To describe Long Xuyen, you can use the United States as an analogous reference to Vietnam. Vietnam and the United States, both have their two major cities (Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi to Los Angeles and NewYork). There are also the cities in other areas, not the metropolises, but the small cities that are just one of the bigger things in their respective regions (like Des Moines and Raleigh).
--With its 300,000 residents, Long Xuyen is the capital of An Giang Province and the second largest city of the Mekong. It has its growing pains, as if it were not a girl, not yet a woman.
--I have taught three weeks worth of classes of second year English Listening and Speaking and trying to work myself into a routine.
That being said, please fill in the blanks.
The answer to that last one is “every”.
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The first week here could have been tough. It could have been horrible. I could have suffered from lonely isolation and quivering paranoia. Homesickness. Culture Shock. Resentment. Alcoholism. Somehow, none of it got to me.
--As welcoming as the AGU faculty and staff was in my first days, I think I need to give a lot of credit to Linh Huynh. An Iowan from Northwestern University, she showed me the same rope-a-dope she began just two months before. In a sense, Linh reminded me there was always reason to stay in love with America, and I wasn’t running away. The slice of American pie I needed after two months away. That being said, I really like her, and she is gone.
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--Being in a foreign country, a foreign continent no less, is supposed to bring opportunities to meet with exotic textures and incredulous tastes (at least enough to fill a few cable shows as a concept of its own)
--Interesting opportunities are abound, but I am sorry to announce that the food in this town, by my standards, is mediocre. Perhaps, I have run most of the gamut of Vietnamese cuisine, but there is nothing really new or particularly distinct in my area. I've turned to cooking myself, and have subsequently turned myself in to the proper restroom authorities afterward.
--Besides a few new dishes and some old standards I get at home, I’ve eaten cockroaches, grasshoppers, porcupines, meerkats, snails, gazelle, and rat.
Boring.
--I go to bed most nights hungry, but I have decided that it might be healthy for me to eat a healthier amount as I reach the big 2-2 (Fine, the big 2-2 isn’t so big).
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I live in a house with five men and one very frightened Taiwanese girl.
We guys often pain for home and aspire to improve our collective situations.
We re-invented Beirut with glass mugs and aluminum tables.
We lost 4-3 in a 5-on-14 soccer match against local kids at an orphanage.
We’ve ordered brands of beer weaker than ginger ale.
We’ve been caught in rain together over and over.
We've taken turns with irregular bowel movements.
We have stayed up late night arguing about and singing to CCR and The Beatles.
We watched Liverpool beat Man Utd in Liverpool for the first time in 7 years.
We’ve drank, sat, ate, pedaled, overpaid, and disclosed.
We do this, only because there really isn’t a woman to impress.
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--I’m responsible for two groups of students. One group consists freshmen who, in Vietnam, typically go through orientation at the start of the semester and start a bit later than the rest.
--Therefore, I’ve been teaching Speaking and Listening to one group of second-year students. They are not shy as much as they are non-responsive. Already other teachers are receiving text messages about how scared they are of me and how difficult my class is for them. I set really high standards and expectations of them and only for their sake.
--As a nation that is going through another economic downturn amidst its growth, the job market in Vietnam for a new graduate is bleak. A friend of mine who graduated from AGU (An Giang University) spent a month in HCMC (Ho Chi Minh City) looking for a job as a front-desk receptionist. Her biggest obstacle, according to her, was her inadequate English. My class is way behind where I think they should be if they expect to survive this developing, collapsing, inhaling, rupturing real world also known as working in Vietnam.
Not on my watch.
--I have the class running around blindfolded, lying for fun, feigning beliefs, and watching “Making Fiends”. All this in the name of language learning. Whatever it takes to take a reticent group of locals to the conceptual overseas.
--On the 21st, the students invited me out to an all day trip to the beach. I got to know them and show them that I'm actually very horrifying. Also, the 17-year-old thing will soon turn into an 18-year-old thing. I'm also getting involved with the English Speaking Club on campus and will be the male Emcee for the upcoming meeting. These are serious meetings with over 100 people in attendance. This last Saturday, a showing of Ghostbusters brought in 70 movie-goers and a bucket of laughs from the two Americans in the room that picked up Bill Murray.
--Perhaps the tide of these conceptual overseas are yet to rise. But how are we to know until we get our feet wet?
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--I have a few sports channels here at mostly broadcast sports commonly played in Vietnam, nations previously colonized by Britain, and fighting sports. The campus is active, but mostly play hacky-sack and badminton.
Hopefully, I’ll get on the badminton racket soon (pun).
--The only sport activities I’ve participated in are the aforementioned benefit soccer game at the local orphanage (where they trash-talking and post-game celebration will never end), middle-of-the-rain basketball playing, late-night table tennis/badminton (not simultaneous), my owned failed teaching of beachside dodgeball, beirut, and long toss in the middle of heavy, heavy foot traffic.
--I did celebrate Francisco “K-Rod” Rodriguez breaking Bobby Thigpen’s record for saves in a season. It’s sad that I won’t be able to see my favorite player work his magic for my team for probably the last time. On the day of 58th save, I showed the orphans how to celebrate like Frankie the Kid. Nasty Young Men They Are.
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--My encounters with poverty and trafficking have been, I admit, limited. However, it was immediately apparent that I had a lifetime of work ahead of me. On the ride from HCMC to Long Xuyen, my driver stopped me at a café for a short break. There he called one of the waitresses to come and entertain me. It was incredibly awkward as she sat closer and closer and tried to make eyes and flirting off with conversation. She was just another 17-year-old on her summer break trying to make some money to make it in the countryside. I asked her about college, and she stated as an unreasonable proposition, as if my question was as ludicrous as the notion someone leaving the Southern California to go to the An Giang province.
Vietnam has changed through its Đổi mới renovation, but the poverty and lack of opportunity in the Mekong is clear. I’ve a lot to learn, to see, and to feel.
Also, there are trust issues linked to my gender that are a lot more significant I had expected...
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