Friends and Adventures

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 20^th 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. 

The beach in Nha Trang

One of my students and me at the English Party

My motorbike

Halloween Party

"Pumpkin" decorating (Cao Bang has an awfully weak selection of pumpkins)

Teacher's Day Performances

Ban Gioc Waterfall with Mr. Anh who has taken me under his wing

There's a path through the woods to climb up to the second level of the waterfall where this was taken.

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.

Fulbright crew and the Deputy Chief of Mission in Hanoi for Thanksgiving