Coming Up for Air

Last week was not my best by any measure. I fell really hard into stage 2 and by the middle of the week I felt like there was rock bottom, fifty feet of crap and then me. I started the week by receiving less then stellar news from home and then throughout the rest of the week ran smack into the realities of Vietnamese management (i.e. I swung by the department office to pick up my materials for class and everyday there were no copies made, in fact nobody can find the email with the files. What ensued was something that in hindsight I am sure was comical and would have been perfect for the Lucy Desi Hour).

My co-teacher and I decided to halt the lessons in their textbooks and have a very frank, honest and slow review of how to study for this class, the materials we provide them weekly and Basic English. We reviewed the parts of speech, had them diagram sentences and find the parts of speech, worked on the pluralization of nouns, pronouns (both subject, object and possessive), verbs (modal, auxiliary, transitive, intransitive, imperative and phrasal) and noun phrases. We also reviewed phonetics and the IPA (international phonetic alphabet) and did many exercises in these topics. As a native English speaker the last time I diagramed a sentence was in middle school and I lived in absolute terror to diagraming (the terror has since subsided) and I never learned the IPA.

Thus large parts of this lesson were taught by my fabulous co-teacher Co Dung who was able to put both her masters and bilingual fluency to work (Co = the title given to a female teacher in Vietnamese. I am Thay Tyler). Co Dung and I planned this lesson very carefully so that all our classes completed this lesson in the same week – a week we both thought we would be here in Cao Lanh to teach. That turned out to be incorrect. On Wednesday night the director calls to tell me that he and Co Dung have to go to another town in the province to grade something and I would be on my own with a helper for Thursday’s class. I spent Thursday morning in hard-core prep mode learning numerous parts of speech and exceptions, phonetics and a whole linty of rather obscure things I never knew about my language.

I am happy to say the class went super well. Teaching this lesson Tuesday and Wednesday and watching Co Dung deliver the verb section and walk the students through the tougher points really helped me work with the students. They were open and we had some fun (a few times at my tongue tied expense). It made me realize how far I have come since August and how far they have come since September. It was such an uplifting and gratifying class. The thing about Vietnam is that it can thrash you around so violently that you wonder how to put yourself back together. At other times, and sometime within the same breath, it can catapult you above the clouds and for me at least I realize that I am doing some good and doing my job for Fulbright and my students. I went to bed that night imbued with the feelings of successfully sowing seeds and serving my students and my country. It was one of my best days as a teacher so far and really did a good job of kicking the crummy start of last week in the ass.

The other thing that kept me going was my trip to Vinh last weekend to see Amanda, the Fulbright ETA at Vinh University. Vinh is in central Vietnam in the part of the country wedged between Laos the South East Asia Sea (or China Sea – depending on your druthers and worldview). Vinh is 500ish miles north of HCMC – a map is below.

Vinh is marked with the A. I live near Long Xuyen about 147 km southwest of HCMC (way at the bottom of the map).

At first glance Vinh is huge by comparison to Cao Lanh and Vinh University is Titanic compared to Dong Thap Community College. I have included pictures below.

On Friday I traveled and met Amanda after her class. We wend to the most bougie western grocery called METRO and went nuts. We got food for dinner and I bought McCormack oregano and Honey Bunches of Oats to bring back to Cao Lanh. That night it just poured – central Vietnam monsoon style – and central Vietnam is famous for its deluges. I was getting the full Vinh experience!

We cooked bruschetta, penne pasta with crème sauce with bacon and tomatoes and fried green beans (in the rendered bacon fat) with caramelized balsamic vinegar. I am such a foodie and that along with this impending holiday season the two hardest things to bear have been not having access in Cao Lanh to foods that used to be staples and not having the facilities to cook the way I used. I was not prepared for such a drastic difference and coming to terms with my reality has really dragged my soul down. But Amanda and METRO came through and we just cooked the night away and got caught up. The next morning we made bread pudding in her rice cooker (where we made the pasta the night before) and used the rest of the cream, cocoanut milk, Vinamilk (something similar to but not the same as milk), and almonds for the top. It was good and my stomach held up to two cream-based meals!

Later that day we wend to a temple at the top of a mountain and then just went café to café talking and drinking. It was so much fun and was the kind of quality family time I needed. We could make all our funny, snide, cynical, sarcastic, witty, etc. jokes interwoven with cultural references and never need to explain them.  And talk as fast as we wanted and not stop to replace potentially complicated words for easier smaller ones.

The temple at the top of the mountain. It was a wonderful day (by wonderful I mean cool thus I didn't sweat and I needed my fleece jumper).

Me and Amanda at the big drum.

The interior of the temple.

The path leading to the temple.

A sliver of Vinh visible through the pine trees.

This week is a short one for me at Cao Lanh as I am flying to Hanoi on Thursday to attend a Thanksgiving Dinner given by the US Ambassador at his house in our honor. I can’t wait and there will be more ETAs! More of the family!

Have a good week readers and Happy Thanksgiving to my American readers!