Nov. 24
Time in Vietnam: one week.
Batting average: 1000.
Nash was telling us today that learning a foreign language is one of the riskiest things a person can do.
"There's great potential to make mistakes and look like an idiot in front of your friends," he said.
Today, Meredith the SIT girl and I decided to order lunch from a restaurant downtown. Usually Chi the office girl calls in orders for the students, but when I asked her to do it she said, "No, you speak Vietnamese, you call." So I picked up the phone and dialled.
"Hi," I said in Vietnamese to the guy who answered. "I'd like a pizza."
He said something I didn't understand. Then he said, "Do you speak English?"
"Yes," I said.
"Address," he said in English.
So I gave him the address.
"No," he said. "Phone number."
And I tried to give him the phone number, but he hung up. Feeling like a complete dork, I asked Chi to call the restaurant. She put in our order with no problem. And then she asked if they had had trouble understanding the foreigner who just called. They were confused.
"No foreigner called," they said. Yup. I'd dialled the wrong number. I had been trying to order pizza from some guy in his apartment.
Living in a foreign country is great protection against taking yourself seriously.
In other news, I've decided to go by "Kate" full time. Actually a lot of people already call me that - most of my family and some of my friends. It's already sort of my name. A lot of Vietnamese people can't pronouce "Katie" and it tends to get corrupted to "Kelly", which is definitely not my name. Also British people pronouce "Katie" so differently that I often can't tell they're talking to me. So it will be Kate all around.
Wednesday, November 24, 2004
Nov. 22
Presenting the following Vietnam dialogue:
Molly says: Let's go eat at the restaurant downstairs.
Katie says: No, I don't like them, they tried to rip me off this morning.
Molly says: I tried boycotting places that did that, but I was running out of places to eat."
Forget what I said earlier about masking tape. Much of what I affixed to the wall has come crashing down. It is a disappointing adhesive.
Today was my first day of Teaching English as a Foreign Language class. I think it'll be a good experience. We spent today experimenting with different ways of explaining a foreign language to people without using any of their native language. It's visual, with a lot more gestures and photos. People can figure out a lot on their own as long as they know the context of the situation (i.e. a bank, a bus station). Our instructor gave us a sample lesson in Thai so that we could experience learning a language this way. I can now order a bus ticket to Udan Thani.
My class is very small; I've heard it's the smallest they've had. Our instructor is Nash, a late 20s-ish Welsh guy who taught in Thailand for five years. He's got an interesting accent and enjoys going off on different theories of language acquisition and why it's better to learn in a group than alone.
I thought the class would be full of recent college grads like me, but there are only two others like that. One is cool Vietnamese/Chinese girl from San Diego who came here because she got tired of working for an insurance company. The other is an SIT Samoa alum from Colorado. She's classic SIT, down to the baggy shorts and vegetarianism.
The rest of the class is more eclectic - there's a girl named Ly from Hanoi who has been teaching English for several years and came here to improve her skills and a guy from Nigeria who has been travelling and teaching English for eight years. Then there's a South African businessman's wife who is taking TEFL because she's bored with just hanging out in Vung Tao city. She's got 20-25 years on most of us, but she's very interested in talking to us. She speaks high British English, whereas Nash's English is much less formal and has been infiltrated with Americanisms. But when he's talking to her, Nash's accent ratchets up several notches and all of a sudden he sounds like the Prince of Wales.
I found myself getting unduely defensive of American English today. Mark the Nigerian was putting it down, and I swooped in with a long tirade in defense of my native language. The gist of it was "A language properly belongs to the people who use and, and there are 280 million of us and and 80 million people in Britain, so let's put the definition of 'proper English' to a vote. Plus most movies and TV are in American. So THERE."
I need to calm down. It's not like it's a big deal. Come to think of it, it would be amusing if I taught each of my classes to speak with a distinct regional accent. I could cause 30 people to run around the city drawling out y'alls, while somewhere 30 other people speak to tourists in Brooklynese. That would rule.
Presenting the following Vietnam dialogue:
Molly says: Let's go eat at the restaurant downstairs.
Katie says: No, I don't like them, they tried to rip me off this morning.
Molly says: I tried boycotting places that did that, but I was running out of places to eat."
Forget what I said earlier about masking tape. Much of what I affixed to the wall has come crashing down. It is a disappointing adhesive.
Today was my first day of Teaching English as a Foreign Language class. I think it'll be a good experience. We spent today experimenting with different ways of explaining a foreign language to people without using any of their native language. It's visual, with a lot more gestures and photos. People can figure out a lot on their own as long as they know the context of the situation (i.e. a bank, a bus station). Our instructor gave us a sample lesson in Thai so that we could experience learning a language this way. I can now order a bus ticket to Udan Thani.
My class is very small; I've heard it's the smallest they've had. Our instructor is Nash, a late 20s-ish Welsh guy who taught in Thailand for five years. He's got an interesting accent and enjoys going off on different theories of language acquisition and why it's better to learn in a group than alone.
I thought the class would be full of recent college grads like me, but there are only two others like that. One is cool Vietnamese/Chinese girl from San Diego who came here because she got tired of working for an insurance company. The other is an SIT Samoa alum from Colorado. She's classic SIT, down to the baggy shorts and vegetarianism.
The rest of the class is more eclectic - there's a girl named Ly from Hanoi who has been teaching English for several years and came here to improve her skills and a guy from Nigeria who has been travelling and teaching English for eight years. Then there's a South African businessman's wife who is taking TEFL because she's bored with just hanging out in Vung Tao city. She's got 20-25 years on most of us, but she's very interested in talking to us. She speaks high British English, whereas Nash's English is much less formal and has been infiltrated with Americanisms. But when he's talking to her, Nash's accent ratchets up several notches and all of a sudden he sounds like the Prince of Wales.
I found myself getting unduely defensive of American English today. Mark the Nigerian was putting it down, and I swooped in with a long tirade in defense of my native language. The gist of it was "A language properly belongs to the people who use and, and there are 280 million of us and and 80 million people in Britain, so let's put the definition of 'proper English' to a vote. Plus most movies and TV are in American. So THERE."
I need to calm down. It's not like it's a big deal. Come to think of it, it would be amusing if I taught each of my classes to speak with a distinct regional accent. I could cause 30 people to run around the city drawling out y'alls, while somewhere 30 other people speak to tourists in Brooklynese. That would rule.
Nov. 21
I could use a New England winter right now. Brick buildings and snow and bare trees and scarves and snow sticking to the treads of your boots. Slush puddles inside. I missed the snow this year.
This weekend has been very low key. I decorated. I had a copy of Seven Days, a Cosmo for Thu, some ribbon, and some photos from my graduation. It turned out pretty well. I took interesting ads out of the Cosmo and taped them to the wall. Ditto with the Seven Days. Then I framed the pictures with taped ribbon and stuck them up as well. They're purple and green. It's a nice effect. Masking tape will never be duct tape, but it's easier to peel and doesn't stick to walls.
I could use a New England winter right now. Brick buildings and snow and bare trees and scarves and snow sticking to the treads of your boots. Slush puddles inside. I missed the snow this year.
This weekend has been very low key. I decorated. I had a copy of Seven Days, a Cosmo for Thu, some ribbon, and some photos from my graduation. It turned out pretty well. I took interesting ads out of the Cosmo and taped them to the wall. Ditto with the Seven Days. Then I framed the pictures with taped ribbon and stuck them up as well. They're purple and green. It's a nice effect. Masking tape will never be duct tape, but it's easier to peel and doesn't stick to walls.
Editor's note: I am one of the most sentimental people that I know. Before I left college, I took a picture of my mailbox so I'd remember what good old 1911 looks like. Thus I think it's only fair to warn you that when I wrote this during my first visit back to my favorite restaurant from '03 I was positively stewing in nostalgia.
Nov. 19
Back at the Bodhi Tree! Everything is the same - same menus, same art on the walls. I remember sitting here a year and a half ago with Sarah and thinking that I couldn't believe I'd be leaving this place. And now I'm back, sipping coconut sinh to and looking at Margerita Italian-type restaurant across the street.
There's a stereotypical lone young blond guy with a beer and a backpack sitting a few tables away from me. Two tables of actual Vietnamese people, perhaps the only actual Vietnamese people in Pham Ngu Lao. The Chinese owner who used to love us because my friends talked to her in Cantonese. I think she recognizes me a little; she smiled when she saw me and quotes me prices in Vietnamese. Hai the waiter who used to call me "older sister" is gone. The ever-present little girls remain, walking around with plastic covered stacks of Lonely Planets that are higher than they are.
I remember when I used to eat here during my last month with my Katie Advisory Board (Molly and Sarah, the two people who didn't leave during SARS.) I used to order everything on the menu because I know how much I'd miss it.
It's funny how many of my memories revolve around food. It was such a regular thing - we ate out all the time and we'd have great conversations. I remember little bits of them - at the beginning of the trip, four of my friends taught me how to eat rice with chopsticks. It was one of the most useful lessons I got for living here. Later on, Sarah and I used to throw a coin at a map of Saigon and go eat whereever it landed. This is where I got my first exposure to crow wine. And sometimes I went out by myself; I remember Grace telling me that in order to be a truely fabulous woman I had to be able to eat in restaurants by myself. ("And I can do it without reading material!" she said.) I've got writing material right now. I wonder if that's cheating?
Nov. 19
Back at the Bodhi Tree! Everything is the same - same menus, same art on the walls. I remember sitting here a year and a half ago with Sarah and thinking that I couldn't believe I'd be leaving this place. And now I'm back, sipping coconut sinh to and looking at Margerita Italian-type restaurant across the street.
There's a stereotypical lone young blond guy with a beer and a backpack sitting a few tables away from me. Two tables of actual Vietnamese people, perhaps the only actual Vietnamese people in Pham Ngu Lao. The Chinese owner who used to love us because my friends talked to her in Cantonese. I think she recognizes me a little; she smiled when she saw me and quotes me prices in Vietnamese. Hai the waiter who used to call me "older sister" is gone. The ever-present little girls remain, walking around with plastic covered stacks of Lonely Planets that are higher than they are.
I remember when I used to eat here during my last month with my Katie Advisory Board (Molly and Sarah, the two people who didn't leave during SARS.) I used to order everything on the menu because I know how much I'd miss it.
It's funny how many of my memories revolve around food. It was such a regular thing - we ate out all the time and we'd have great conversations. I remember little bits of them - at the beginning of the trip, four of my friends taught me how to eat rice with chopsticks. It was one of the most useful lessons I got for living here. Later on, Sarah and I used to throw a coin at a map of Saigon and go eat whereever it landed. This is where I got my first exposure to crow wine. And sometimes I went out by myself; I remember Grace telling me that in order to be a truely fabulous woman I had to be able to eat in restaurants by myself. ("And I can do it without reading material!" she said.) I've got writing material right now. I wonder if that's cheating?
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