In Other News

I don't know how I feel about being so immersed in this program. Ian's spirit is haunting me and so I'm trying to stay up to date with world news, but it's hard to find the time [maybe I should tone down the blogging]. Reading the NYT headlines each day is a quick reminder that the rest of the world is both unstable and exciting, and I wish I could be watching it more closely. At the same time, I'll never again have as good an excuse to tune out as I do right now. That is what "study abroad" has meant to me thus far: the grass is always greener, and I need to start liking my own shade.

It seems like ages ago that I cared actively about the Oscars, and so it was cool to see the results online this morning. Things panned out as I expected, but I wish I had seen Black Swan before I left. I also miss Cheese-Its, specifically the Tabasco ones. So, if someone reading this uses Twitter and wants to get on those Cheese-It commercials, feel free to link to this post. For the record, I would like to be greeted stateside in June with a box of those tasty snacks and a bottle of Belgian ale.

We had dinner tonight with the other SIT group in Viet Nam, which was really fun, as they have been here for four weeks already and have been going through the same emotional trials as us. Of the nine of them, however, only one has been sick. That very well may change in Can Tho! Two Bourdain fans in that group, and they've both been to the famous Lunch Lady - I'll make it to her in due time. We had time for a quick dessert of tofu, sugar and ice at a Khmer pagoda, and now we study frantically for our Vietnamese mid-term tomorrow. Yep. Mid-term.

Transient life-plan off the day: be young in Viet Nam, raise a family in New England, and grow old in Great Britain. Let's see how I feel tomorrow.

Last One Out of the Guest House

[thinly veiled Less Than Jake reference]

We had Saturday off, so naturally we spent it doing a ton of things. I sort of forget what happened, so I'll try to use pictures to prompt myself:

Kite  flying at Gate C - kite flying is difficult, it is a great thing to do with your date, and if you are a goofy foreigner, people will help you fly your kite, regardless of the language barrier. I mean, it is pretty obvious that the intent is to have the thing in the air... Celine Dion's Titanic theme was blasting in the distance (it always does). So good.

A blurry picture of "Make Out Point" in the entertainment district - Close to the legendary Xe Loi nightclub, a great place to play pool and party like a cowboy.

Best kept secret in Can Tho - a hole in the wall that serves a naturally herbal coconut drink and jellied coconut.

Aforementioned jellied coconut. Awesome.

One of the many puppies walking in and out of restaurants and stores.

Dumbledore the Kite! He doesn't fly so well, but he looks great.

Saturday night at the Can Tho museum - The Beatles played Sai Gon! Student volunteers got a chance to translate what the museum guide was telling us. I learned a lot about Mekong cultures.

Bubble tea and friend ice cream with Chi & Co!

Motorbikes rule - so does this picture.

Partying with Can Tho's elites in the Golf Club - tropical fruit at a club: take note, Mare of Saratoga..

A dorm on the campus tour - student translators from the club showed me around and practiced translating.

The translation club - as the 'guest of honor' (i.e. native English speaker), I gave an impromptu lecture on college tours in the US, as well as how to expand your vocabulary in a second language (biggest tip: listen to the news. Thanks, TP!).

A photo op with translators-to-be.

Well, that was a busy day/morning. I feel like the Mekong Delta would really benefit from lone jazz musicians playing into the night.

I'm at my homestay now, it's really cool: the first thing we did was eat sandwiches and have a beer, and the second thing we did was take a nap. I have some studying ahead of me tonight, then more sleep. Our first excursion on Wednesday... I'll keep you posted until then.

Thanks.

2nd Homestay and Guitar Club

I was invited to dinner last night by Melissa's homestay family, and because I would have been eating on my own otherwise, and because this homestay family was almost my homestay family (remember?), I said "Of course". So I was picked up on motorbike and had my first ride through the city, which was incredible. Dinner was homecooked of course and consisted of deep-fried squid, taro, beef and leek stir fry, a local chicken on the bone, Bia 333 and rice. Fantastic. [I won't spell his name correctly, not yet at least], but Melissa's homestay brother Hinh, who refers to me as Edward from Twilight, is hilarious. So sharp, so quick; he reminds me of a 15 year old Ian. He beat us in Chinese chess and then we had to go home to finish homework. I was having the time of my life, Melissa is going to have a great homestay experience, and I'm welcome back anytime. Such a sweet family.

No pictures because that experience was for me (and I didn't bring my camera). Just imagine four people sitting around a table eating and laughing, and a mother constantly sneaking more food into my bowl for me to eat. The Vietnamese are like the Italians that way.

And then today there was guitar club. Long story short, Lydia and I ventured over to try our Vietnamese and to see how well everyone can speak English (verdict: we both have a ways to go, but they beat us). We listened to more classical Vietnamese songs, played a few from the US ("Fire and Rain"), and got a bunch of phone numbers. They will teach us Vietnamese and we will teach them English. They also let us borrow a guitar to practice with.

riding through Can Tho with a guitar on my back (in-action shots too tricky to take, so this was staged)

Adam and I are going out for a drink, it has been a long week and we have class tomorrow at 8:30 am. I haven't slept this little since high school :)

Shout Outs Vol. 1

Two things before the shout outs:

1. Power outage downtown this morning (all day, really), which means that the traffic lights were out! Woah! Outages happen more frequently in the dry season because Viet Nam relies a lot on hydropower.
2. A little clarification to the "Ego Boost" post. I'm kidding around a bit. People are looking because we are obviously foreign, probably a bit too loud and have definitely not yet become an organic part of the action on the street. We've been to parts of the city that don't cater to week-long tourists, or even some expats, so we're even more of a curiosity. I'm just continually impressed how open people are to sharing their city with us. It's been very humbling.


Shout outs:
HI DAD! HAPPY BIRTHDAY! At least I think it is your birthday, or was when you went to bed :) In any case, I'll be on my computer around 8 am your time if you want to Skype, but I think you're still in Florida. Comment below if you'll be around.

Ian, same goes for you.

Tom Potter, if you're following this (if not, Dad, could you get it to him?), there are a lot of French expats here. Learning Vietnamese is hard, but no conjugation of verbs!

Reggie, stuff is awesome, glad you're following. Email me if you want to chat some.

Bob, the opportunities to study policy over here are incredible. It seems like it is becoming acceptable to critique the disconnect between government policy and the public outcome, as long as the feedback is constructive and acknowledges the good intentions behind the policy. However, I will stick to observing for the time being. The USGS has set up a sister river program between the Mekong and Mississippi, which could provide a great opportunity for such 'learn from our mistake' advice.

Josh, we've been building a cultural platform before we really delve into the ecology of Viet Nam, but your post is coming.

Some pictures again to enjoy (I felt dumb taking some of these but even the ordinary here is different from back home, so I thought you should see what I'm seeing).

language classroom

view from the language center

a student run recycling center, and right next door is the CTU 'Burgess Cafe' equivalent. the current favorite treat is the pineapple frozen yogurt bar, or the coconut banana peanut frozen yogurt bar. students riding along, chillin.

banh mi for lunch

dragon institute on campus, where we have class

student garden?

Adam rode on the back of my bike today, big accomplishment for the both of us!

No Free Time = Short Post

We are so busy here. I'm behind on homework, so this has to be brief:

• Vietnamese class again today, very difficult, going back to flash cards.
• 3 hour history class - too much to cover, but essential - second class with a translator
• Imy took me to the guitar club in the center of the campus, in this awesome garden. They play classical guitar, but had me sing a song and I'm now invited to play "From the Beginning" by ELP at their concert on the 3rd of March. WHAT?

Camera was charging but I'll get more photos soon (I'll also borrow stock photos from the other kids on the trip). Sorry if the text is boring!

 

Doing homework at the cafe bookstore down the street 

http://soundcloud.com/pigiron/norse-south-east-death

Need a Boost to Your Ego?

If you're foreign, attend a large university in southern Viet Nam. There are nice looking people everywhere, and they're all looking at you, all the time.

Win.

What else was there today? Music and fruit in class. Mr. Bich is a renowned expert on Mekong Delta culture, and so we were treated to a history of Vietnamese classical music and instruments. Yin and yang is big here in Viet Nam, and one of the best exampled is tropical fruit (yin) with salt and sometimes chili (yang). Watermelon with a bit of salt is both delicious and good for replacing electrolytes lost during ... uh....

Dinner with homestay families tonight. We biked to a new part of town, the locals' entertainment district, and met all of the host families. I was introduced my homestay family, a really nice lady and her 15 year old son, who insisted I looked like a character from Twilight. He and I talked about Pokemon (they have like 12 games out for the Gameboy now), and just as we were talking about the Elite Four, the homestay coordinator said that there was a change - these people weren't my homestay family after all! It was a really sad and really weird moment, because the same forces that were having us open up to one another just shut down the whole operation. We laughed a bit and Hinh and I kept talking about Pokemon, and then they left to find their new student. "Well, that was sad..."

In a few minutes, however, I met my few hosts - Dr. Khoa and his four year old daughter (insanely cute). He teaches agriculture and applied biology (win), and he likes to cook. So that is cool.

One little side note (an observation) - parenting is a shared job in Viet Nam. Partly it is because multiple generations live under one roof, and children don't leave until they are married, so there are a lot of hands to help out. But more than that, mere acquaintances can help put food on a plate, or wipe a dirty face. I think it has to do with the Vietnamese cultural belief that everyone is part of a big family (when using pronouns, for example, you refer to someone your father's age as 'uncle'). In the US, kids are the property of their parents and few others. There are benefits to both systems, sure, I just think it is interesting to see how the two methods came about.

Imy, some of Adam and Joy

Off to study... see, barely any time to myself here!

Recovery?

Rule of the day: don't eat or drink anything that doesn't come out of a plastic wrapper or bottle.

Everybody is coming down with what I had (i.e. intense TD). So, waking up at 2:00 am, completely emptying out everything (...), high fevers and weird dreams, and having an intense dislike for the fish market outside our door.

I feel better but I still 'hate' the food here. Nothing like a kick to the entire GI tract to make one yearn for Rtiz crackers and peanut butter. I'll consider myself fully recovered once I go out for sugarcane juice.

I've been getting some comments and emails from people on the blog here, and it is so nice to know that people are interested in what I'm experiencing. Consider this post an apology if I am late in responding to you, or don't respond at all. I feel really limited with no Facebook and only knowing a handful of emails (and if you leave comments on the blog, it is to a 'no-reply' email). Additionally, they have us scheduled pretty tight, and between waking up at 6:00, four hours of language each morning, group dinners and some sight-seeing, we're all ready to crash come 10:00. In the next few months, we will be traveling and might not have internet at all. So basically, I'm doing my best ;)

To make up for the lack of pictures lately (I was busy praying to the porcelain goddess), here are some photos from the (now suspect) street food and karaoke.

when the only word you can understand on the menu is 'chicken', what are the odds of ordering the chicken feet?

friends

 

we couldn't read it, either

it's my life - bon jovi

little did we know that this expression would be stuck on my face for the entirety of the following day - fever isn't flattering

Oh Boy

I am now what you call 'laid up'. It was bound to happen. Anybody who is worried, know this: I have medication, clean water and salty soups, AC, and my academic director knows what's up. This is just not as fun as the first seven days... I realllly want pretzels.

ughhhh

 

 

 

 

 

 

Adventure Time!

Today was a day off, and I wasted it by sleeping in until 8. No point. I did get a banh mi with the works - all of it, liver pate, pork, fried egg, etc. - and it was fantastic. Fifty cents.

Imy took us around the city last night, to all the most happening parts of Can Tho, and to all the cool food spots. We actually went to "Food Street", where everything is cheap and delicious. Four of us road back there tonight and we stopped at a place near the canal, and it is great being the only foreigners around - people love to say hello. For dinner, we ordered blind from the menu. The only thing we knew that we were getting was the beer (fresh beer in big metal canteens). Adam ordered something "ga", which is chicken. Chicken feet. So tasty but funky. After that we tried to get fish something, but when the owner motioned to his stomach and esophageous, we said no and got squid and wild leeks over rice instead. Fantastic.

I took a video from my bike while moving, and it is too shaky to post, but the idea is there. I'll redo it and you all will freak out. Riding my bike is a daily thrill.

Off to kareoke with the locals, more beer and singing to be had. Classes early tomorrow, then a week of classes. How strange...

Pictures Vol. 1

Before I start my homework, here are some photos from the past few days:

chilies drying at a bus stop

you can tell what they are selling by looking at the bamboo poles

Meg and I have both eaten fried fish tail, chicken feet, fish eyeballs and chicken butt

New friend Imy was telling us about the market. A pineapple merchant has a pineapple on a pole to indicate from afar what he is selling. She had some riddles for us:

• What is on bamboo that is not for sale? Their laundry. Some of these boat people live on boats their entire lives. Kids born on the boats don't have birth certificates and so they can't go to school. The government is working to fix that, but there is a lot of history to work against: one side of the river has had electricity for fifty years, and the other for only two.
• What is not on the bamboo that is for sale? Soups. I got that one right.
• What is for sale when palm leaves are on the bamboo? The boat itself.

We went to the market with our new friends (student volunteers from dinner last night). Getting there at 6:30 am wasn't enough to catch the real local market experience. By 8:00, it's just French tourists eating pineapple and bookies on boats collecting money.Yes, I stood on a boat eating pineapple, too. At least when I hang out with eight Vietnamese university students, I look more legitimate.

After the market, we had a tour and lunch at a tropical fruit garden, walking along the river and talking. Great conversations here. The students are just as eager to learn about the US as we are to learn about Viet Nam. Imy wants to go to UMass Amherst to follow her English teacher and see snow. I want to stay in Can Tho and eat more milk fruit, papaya and fish eyes. The grass will always seem greener.

Yall have no idea how insane my commute to school is. Riding a bike in this city is so much fun. The one rule is that you always look ahead. The complimentary rule is that you never look behind you. Not while merging, changing lanes or pulling a U-turn. But you can't look back, because in the rightmost lane, it is okay for traffic to travel against the legal flow, and people can park in that lane, too. Stoplights are suggestions at best, with timers counting down until liftoff. And while being honked at home usually makes me shrink into my seat, here, it is the best thing somebody on the road can do for you. It's the way of saying, "I'm here", so you don't do something silly. You have to keep looking ahead, but you can take in information from all sides just by listening.

I also rode my first cyclo today as a passenger. So much fun.


We visited a supermarket today, which is a blast. If you ever decide to travel to Vietnam, don't bring anything except that which you really want to bring. They have real supermarkets in the cities, just like the rest of the world. I bought some hair wax and notebooks for class.

I had my Lego backpack on, and some woman came up, poked the logo and smiled to me, speaking Vietnamese. The teenager following her told me that I was very beautiful, in English. That is pretty common here: if you are pretty, people will tell you.

Language class today - also very fun, but intensely tricky. I'm already scheming about how I could work for some company abroad, maybe start Ecovative's Saigon branch, and learning the language would be really helpful.

So, off to dinner with the local student volunteers, hopefully to grab some phone numbers and start making friends. I love this stuff.

Good Morning

Can Tho River

Breakfast was Vietnamese BBQ pork and pork skins over broken rice with fish sauce, with carrot juice to drink. Eggs were an option, but I'm not hopelessly yearning for familiar food just yet; half the reason I came here was to eat local foods. I'm sure the day will come where I want a saugy, but right now, the only familiar thing I'm missing is Cheese-Its.

Breakfast

We traveled by bus today to Can Tho, stopping at a rest stop for deep fried bananas, coconut pastries, sweetened dried sweet potatoes and peanut brittle. They were chilies drying in the parking lot. We passed rice paddies on the way down from Sai Gon, and restaurants every 40 meters with hammocks next to every table.

Our guest house for the next ten days is fantastic. We have five rooms on the second floor, and we all share a balcony overlooking the Can Tho River. Lunch was fried tofu, sauteed garlic morning-glory, fried squash blossoms filled with fish, and catfish hot pot.

We also bought bikes and cell phones today; Tien was indispensable in helping us negotiate prices. More about riding bikes in the city of Can Tho. In short: WOW. The only rule is don't stop looking forward.

Classes start tomorrow. On a similarly academic note, the situation looks promising for my ISP. The proto-question that I'd do my research under might read as, "Should Vietnam support the adoption of industrial agricultural techniques?"  It leaves room for discussions on ethics, foreign meddling, science, and the value of making your own mistakes or learning from others. It needs refining - who or what do I mean by 'Vietnam', for example - but it would give me a chance to visit the US Consulate, utilize the ag school in Can Tho, work with USGS, and talk to the Vietnamese who work with food.

I'm writing a lot in this blog, and I think it is too much. I was anticipating only putting down a few lines with a daily photo, but I like keeping this journal. After this post, I think I'll switch to writing in Word and give you all a "best of" sampler. If you want more, ask. Critiques on the format are welcome.

Also, since fbook is banned and sometimes hard to get on, leave me comments on here or email me at gmacpher@skidmore.edu. If somebody could email this link to R. Greg Trimmer, that would be great, too.


Photos tomorrow; passing out now.

Hard Work

7:00 - rise and shower
8:00 - walk 0.3 km to breakfast (crab paste noodle soup and cà phê sữa đá)
8:10 - brownout in District 1
9:00 - another coffee at Highlands Coffee, over talk about upcoming plans
11:30 - cab ride to Com Nieu Sai Gon for the lunchtime spectacle of flying 'burnt rice' cakes (see 'A Cook's Tour' videos on YouTube). Accompanied by fish stews, mini burnt cakes with fish, garlic sauteed flowers, and chewy chicken skin in rice noodles. Coconut juice to drink, and a fruit plate of pomelo, pineapple, papaya and dragonfruit to finish.
14:30 - medical briefing at the international clinic
15:30 - pineapple orange smoothie at Trung Nguyen, over more talk of upcoming plans
18:30 - dinner of rice porridge with chicken, pig hearts in herbs, and beef in vermicelli. A cold Saigon Red, too.
20:30 - blogging about food, mostly 

The 'burnt rice' after being dressed with oil, sesame seeds and green onions. You order this for the experience of having it delivered to your table; while tasty, it is a little hard to eat. The extra thrill for me was the link to Bourdain. 

Carnage at Com Nieu Sai Gon

I realize that this is ridiculous. Whatever. Can Tho tomorrow, where I plan to snag my first banh mi. New friend and Can Tho native Angela knows good places for said sandwiches, as well as curries. We will also buy bikes to use throughout the semester, then use them to tour the city. After that, we will probably eat more. It will get harder, don't worry.



Maybe it's the fact that I love this food and am willing to try anything, or maybe it's the 8 tabs of Pepto each day, or maybe it's just sheer will power and a desire not to disappoint Bourdain, but I'm keeping it together. If you catch my drift.  


* this trip is my experience, not Tony's, but that doesn't mean all hero worship has to go out the window

Pho

How about that last post for an overly romanticized view of the city? But it is mostly true: Viet Nam is a young country, there are a lot of couples, and many motorbikes. 32 plus hours with hardly any sleep might have contributed to the euphoria. Future posts will be much more subtle and clever.


A few important things:

• Went to the market in Saigon today; somewhat touristy but I got great coffee and a coffee maker for USD $1.20
• The traffic is truly an animal; we saw our first cyclo accident a block from our hotel
• $1.00 USD = $20,000 VND
• We will be working our way down (up) to street food - we've already started to tackle ice
• Most importantly: first bowl of pho bo this morning, with ca phe sua da

While Internet is available almost everywhere and for free, I haven't been on Facebook - the website is technically illegal here, but we will soon be taught to work around it. I will also most likely get a phone. I wasn't planning on it, but for $30 USD I can get a simple cell with 10,000 minutes on it. Everyone here has a phone.

Bird's Nest Drink

I’ve already eaten something I've never seen before (a dragon-looking fish). Everybody in Saigon is young, pretty, in love and on motorbikes. It always smells incredible, even when it stinks.

Ian: the weird drinks in the minibar cost as much as the weird drinks from Job Lot, but taste better.