Reflections after one month (aka Orientation)

I write this at the conclusion of my first month in Vietnam, and my orientation period.

Now- I realize its dangerous to draw conclusions too quickly- I've only seen 3 provinces/municipalities in Vietnam, out of over 60. I've met only a minuscule fraction of the over 80 million people in Vietnam. Even there, I interact mostly with English speakers, as my Vietnamese is limited to only essential communications ('What is the this?' and 'Where is the bathroom!?').

Culture Shock

For reasons I don't know, I didn't take culture shock seriously. I remember thinking during the Predeparture Orientation, that it wasn't a big deal (something along the lines of "I've been to enough countries, culture shock won't affect me). However, the culture shock has definitely been real.

I didn't realize how hard it would be to start at square one in terms of soft skills. Whenever I leave my room, I need to have a plan for how and where I'm going. I can't just depend on my ability to figure it out (via signs or walking around). I've had to rebuild my ability to read a menu, read a street sign, and many other basic tasks. We had a training session on workplace customs in Vietnam, and I realized that I really will need to start from scratch in terms of social skills. Gestures, small talk, and day to day life are different here. For example, asking how much money someone makes is no big deal; or, crossing one's fingers in a good luck sign is considered offensive in Vietnam. Even further, one should give and accept business cards, envelopes, menus, and other pieces of paper with two hands, not one.

While it is intimidating to try to learn the social customs of an entirely new culture from scratch, I'm hopeful that my co-workers and my students will forgive my lapses (I still struggle with not pointing with only my index finger and using my whole hand instead).

The effects of travel have also impacted me physically. I've so far been very lucky (knocks on wood frantically) to escape the bowel-destroying illness that has struck down two of my fellow ETAs. However, I've definitely gotten low level sick several times. It has never gone beyond low-grade fever, sore throat, or irritable bowels. So- nothing serious, but just enough to keep me aware that I'm in a very foreign country.

Additionally, I found myself having much larger mood swings than I'm used to. Usually, I don't find myself to be a terribly emotional person. Here, I've found my emotions to be much stronger than usual. Things that ordinarily wouldn't matter in the slightest have been making me somewhat upset. For example, I left my shorts in an area where they could get wet when I showered in Mai Chau two weekends ago, and when I found my shorts were somewhat wet, I was really bothered by it. (It should be like a 2, but was instead a 7). I couldn't figure out why I was being so emotionally volatile until I googled it and saw it was a symptom of culture shock/homesickness. Hopefully it will go away with time (and then return when I return to the States!) Its an unfortunate trait to have when some much is outside of my control.

Flexibility

As you probably know, I'm very much a planner. I like to know when and where and what I'm supposed to be doing. I'm on time and on schedule. As you might guess, Vietnam is not like that. One part of the problem is my own incompetence- it takes me longer to do stuff and get places. However, I've compensated for that by leaving earlier, doing more advance research.

Vietnam is not accommodating for advance planning. On one hand, everything needs to be submitted in triplicate. On the other, everything that doesn't come from a very top official is subject to change. Plans can change 5,6 or 7 times, and do (often without anyone telling me :( ) In America, this would be very rude. In Vietnam, I say "Oh, Vietnam" and roll with it (or try to).

For example, I was supposed to have breakfast with a teacher from my school this morning (Hoa, which means flower) at 8 am. At 7:25 (still in bed), I heard my handler/mentor (Khanh) outside with some supplies. She told me to wait and she would be back in two seconds with more stuff. I waited for about 15 minutes, but didn't see her. I got a call at 7:40 from Hoa, asking if I was ready to go. I replied that I needed to shower, could she give me 15 minutes. She told me I had 5, she had a meeting at 8! I replied that I thought we had breakfast plans at 8, but it turns out she had scheduled a meeting then instead.

(Side note: one thing I've quickly learned is that most things don't revolve around me; and there were hundreds of parents at Lao Cai Gifted High School today for parent-teacher conferences, so everyone was really busy). Basically, I've learned to make plans and confirm them multiple times before heading out. Totally not a big deal, just a shift in mindset from the temporally-efficient U.S.

Communication Barriers

I've started to become frustrated with the language barrier in Vietnam. With most Vietnamese, my Vietnamese and their English is only sufficient for very basic conversation (whats your name, where are you from, what do you do, etc). Its not sufficient for anything meaningful- I can't ask their feelings about social justice, politics, current events, America, my actions- really anything. (Of course, I steer clear of really sensitive issues or just frame them in terms of America- aka in America, women get paid 77 cents on the dollar, is it similar in Vietnam, and what do you think about that).

This is good motivation for me to learn Vietnamese (and to be a good English teacher), of course, but it is a tad frustrating. The point of Fulbright (as I understand it), is to be a cultural ambassador, which doesn't require a ton of Vietnamese. People see me (even when I don't see them), and watch what I do, thus requiring me to be "on" all the time. Thats not a problem for me- I can accomplish the goal of the Fulbright, but my own goal (maybe I should do a blog post on my goals for this year?) is to engage people in meaningful conversation, and I'm not yet good enough at posing questions yet to find out what people think about stuff. I know they have thoughts, but its just a matter of finding targeted questions that prompt them to answer (For example, if you want to know if someone has siblings, you wouldn't say "Do you have siblings?" you'd instead say "How many people are in your family.") This is definitely an area where I think I can improve my Fulbright Experience!

I'm now in Lao Cai. I've only been here for about 36 hours (got here on Saturday at 2 and its now 10 pm on Sunday) so I'm waiting to tell you guys until I have a little bit more experience for some context.

The only bit I'll share so far: some (many) of the students absolutely lose it when they see me. Like, One Direction status. I know I'm prone to exaggeration, but I can prove this one, I promise! I found out from a student that I have a fan page with over 300 likes (through 24 hours). Look on facebook for "Daniel CLC Team" if you don't believe me haha. But please don't like the page unless you want all my students to friend request you! I thought it would be cool (and it was) for about 10 minutes and now causing a ruckus wherever I go is somewhat annoying (grass is always greener, I guess!)

Thats all for now. I'll post again after my first week of observing classes!

Onward. Always Onward.
Daniel

2/3 of the way through Orientation (Part 1)

I promise that I won't be one of those (many) people who start blogs, put down a few posts, and then abandon them!

This was originally going to be a longer post with updates about my activities and more general reflections, but it got too long, so I've split it up into 2 parts.

Vietnamese Lessons

The first two week of my time in Hanoi were dominated by Vietnamese lessons! All day, every day. We had class from 8:30-4:30 on M-F, and we learned an insane amount. We went from practicing the vowels on Day 1, to being able to have full conversations (on limited topics) on Day 10. As per usual, I have really struggled with Vietnamese, but I've definitely been working hard to get better.  I try to speak with every taxi driver, every bus driver, every tour guide. Its slow going, especially because Vietnamese has 6 tones, so every word can mean 6 different things based on how its said.

Definitely, Vietnamese is still a work in progress- I'm continuing to take lessons once I get to Lao Cai, and I'm always adding to my vocab booklet. While (as of now), I'm comfortable buying stuff on the street, ordering food in a restaurants, getting directions, making (very) brief small talk with locals, I want to get a lot better. Next time you see me, I'll be a lot closer to fluent (although definitely not that close to fluent, haha).

Last day of Vietnamese class!

Ninh Binh

On our first weekend in Vietnam, we wanted to go to Ha Long Bay as a group of 14 ETAs, but the region was flooded, so we went south, to Ninh Binh. It was beautiful (google "Inland Halong Bay" or "Ninh Binh" if you don't believe me). We kayaked through a cave (which was a UNESCO World Heritage site for reasons never made clear to me), went to an old pre-Hanoi capital called Hoa Lu, and finally climbed through the largest temple complex in Vietnam. Definitely a fun adventure and a bonding experience with the other ETAs.

Ninh Binh: this photo doesn't really do it justice

Kayaking through a UNESCO World Heritage Cave

Giant statute alter type things

13 Story pagoda, unfortunately closed

Mai Chau

On our second weekend, Fulbright Vietnam organized a bonding experience in Mai Chau, a beautiful province also south of Hanoi. We headed out on Friday afternoon and stayed at Mai Chau ecolodge, a more beautiful and luxurious place than we had any right to stay at. We went biking, kayaking, walking through a local village. Josh and I befriended a tour guide and he invited us to play soccer with some of his friends. We had some fun, despite the ridiculous humidity, and the fact that only one friend showed up.

Amazing pool

Rice paddies everywhere!

Killer outdoor shower

View from the the ecolodge that Erik and I shared

We went biking through the fields- I was curious what a rice paddy would feel like to fall into.
Sadly, my camera did not survive the trip.

(I did not intentionally go into the rice paddy)

Teacher Training

After finishing Vietnamese lessons, we have been in teacher training for last two weeks of orientation. While Vietnamese was a new skill, and crucial to survival here, learning to be a teacher is really our focus for being here. That being said, we have very little information about our classes or students, so its hard to prepare (and easy to be anxious). I know that I will be teaching Speaking and Listening to 10 classes a week, meeting with 10th grade English, Chemistry, Maths, and Physics majors, as well as 11th grade English majors- twice a week for each group. I know I have a textbook and syllabus and that is far more than the rest of the ETAs have. They mostly know that they will be teaching, but not who or what or for how long.

As you might imagine, lacking this information makes it hard to conceptualize and apply the information we are being given. How does one make a lesson plan for students they've never met? Fortunately, several members of our group are experienced teachers, and I will rely on their expertise. I'm shadowing my first week in Lao Cai, and then I can just teach from the textbook until I get more comfortable with my students and their level of English. In an ideal world, I'd know more, but one (of the many) lessons I'm learning in Vietnam is how to be flexible.

Homestay

My third (and final) weekend I did a homestay with a Vietnamese family. I stayed with a VN National working in the Fulbright Office, a woman named Chi Hanh. She has a husband named Anh Long, and two 4.5 year old twins named Ben and Nim (think Benjamin) who speak Vietnamese, but can understand English, which Chi Hanh speaks fluently.

My goal in visiting was to see (from the inside) what a typical Vietnamese nuclear family looks like. It typically includes another generation (typically the man's parents), and while Chi Hanhs parents and in-laws are healthy and young enough not to live in their apartment, I did get to meet her father (Ben and Nim's grandfather!). We went to the zoo, the ethnology museum and had pigeon for dinner one night. Definitely less "adventurous" than going and exploring provinces south of Hanoi, but I'd say more educational.

Eating pigeon with anh Long, Chi Hanh, Ben, and Nim

A 3rd world zoo had a lot of concrete and chain link, just like I expected. :(

When I saw this, how could I not do it!?

Chi Hanh has a sick apartment!

They LOVED playing Temple Runner on my phone for some reason.

I realize that these last couple posts have been lots of information, with little reflection and analysis. There is a reason for that. Until I have been here a sufficiently long time, its hard to know what is common. What is typical for Vietnam, and what just one person/one person having a bad day? It rained every day for the first week, but only once since. In order to avoid making overly broad generalizations, I've tried to refrain from drawing conclusions, but instead limited myself to observations.

Now, I still can't make any conclusions about Hanoi, much less Vietnam. However, I can draw some conclusions about how I've been doing, which is what part 2 of this blog will be about.

Onwards. Always Onwards.
Daniel

End of Week 1

Hey all-

Now that I have a week under my belt, I have a better handle on my routine for the next three weeks or so will be. This week, we (the 14 ETAs) have orientation every day from 8-4:30. We start with a 2 hour lecture on Vietnamese culture and history and then have approximately 6 hours of Vietnamese lessons.

Our classroom for Vietnamese lessons

Vietnamese lessons are HARD. Spanish doesn't hold a candle to it. Vietnamese has 12 vowels and 6 tones, so any given word can mean 6 different things. (La with a down tone means "is" and with an up tone means "leaf." Not even counting the words that mean two different things, like the word for country and/or water and/or liquid). If you can imagine, the letter "A" has 18 different permutations. 

We've progressed from practicing vowels, to consonants, to dipthongs (like ong or an or ut) and now can read almost any word* (We can read it, but most of us struggle, me especially, with the question mark tone). I'm pretty good at flat tone, up tone, down tone, tilde tone, heavy tone, but question mark tone really gets me. (Its like an up and down at once).

 We have really good teachers and the class is really supportive, but man- it is really frustrating to practice saying ba over and over again. I've been working on increasing my vocabulary (mostly through asking one of the 4 Vietnamese speaking ETAs). My highlight today was telling our cab driver where to go, and asking him his name and telling him mine.

Yeah. Vietnamese has 6 tones. The question mark tone is really hard.

(Before you think I'm too good, yesterday I told our taxi driver to go to our hotel on Hang Ga, and he took us to Hang Gai! Luckily it only added 4,000VND to our bill, or $0.20)

My end goal for Vietnamese is to be able to get directions around a city, ask people about their day, ask people the appropriate questions to figure out their title, and handle myself in a restaurant. (Also, it'd be cool to surprise Vietnamese people in restaurants back home, too). Hopefully I'll surpass that, but we will see!

After Vietnamese lessons, we head back to the hotel and go out to dinner. It is a little bit more involved than in the States, because, while there are "restaurants" every where, we need somewhere big enough for 4-5 Americans that is also safe-ish to eat. If we split off into 3s, 4s and 5s, it usually takes about  1:30- 2 hours to find an interesting, new, safe place to eat, eat and then come back.

Not quite big enough

After that, we come back to the hotel and do a "spotlight" where one ETA sort of tells their life story and takes questions and receives affirmations- sort of similar to a life map for you RAs out there.

The next month seems pretty straight forward- I'm heading to Ninh Binh in about an hour for the weekend (google search it and look at the images. Trust me) I have language classes all next week, then we go to Mai Cau for a team building retreat. The last two weeks are centered on teaching, with a homestay during the weekend. Then, I ship out to Lao Cai!

I'm hoping to post a more thoughtful, less news-y blog post at some point this weekend, but I just wanted to let y'all know what I'm doing day to day. This is what I'm doing, not what I'm feeling, but hey.

Onward. Always Onward.

Daniel

On Thursday, Erik, Diane, Josh, and I saw the water puppet theatre

On Sunday I went exploring and found the Temple of Literature

(Finally) In Hanoi

Hello all!

Well, I'm finally here. I left my house at 10 a.m. on Thursday morning and I finally made it to the hotel at 3 p.m. on Saturday. I'm now in Hanoi, where I will be staying for the next month training.

It still feels surreal that I'm here. I had one of those "wtf is going on" moments when Josh and I (my travelling buddy and co-Fulbrighter) were zooming in a taxi the wrong way down a major street- how did I end up in Hanoi instead of going to law school in New York?

Essentially, I applied for a Fulbright in Vietnam on a whim, without any expectation I would get it. I got waitlisted and so instead, I deposited at Columbia, ready and excited. Then, Fulbright received some more money, and offered me a spot (weird, I know, but I'm rolling with it).

So, here is the plan for the next 10 months:

1. August- spend with the 13 other Fulbrighters in Hanoi, learning Vietnamese and training in Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL)
2. September-May- teach in Lao Cai Gifted High School
3. May-June- travel around SE Asia and New Zealand (I have to check off that 6th continent!)

I'll post more about the fact that I'm teaching English later (where and how, and the irony that I of all people would become an English teacher) but I want to focus on Hanoi for now.

Josh and I got into Hanoi after about 30 hours of travelling yesterday at noon. It was raining. We took a harrowing taxi ride to the hotel. (I had heard traffic in Vietnam was insane, and it was. Cars and motor bikes zoom in and out of traffic. Right of way means nothing. Street signs mean nothing. Lights are sometimes obeyed. Pedestrians move throughout traffic perpendicularly. Horns are used to signal 'Hey, I'm behind you and going to pass you by swerving into on-coming traffic.' I can't believe there aren't 500 accidents every hour. But somehow, it all works.)

Once we got to the hotel, we met up with Alvin, a Fulbrighter from UCLA who already speaks and reads Vietnamese and promptly took a nap. After napping, it was time to explore! We walked around the lake in Oldtown Hanoi, had coffee with egg white in a rooftop cafe (on the 5th floor), saw the old Cathedral and had dinner in a place called "My Pho." After that, we got Viettel Sim cards and saw where Alvin's dad used to live before it got "re-appropriated" and became a local police station.

A couple notes:

I had been told that I would be a celebrity/circus freak while I was here, but it wasn't too bad in Hanoi- lots of white people here. The only incident I had was a 20 something year old woman (with her boyfriend) came up to me by the lake and said "Picture?" I agreed, and reached for her camera, thinking she wanted me to take a picture of her and her boyfriend. Alvin grabbed my arm and said, "No, she wants a picture with YOU." So, Alvin took the picture of her, Josh, and me (wearing her conical hat, at her request). She seemed happy, and Alvin said it wouldn't be the last time something like that happened to me. I figure I'm the equivalent of either Yao Ming or Robert Wadlow...probably just Robert Wadlow, haha.

I was wondering how far my stipend ($1000 per month or 21 million VND) would go in Vietnam.  Well, dinner last night (Pho and a soda) cost 3 bucks (or 60,000 Vietnamese Dong VND). I ended up covering dinner for Alvin and Josh, because the Vietnamese don't really do split checks, and Alvin had been really helpful getting my sim card set up, and Josh had had a rough day discovering his brand new Iphone didn't have a Sim card slot (necessitating getting a new phone). Dinner for all 3 of us was a whopping total of 160,000 VND ($8- I know, I'm a generous guy ;) )

I'll post some updates about how training is going hopefully in the next couple days. Also, if you want my Vietnamese cell number, so you can Viber or WhatsApp me, shoot me a facebook message and I'll send it to you.

Onward. Always Onward.
Daniel

P.S. I should mention that this blog is in no way affliated with the U.S. Department of State. All of the views expressed here are my own and do not represent the views of the Fulbright Program or the Department of State

P.P.S. The only pictures I've downloaded so far. (I have more, don't worry!).

I had to sneak my Northface backpack into Japan! (Maybe?)

Josh and I at approximately 4 am Tokyo time (and who the hell knows EST)

View of my room (single room!)