I realize that it’s been quite a while since I last wrote so
I figured that another post was long overdue. The last two months have been
filled with many new experiences, adventures, conversations, and relationships.
A lot has happened in the last two months and I’m going to do my best to
categorize this post (at least in a way that makes sense to me) in an effort to
share as much as I can.
Time
Time is something that has been on my mind a lot recently. It’s
very hard for me to believe that I’m beyond the halfway mark of my time in
Vietnam. I remember thinking, in August, that it would be incredibly daunting
to finish four months here and know that I had half-a-year left. Luckily, the
four-month mark came and went and I have not felt intimidated by the length of
time that remains in my stay. In
fact, it occurred to me at the beginning of December that I had been in Vietnam
for about as long as a study-abroad semester. I was comforted by the thought
that I needed more time. Sure, there are times at which being home would be
nice, but if I had to leave now, I would have a really strong sense of
unfinished business. I feel extremely lucky to be content with being in Vietnam
(at least for now)—it would be a long 5 months if I didn’t.
It’s also interesting to reflect on my daily life in Vietnam
and how my own perspectives have changed. As I’ve settled into a daily routine
in Cao Bang and have gotten more comfortable as a member of the community here,
events and experiences have, in some ways, gotten much less special, and in
other ways have been just the opposite. In case that made no sense, I’ll try to
explain my point relative to this blog. In the beginning, trying new foods,
finding new places to hang out, and sharing initial classroom highlights were novel
experiences worthy of a blog post—now they’re not. On the other hand, meeting
people, developing relationships, and finding a community were not what I
deemed most important to share with readers of this blog—now they are. Mostly,
I think that reflects a certain level of comfort (or desensitization) to some
of the things that I see, experience, and deal with here. In other ways,
though, I think it shows a shift in my priorities—what used to stand out as
important and new doesn’t anymore and what seemed low on my priority list now
seems paramount. I don’t think the relationship between the exciting and the
banal is quite as inversely proportional as I’m portraying it, but I hope you
get the point.
Community and Culture
Almost immediately after my last blog post, I started to
notice a shift. I was finding it very difficult to move past superficial
interactions and develop strong relationships. I was tired of every person whom
I met asking me the same 10 questions and tired of having 600 tour guides who all
wanted to show me the same city and “introduce” me to the same “traditional
foods” (some of which were definitely not unique to Cao Bang or Vietnam). I was
also feeling like I was having trouble being understood and having trouble
understanding the people with whom I was interacting. I could not understand why
people were asking me, “Can you eat rice?” or “Do you know how to use
chopsticks?” How did they not know that rice is a fairly universal food and
that Americans learn how to use chopsticks? Even more surprising, do they
really think that using chopsticks is some kind of monumental kinesthetic
accomplishment? Better yet, do they think I planned to starve myself for ten
months all because of an insurmountable difficulty of using chopsticks? I
haven’t found the answers to these questions, but I have found that people have
become much less shocked by my existence here. As a result, I feel like I’ve
been able to form a really solid group of friends.
For the most part, I hang out with many of my students, some
recent university grads who have moved back to Cao Bang to work, and several
other members of the community who have reached out and befriended me. In
addition, I’m also very thankful for the few other ex-pats who are living in
Cao Bang now. There are four other Americans, a 24 year old from Luxembourg,
and a man from The Netherlands and I spend time with all of them on a fairly
regular basis. What’s nice, though, is that even when I am with the other
foreigners, there are almost always Vietnamese people with us. Whether it’s
going out to dinner with the other Americans and my students or eating dinner
with the Europeans and their Vietnamese co-workers, I’m really glad that I’ve
been able to develop great relationships with people from both the East and the
West.
In addition to developing relationships, I (along with all
of the other foreigners) really feel adopted by the community here. One of the
perks of being in such a small town is that everybody knows everybody (this can
also be a major frustration) and as such, I’ve been able to become friends with
restaurant owners, families, and many other community members.
One highlight was in late October when I helped to organize
an “English Party” at the local pizza restaurant. The owner, who is always
looking to practice his English, wanted to close his restaurant and invite as
many people as we could find to get together to speak English. I invited many
of my students, fellow English teachers, and all of the other foreigners and we
all had a great time. It was so much fun for me to see all of my students able
to relax and have fun. With the absurd pressure on the students to attend
“extra classes” and to study, they almost never have time to socialize with
each other. I was glad that community members from all different cross-sections
of Cao Bang could come together just to have a good time.
A few days after the English Party was Halloween. Given that
most people in Vietnam are relatively unfamiliar with Halloween, I wanted to
have a Halloween celebration at the school. Thankfully, the school agreed and
the English Club helped me to host a party complete with costumes, pumpkins,
and candy. The students really impressed me with their costumes and makeup
artistry and (no surprise) put my costume to shame.
After Halloween, the next big celebration was Vietnamese
Teacher’s Day. Teacher’s Day falls on November 20th and is a
celebration that is taken extremely seriously in Vietnam. As my fellow ETAs and
I have experienced, being a teacher is probably the most respected job in
Vietnam. Telling someone that I am a teacher, for example, immediately changes
the nature of our conversation and our relationship as the Vietnamese have a
truly impressive level of respect and reverence for their educators. Teacher’s
Day is the best example of this respect as students put on elaborate
performances, give all of their teachers gifts, and even visit their teachers’
houses to show their appreciation for them. I was initially a bit skeptical
about Teacher’s Day and whether it would feel forced or exploitative of the
power dynamic between students and teachers. I was very impressed and relieved
to notice, though, that the day felt incredibly genuine. I will also remain
grateful to and humbled by my students for going out of their way to make sure
that they expressed their gratitude to me.
Teaching
For the most part, my teaching experiences since my last
post have been much of the same. However, for the last two months, I have had
the pleasure of intensively teaching 6 students who have been preparing to
participate in a national English competition. The competition is a series of
national exams and at each stage a certain number of the students are
eliminated from the field. The competition culminates in one final test that is
taken by 6 students from each of Vietnam’s 63 provinces. Based on their scores
on the exam, it is my understanding that students can “test out” of having to
take the university entrance exam and can even win scholarships to some of the
top universities. This national competition exists in several different
subjects and all of the students who are preparing spend months preparing for
the test all day every day (they do not attend their other classes). Usually,
at least from what I’ve observed, this preparation means sitting in a room all
day doing worksheets on their own with no teacher instruction or guidance. To
make matters worse, in rural provinces like Cao Bang, student motivations and
expectations for these exams seems fairly low given the fact that they will
have to compete against their peers from big cities with far more resources who
attend at far more advanced schools. Regardless of the fact that the process of
administering and preparing for the test seems to me to be at best odd and at
worst pointless, I relished the opportunity to be a part of it. I had so much
fun teaching long classes with just 6 students who are all among the best in
the school at English. For about 6 weeks, I only taught the students for a few
afternoons each week. For two weeks, though, I spent all of my teaching hours
just working with the group. It was such a great experience for me to be able
to watch my students make tremendous progress, but it was also refreshing to
develop some really good relationships with them. Needless to say, I felt that
my time was much better spent with these 6 than with the almost 600 that I had
been teaching prior.
Travel
As I mentioned in the last post at the end of October
(embarrassing, I know), I had not left Cao Bang “City.” November and December,
however, were filled with both provincial and countrywide adventures. First, in
early-November, I went down to Hanoi for a long weekend. The weekend gave me a
chance to meet up with some friends including two juniors from Hopkins who were
visiting Hanoi as a part of their study-abroad semester in Ho Chi Minh City. After
more than 2 months in Cao Bang, the weekend provided a very refreshing dose of
English-speakers, Western food, and relaxation.
The following weekend was spent visiting Pac Bo Caves and
Ban Gioc Waterfall (the background picture of this blog)—the two most famous
sites in Cao Bang. I should also mention that in the second week of November the
family of one of my students was gracious enough to lend me a motorbike for the
rest of my time here. Having a bike has been incredibly liberating and has
allowed me to explore the city and the province to a much greater extent. First,
I went with my friends Ryan and Quang to Pac Bo Caves. The Pac Bo area sits
northwest of Cao Bang City and just 3 km south of the border with China. Pac Bo
is where the former President of Vietnam Ho Chi Minh lived (in a cave) for
several months in 1941 after his return to Vietnam from China. Pac Bo is
beautiful, but beyond its natural beauty, it provided me with a great sense of
our incredibly close proximity to China and it also offered a great
introduction to the legacy of Vietnam’s national hero and the beginning of his
quest to unify the country. Two days later, I had the chance to visit Ban Gioc
Waterfall, which is northeast of Cao Bang City and is on the border with China
(the southern half of the falls belongs to Vietnam and the northern half to China).
The waterfall was an incredible sight, but the ride there was at least as
impressive.
The next weekend was Thanksgiving and after a week of
teaching my classes about the history and cultural traditions of the holiday, I
celebrated with most of my fellow ETAs in Hanoi. As a special treat, we were
welcomed into the home of the Deputy Chief of Mission (who was the Acting Ambassador
at the time—we’ve since welcomed a new U.S. Ambassador to Vietnam) who
prepared, even by American standards, a truly incredible Thanksgiving spread
(which was all the more impressive given that Thanksgiving ingredients don’t
exactly align with Vietnamese cuisine).
A week and a half later was our Fulbright Mid-Year
Enrichment Seminar. For the few days prior to our conference, I spent some time
on the beautiful beaches of Nha Trang before taking an exhilarating bus ride
along narrow mountain ridges to Dalat. This was the first time that the entire
ETA cohort had been together as a whole since August and it was great to spend
some time with everyone and to hear about everyone’s very different
experiences. The conference was a great opportunity to share best practices,
vent about frustrations, plan for the second semester, and just have some fun
as a group. It was also a nice introduction for me to the different weather,
culture, and food of southern Vietnam.
2014 was capped off by an amazing two-week trip with my
family through Vietnam from which I just returned. I will have to add another
blog post soon highlighting our trip. For now, though, if anybody has made it
this far in the post without finding something better to do with your time, thanks
for reading (and I hope you find more exciting endeavors soon). I also promise
to do my best to be more diligent about my blog posting in the 2015 portion of
my grant. Finally, no matter which holidays you celebrated, I hope they were fun
and meaningful and I send my best wishes to everyone for a happy and healthy
2015.
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| The beach in Nha Trang |
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| One of my students and me at the English Party |
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| My motorbike |
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| Halloween Party |
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| "Pumpkin" decorating (Cao Bang has an awfully weak selection of pumpkins) |
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| Teacher's Day Performances |
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| Ban Gioc Waterfall with Mr. Anh who has taken me under his wing |
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| There's a path through the woods to climb up to the second level of the waterfall where this was taken. |
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| A stream outside of Pac Bo caves. The water looks like it has food coloring in it, but apparently it has something to do with the water running over limestone. |
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| Fulbright crew and the Deputy Chief of Mission in Hanoi for Thanksgiving |
