December 4
I'm starting to be able to pick out the English teachers from the tourists. They're either dressed up for class or they look casual, like they're hanging around the house or something. The tourists tend to either dress like they're at Club Med or they wear cloths from the souvenir shop: t-shirts with the Vietnamese flag or the Tiger beer logo, sometimes accented by a woven or silky something from one of the craft shops. Plus they're usually clutching guides.
Yesterday, I stopped to help a lost foreign teacher downtown, as she was wandering around looking for a restaurant.
"My friend said it's near Reunification Palace, and there's a sign that says 'delicious' in English and Vietnamese, but none of the signs here are in English," she said. So she'd been going around the park, interrupting the couples making out to see any of them spoke English and knew where the restaurant was.
I remember doing things like that. You're lost and feeling a little ridiculous, but it's sort of amusing. Because you're usually a reasonably intelligent person who can take care of yourself, and yet here you are, tromping through a foreign country where you haven't the faintest idea of how to say 'delicious' and so you've really got no alternative but to force snogging teenagers to come up for air and help you. It's pretty funny, actually, and anyway it can't be helped. You're in Saigon and this is part of your adventure.
"It's right there," I said, pointing. She'd been within a quarter block of it the whole time. "See, it says 'an ngon' on the door, that means 'delicious food.'"
And she was fine. You can go far on the kindness of strangers - you get rescued a lot when you have a certain confused look in your eye.
I miss that. My Vietnamese is pretty bad and I can't figure out our electric bill on my own, but I can get to whereever I need to go in the city and I have a good sense of what's normal and what's appropriate. And I know how to say delicious.
It was different when I was here before - by the end, I was at about the same level of competance that I am now, but I knew a lot more Vietnamese people, and what I knew about the language and the country was constantly being stretched by spending time with them. A lot of that was from the university - it's amazing how much community comes with being part of a school. Now that I'm on my own I belong to the city less, I think. And what I do during the day is just the sort of daily living things that I know I can handle.
I wonder how things would have been different if I'd head off in some totally random direction. I've been thinking that when the year is out, if I'm not sick to teaching English I might head off to Prague or Russia or someplace like that. I have no idea how to say "delicious" in Russian.
Saturday, December 04, 2004
December 3
Back. I feel like I should have more staggering cultural insights to report, but unfortunately studying grammar and teaching isn't all that fascinating. I haven't even been making any weird phone calls to strangers for pizza.
I've been thinking about renting a motorbike. Driving habits here are suicidal, but I feel a little safer driving myself around as I do leaving it to someone else. Plus I think it would be cheaper; we live far enough out that I pretty much have to take a taxi everwhere.
Back. I feel like I should have more staggering cultural insights to report, but unfortunately studying grammar and teaching isn't all that fascinating. I haven't even been making any weird phone calls to strangers for pizza.
I've been thinking about renting a motorbike. Driving habits here are suicidal, but I feel a little safer driving myself around as I do leaving it to someone else. Plus I think it would be cheaper; we live far enough out that I pretty much have to take a taxi everwhere.
December 1
December 1! Is that possible! There's no snow, and I haven't seen any since March or so. Plus it's 80 degrees and sunny with palm trees. I put snowy forrest wallpaper on the computer and TEFL.
Today and yesterday, they let me loose on an actual student. Yesterday, I nearly died of nervousness before she came. I was sure she'd sprout claws and maul me or something. You've got to be careful of those mutant Vietnamese college students. But she was very nice. We were supposed to go over some basic information about her life and then go over her favorites in sports, food, and everything else I could think of, using pictures to help her learn the words. But it turned out she already knew most of the words, so we ended up talking about what she'd written down.
We got along so well that today we spent the first half hour chatting and I had to plow through the actual lesson. I went way too fast. I'll try not to plow in the future.
Still, the fact that I survived an actual student makes me a feel a little better about my chances for life when we go through practice teaching next week.
December 1! Is that possible! There's no snow, and I haven't seen any since March or so. Plus it's 80 degrees and sunny with palm trees. I put snowy forrest wallpaper on the computer and TEFL.
Today and yesterday, they let me loose on an actual student. Yesterday, I nearly died of nervousness before she came. I was sure she'd sprout claws and maul me or something. You've got to be careful of those mutant Vietnamese college students. But she was very nice. We were supposed to go over some basic information about her life and then go over her favorites in sports, food, and everything else I could think of, using pictures to help her learn the words. But it turned out she already knew most of the words, so we ended up talking about what she'd written down.
We got along so well that today we spent the first half hour chatting and I had to plow through the actual lesson. I went way too fast. I'll try not to plow in the future.
Still, the fact that I survived an actual student makes me a feel a little better about my chances for life when we go through practice teaching next week.
Nov. 29
Back in the old neighborhood Trung Nguyen coffee shop. Sorry to have gone so long without updates. I think this is the longest I've gone without writing in my entire Vietnam career. The past few days have been depressing and/or unexciting. Spending Thanksgiving alone in a country that doesn't recognize the holiday is every bit as depressing as it sounds. I know many three other Americans here - two from my TEFL class that I don't know very well, and Molly, who was working all day.
Nash my British instructor was good to me, though; when he heard it was a holiday he called around to the expat hangouts to see if they were doing anything. No one was, but it was a nice gesture. That night I set out in the backpacker district in search of Americans, but the place was strangely deserted. Then I went up to Sheridan's Irish pub, because it's the sort of place where it's easy to strike up a random conversation with a stranger. But on this night, everything was quiet and the people were sitting in clusters that seemed inappropriate. I sat the the bar and had one drink, but there was very little human acknowledgement aside from a sympathetic smile from the friends transgendered doorperson. Some days are just no good.
I did get a nice phone call from my family. Dad says Mom has told everyone she knows about my apartment's admirable fire control system.
This weekend was the perfect combination of fun and vegging. Molly, Thu and I went out to Sheridan's on Saturday night and this time we did find good random conversations. We met a guy from the British consulate, a guy from New Jersey who helped to start the place six years ago, and a tourist from Nottingham, England.
Late that night after most people had left, Molly and I got into a long conversation with Mr. Nottingham about what should happen to Northern Ireland. Molly was saying it should be its own country, Nottingham was saying it should go back to Ireland, and I was saying to should be up to the people who live there. It was one of those fabulous Irish pub conversations that goes on and on and spawned subconversations about who is qualified to say what about what and how much birthright fades with distance and how different countries relate to their American diaspora and so and and so on - the sort of long windy conversations that makes me fond of Irish pubs and Molly.
Today hasn't been terribly exciting. I've just come from the TEFL class on Troung Dinh street, which is just a few blocks from the guesthouse where I lived when I was a student here. It still feels like my neighborhood. A couple of times a week, I go to Trung Nguyen after class. We used to hang out here, and the coffee shop looks exactly the same.
Across the street, they've torn down the yellow wall that used to be there and replaces it with a monstrousity of a seafood restaurant. The building looks vaguely like a house you'd see facing a harbor in Cape Cod, and it's got a statue of big molded shells outside. They've torn up the sidewalk that used to be there; it used to look a little like it had been through an earthquake and now it's a bunch of cute seashell tile. Some of the other buildings on the street have changed too - they're mostly restaurants that are much nicer than they were in '03. Also they're putting up high class apartment buildings downtown with names like "Norfolk Estates" and "Somerset Manor". They've got maid service and New York-style rent. Saigon is gentrifying, I think. The foreigners are pouring in, and people are taking advantage of it. In 20 years, this place could be another South Korea.
Back in the old neighborhood Trung Nguyen coffee shop. Sorry to have gone so long without updates. I think this is the longest I've gone without writing in my entire Vietnam career. The past few days have been depressing and/or unexciting. Spending Thanksgiving alone in a country that doesn't recognize the holiday is every bit as depressing as it sounds. I know many three other Americans here - two from my TEFL class that I don't know very well, and Molly, who was working all day.
Nash my British instructor was good to me, though; when he heard it was a holiday he called around to the expat hangouts to see if they were doing anything. No one was, but it was a nice gesture. That night I set out in the backpacker district in search of Americans, but the place was strangely deserted. Then I went up to Sheridan's Irish pub, because it's the sort of place where it's easy to strike up a random conversation with a stranger. But on this night, everything was quiet and the people were sitting in clusters that seemed inappropriate. I sat the the bar and had one drink, but there was very little human acknowledgement aside from a sympathetic smile from the friends transgendered doorperson. Some days are just no good.
I did get a nice phone call from my family. Dad says Mom has told everyone she knows about my apartment's admirable fire control system.
This weekend was the perfect combination of fun and vegging. Molly, Thu and I went out to Sheridan's on Saturday night and this time we did find good random conversations. We met a guy from the British consulate, a guy from New Jersey who helped to start the place six years ago, and a tourist from Nottingham, England.
Late that night after most people had left, Molly and I got into a long conversation with Mr. Nottingham about what should happen to Northern Ireland. Molly was saying it should be its own country, Nottingham was saying it should go back to Ireland, and I was saying to should be up to the people who live there. It was one of those fabulous Irish pub conversations that goes on and on and spawned subconversations about who is qualified to say what about what and how much birthright fades with distance and how different countries relate to their American diaspora and so and and so on - the sort of long windy conversations that makes me fond of Irish pubs and Molly.
Today hasn't been terribly exciting. I've just come from the TEFL class on Troung Dinh street, which is just a few blocks from the guesthouse where I lived when I was a student here. It still feels like my neighborhood. A couple of times a week, I go to Trung Nguyen after class. We used to hang out here, and the coffee shop looks exactly the same.
Across the street, they've torn down the yellow wall that used to be there and replaces it with a monstrousity of a seafood restaurant. The building looks vaguely like a house you'd see facing a harbor in Cape Cod, and it's got a statue of big molded shells outside. They've torn up the sidewalk that used to be there; it used to look a little like it had been through an earthquake and now it's a bunch of cute seashell tile. Some of the other buildings on the street have changed too - they're mostly restaurants that are much nicer than they were in '03. Also they're putting up high class apartment buildings downtown with names like "Norfolk Estates" and "Somerset Manor". They've got maid service and New York-style rent. Saigon is gentrifying, I think. The foreigners are pouring in, and people are taking advantage of it. In 20 years, this place could be another South Korea.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
