sponsored

I'd heard rumor that there was a baby with a cleft lip at the Baby Orphanage, but hadn't seen him in the baby room, but on Friday I remembered about the 'secret' baby room that is behind the kids' bedroom building and down a hall. I went back there and sure enough, there he was, laying on the wooden slat bed. I talked with him a bit (as much as you can with a 4-month-old) then asked the "mother" to hold him. What a cutie! His cleft is pretty dramatic, going from his right nostril down with a very short septum and no palate on that side, either. I can't seem to get a straight answer about surgery for him, but was told the deformation was his reason for being at the orphanage. He's "sponsored"--whatever that means exactly. So, hopefully the sponsorship includes covering the cost of surgery. He's adorable, but in all honesty, he needs to get his palate and lip fixed. I wish it were easier to find information about these kids and what's happening, but not much is shared. I'm still gonna ask a bit more; this kid deserves the help.
(photo by Tranh, 5-year-old orphan girl)

Bargain or exorbitant? It depends

Audrey got her own set of traditional Vietnamese clothes for Tet (17 Feb). She really wanted an ao dai (pronounced ow yie), but the tailor said she couldn't make one, but she'd make this for her. I'm not sure what the difference is, but it doesn't really matter. Audrey loves it all. She got two blouses (long pink, short pink) and three pairs of pants (pink, yellow, white w/pink). It's beautiful and she felt like quite the special girl trying them on.

I'd bought the fabric elsewhere last week. Total: 65,000VND (about $4)
I paid for the sewing work today. Total: 100,000 VND (about $6.50)
So all together, for 5 pieces of custom-made clothing I paid less than $11.

Then I went to the post office and paid more then 3,500,000VND (about $220) to ship presents home to family. After spending two hours in the post office on Friday only to be told that they couldn't quite figure out how much I owed and that I could just come back in the next day or two to pay. They took Yen's number and called yesterday to let us know that it was ready. 3.5 million VND. Who'd have thunk?! It cost almost $35 just to ship a necktie to Stuart's old teacher. For that price, the stuff ought to be there by Friday.

But really, I'm just so frustrated that it cost as much as a ticket to Hong Kong. I hope everyone realizes how much I love them and don't feel too sad when I tell them I can't afford anything for their birthday/anniversary/Christmas present.
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By the way, the yellowing agent for the rice: turmeric. Anyone interested in her com ga recipe? I'll post it, if so.

Phu Ninh Lake

Jo came back to visit with her boyfriend Charlie and the five of us headed up to Phu Ninh lake outside of Tam Ky. It's quite lush and we had the place nearly to ourselves (thanks to our Western idea of what "hot weather" means). It was gorgeous with the blue skies and cool water. We even rented a paddle boat, though by the end I remembered why I've been avoiding boats. The kids played and splashed for about an hour before heading back home. Definitely glad we went, plus it was extra fun to have Jo and Charlie along.

Again there are caged up birds and when we were looking at the peacock one of the women came along with a big stick and was going to poke it (I'm assuming to make him put his tail up), but we told her no need and waved her, and her stick, away from the bird. Another cage had two parrots, one of which was wedged in between the upper edge of the cage and the roof--dead. Horrible. Animal abuse is a term that doesn't exist here, at all. (Stuart has twice caught the kids at the baby orphanage tearing a lizard limb from limb!) We quickly moved past the birds and on to the water.

The scenery is gorgeous though and they have it all set up romantically with swings around the edge of the lake for you to hang out with your honey and watch the water. Lovely and I can imagine that in the summer it's quite the make-out spot.

Back to the beach

Despite our worst fears, the beach is cleaned up and beautiful again. According to a few different news sources, soldiers, volunteers and other unnamed parties contributed to the clean-up. There were bags and bags of the gloppy oil piled up waiting for the trucks to take them away and we happened to be there for the pick-up, as well, so by the time we left you couldn't even tell there'd been an oil spill, save for a bit of the oil globs here and there. We'd brought along some heavy plastic bags and a large covered bucket to pick up oil, if need be, but since it had been done before we got there, we used the plastic bags to pick up trash instead.
It really is a lovely beach and we'll probably make it our weekend get-away a few more times. It's so close (only a 20 minute drive). It's still kind of spendy to get there, so we can't do it too much ($10/rt via taxi).

The beach is pretty different from the Oregon beach, though. The sand is coarser (more like salt crystals) and there were tons of shells. Where the waves broke near the shore, the ground was covered with shells, but we managed to pick quite a few up from where they'd been left on the shore. We found those corkscrew kind and lots of clam shells and these really flat glass-like shells. I feel a science project coming on with the investigation and identification of them. :)

Thuy

One of the little girls from the Home of Affection orphanage had a seizure on Wednesday and as of today is still in the hospital, still very sick and still unsure of what is causing the problems. She is only 3 or 4 years old; her name is Thuy (twee) and she's been a chronic crier. Everyone had assumed that she was just a sad kid since she'd lost her father in the typhoon last May, then was given by her mother to the orphanage only a month later. It's understandable for her to be sad. But now I'm wondering if she's been suffering from headaches and they're related to the seizure. I don't know. The doctors don't know. But if you pray, add this one to your prayers. If you don't, send good vibes her way. She needs everything she can get right now.

"What do you like?

If you've been wondering at all what we've been eating, well here you are. We have the greatest cook in all of Viet Nam, I swear. Jo's goodbye dinner was at her request (and what's on the menu for tomorrow night-woohoo!): com ga. Chicken, vegetables and rice; simple, but so delicious. Mrs. Hanh cooks the rice with onion, garlic and some spice that makes it yellow. The vegetables are carrots and "green vegetable" (the name for everything it seems). I think it might be a squash of some sort, though I've seen her use green beans and figure I could probably substitute chopped broccoli stems for the "green vegetable." They are cooked to crisp-tender perfection. The chicken is cooked with onion and some other leafy "green vegetable," something like spinach this time. We stir the vegetables and the chicken mixture in with the rice and eat it like it'll never hit the table again. So delicious! Oh, and the cucumbers. I eat them, but no one else really likes them. Except Yen, who eats them with chili sauce. Ew. :)

So we are definitely not starving to death and I'm surprised I haven't put all the weight back on and more, given the way she feeds us. This is lunch on Monday. Chicken, fried potatoes, shrimp crackers, Vietnamese cole slaw and rice. Technically, we were supposed to dish the cole slaw up onto the crackers to eat it, but it was a lot of work to keep it together. The potatoes are a huge hit with the kids and our new volunteer, Hannah. I couldn't eat much of the meat with the bones still attached, but there's always plenty of everything. You couldn't possibly leave the table less than full. Mrs. Hanh wouldn't let us even if we tried.

And that's her phrase in the subject line-"What do you like?" Really it means: Do you like it? It's quite cute though, as is her use of any English. All verbs are gerunds. There are no filler words. "Mrs Hanh talking Mrs Hanh friend, coming later, talking clothes." That's the way all conversations go. And if you apologize, she answers "You're welcome." I guess it's because the Vietnamese translation: Khong co chi means something like "It's not a problem." A suitable answer to an apology, but it still makes me smile when I do something wrong and she says "You're welcome!"

Home school isn't as easy as it sounds

It started off pretty smoothly, but then Audrey got sick, then Stuart and the homework plans that I'd so nicely laid out were shot. Two weeks later we're still struggling to catch up. I really had planned for it to go much smoother than it has, though it hasn't gone all to pot, thankfully. Audrey spent a half-hour doing math drills and Stuart has finished his rough draft of the essay on Ho Chi Minh (and it's pretty good). He even did some reading today and Audrey's been working on a picture book of animals in our "neighborhood" as an art/writing project.
So I guess it isn't all bad, but the plan was to spend 2-3 hours a day doing school work and it really hasn't been close to that. It's so hard to fit it in between visits to the orphanages, meals, lesson planning, errands and my own reading and writing assignments for my university Anthropology course. I really had good intentions, but the real school work for the kids will have to wait until mine is done.
It really would be so much easier to teach them at home if that was all I had to do. I'm never going to be a housewife again though, so I gotta figure out how to do this. Once we get to Ha Noi, I'll have to figure it out a bit better (looking into the idea of hiring someone to help me out with the kids while I'm working). We'll see. The school bit is critical or we have to go back to the States and none of us are ready for that quite yet.

Random photo:
Kids at the baby orphanage. Really these kids are among my favorite and always want to be carried on my shoulders or Stuart's. We run and chase with them and play silly screaming games, but they're also sweet as pie when they want to be and today nearly all of them blew me kisses goodbye. It was the first time any of them had done it back to me and it honestly melded them into my heart. I'll never forget these kids. (But I do wish I could remember their names better!)

Getting a hair cut

It was getting a bit long, so Audrey asked to get her hair cut. A bit wary after Jo and Claire's experiences at the local hair salon (ruined their hair), I decided to do it myself. Not the first time I've cut hair, but the first in other ways. She wore a rain poncho to keep the hair off. I used old (and enormous!) sewing shears to do the cutting. The comb was one that Audrey had collected from one hotel or another. It was a hack job in many ways, but in the end, her hair looks very nice. She approves.

Thanks to a comment, I was able to find this info about the oil spill:
http://vietnamnews.vnagency.com.vn/showarticle.php?num=02ECO020207

We must have gotten there very soon after it washed ashore considering we were there on the 30th and the news report is on the 2nd. Or maybe it just works differently here.

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Got our new volunteers: Mette from Denmark and Hannah from English (though she is originally from Belgium). So we've got Danish, Flemish, English, ASL and Vietnemese languages going at various times depending on whose talking to whom. Mette had friends over today and it was so fun to see the translating between languages, including her friend who knows Vietnamese but is from Denmark. What a crazy world.

Goodbye Jo!

Our last January volunteer left yesterday and man, we're going to miss her. We really connected with Jo and we're all gonna miss her so much, especially Audrey. They really adored each other. She's coming back in a week, after traveling a bit with her boyfriend that's visiting from Australia, so the goodbye wasn't too sad yesterday, but the next one will be so hard. I honestly could her integrate into our family and be thrilled, but alas, she's going back to Australia and we'll just have to try and stay in touch.
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Welcome to Tam Ky City! As of 1 February, it's official. Tam Ky is now a city. It got approved as a city in November, but this marked the beginning of something bigger for the place. The flags are up, lights are strung around businesses, there was dancing and music that night.

Add in the fact that it's the anniversary of the Communist Party in Viet Nam and Tet is in two weeks, and you can only imagine the flurry of activity here. Businesses are getting re-painted, food is being bought up, houses are being cleaned and clothes are being ordered (including an ao dai for Audrey, at her request). It's refreshing and I can't wait to see this place after Tet; it's going to be lovely!

The rice fields are already absolutely gorgeous, with the green grasses fluttering in the breeze. Every day our trip to the Baby Orphanage gets nicer and nicer as the rice grows. We still haven't been able to figure out (or have it explained to us) exactly how the rice is harvested, but I might just have to sacrifice the time and do an internet search.

Talking of rice reminded me.... yesterday on our ride to the orphanage, I saw an old woman walking along the side of the rode, bent at a 90% angle to the ground, unable, after years in the rice fields, to stand up straight again. I couldn't help but cry just a bit for this woman, physically transformed by difficult labor, knowing that she is just one of so many. Maybe it's having a cold that makes me a bit weepy, but really, it's moments like that that impact me the most and make me realize how grateful I am for the luck of being born in a time and place that gave me options in life, limited as they are. I still am not destined to work, bent over in a field, mud up to my knees, picking rice for hours to be sold for mere cents, every day of my adult life, despite the pain. I am thankful, yet melancholy.