The Silent L

Last week was an interesting and rather uncomfortable week. It all started in my Elementary Staff Discussion Class on Friday afternoon, a class populated with all female teachers at my college ranging from 5 years older to me to my mother’s age. The topic was food – and in their book there was a long listening passage with the word ‘salmon’, the silvery fish that swims upstream to spawn.

As per our usual course I am going over the vocabulary at the top of the lesson - I say it, they repeat it and back and forth we go. Wine, cheese, casserole, quiche – and we are chugging along pretty well (especially since quiche was in their books – what are publisher’s thinking?) then came salmon.

I said salmon. "|ˈsæmən|"

The ladies said. "|sæl| |mɒn|"

“Close but the ‘l’ is silent and it’s ‘ə’ not ‘ɒ’”

Then my best student (let’s call her Suzie Q) says "Oh I see teacher - |ˈsimən|!" (In case you don’t know the IPA – that word is SEMEN)

I didn’t speak – rather I looked like this:

Oh Sweet Jesus! What's happening?! I'm not trained for this. Oh no it's contagious!

Unfortunately in my utter shock I didn’t move quick enough. And since Suzie Q is the best student all the other ladies thought she was right. Just like the seagull scene in Finding Nemo the mispronunciation spread and I couldn’t stop the |ˈsimən| flood. Seriously it was like a tsunami. Bringing in embarrassment and taking away all of our dignity.

"|ˈsimən|" goes Suzie Q

"|ˈsimən|" goes Lady A

"|ˈsimən|" "|ˈsimən|" "|ˈsimən|" "|ˈsimən|" "|ˈsimən|" "|ˈsimən|" chimed the overeager ladies in a diluted chorus. Remember some of them are old enough to be my mother.

"NO NO NO NO NO NO NO!" was all the protest I could muster as I watched, flabbergasted, it take hold of the group - like Mad Cow Disease. One by one they fell.

I tried in vain to fix it. I stood at the front:

"Salmon" I said slowly and with emphasis.

"Semen" went the class.

"Salmon"

"Semen"

"No listen. |ˈsæ|"

"|ˈsæ|"

"Good. |mən|"

"|mən|"

"Great. Now |ˈsæ| *pause* |mən|"

"|ˈsæ| *pause* |mən|"

"Yes, a little faster |ˈsæ| - |mən|"

"|ˈsæ| - |mən|"

"Now in one breath: |ˈsæmən|?"

"|ˈsimən|"

The salmon semen call-and-(wrong) answer chorus went on for 10 minutes.

And it only got worse from there. Throughout the lesson they kept mispronouncing it and I was struggling not to die/blush. They said things like:

‘Class what did he and his friend order?’

‘Well Don ordered semen for an appetizer and John ordered semen for dinner.’ – No, No I don’t think they did. It's not that kind of establishment.

‘Teacher I have a question.’ ‘Yes’ – I squeaked with apprehension. ‘Is it hard to get semen?’ I pulled out my ambassador hat – tried to keep the sass in my head (as the manual labor = hand job snafu entered my mind) and just blinked. This was just too rich.

Other inquires including if semen was good for you and one's health and my personal druthers for it (semen that is not salmon - nobody asked if I liked salmon) were left unanswered. I was mortified and shammed so shammed. How could this all go so astray?

This continued for at least 35 minutes. No matter what pronunciation, IPA, rhyming tricks I could come up with, it kept coming out semen.

I had to stop the lesson. I really didn't want it to come to this.

With a face as red as a traffic light I had to explain what semen was so they would stop saying it - for the third time some of them are old enough to be my mother. Awkward! Now it was their turn to blush and some were highly offended and indignant. One of the ladies was scandalized! She shot me this look so I shot her my best 'I told you to say salmon - y'all said semen repeatedly with glee. And that's on you!' look.

God damn those silent ‘l’s.

In an equally uncomfortable situation that weekend I went to get some dinner with a group of Vietnamese people. Beers were ordered. Glasses were plonked down on the table. Chunks of ice were dropped into the glasses. Menus were frowned at and instructions were issued to the waiters and relayed to the cooks. I was clueless and blithely unaware. Plates of food started to arrive. The party was jumping.

Talking, laughing, drinking, eating. Knees not fitting under the table. Chopsticks, bowls, plates, dipping sauces, spoons, wet napkins and beer bottles piled haphazardly on the table, requiring rearrangement every time a new dish or a new diner arrived.

There was rice and veggies and a seafood hot pot. I stuck to the veggies, but my helpful host piled some squid into my bowl.

In a desperate attempt to make conversation – and just to speak, I put the squid into my mouth and said ‘what’s that?’ pointing to some squid in the hot pot thinking I knew the answer.

“Testicle”.

I stopped chewing, trying to decide whether to spit out the spongy stuff in my mouth – and how to do it with deft and grace. It’s not that improbable that someone has ordered a plate of testicles. Vietnamese don’t waste anything. Chicken feet, bone marrow, offal, coconut worms, bull-penis soup, ovaries, pig’s blood, embryonic eggs – they’re all fair game so what’s left?

“I thought it was squid,” I mumble around the half-chewed animal part. As I say this I stare at my host – who at times plays little jokes (also his name is Mr. Hung – I know, I know, it’s really too much). But he’s not blinking or smiling or trying to even suppress one. He’s serious.

“Yes I said tensticle”.

“Wait! Say that again”.

“Tensticle”

“Do you mean tentacle?”

“Yes  - that’s what I said”.

Relieved – though still freaked out, I finished eating. On the ride home we had a little conversation about testicles and tentacles.

Paging Dr. Freud.

Paging Dr. Freud.

PS - All puns in this post were intended.

The E.T.A.'s New Groove

Oh boy! What a month it has been! A quick trip back to the USA, lost luggage, the world’s best banana bread and a great week of teaching followed by grading the worst exam I have ever seen…welcome back to life in Nam.

When I left this blog last I was gearing up for my trans-pacific 4 state, 4 interview crisscross contiguous lower-48 whirlwind and that it was. Between all the planes, TSA checkpoints, and airports I was ready to just collapse by the time I touched back down in HCMC, luggage-less but more on that later.

To be honest I wasn’t ready for this trip back home. I distinctly remember sitting on my bed at the Rising Dragon Grand in Hanoi during orientation – in my underwear sweating and filling out secondary applications thinking, “February is eons away”. To be honest it was. In all that heat and all that newness, and with the unknown prospect of 9 months in the provinces stretching out before me I couldn’t even fathom making it to Christmastime. But I did and just when I felt like I could live and really enjoy living here I was off to America and my future had come a callin’.

For me the interviews are the fun part of the application process. Being a stack of paper is an unpleasant and impersonal existence so being able to sit down and explain why medicine, why those institutions and explain my crazy non-linear path was the opportunity I was waiting for. What made my trip back to the USA very special was the amount of family time I got to spend. When I was in Arizona I stayed with my father’s cousins once removed and we had family style dinners and they were a hoot and a half. I met them when I was little (and have no recollection of it) so meeting them and getting to know them was fantastic. Then in Philadelphia my wonderful parents drove 6 hours in winter from Rochester to spend Saturday with me. Getting to see them, eating some homemade Coon family bear claws (Thanks Mom!), and playing cards really made it special. I also got to visit some dear professors and I spent Sunday with my research advisor banging out the final edits to our manuscript and had dinner with his family. I am proud to say that the textbook chapter (we – my advisor and I – were invited to write one on the thirdhand smoke polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAHs) toxicology contamination research that I have been doing for 2ish years at PhilaU) is off to peer review and barring any major catastrophe should in print in the fall. All the opportunities I had to connect with people really broke up the airport/interview/airport/interview/airport cadence, took some of the pressure off, and were fantastic.

Being back in the US also showed me how provincial I have become. When I landed in the San Francisco airport the view of the elevated highways, concrete bridges and airport train stunned me. I stood there god smacked and spent the rest of the trip feeling like I was on another alien planet mouth agog like I was in a zoo with rare animals. The amount of development, the lights, the drivers staying in their lanes, sidewalks actually being reserved for people, drivers yielding to pedestrians not aiming for them like it was hunting season and so much more left me feeling like I wasn’t at home.

And perhaps that was the theme – I wasn’t home or in a place (beyond PhilaU, and even that to some extent) that I recognized. The USA is where I was born, it’s my culture, it’s my people, it’s is where my future is…but I felt so out of place – cold, really cold (especially in Philly) and totally out of place. America may be in my blood, but Vietnam has thinned that blood and tanned my skin to a shade of bronze I have never reached. I found myself in the morning missing cà phé sũa da, craving pho and as odd as it sounds, resentful of everything being in English. Here in Nam I rarely know what is happening around me as it’s all in Vietnamese. The blessing of that is that I have learned to tune out all the chatter and just be introspective me, or me and my music and book and let Vietnam soak in. In America I understood all this background chatter and I couldn’t tune it out. The entire trip was sensory and auditory overload. Things to look forward to in 3 months when the curtain falls on my time here in Nam.

When I landed back in HCMC I felt like I was back in my rhythm. The cabbie spoke no English, my bag was lost somewhere between NYC and HCMC and I was hot and glistening. Ah! It was nice to be back.

A quick tangential side note about the bag. It was never put on the plane from JFK to Beijing even though I made it all the way to HCMC. So it sat in JFK for about 3 days, and then sat in Beijing for about 3 more. Finally on day 7 it had to be driven to Cao Lãnh. It was difficult to have no clothes, or a razor. But in the end I had my father, my host and me working on it from both sides of Pacific, in 3 countries and 3 languages. What’s important is that the two loaves of my mother’s homemade banana bread with walnuts, cinnamon and nutmeg made it safe and sound. And last night was a sad night because I finished the last loaf. Yep 1 week and 2 loaves gone… don’t judge. God how I miss my mother’s kitchen… and my mother too, of course!

So to wrap this up – I had an excellent teaching week. I have finally learned how to design handouts with enough review/grammar points and successfully combined multi-media for a streamlined and easily grasped lesson! SCORE! Being back in Cao Lãnh, getting coffee at my favorite café (where I spend my mornings either reading, working or like I am now typing my blog over eggs and coffee for $1.50) and running around the park really settled me. In addition the interviews are over and it feels like a huge weight has been lifted. I am energized and ready to tackle these last 3 months and knock this grant out of the park. My time back in the US made me realize (just a little) how much I have changed, how much Vietnam has been imbued within me and how much I love this place, my students, teaching and that I am not ready to go home. It also was a quick preview of how intense reverse culture shock is going to be.

Goodbye for now readers!

Should auld acquaintance be forgot?

Happy New Year! Yesterday was the first day of Tet (the Vietnamese lunar new year) and marks the start of not only a new year, but also a break from teaching. Tet is a major event here in Vietnam and is unmatched by all other holidays. Imagine Christmas, New Year’s, Independence Day all rolled into one and you have some idea of this holiday’s significance.

Tet is a time to see your family so Vietnamese around Vietnam partake in a massive migration – usually out of cities and into the countryside to visit their ancestral homes. As such the cities (especially Hanoi and HCMC) become virtual dead zones where almost all the shops are closed and the streets and sidewalks become passable as there are nearly zeros cars and motorbikes. It’s fantastic!

Unfortunately I will not be in Vietnam for Tet as tonight I am boarding a plane bound for San Francisco to begin interviews for medical school. 9 days, 4 states, 4 interviews, 21,911 miles. Jet lag here I come!

To kick off my trip I spent a few days in Ho Chi Minh City taking in the flower markets of Tet and catching up with Trevor, another Fulbright ETA and we visited a nearby park and waterfall which was wonderful and super relaxing. Then I spent 1 day in Hanoi visiting a uni friend from Australia and in 8 hours it’s take off. Pictures are at the end of this post.

The story of note – and one of the best teaching moments I have had so far was at the end of my classes last week – which was the last week of teaching before the students got their Tet break. At the end of class we had about 15 minutes to spare and I wasn’t about to start the superlative adjective grammar point so I was punting for something to do with the students when it dawned on me that I could be Mr. America and infuse some much needed American culture into the classroom. So we had a quick conversation about the Georgian New Year (Jan. 1^st) and Tet, customs, traditions, etc. Then my students asked me to sing. They have been dying for me to squeak out some notes and so far I have fended off the requests but I couldn’t see anyway out of this one. So I quickly cudgeled my brain for a New Years song, that was American (or western) and that I could sing in key. Auld Lang Syne! I sang it, quite well I might add and finished. The students clapped I took an obscene bow with a flourish triggering more laughter and I was ready to send my students home when they proceeded to stand up and sing for me. They sang 4 to 6 songs about Tet and spring – some even in English!

It was so moving and one my proudest teacher moments. When I arrived they were too petrified to try speaking any language in front of me for fear of making a mistake and now they are singing! SINGING! One more time spontaneously SINGING! I was such a proud teacher. As they filed out, wishing me and my co-teacher happy new years it struck me that these moments are what Fulbright is all about. It’s not language, it’s not grammar, and it’s not teacher to student. It’s people sharing cultures and song and finding the commonalities about the New Year and what that means. Moments like that are the jewels of Fulbright and I am so happy of have taken part!

Picture (and video) time! First the flower market in HCMC, the park outside HCMC and then some shots of Hanoi all dressed for Tet. Happy New Year everybody! Chúc Mừng Năm Mới

One of the major parks in HCMC became a vast sea  of flowers and it smelled great. Flower are important decorations for the New Year.

The park/resort was a 2 hour bus ride out of the city but it was worth the trip. It was peaceful and practically empty. 

Video of the waterfall and lagoon.

Trevor and I. Trevor teaches in the South, near the bottom of the country. He is the most southern of all the ETAs. 

The streets of Hanoi all dressed for Tet.