New and exciting

The scientists are at it again and have found more formerly unknown species of plants and insects in Vietnam. How cool is that?

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We weren't able to celebrate the autumnal solstice this year, but I thought about it lots yesterday. Hope everyone in VN ate lots of yummy holiday foods.

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It looks like we may be nearing the end of our official homelessness. I'll let ya know soon.

Buy One Get One Free

Okay, if I had the $399, I'd totally do this. But heck, I can't even afford a place to live!

One Laptop Per Child is trying to get a boost going for getting these computers out to kids and is offering a deal for the layperson to get involved. If you buy one computer to be donated overseas, you'll get one for yourself or for a gift. Seriously, this is great. They are great for kids and I think it'd be a fantastic computer to take traveling (it's set up for wi-fi and has unique power features and is water-resistant). Read the article, visit their site, then buy one if you can (starting 12 Nov).

Time to teach

My class at PCC is coming up soon, but I need a minimum number of students or the class gets canceled. So, now's your chance! Come, meet me -in person-. haha Really, it should be fun and fairly interesting as well. (I hope.)

Here's the recap and link to click:

Travel With Purpose: Volunteering Abroad

Opportunities to volunteer abound: work with children, endangered animals, teach English or build homes. Discuss possibilities for solo travelers, couples and families; the pros/cons of voluntourism and how you can make a difference.

The class is on 6 October out in Beaverton at the Capital Center. 9a.m. to 12 p.m. Come join me. Please.

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In other news, we are still "transient" as put on my OHP application. We're staying a friend's house while she's out of town, then truly transient for another week and a half before the next house-sitting gig. But the job's good, I'm learning a lot and my website is plugging along. I'm hoping to unveil it officially at the end of the month...wish me luck!

Isn't that a war?

When telling other students about going to Vietnam, Audrey's been asked a few times, by children, "Isn't that a war?" The relevance of it as a country is minimal to most and while I can't be angry about it (VN is rarely discussed in the media outside of the war), it does become frustrating for all of us. Maybe especially Audrey who has no connection to it as a war and saw very little evidence of it as a war-torn country.

In a NYTimes article, the author wrote:
Many Americans who returned from Vietnam were stunned that “Vietnam” meant something completely different back home. It had ceased referring to the country we had tried, for better or for worse, to help, and had become shorthand for a monumental domestic crisis of identity. I don’t mean to suggest that Americans caught up in that wrenching clash were callous or cynical, but for most of them the war in Vietnam became lost in the ensuing domestic conflict over the morality of warfare, the exercise of power, the draft. That, for them, became “Vietnam.”

Even though he's talking about the wars and how the US can get out of Iraq in a more dignified fashion that our sudden abandonment of Vietnam, he makes a good point for those of us who have only recently traveled there. Yes, there was a war there. But Vietnam is so much more than the American War.

on the move, again

Another month, another place to live. It seems to have become the norm that we stay no more than a few months in any one place.

We're leaving my parents' house and heading north into the city to house-sit for my friend Sparrow while her family visits Grandma in California. I'm grateful for the place to crash, especially since it will cut our commute from 1+hour to about 15 minutes. Lovely. We'll be there for a week and a half before packing up again and heading back to my parents for a couple of days. The next 3 weeks will be pretty crazy with the living situation; inconsistent is the perfect description, it seems.

The trusty, enormous, lime green suitcase was pulled from the garage and we're using it once again to pack everything into (along with a few other bags). Some of the pockets hadn't been emptied and it was fun to come across receipts, drawings, etc. that I hadn't seen since our return. My 'monkey purse' was on the bottom shelf and I needed to pack that away, too. All my business cards that I collected during our months in Vietnam are tucked in there, so I wanted to get them and put them with my "building the website" box for later use. Anything else? Oh yes, tucked into the corner of the bag was the pin from Mr. Hoan. It's from Dai Hoc Hong Duc... my alma mater, in a way. I'm not sure what it was about that pin, but somehow the sight of it brought tears anew.

I have a tremendous amount of guilt for leaving my students there. Things have gone from bad to worse for them, with several teachers coming through (and leaving) and the number of students that attend has dropped from nearly 50 to less than a dozen in the months since I left. The TOEFL test is quickly approaching and I can't help but feel so bad that I let them down. Yet, I know that leaving was best for the kids. I wish there was something i could do to help 'em out, but I've yet to figure out what.

Clearly, I'm not over this "break-up." I miss that place so much. I miss the people even more. But there's no time to continue crying over spilt milk. I have to get the car loaded.

change of perception

I didn't even mention the biggest change, which is in my perspective of the world and, particularly, of American (aka Western) life.

Do we really need to be able to choose between 50 different brands/flavors/fat content/styles of yogurt? Yogurt. Come on. I'd be satisfied with plain vanilla Vinamilk yogurt again, with a little fruit thrown in. I can even see having a few varieties of fruit flavors, but it's overwhelming staring at the dairy section and the yogurts take up ten feet of shelf space.

And how can we possibly need that many choices in pretty much anything and everything, even water! Bottled water comes in small, medium, and large glass or plastic bottles. Flavored or not. Sparkling or flat. It was so much easier when there was just one, maybe two brands to choose from. And when 5 gallons of bottled water cost the equivalent of a dollar.

I find myself irritated with the seemingly American way of being self-absorbed. Last night, I was discussing with my mom the lunacy of Americans, particularly the worker who was jailed for spilling salt on a burger and the woman who tried to burn her neighbor's house down when she thought they'd stolen her keys (later found in her own pocket! People have way too much time on their hands.

And part of that falls into the other thing that drives me insane these days... the obsession of having newer, bigger, better. Doesn't matter if that jacket has hardly been worn, it's so last season! Our 4000 sq. ft. house? Just not big enough. There's a new iPod? Must have it now. -insert eyeroll here-

It's taking a pretty good tole on my patience to deal with listening to people's conversations about this fall's new lip color while I am struggling to find a way to send warm clothes to orphaned children. Or while women are being sold into prostitution. Or while any number of things are happening that are way more important, in my opinion.

I've tried not to get on my high-horse about it, but the kids and I spend a good portion of our two-hour daily commute discussing the lunacy of so many of our peers. And high school! Poor Stuart has to deal with the brunt of the "it's all about me and what I want" (with no thoughts for the future) attitudes of his classmates.

Yeah, I wasn't quite prepared to be quite so disappointed.

ch-ch-changes in me

The kids started back to school this week, returning to the same great school they attended for the past 3 years (sans our break to SE Asia), and everyone asks: "So, how was your trip?" Wonderful, amazing, awesome, life-changing. All the words work, but they don't give it even the slightest bit of depth. How can you possibly wrap up seven months into a 2-minute answer. I've yet to figure that out, so I keep saying things like: "Best thing we've ever done" or "I'd do it again in a heartbeat; squats, dogs and all!"

One mother, who had lived in Thailand as a teenager, asked me how it had changed me. It has changed me, in so many ways.
--A few weeks ago I painted my nails in red, as I'd always done prior to our trip, but after a day I felt like a poser and took it off. It's just not me anymore.
--I realize I drive very close to other cars, too. In VN, everyone drives on top of each other and it just seems normal until I think about the killing capacity of cars vs. motorbikes, then I back off.
--I prefer chopsticks for pretty much anything that I can't eat with my fingers.
--Knives are not preferred; like Tommy, I'd rather pick up the hunk of meat with the chopsticks and tear it off.
--I slurp all soups and noodle dishes.
--I still find squatting to wait quite comfortable and have to drive with one foot up on the chair most of the time (this'll change when I get a stick shift back!)
--Fashion used to be so important and now I'm just proud of myself for getting dressed. I have no idea what's cool/hip/fashionable anymore.
--When I'm surrounded by Asians, I feel at home (though I'm only seen as an outsider)
--I still want to be with my kids as much as possible. It was great having them around all the time, even if they got sick of it.
--I want to do more with my life; I just have to find another way.

remembering Ho Chi Minh

This weekend in Vietnam people are remembering HCM's famous speech at Ba Dinh Square and later, his death; so to commemorate, here is Stuart's report on the famous man:

The man we know as Ho Chi Minh did many things in his life, but most of them were done under different names. His first name was Nguyen Sinh Cung , he was born in Hue on 19 May 1890.

For High school Nguyen attended Quoc Hoc High School in Hue, but was soon expelled for taking part in a student protest and left for France by steamboat, a popular mode of travel at that time.

While in France he decided to become a Nationalist, changing his name to Nguyen Ai Quoc. He kept his last name and used his old high school's name for his first name. He was also known as "Nguyen the Patriot." He later became a member of the French Socialists and when they broke up in 1920, Nguyen was one of the founding members of the French Communist Party.

Nguyen was jailed in France for insurrection, released then re-arrested. He later escaped with the help of the jail's hospital staff tricking both everyone in the jail and the French police that Nguyen had died from tuberculosis.

By 1923,Moscow had heard about Nguyen and asked him to take part in what they called an international revolution. One year later Nguyen was sent to China to join one of their communist parties but in 1927 Chiang Kai-Shek, leader of the Chinese Nationalists turned on the communists and Nguyen fled the scene and ran to Thailand disguised as a Buddhist monk.

Over a period of time visited places such as Brooklyn, then London, where he got a job as a hotel pastry chef, and back to France, after WWI, fixing photographs.

In 1930 Nguyen, now finally Known as Ho Chi Minh "He who enlightens," had re-appeared in Hong Kong, founding the Vietnamese Communist Party. At that same time he was wanted in several countries Including France, China and Vietnam. A few years later he moved back to Vietnam; which he had not seen in over thirty years. Ho was now fifty-one and dysentery, malaria and tuberculosis.

In the mountains of northern Vietnam Ho Chi Minh, Vo Nguyen Giap and Pham Van Don established the Viet Minh a collection of military units that could create independence for Vietnam and over time it had become what we know now as the VPA: Vietnamese People's Army. In 1942 Ho was arrested as a Franco-Japanese spy and was sent to several prisons for over a year, during which time he wrote poems which were later published as "The Prison Diary".

In 1945 Ho was named President of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and gave his famous speech, reading the Vietnamese Declaration of Independence on the 2 September in Ba Dinh Square, Ha Noi,

After all of Ho's efforts he never got to see a unified Vietnam, Instead the country remained in a state of turmoil with the French occupation and the American invasion. Ho died on 3 September 1969 due to heart failure. Despite his explicit wishes of wanting to be cremated and seperated between the north, central and south of Vietnam, his body was preserved and is on diplay at the site where he gave his speech in Ha Noi.

Even now forty years later, Ho Chi Minh is as heroic as ever and is loved by all in Vietnam . He is on all the Vietnam Dong, the national currency, in pictures hung on the wall in Millions of homes and is known as Uncle Ho, one of the greatest leaders in all of Vietnam's history!



Sources:
Colet, John and Joshua Eliot; Footprint Vietnam Handbook; Footprint Handbooks; 1999, Bath, England

Heidhue, Mary Somers; Southeast Asia: A Concise History; Thames & Hobson, 2000, London.

Templer, Robert; Shadows and Wind: A View of Modern Vietnam; Abacus; 1998, London.

Frommer's Vietnam; Wiley Publishing, Inc.; 2006, Hoboken, New Jersey.

Wikipedia: Ho Chi Minh; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ho_Chi_Minh; 31 January 2007

Tam Ky market

So let's see if this works...

We were in Tam Ky around Tet and the market (Chợ Tam Kỳ), always a bit overwhelming, increased in volume and mass. Here's a video put together of stills and movies, narrated by Audrey.