Mangoes and Lemongrass

    Spring break!  It is a wonderful feeling right now - everyone is either napping or having personal in room times on a Sunday afternoon and I don't have to worry about school work today.  It's break, and it's glorious.  This last stretch at school feels like it has been a lot of work.

     We are off tomorrow for a two day jaunt to Vung Tau, a beach resort one hour's hydrofoil boat ride down the Saigon river.  Hotel with a pool on the beach - that's about all we need for a getaway that we'll enjoy.  I'll be sure to post pictures when we return.

     It is always fun to ask my students where people are going for the break.  I think by the time I saw all of my students, I found out that they were scattering to at least 12 different countries.

     We also have confirmed tickets for the summer, which is a great feeling.  We will be in New Jersey with my parents the third week in June, and again at the end of July.  In between we will spend a month at the cabin in Michigan.  Sorry South Carolina friends, it doesn't look like we will make it south this summer.  We will make an effort for next summer to be sure. 

     Each week things get more comfortable, more routine, but there are always things, and will always be things that remind us how far we are away from the familiar.

     When Maeve and I were in a taxi to school the other day, the taxi driver was listening to a "learn English" tape.  "A robber is someone who steals from a store.  A tenant is someone who rents from a landlord.  A shoplifter is someone who takes something from a store without paying for it. A client is someone who buys something from a shop."  Maeve got her furrowed brow look - it was funny - she knew she understood it was English but she wasn't quite sure... The content alone sends messages about the relations ship between Vietnamese and English speakers doesn't it? 

     Sophie gets funnier.  She starts many sentences with what we think is a Vietnamese phrase that sounds like "Mee Mow"?  She seems to be blending languages a bit.  The other day when I was frustrated because of something in the kitchen - and it could have been a veritable array of things that seem to go wrong all of the time - kitchen sink spurting water, being out of milk or ice, drinking water running out.  One things that is for sure about living here is that it feels like you can't count on anything to be the same as it has been before.  Everything seems to take a deliberate effort still.  We have plans to get more full time house help next year which I hope will make the daily working of eating and living easier.)  In any case, amidst my frustration Sophie said "Calm down Mom!  Breathe."   :  )

     She's also quite the 3D artist.  After watching me make a marionette out of chopsticks, foil, and string, she constructed this one completely on her own the next day.  (By the way, did you know that chopsticks can not only make a marionette, but be a magic wand or a back scratcher too?)

     Maeve had her first official friend over after school last week.  Rae is Vietnamese but from North Carolina.  She's in Maeve's class and is a real cutie.  I love hearing her dad talk who is clearly Vietnamese but speaks English with a southern accent.

     Sophie and Charles have been learning about different countries in the world, keeping a journal, and keeping this map in her room with pictures of famous places.

     Here, Charles shares both of our favorite house chore, hanging up laundry.  See how excited he is to do this?

     I got the nicest notice form the phone company the other day on our box, that I wanted to be sure to share it on my blog.  

     Announcement Re: The Fixed Telephone service is interrupted provisionally.

To: VALUABLE CUSTOMERS OF THE FIXED TELEPHONE SERVICE.

    First of all, Saigon South Telephone Center (SST) would like to than our valuable customers for using the fixed telephone service during the last time.

    Aim to ensure the quality of service, Saigon Postel Corp. will upgrade the telephone exchange system.  On behalf of Saigon Postel Corp., Saigon South Telephone Center would like to inform you that during the time of performance from 00h00 to 04h00 Sunday, March 22, 2009 we need to interrupt your services. 

Wishing your help and cooperation.

Sincerely Yours,

Translation?  Please use Skype to contact us for at least a week.  :  )

     Here is a picture of the courtyard in our apartment complex - Hung Vuong 2.  When asked "Where are your from?" Maeve answers "USA".  Sophie says "Hung Vuong Hai."

      Here is our friends' smoothie stand on the corner. This one came after her stand at school, so we were already regulars.  Days just aren't the same without a mango smoothie.

     Lemongrass is my absolute favorite new spice.  I think it may be more Thai than Vietnamese, but many restaurants cook meats in it.  Delicious.

     We went downtown today for a lunch treat at our favorite restaurant called "Juice"

and followed it with a trip to the Reunification Plaza.  It is the former presidential palace of South Vietnam, planned by Soviet Architects ala 1960s, and the North Vietnamese tank that collapsed the gates in 1975 showing North Vietnam's victory is still in the front yard.

     The architecture is pretty cool.  It is all open with many of those wonderful 60s modern lines.

      Charles and I agreed that the "Gambling Room" was our favorite.

     We will hopefully soon be over our latest round of colds.  Guess who got it last and is sniffing as she types? This latest round included hives for Maeve, a little disconcerting, but all fears were allayed when we saw our great Israeli pediatrician who did not seem too alarmed.

     Maeve will be six on Friday!  It's hard to believe. I remember my mom picking me up in our little kitchen on Coldspring Drive on the morning of my birthday and saying "How did you get to be six?"I understand where she was coming from.  : )

     I have joined the "jungle" of Facebook as my sister calls it.  I must admit that I poo-pooed it so, probably because of how obsessive it is for my students.  But it is right up my alley because it is about something I have enjoyed doing for years and did before simply by snail mail ...keeping in touch with people.  It is a hoot to see all of my contemporaries and friend with little ones in their pictures.  So if I haven't invited you as a friend yet, don't hesitate!

    There have been a few hard moments for me this month feeling so far away from friends who are having babies or having hard times.  I must admit that the internet is amazing for at least communicating.

      There way joy and surprises too.  My friend Francis sent me hardback copies of all of the Newberry winners this year.  What a treat!  Books are especially golden here.

   I close with a picture acquired by the very same Facebook.  Bonus points this month for anyone who can properly identify someone we know in this rockin' picture:

It's a small pic, sorry, so I'll give you a hint.  Look in the lower left corner...

     Don't be a stranger!

     

February Ends

  

    I have blinked and another month has passed!  The remnants of Tet remained at school for weeks, but even they have been cleared away.  The flags remain, a happy daily morning reminder of how many different people will be a part of my day. February still feels like February, even half way around the world. OK, being able to sit pool side on a Sunday afternoon in the sun makes it feel a little different.  I try to soak up extra sun for all of my friends and family in places that have been so cold this winter. All is well with us.

     We still often use school as our off hours play place.  The size of campus is luxuriously large by Asian standards, and offers the most substantial place we have found in HCMC to run and play.  Here Sophie plays in one of the two new sandboxes.  Both can keep us happy for hours.

     So few of the pictures in this post are about Vietnam.  I know that we find less and less surprising and new.  Our life, I guess, has settled in.

       Fabulous tubby doos.

    Maeve was thrilled to find that we had 100 shells from our beach trip that she could take as her objects for the 100th day of school.

    We shared a nasty bout of a stomach virus with each other and even other friends' families.  Nice of us, eh?  I got it last in my house - just in time to not be able to get back from Tet vacation.  When I roused from my bed finally, I found this posted on my door.

     Charles paints with the girls quite a bit.  Here, Maeve was "inspired" by a Picasso picture book, creating her own portrait of Picasso's wife. I told her it was one of the best pictures that I had seen her paint.  Ms. Dyana later told us that during a painting session at school, she taught her classmates about Picasso and painted another version.  :  )

     Ready for the pool!  Swimming is still our favorite activity, especially on weekends.  Special attention went into pool outing outfits on the shown Sunday morning.

     The back playground at school.  We often hang out with colleagues and their kids for a Friday afternoon play session. Maeve is taking it easy.  You can see the Saigon River beyond her.

     The Dotys, who have boys the same age as Maeve and Sophie. David teaches high school math and Blair teaches fourth grade.  David's getting his first dose of Charles Waugh political discussion...

     It is fun to watch the boats go down the Saigon River right behind the school.  Most have hammocks on the upper berths where boat owner and workers sleep.  Often roosters man the front decks. I love watching the boats filled with fruit. My classroom window overlooks the river.

     Maeve has had a new explosion in literacy.  Ms. Dyana (her K teacher whom we love) pulled me aside to share this writers workshop piece.  She showed me one from two weeks earlier too, and it is exciting to see how much she is making sense of sentences and word phrasing.  She explains our purchase of new bikes - of course the first one too big.  She has decided to save it for later.

     We were greeted on this morning with "Happy Sports Day!"and ferocious tooth brushing and getting ready quickly.  Yep, it is amazing how similar field day can feel half way around the world.  I can't get over how much Maeve is growing.

     It was funny to chaperone the middle school dance last night.  It too was a scene that was predictable and in so many ways unchanged from even my own middle school dances.  Lots of not dancing, sitting on separate sides of the room.  You know, you've been there!  So I think that the one big difference at this dance was that no one was passionately making out in the corner.  PDA is a rarity  in Asia.  Certainly a plus when you are in the chaperone roll...

     What else happened in February?

•  Jay NcTighe, of Understanding by Design, did a conference at SSIS that was great.  My favorite part was meeting and working with people who teach all over Asia.  I laughed when I explained to Charles that I felt shorter at the Friday and Saturday conference.  The room was full of caucasians, and I felt markedly different than I have for the last six months.
  
• Maeve was finally the star of the week in kindergarten.  We all had lunch with her at school, she got to display all sorts of pictures of her and her family in the room, and her class created a book for her.  Lovely.
• I found out that I will remain in the middle school next year.  Disappointments and positives suround that one.
• I had a wonderful conversations with my mentors, friends, and colleagues Heidi Mills and Tim O'Keefe after figuring out how to load money onto Skype to use it through phone lines.  It was great to reconnect with them and hear about how the Center for Inquiry is faring.  There was a moment when I was in Maeve's clasroom this week, Rafi's Children of the World was playing ( a song that Tim sings regularly with his students), and I got a little teary.  I miss those guys and my colleagues at CFI.  I knew I would, but just every once and a while it really hits me.   

     School is fine but has felt like an especially large amount of work lately.  I do have some colleagues who I like very much. But with 5 preps and meetings with all of the departments, it is hard to keep connected.  Quite honestly, this is the most traditional school, from a curricular standpoint, that I have been a part of.  I miss the continuous, thoughtful, philosophy rich conversations that were a regular part of my days at the Center for Inquiry.

    The students are great, which makes it easier to not worry as much about the larger picture of all parts of school life.  Just by nature of the fact that it is a bigger school meant from the get go that the experience would be markedly different than my time at the Center.  I keep reminding myself that we made this move for reasons outside of the "perfect" job for me, and this has been a very good choice and life change for us right now.  And then there is the fact that there is so little left to the year really!  I have a week long trip with the seventh graders in April, spring break, and some long weekends, all within only three and a half more months of school.  And next year things will not all feel new.  We will be living in the same place, I will likely be teaching the same classes and a "veteran" here (few teachers have been here more than two years), and we will return from the States next fall knowing what our  days will be like. (I already have my detailed list of what I will pack!) It will be easier to determine what is hard because this is new, and what is part of this place.

    I am hoping to secure tickets next week, but yes, we will spend our whole summer in the states.  NJ with my parents for our first and last weeks, and hopefully a month at the cabin in Michigan.  We are really looking forward to it.

     I hope your part of the world is starting to warm.

     Keep in touch!

     Chuc Mung Nam Moi!  Happy New Year! It is new year's day in the lunar new year - the year of the Ox.  The TET holiday is wonderful.  It has been fun and really interesting to see and learn about a holiday so different from any of our own.  Having another week off of school doesn't hurt either.

     So Tet has been described to me as many of our holidays rolled into one - Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years... It is a time of true celebration and time with family.  Today, at the end of New Year's Eve and preparations for Tet, you could walk down the middle of the street for five minutes and not have to move.  The streets are deserted!  Everyone had returned to the countryside or is home with family.  We have had to prepare for even all of the grocery stores closing for three days. People are especially happy and smiley, and moving a little more easily amidst the city chaos that is a part of our lives every day. In many ways, it is a very lovely holiday.

     Gifts are exchanged for Tet.  People give each other flowers (more about them in a bit) produce, baskets of food, and "lucky money" in special little red envelopes.  That's about it.  It is so practical and makes sense.  Workers are allowed Tet bonuses by law. We gave  our cleaning lady an additional months salary, which is standard fare.  

     The big flower market in Phu My Hung was actually right behind our building.  (Photos to follow.)  This was a good thing during the day, but loud at night.  (We smiled at each other last night at the silence of it.)

    The flowers in all of the flower markets are breathtakingly beautiful.

     Maeve learned to wish everyone a happy new year in Vietnamese.  That has been a big hit.  She also got to celebrate International Day at school.  We came prepared with Walmart bandanas and socks and a 4th of July dress.

 Here's Maeve in the parade of Americans.  : )

It was so fun to see all of the kids in their traditional country dress after seeing them in uniforms every day.  They all looked so different.  I laid eyes on clothing I had never laid eyes on before in my life!  (Like traditional Philipino shirts and outfits from Malaysia).  OK, the confession is that we did not really have international day as a middle school, so I snuck my math students out to watch the "parade of nations".  The whole international day idea is something I was really looking forward to and couldn't resist.

     Little American posers at International Day.  It was really fun to sample all of the foods from different countries.  One bite from the food at the Japanese table sent me whooshing back to high school and my stay in Japan.

    The flower market near our house was impressive.  Here are dragon fruit plants.

Here we are setting out to check out the flower market after school one evening. We dined on Vietnamese spring rolls and cotton candy.

It is the year of the ox, so you see statues of them everywhere.  It was fun to go in here, the deserted amusement park directly behind our apartment.  They used the space for the flower market and accompanying diversions, but did not use the ferris wheel, etc.  (Looking at the state of them, I'm not sure they could ever be used again.)  

     We saw water puppets here, like the ones that we saw at the history museum.  (I think it may have been the same troupe.)  Yes, they are puppets that are in water.  This one is my favorite.

A cool picture of the troupe as they take their bows, in water, at the end.

A twilight view of the market behind our apartment.

    We also headed downtown for the Tet decorations and flower markets there.  They were impressive!  I also noticed how uncommercial they were.  Huge main thoroughfares shut down and mostly decorations of flowers, plants, statues, and other "arrangements" were everywhere.  There were a few drink and ice cream vendors, but not the miles of chatchkas and stupid souvenirs you would have seen in the US at something like this.  Charles reminded me that it was probably all carefully groomed and chosen by the government.  Pepsico Vietnam was involved.

    Maeve and pineapple plants...

   The downtown flower market.  Flowers as far as the eye can see...  The air glowed yellow.

More downtown decorations.

I have never seen such orchids in my life.

This was one of my favorite downtown decorations - hugh yellow flowers suspended above the main thoroughfare in a giant net.

These plants look right out of a Dr. Suess book and make me nervous for some reason.  (???)

Dragon fruit plants and sunflowers at the downtown flower market.

     So one of the amazing things is that people come to the flower markets and buy these huge,  gorgeous plants. There were very few cut flowers at all.  There were some smaller pepper plants and cacti, but most of the plants are quite substantial.  Then, of course, people need to get the plants home....on scooters of course!  Here is a couple with their four hugh plants, venturing home for a happy Tet.

     Christmas decorations shared space with Maeve's Tet contributions.  

Small paper lanterns we bought at the flower market.

These yellow flowers are EVERYWHERE, including the girls beds.

    I went to our school's version of a New Year's party at colleagues' very cool rooftop apartment in the next building.  It was fun to sit on the outside patio in the cool breeze (by my standards - I had a tank top on still) and welcome in the new lunar year.

     Grandma and Aunt Jen's Christmas Packages made it just in time for Tet! Who says you can't have another Christmas tree?  (Especially a magic crystal Christmas Tree. Thanks, you guys.)

      Thanks to Diana Butcavage who sent her Christmas card that made it here, no problem!  Basically the rule of thumb seems to be about two to three months for packages to arrive.  Thanks to Diana, I now know that regular letters and cards only seem to take about 10 days to two weeks.  Good to know, especially if you were thinking about sending us a letter or card.  (Not so subliminal, eh?)

     Chuc Mung Nam Moi to you!  We hope you are well and can find a little of the flowers, peace, warmth, and joy, maybe even lucky money of the Tet holiday in your life this week.  Don't be a stranger.