It's Raining Again...

       As the thunder crashes across the sky on a gloomy Sunday afternoon, I can't imagine that two weeks have passed since my last blog.  Days go faster and faster and the new becomes familiar.  We no longer think of a trip to the grocery store as a big deal, whereas at first I felt like I had to do some major planning before I jumped as a fish into the mighty stream of people.  

     Some days are a little longer than others, like the day that Charles and I flopped into bed at about 8:00, talking about the cheeky and sometimes disrespectful ninth graders in my Algebra class and how to deal with them, and the grim outlook for a house sale in South Carolina amidst the economic environment of the times, when someone pounded on the door.  It was Mr. policeman, doing a routine check.  Although we did not yet have the appropriate paperwork, he was satisfied with a gander at our passports and gave me a number for school to call the next morning.  I was also able to get our friend from school, Bich (pronounced Bik : )) on the phone and she talked to him, assuring us everything was OK after.  It turns out we were the first teachers in three years to have a visit. "Honestly, I was ready to take the information out of the orientation guide."  Charles Barton, our headmaster, told me. I am glad that it wasn't a complete surprise to us.  I think the guy at school who is in charge of paperwork was in a little trouble...     

     Mr. Policeman was actually very friendly and said "No problem." quickly in response to Charles' concerned face. Some people have told us that he probably just wanted money.  It is clear that sometimes it is a good thing to be a clueless American.  Charles commented about how weird it felt that a policeman came alone and without any sort of weapon. 

     We have finally kicked our first round of kindergarten colds and Charles wound up with a sinus infection, as he always does.  The best part is that he was able to go right to the pharmacy, tell them exactly what he needed, and buy it. He was almost giddy about being able to circumvent the $100 doctors visit that would have generated the exact same results.  

     

     We celebrated Charles' 41st birthday with a night out!  We started with a drink at the Rex Hotel rooftop garden. Its historical connection is that it was where the correspondents covering the Vietnam War rubbed elbows.  It felt a little like the Tiki room to me....  A great breeze and a couple of drinks was a great way to start the evening.  We met an American woman from Texas living in Australia whose husband works for Mobil.  

     We ate dinner at a middle eastern restaurant called Skewers - really delicious.  I couldn't help but feel the international similarity in big cities. As I sat and looked onto the street, I could honestly have been in New York.  I am certainly still adjusting to city living.  It is invigorating and exhausting to be sure.  

     Friday night we went to a grand party at our friends the Perkins.  A reunion of sorts of the "newbies" at school this year.  Such an interesting and fun group of people!  I won't tell you who overdid it a bit and paid for it dearly on Saturday.

     Maeve loves school more and more.  (Hurray!)  She has started calling me Ms. Dyana accidentally every one and a while.  A good sign. Tomorrow, she will ride start riding the school bus by herself.  She looks cute in her uniform, don't you think?

     On weekends we make our way to school quite a bit - sometimes to ride our scooters in the gym or use the great pool.  It is nice to have these spaces to run and play.

     One of the fancy "Starbucks-ish" coffee shops is across the street from school so we can stock up and spend the morning.

     Speaking of school, it gets more comfortable every day. Ray Smith is who I plan and teach 7th grade science with.  He is a field biologist by training and we are embarking on a cool butterfly count study with our students.  (Tim O'Keefe, if you are reading this and "doing" butterflies, get ready for some web collaboration.) My Center colleagues would be proud of our weekly planning sessions.  It is nice to have something like this going on - I feel like so much of my teaching has to be fairly traditional  by necessity right now given the newness of it all, 5 preps, and fewer resources that I have had in years. 

     It is a good thing that I can still laugh with my students about the incessant pounding of construction.  Our new cafeteria is supposed to be done in October.  A brief reprieve before they begin to build the new high school building...

Here's what I love:

• watching Sophie wave goodbye on the back of the scooter
• giving Maeve a kiss and wishing her a good day on her way into kindergarten
• paying less than $1.00 for the best bunch of bananas you have ever tasted
• ordering a fresh fruit smoothie right at school
• riding in taxis (most of the time - see the end of the next list...)
• pho
• rice
• home delivery of almost anything in the world
• incredibly cheap 400mg. ibuprofen pills
• discovering a great new restaurant 
• hearing live music and watching dance at school each day
• hanging out with new friends, and meeting people who have had such interesting life experiences
• the victory of finding something we need at the store
• emails from people I miss

Here's what I miss:

• family and friends
• fluffy, clean, wonderfully smelling towels and clothes
• the park near our house
• the Columbia Riverbanks Zoo
• using a debit card  (I am always running out of Dong, and so are the ATM machines!)
• plentiful, cheap art supplies
• Target
• the cabin
• our back yard
• being surrounded by books
• people standing in line without cutting in front of you at the grocery store
• other peoples deodorant use (Charles contributed these last two...)

Here's what I don't miss:

• Having a car

Love to all.  Savor your next trip to Target and your extensive selection choices for me.

Tet Trung Thu = Vietnamese Moon Festival

     In the fall, the Vietnamese celebrate the moon festival in honor of their children. Historically it is a time after the harvest, when parents make up for time in the fields and spend time with their children.  Earlier in the week, we made our own lanterns to hang in the kitchen, and we watched as they hung beautiful lit lanterns around Hung Vuong 2, our apartment complex.  Maeve came home from kindergarten with a Vietnamese hat decorated ala Maeve.  Then, the celebration came to us!   Bich, our bilingual Vietnamese friend, called us to tell us what was going on right beneath our balcony. We were on our way down. 

We promptly got lit lanterns, (Yep.  Even the two year olds were handed lanterns with candles in them to run around with - love this country - it has the spirit of what it used to be like for us as kids before lawyers.) and joined the throngs of little ones that live in Hung Vuong 2.  Wow - the music 

and talk was loud.   So loud that Maeve bailed quickly to watch Mr. Bean with Dad.  Sophie couldn't get enough. The girls fell asleep literally in the midst of concert level loudness.  

      On Saturday, we headed to the SSIS pool which we had to ourselves!  So nice.  I scooted across the street to Well Being for an end of the summer trim.  Well, the trim was only the beginning.  After a hair wash and condition, facial, head,  and upper body massage, and chilled cucumbers on my face, I walked back to the pool with a smile on my face feeling better about the world. Damage?  80,000 Dong.  ($5!)  This week I'll try the full body massage place.  I told Charles that I thought I probably needed a weekly trim. : )

     We're trying to emerge from our first kindergarten colds.  Hopefully Maeve will make it to school all week.  I have to go, because We Wish You a Merry Christmas on the second alarm clock that I have purchased since I have been here will be singing all too soon.   Only in Vietnam...

     

A Trip Downtown

September 7th

We actually made a family trip downtown yesterday.  

     We started at the Ben Thanh Market.  Charles said "You go first." as I held Maeve's hand tight and tunneled through the clothing stalls of the market that were less than an arms length apart with lots of people trying to sell us absolutely everything.  Most were short of grabbing us and putting the clothes right on us so we would have to pay for them.  Fortunately, most of the market is not nearly as intense.  BEAUTIFUL fresh flower stalls including orchids all over.  It is so fun to watch the "pets" in the food market.  Crabs, snails, frogs, fish, squid all swimming and scampering before they meet the whack! of a cleaver.  : )  (Did I share about the fresh food at the grocery store?  Chicken comes in a sealed package head and all.  Fa-ra-ra-ra-ra...)

     We then had lattes at Highland coffee, the place that will rival Starbucks if it ever makes it to Vietnam.  We sat on the porch and drank - the girls ate brownies. And here are all of the things that we could have purchased from our chairs thanks to the street vendors: 

• sun glasses
• a cell phone
• a Vietnamese phrase book
• postcards
• a copy of Lonely Planet Vietnam (and I mean copy)
• balloons for the upcoming moon festival
• durian (this guy actually stopped in the middle of the street on his cyclo and smiled at us forever.  Charles offered"Does he really think that we are going to buy a durian to eat with our coffee?")
• shoe shine (despite the fact that three of us sported sandals and the other sneakers. Hmmmm.)
• fancy hair elastics
  

Sophie quickly became the best at

 hollering "No thank you!" and waving her hand in dismissal.  It was hard for Maeve because she really did want to look at everything and would have been happy to purchase all.       

     The head scratcher on our taxi ride home ...we saw a girl on the back of a scooter with a t-shirt that read " Sniffing glue doesn't keep families together."  in English.  

     Sophie and I spent the morning at the sandy bottomed pool - a pool that has a shallow section with actual sand on the bottom.  We ran into four couples from school and their kids and new Aussie friends we met at another pool last week.  It is the expat Sunday morning outing I think. Maeve nursed her first kindergarten cold at home and Charles napped after getting up, once again, at 6AM.  Last night we were at our new friends Kari and David Perkin's house.  Such fun. We swam at our the SSIS school pool Friday afternoon (which is open every afternoon, even weekends, for our use).  

     So it is clear that Sophie already has some "cultural mixing" going on.  She told an elaborate story yesterday that went something like this:  (We were making paper lanterns like the beautiful colorful light lanterns that they have hung in our apartment complex for the upcoming moon festival.  By the way, they also have moon cakes which are beautiful but which taste like a horrific version of fruitcake.  I digress...)

      So Sophie's story went something like this: We are going to hang lanterns and make a birthday cake to put near the lamp because Santa is coming with presents and we will turn out the light and when he comes in all yell surprise!  Poor kid.  At least she got the present part in there. 

     This week brought ups and downs, as the honeymoon newness of our move is over and so much is still hard because we are figuring things out and finding our way.  By the way, if you know anyone looking for a great house in Columbia, South Carolina, we are ready to bargain...

     Tam biet for now. Lots of love.

     

Greetings from steamy Saigon!

Sin Ciao!

     Life has finally settled down enough for us to sit down and write.  We have been in Vietnam for four weeks (hard to believe) and I have gotten used to so many things that were so new just weeks ago.  Charles, Maeve, Sophie, and I are enjoying a long weekend because of a national holiday, and today felt almost like a normal Sunday.

     Our first visit to Saigon South International School meant muddy feet!  The school has been undergoing a major new building project and quite honestly it was hard to find the front door.  The most amazi

ng part was watching a work crew plant the huge front field, each little plant by hand.  (Yes, you see people wearing traditional Vietnamese hats every day.  They make sense for sun and rain, both of which there are plenty.) It was just the beginning of a feeling that I have had every day since...people walking around behind me

 cleaning up.  The sheer volume of workforce in Phu My Hung (our neighborhood) continually amazes me. 

     Saigon South International School is a great place.  I have enjoyed meeting other teachers and their families extensively.  Many seem to be from the north western coast of North America, both the States and Canada.  One other southern family from Nashville is the extent of the Southern U.S. contingent.

     My new students (6th-9th graders) are delightful and from all over the world.  It is

 comforting how similar daily life in the classroom feels to what I know.  I have enjoyed working with middle schoolers again after more that ten years.  I have had to rely on textbooks more than in a long time, and it is funny how hard it can be to help students make connections to them because they are written for an American audience.  My students have learned many things about the U.S. because of it.  I know I will be able to use textbooks less as I figure out where all of the resources are hiding.

     It has been challenging walking into a completely empty room after so many resource rich days at The Center for Inquiry.  My position is new because of new kids, so I didn't move into an existing position.  It also seems tricky and expensive to get resources into the country. I'm sure I will be tripping over stuff in no time.

     Maeve is loving kindergarten.  I knew all 

would be alright when she came home and taught me "Skidda - ma - rink" the other day.  Long days have been an adjustment, but she seems to be settling into routines.

     I have a quick ten minute walk to school, which I love.  If  Maeve and I go together, we take a taxi.  One is always waiting outside of our building and the 16,000 dong price (about $1.00) certainly even beats driving the Saturn with U.S. oil prices.

     Speaking of Dong, (the Vietnamese currency), the cost of living is quite inexpensive here.  Daily expenses of living and eating (providing you are not always eating western food) pale in comparison.  We are beginning to negotiate the grocery stores that locals use every day.  "Fresh is better" here and most people have very tiny refrigerators.  (Including us!)  We have tried all sorts of new foods that we like. Dragon fruit, and pomelos are some of my favorites. (Maeve misses chicken nuggets and sticks to apples, baguettes, and grilled cheese.  Ugh. )  We have catered food for school lunch which is AWESOME!  I feel like I will never have to pack a lunch for school again.  (My Center teacher friends will understand how appreciated this is...)

     It rains every day and is hot, hot, hot.  Not too unlike good ol' South Carolina in August.  My colleagues from British Columbia walk around in pools of sweat much of the time.  It definitely feels tropical, and near the Equator in ways that are different than SC.

     Our apartment is luxurious by Vietnamese standards, open, and comfortable.  It has been interesting to adjust to no oven, no dishwasher, and no hot water in the kitchen.  We will eventually buy a toaster oven and microwa

ve.  I have to admit that I miss a clothes dryer.  We have a washer in our balcony, and hang everything up to dry.  I have a new appreciation for lint traps...

     Although Phu Ny Hung is the suburbs, it feels like we live in a bustling city.  Until we go downtown.  I have never experienced the same kind of rush of people, motor bikes, and general melee before.  It is intense.  Charles said that he saw someone moving an entire, fully constructed swing set on the back of a scooter the other day.  He and I have talked about how there is a calm to the chaos in driving.  People tend to make way for one another in some ways.  Rarely do you see any "road rage".  The only scooters we have so far are awesome razor scooters that the girls ride in our children laden apartment courtyard but that will change soon if Charles has anything to do with it.  I'm just proud to have figured out how to cross the street...

That's all for now.  Send questions and keep in touch!

Julie