we made it to Tam Ky

We arrived in Tam Ky this early afternoon to an ecstatic Mrs. Hanh waiting for us at the train station. Audrey has now surpassed her in height, how cute. She got us back to the GVN house via taxi, got Grandma starting lunch for us and headed out for a meeting. Meanwhile Me Ba came over. She works at the Quang Nam Baby Orphanage still and the head caretaker there; loving and nurturing each child that comes through there. There's something about her that is so inherently kind and it was wonderful to see her again, weepy at our reunion. The real reason for her visit was the ao dai.

One of our favorite kiddos from the baby orphanage when we were here was Quang, a rambunctious little boy who took to Stuart on our first day here. Every visit they were side by side. Four weeks after we arrived, Quang was adopted and now lives in Florida (near another set of siblings we adore). His mother contacted me and asked me to help get Me Ba an ao dai and through emails, phone calls and the help of several others, Me Ba is now the proud owner of a beautiful gold and black ao dai. It fit her perfect and she looked every bit the beautiful Vietnamese woman.



This afternoon I have to get some pictures printed and deliver nearly 100 pieces of clothing to the kids. We've also gathered almost $200 to go toward the kids, but I think I'll be plunking down some more cash to help out. They have some good programs going for the orphans with extra fruit, a monthly feast and paying the school fees for the kids at the Home of Affection. If you are interested in helping out, shoot me an email. I can easily get donations to them for the next two weeks (when we'll -gasp- be leaving Vietnam).

When Me Ba left, she gave me a short lecture in Vietnamese. I understood little--vui (happy), cam on (thank you) and yeu em (love you), but I know she meant well. We were both a bit teary, not quite willing to quite hugging each other, knowing that we both care about these kids--the orphans and the adopted children. In that, we agree and I know it. Even if I can't understand what her voice says, I can see it in her eyes.

at Tam Coc

heading out

I've been trying to update this page for some time now with pictures, but rarely can I get on and even more rarely can I upload pictures. What a shame. So what's been happening?

Last Sunday we went to the beach with students from the first year: Giang, Giang and Thanh all came, the last two bringing along their families as well. The group of us took a taxi out to Sam Son beach and hung out for hours with Audrey getting a new kite, courtesy of Giang (her former tutor) and playing in the water. I wish I'd had more time to chat with the students but Audrey wouldn't go into the ocean alone and neither Zach nor Stuart would join her swimming. Too bad, boys, because the water was great. So nice and warm with no crabs or rocks to step on. The big group of us headed out on cyclos after dark to enjoy dinner at a seafood restaurant. And of course, the kids had to play with their food. Crab claws were the hit of the party to be sure.

My other student Ha had her baby on Wednesday-woohoo! Nearly two weeks overdue she was more than ready. I'll head over next week for a quick peak, but since I'm still fighting a bit of a cold, it has to wait.

Oh! I almost forgot...last Saturday we brought Chinh along to go to Tam Coc again. It was beautiful and nearly deserted. Despite growing up less than an hour away, Chinh had never been to Tam Coc before, so I was happy to be able to bring her with us. Plus she helped us out by getting us on buses for the trip rather than the expensive taxi ride I was planning.

And tonight we head south to Tam Ky. We'll be there tomorrow, early afternoon. I'm looking forward to seeing Mrs. Hanh again and hope that some of the volunteers stick around so I can talk to them about the kids. After our quick jaunt there, we'll head off to Nha Trang (another 10 hours on the train). The plan is to be there for about two days then head back to Thanh Hoa on a 21-hour train ride. Me and three kids...should be entertaining!

travel is for the wealthy

And the definition of wealthy changes wherever you go. In Vietnam, I make enough money to afford us to spend our weekends in Ha Noi, traipsing around the city eating expensive Western food and taking taxis to museums. I come back to Thanh Hoa and gripe about the insanity of prices in the northern capitol, glad to be back in a small city with prices I'm more than happy to pay. Less than a dollar for three bowls of ice cream. Dinner for four costs less than four dollars. I am happy to drop a few thousand VND in the upturned cone hat of the beggar woman at the market; she clearly can use the help as she scoots across the wet fish market floor. I feel like I'm spending my money wisely; I'm thrifty like that.

Then a student tells me how if life had a do-over, she'd be a doctor. She could make a lot of money. She could be rich. She could make, she paused for effect, more than 5million VND a month. She'd be rich! I made that much in the first few days of the month.

She imagines being so rich and I complain that it cost me 300,000VND for a pizza dinner in Ha Noi. Or that it will cost me more than 3million VND to get to Tam Ky so I can deliver these clothes for the orphanages, help Me Ba get a new ao dai, visit orphans who've no doubt forgotten us in the repeated comings-and-goings of volunteers.

But I can. If I want, I can spend those millions. And I will spend that and more, taking the kids down south...to Nha Trang, Da Lat, Hue? I don't know, but our biggest constraint is time, not money.

In this life of juxtaposed wealth, I forget how lucky we truly are. And I'm afraid the kids will never know. In a month, we'll be back in America, scraping by month to month on a salary that puts us a few grand below the poverty level. I'll continue making rice dishes and eating little meat simply because I can't afford it if I have to buy milk and fresh fruit, too.

It's a strange place to be--this temporary wealth, where I look for hotels at the beach and far-away attractions knowing that I'll be there before long. We'll be off to Bangkok soon, then through Thailand and Malaysia before heading home. I'm researching budget hotels and how to buy train tickets online. Thrift is in my nature. But the realization that this life of extra is something that those I care for most here in Viet Nam can never have stings. And it fights with my maternal drive. I want to show my kids all that I possibly can, yet in my rush to give my family a wider vantage of the world, we remain blind to so much.

Returning to Sam Son beach

After more than nine weeks in Thanh Hoa, we finally returned to the beach that sits only 15 km away. I'm not sure what took us so long to get back there, but either way the situation was remedied. I had the middle of the week off, so on Wednesday morning we took a taxi out to the beach we'd visited so many times before.

Stuart and Zach collected shells, crabs and other "waste" from the fishing nets. When the boats come ashore, they clean out the nets and all sorts of things find their way onto the shore.

Including this fantastic horseshoe crab specimen. Audrey was especially appalled when some locals started playing with it, flipping it over, etc., but someone nicer came along and lifting it by its tail, threw it back out to sea.
Audrey and I on the rocks. We didn't yet have the deep red glow we would acquire by the end of our three-hour visit to the beach. Ouch.



Audrey is always happy to pose for photos. The cheesier, the better.


For a snack, I bought xoi (sticky rice) from this woman. I know I paid too much, but there are times when I feel like it's worth it. She was so kind, she deserved the few extra VND.

Overall the trip was enjoyable. We were originally bombarded by sellers and children who would not leave us alone, but a few fellow sellers chased them off from us. It's always an awkward situation to be trying to set up a beach spot and have people surrounding us, touching us and talking quickly in a language I do not understand. And despite our answers of "Khong...khong thich...di di" they just stay pushing their wares at us.

Then, of course, there was the man who was trying to let me accept a massage. I finally got him to leave, but when he returned the second time he just kept touching, squeezing my arm, then my leg, then grabbed a handhold on my breast. I nearly punched the guy, but managed to keep it to a hard shove. So frustrating.

The kids were all enjoying themselves and we'd rented an umbrella, so we stuck around longer than we should have and three days later, none of us are sleeping well due to the burns. Oops. We forgot our sunblock in Hanoi and the stuff is unfindable around here. The locals carry umbrellas and wear long-sleeves, what would they need it for? So, we all pay the price. But next time when I say we really should go, I'm pretty sure Audrey will be more apt to believe me.

sigh...

How is it that no matter where you are life does not go according to plans?

Our time has been cut short by more than a week; a week that we were going to spend traveling around the country. Unfortunately when our visas were renewed, they only gave us until the 12th. I will finish work on the 1oth, head to Hanoi, then leave the country. I'm so frustrated I could scream. Not only for the limited time, but for the lack of travel we've been able to do. Each time we've planned to go to Ha Long bay, a storm has rolled in, cancelling our plans. Then there's the surprise vacation, mid-week. I will have Tuesday-Thursday off this week, just enough to not really go anywhere. We'll head to the beach and hope for some fun, but I'm fighting a cold and grumpy as all get out.

I was given no warning of the days off, the money lost. And I've got three kids who've seen more of the inside of a dorm building that they've seen of Vietnam. Quite frustrating.

Hopefully on Saturday we will be able to get to Tam Coc, but I'm afraid that Ha Long Bay and Sa Pa will not be seen this time. And my plans for Da Lat are sinking fast. I have obligations to get to Tam Ky and we may just have to do that instead.

Hitting the arcade with the Kids

On Saturday afternoon we headed out to Vincom Towers to visit the arcade. You can imagine our disappointment when we arrived and the doors were locked, the room was empty. Of course there was a sign, but we couldn't read it. Frustrated, we decided to walk around the mall and just happened to stumble upon the arcade.

The kids played all sorts of game, including (to my utter dismay) this shoot-'em-up version:

Notice the enormous breasts to the left of Stuart's head. I'd walked by it a dozen times before Audrey brought the body shape to my attention. Behind us was a gigantic male torso, too.

On our first night out as a foursome and for only the second time in all our months in Vietnam, a foot got run over by a motorbike. And of course, it was Zach's foot. Note the treadmarks.

simplicity

Here comes the storm

We're right in the middle of it; the kids are in Hanoi with Keith and Trang while I'm down in Thanh Hoa. We are all edging into the red zone. Hold on tight.

hmm

It's images like this, with symbols and markings that I can only partially decipher, that worry me. We're not too far outside the pink on the far left. So far, no luck on finding much more about the path this one is taking, but the planned trip to Ha Long Bay (which is in the pink zone) for Saturday may have to be postponed.

Good night and good luck!

Last Friday was the last day for the A2 class; they'll be taking the TOEFL-iBT in just a couple more weeks. As a way to celebrate the end of their studies and the final push toward their test, we went out to dinner as a group. Our original dinner with the students had been at a restaurant that prominently features goat meat (called "The Most Goat") and we'd been secretly hoping we'd return there, but the students chose another restaurant, practically a stone's throw from our dormitory.

Built over a small (possibly man-made) lake, the restaurant consists of a dozen huts perched in the water. It's a quaint setting with palm-leaf thatch roofs that shade your view of the other diners and definitely gives it that oh-so-tropical feeling. Thang and Chinh made sure to order some food that the kids would eat (chicken, always chicken) and took care of the rest of the food. After about a 20 minute wait, it started coming out. First the bits of pineapple and cucumbers. Then nem... these little sausage style rolls of pork skin, meat and spices that are wrapped in banana leaves. They are actually pretty tasty if you can avoid thinking of skin while you chew.

Next came the snails and after trying them I am completely perplexed by the Western notion of these as some sort of delicacy. They are chewy and thick and covered with a thin layer of mucus. It looked a bit like mildewed cartilage wrapped in nasal discharge and, personally, I'm not sure they tasted much better than that either. Yeah, definitely not a fan of the snails. It took forever to chew it up and get it down my gullet. Stuart tried, as well, and liked it just about as much. Audrey wouldn't even come near the stuff.

But she did eat some chicken and rice. Chinh was nice enough to take it off the bones for us, not always an easy task, and find the best bits every time. We had both lemongrass chicken and grilled chicken, but they were vastly different. The lemongrass chicken came with mostly leftover bits of the bird. Rib pieces, tails, sections of the neck. Nothing with any meat and everything that made me feel like a neanderthal while chewing on it. Needless to say not much of it was eaten. Audrey found the head in there, though, nicely fried up, and was somehow able to get past the "ew" factor of plunging a chopstick in and made a little puppet. Oh my.

And I got my palm "read" by the Vietnamese teacher. Supposedly, I have a good Luck Line, meaning that I will travel abroad often (not often enough). My Study Line is strong and shows that I will continue to learn and get more education (if I can ever afford it). My Love Line though is, as she put it, difficult. She said that your left hand is your love/romance hand and wanted to take a look at that to see if she could get a better answer, but the best that she could come up with after much inspection was that my love life is "complicated." I think non-existent may be a better word for it, but it still got a good laugh. And then she measured the thickness of my hand, which isn't so thick, and decided that I will never be rich (I was already quite sure of that) and that sometimes I will struggle financially (oh yeah, like every day). Audrey got the advice to exercise as her Health Line was a little weak and that she would get a Master's degree someday. I can only hope.


After the palm reading and eating as much of the meat (including squid and fish, along with the snails, chicken and pork skin sausages), we headed out for karaoke. Well, the kids went home and most of the students went out to, as they call it, carry-oh-kay. I enjoyed myself as they belted out Vietnamese love songs and joined in for a mediocre rendition of "Let it Be."

Thanks so much to everyone in the class who was there and for those who couldn't be. I had a great time teaching you all and wish our time together could have been more than these quick seven weeks. The best of luck to you all! -Co Teresa

As always, the men brought out the shot glasses and got started right away. After several tries, they stopped asking me and moved on to trying to convince Stuart to give it a try.

Stuart finally got them to stop asking if he wanted a shot of Vodka by pouring it down his back. The burn on his skin was enough to convince him that it probably isn't so healthy going down one's throat, either.

Picking through the meat to find the edible-to-us parts.

Just a handful of the A2 students: Na, Duc, Phuong, Chinh, Dan, Chien, Cuong and Chinh.