giac gio.

so, i’ve been sick. i try my best to hide it, but my voice always gives me away. it lurches and gurgles and doesn’t sound at all right. one of my bosses overheard me say something to the security guard and insisted that we go to a doctor.

we went to the pharmacy and bought medicine. that was fine with me and i was ready to go home until it was suggested that i receive the ‘giac goi’ treatment. i was driven to his house and escorted up to the bedroom where i was instructed to take my shirt off and wait. i did.

‘giac gio’ means to cup the wind. evidently, this was an ancient method of curing illnesses. inside every person there are winds. inside of a sick person the wind is bad and must be removed.

a thin man walked in the room with a cigarette limply hanging from his mouth. he had his shirt unbuttoned and carried a small, wooden, blue case. he told me to lay down.

he first gave me a massage. it wasn’t the most relaxing massage in the world. his hands were bony and my back is amply fleshy. he didn’t rub the muscles, he pounded them and slapped them and made rhythmic sounds. he started to rub my back with what felt like a pencil. it was thin and sharp and he dug deeply. i winced but imagined it was all part of some culturally redeeming experience.

the man sat up, turned to my boss and said, ‘yep, he’s full of a lot of bad wind.’ (many bad puns or jokes could be made here but i will tastefully refrain.)

he opened his blue box of wonders. it was full of glasses that were about the size of a baseball and about the shape of a flower bulb with one end sliced off. he opened a jar that held clear liquid. he took out a wand with a wooly end and dipped it in the jar. the wand burst into flames a few inches from my face. he shook the flaming wand over the glasses. the fun began.

he put the wand inside of a glass and pressed it on my back. the fire created a vacuum and the glass sucked to my skin. he slid it down from the top of my back to the bottom of my back and pulled it off making a ‘pop’ noise. he put the wand back in the glass and slid down. ‘pop’ this went on for a few minutes and he repeated his diagnosis. i was full of bad wind and needed it out immediately.

he took all the jars out of his box and stuck them to my back. he would put the flaming wand in the jar, stick it to my back, grab another jar, stick it to my back and so on. he had about 25 jars.

soon my back was covered with these jars. they pulled at the skin and i was tense all throughout my chest. the experience was uncomfortable to mildly painful.

the man now sat between my legs. this was becoming strange. he gave me a massage all over my legs, feet and my buttocks. he would slap and bang and hit and slap. it wasn’t a very relaxing massage. the most macabre moment occurred when this frail, old man was slapping my butt rhythmically, much like a bongo player would play the bongos, and i was laying face down with 25 glasses sucking on my back creating giant hickies.

he then moved from between my legs (i relaxed a bit) and began repositioning the glasses. he could see where some were working better than others. he began to massage my arm. he moved them again and massaged my other arm, making sure to crack all my fingers whether they wanted cracking or not.

finally he removed all the glasses and told me that i would be better soon. i came home and showed jack. my back was covered with large, reddish purple marks. he counted a total of 44 of them. i’ll have pictures soon.

when it feels like summer, one shouldn’t have a cold. colds are for days that are blistering. colds are for days when you have nothing better to do than sit under a comforter watching television drinking how cider spiced with cinnamon. here, it is always summer. i have long forgotten what a blistering wind feels like. i have no recollection of snow.

i have a cold and it is hot. my face feels like a giant pimple rests behind my nose constantly seeping ooze. i have a cold and my nose runs. my nose runs and i sweat. one should not be sweating and whipping snot at the same time.

when one is sick they think of little else. they sit and sit and think about whipping their nose or if their nose is sore or if the cold is moving down to their throat. when one is well, one doesn’t take full advantage of their health. one sits around and watches espn (as i remember) or they go up to the kitchen, walk from one side to another wondering what they should be doing only to resign themselves to opening the cupboard and taking out a bag of salted something or other and eating them while continuing to think about what they should do.

back to the heat. i remember having a cold one summer and thinking it was the most terrible thing in the world; it would never happen to me again. i sniffled and blew and complained. i wasn’t enjoying the warmth or the air or anything that summer brings. now it is hot all year long. there are two seasons here: hot and hot with rain.

most of the students said i had a cold because we were changing seasons. the dry season is now beginning. i have not noticed a change in seasons but one class was so determined to make me well that they brought me over an entire bag of fruit and five (count them, five) liters of whole milk. maybe they want to fatten me up and make me well at the same time.

how to learn english better.

we had a conference, a gathering, with all of the english major students. all 300is of them piled into a room and waited for the annual meeting to begin.

i was asked a few weeks ago to talk at a gathering for the students. i was not told who would be there or what to talk about. my only guidance was that i was to talk about how to improve student's reading skills. oh, how to guide a group of 300 students, some of whom just began studying and others of whom have had a couple of english lit classes with me, on how to improve their reading ability in 20 minutes. well, at least i had powerpoint. lots of pictures.

so, the meeting began and we sat at the front with the complimentary bottle of water. the mc walked to the front and, to my astonishment, began the meeting with a clapping game. he would clap and the crowd would follow him and then, at his choosing, he would intentionally miss his hands, the students would clap and we would all laugh. i did more brow furrowing than laughing.

my speech began and went well. i talked about culture and understanding literature which was way above some students heads, a bit below some and right on for only a handful. i asked questions like, if an author talks about a character and tries to describe them by saying something that is one of our 'general cultural assumptions' the student must understand this. for example, if an author talks about a girl that gets married at the age of 19, that character would more than likely be uneducated, naive. i gave modern examples and historic examples (for example, how did charles dickens describe characters based on his own culture's generally accepted assumptions).

after my presentation the mc strolled back to the front. he sang the song, 'sealed with a kiss.' need i say more? everyone clapped and he asked a student to volunteer to sing another song. a student humbly walked to the front and sang a song about love and loss and pain and more love that heavily influenced by michael bolton.

the next presentation. more generalizations, theories, powerpoint glamour.

mc back to the front. this time he gets five students to come to the front and play a game in vietnamese where they have to answer all say that they are a 'piece of __________' and fill in the blank with another something that one can be a piece of. the students took turns and, if one made a mistake, they were forced to sit down. the game continued for far too long and there was much giggling.

more presentations and pomp. people think they know things when we are really all quite dim.

it was hard to take it all very seriously. it was like a gameshow and a discovery program all wrapped up in one. it was a mess.

a child has a moral debt to pay their parents. they have given them food, shelter and, more importantly, life. in vietnam, this rests at the base of culture. people used to not cut their hair because that would be desecrating the body their parents gave them. to cut your hair or to shave would show that you are not pleased with who you are. while this debt could never be paid off, people are not fatalistic about it. it is their duty to compensate their parents in any way possible. they would never put their parents in a nursing home. they try to make their families as happy and content as possible and this means listening to their parents in every circumstance. we are not taught this. i believe we are taught that it is the parent's responsibility to raise the children. it is some how their duty and, while we should be thankful and loving, it is definitely not a prerequisite. if a parent does a poor job of raising a child, that child will not show eternal love or thanks. things are not the same here. we are to thank all of our ancestors for giving life to the next generation. if it wouldn't be for them, we would not be here. i think we, in western culture, overlook that a bit much.

in my english literature class we often deal with mortality.

we talk candidly about death and the after life. people here aren't christian so there isn't any basic cultural assumption of what happens to you if you die. people don't initially say you go to heave or hell nor do they have any concise understanding of what either place is. may people who believe in god (many students are firm atheists) still don't believe in an afterlife. many believe that people are punished here on earth. many of them focus on the cycle of life and how death is an inevitable part of it.

we were all taking a break from class this morning and i was talking to a girl i don't normally talk to. we were standing outside in the blazing morning sun. she was eating a sandwich.

she always hides behind large glasses but is usually smiling. she doesn't say much in class but routinely participates. i asked her how she was doing. she replied, 'so-so.'

normally i try to follow up an answer to 'how are you' with some other probing questions. i want the students to practice a bit of their english and come up with a reason for feeling wonderful, tired or just so-so. she looked down at the ground, bit her sandwich and looked really hurt. i wondered if i had made a mistake in asking her the question so i tried to think of something else to say.

'i went home last weekend.'

i didn't understand why that would make someone so sad here. normally the family is the most important part of someone's life. the students who go to school even thirty kilometers away from home talk about how far it is and how they never see their family. i've had students who live outside of long xuyen and have to live on campus come up to me and said they could sympathise with me for living so far away from home. going home is a joyous event.

'oh, and how is your family?'

there it was. it was an invisible land mine in the conversation that i could not avoid. i couldn't even see it. it was a booby-trap placed in a dense jungle. i walked right into it and the next thing i knew, there was a flash and i was missing two legs.

'my father died.'

there it was. she looked away, broke off part of her sandwich and gave it to me. i don't know why she gave me a part of her sandwich but i ate it. she looked back up and here eyes were red. i didn't know what to say. i didn't know how to act. i'm a teacher. she's a student. i'm a man. she's a woman. i do not have words to console someone who has experienced a loss of that magnitude. my stammering and stuttering and attempts at sincerity would have been lost in a cultural divide. i wanted to give her a hug but that would have been terrible. i wanted to tell her something, anything.

'wow. that must be hard.'

then there was a moment that couldn't have been more than twenty seconds but was one of those famed moments that last for a distressing amount of time in your mind. they hang, they don't move. your mind races and there is no answer even though the clock is ticking. i should say something. i should do something. i should have seen where i was going and avoided this topic.

'it's ok. my older sister and my mother really love me.'

and with that, the bell rang and class began again. she walked inside, sat down. i walked inside, taught. it was over. i couldn't teach well, not because i was choked up, just because all the talk about death and the afterlife doesn't really matter to us poor souls who still inhabit earth. all i teach is speculation. her pain was real.

the 22nd seagames are coming to vietnam. you don't know what the seagames are? let me explain.

the seagames are the south east asian games. this is somewhat like the developing nation's olympics. the games are being held in vietnam and people are incredibly excited. many people wear shirts with the logo. the logo is a large bull with a yellow belt holding both hands in the air. he is celebrating. he is grinning. he is the winner.

the games won't be held until december. there is a large sign in long xuyen that welcomes the seagames even though we won't be any part of it.

every night we watch the news. the newscaster always talks about the seagames. normally we watch ping-pong highlights or maybe badminton. sometimes it's football. the seagames are wonderful.

the seagames actually has an official song. i have tried to sing it in karaokee with little success. you hear it in coffee shops all over the country and we are proud to off all of our viewers a translation of the song. please, sit back and enjoy.

for the world of tomorrow:

hand in hand for happiness of amnkind we walk together

eastern sunshine up seagames vietnam isa expecting for a long time

eager hearts get deep in emotional for the victory

from your eyes i have my hope the dream i share with you

best that now we try for the future is in our hands

all together gloriously ha noi with seagames

tomorrow we believe in let's sing out our song

this moment we keep in mind for the world of tomorrow.

MOYER, JONATHAN
4/22/2003 $300.00
WHEELING, IL 60090
HARBOR HOUSE/PRESIDENT -[Contribution]
NATIONAL REPUBLICAN CONGRESSIONAL COMMITTEE

i found a website on the internet that listed all the people who have made political contributions. just thought it was interesting. (by the way, if you care about changing anything in the world for the better, please do something to support mr. dennis kucinich HERE.)

i'd like to talk a bit more about being famous.

i'm teaching augustine's 'confessions' in my literature class and he said a number of things that stuck close to home. he talked about how he longed to be important; he wanted to be known. he went to law school and decided that he could lie his way to the top. he rebuked christianity because it required him to be humble. he, 'could not bear to be a little one; i was swollen with pride, but to myself i seemed a very big man.'

in a lot of ways that's fairly parallel to our experience here. we're made out to be a lot more important than we really are. we are treated as dignitaries on and off campus. we are always made to sit in the front row and are given the nicest meals. if we need anything we can talk to the department that was specially created to cater to our needs. the 'international relations department' is only a phone call away and any grievance or want we have, they can satiate.

we also lie. no, they're not lies that are truly important, but it's important to realize that they still are lies. we tell people how interesting they are or how nice they look or how much fun we have with them. upon returning home to our foreigner enclave, we bitterly and sarcastically make fun of the same people we were catering to earlier. we definitely lie to move up in our little magic foreign world.

all of the fame goes to your head. all of the people telling you that you are handsome (they tell everyone here that they're either handsome or beautiful) or that you speak vietnamese wonderfully, they all burrow their way into your ego and expand. all the people saying that we're such heroes for coming so far away from home and working as a volunteer to help people have no idea how easy this life really is. they have no idea how much we are getting out of it all, they have no idea how much meaning there is in an experience like this.

i don't think my motivations here are malicious; i don't come here for the fame. i do think that the fame has gotten to me in some regards. i have learned to live with it and appreciate it. i revel in it even though it all seems terribly fake to me. it, however, is not remotely fake to the people who approach us in restaurants. their eyes beam when we speak vietnamese and they're handshakes are warm and sincere. their sincerity has eroded in on our reality. their sincerity has become commonplace. our 'sincerity tolerance' is sky high and, when that happens, sarcasm takes over.

eating in slummy environments.

tonight we had goat meat. the restaurant is an odd mix of tables and the ambiance can clearly be defined as 'dank'. old men sit around with their shirts unbuttoned and their cigarette smoke wafting through the air inhaling goat meat of all sorts. well, actually, they only have three dishes: curry goat, grilled goat and goat stew. we always opt for the first two seeing as how the last dish is full of stodgy bones. no american likes bones.

we eat and people marvel at our presence. it's like beign super heroes. we sit there and people come up to us and ask us where we are from and are 'shocked and awed' at our vietnamese. they spend too much time with us and we get perturbed, but not visably. a long time ago i wrote on this blog about being a super star and how i wouldn't be able to handle it. it would all be too fake and there would be too many people who wanted to talk to me and something would die inside of me. it turned out to be an ominous forecast. i am a super star here. the relationships are incredibly fake and, when we go out, we are followed. when no one approaches us, we wonder what is wrong.

we leave the goat restaurant in all of its bleakness. we walk past the dirty tables and the filthy floor. we pick up the motorcycle. it is parked out by a tent which houses another three tables. people at the tables ask us to walk over and talk. we sit and talk and enjoy the fame. we know we won't be famous for long.

this has little or nothing to do with vietnam. found some pictures on the internet that i liked a lot.



this is a picture of a daisy cutter. it weights 15,000 pounds, is droped from a cargo plane cause it's too heavy and clears out an area of about three miles (according to bbc). we dropped 11 of them on iraq in the first war and a few in afghanistan. yee haw!



this is a picture of a leaflet we dropped in the first iraq war depicting a daisy cutter bomb. the translation says, 'flee and save your life, or remain and meet your death.'





this is a picture of one of the leaflets we dropped in iraq before the second war.

lieutenant general charles horner was the commander of the air force at the time the 11 daisy cutters were dropped. he was born in iowa and flew air missions over northern vietnam.

i am unaware if coalition forces know of his whereabouts but here is a picture:

poor logic pervades all parts of the world. here are some examples from my experience.

one of the ladies in charge of making sure our stay here is comfortable told julie why she was getting no dial-tone when she picked up the phone. julie was sure that it was the line but our administrative friend said it was the actual phone. julie explained to her that that she had switched the phone with my phone and that her phone worked in my room and mine didn’t work in her room. our administrative friend sent the post office (these are chaps clad in lazy brown uniforms who are in charge of fixing phones and what not). the man came in julie’s room, checked the phone and decided the problem was in the wall. that all took two weeks.

one teacher was talking to me the other day and he was explaining why he liked to go on chat rooms on the internet. he said that they were wonderful places where you could meet new people and practice english but that he didn’t trust anyone. that is, until the other day. the other day he met a lady on the internet and she told him that he could trust her. she told him that she was not lying about who she was and that she was an honest person. she even gave him her email address. he went on to tell me about how he now trusts people on the internet and that this lady could not have been lying because she furnished him with her email address.

a different teacher went on the internet the other day in a chat room and informed us all that he met the dali lama. he asked us if we had heard about the dali lama. we informed him we had but couldn’t believe that it was the dali lama. the teacher told us that the dali lama informed him that, if he wanted his ‘one wish’ to come true, he would have to tell as many people as possible the following saying: ‘you do not fail until you quit.’ he told us that we should also go about telling other people this saying. only by spreading the word as much as possible could his ‘one wish’ possibly come true. now that you have heard this, it is your duty to follow the chat-room dali lama and pass the message on to others.

i play soccer with the education department when we have our bi-annual tournaments. we play against three other departments: economics (they’re not very good), agriculture (they’re excellent and tanned) and the maintenance/security department (they’re ok and it’s the first time i’ve ever seen them with a red face that wasn’t induced by rice wine drinking). last year i had the ill-fortune of falling down while trying to score a goal. the field is a nightmare filled in with glass and chunks of rocks not to mention one patch of thick mud where the ball always stops. there is also the reminisce of an old curb near one of the sidelines. i fell over that because, well, it’s a large curb sticking out of the gravel and mud. that was last year. this year i was trying to be heroic. we were deadlocked with the normally placid economics department. they had scored two goals (both of which dribbled through the legs of our goalie. our department chair, who is a little too rotund to play, but thoroughly enjoys watching, berated him, harangued him, for five minutes.) i played defense on the team of four. the sidelines are packed with students beating drums and cheering on their teachers. i needed to safe face in front of the students and didn’t want to be lambasted by the chair of the department. a ball dribbled down towards the goal. an economics player darted after it. i caught him with much pumping of legs and swinging of arms. an ‘oooohhh!’ went up from the crowd. the goalie came out from his net, his legs widely swaying from side to side. the economics player was going to kick the ball. i only had seconds to decide. would i drop to the ground, stop the ball, potentially save the game and bring much glory and honor to the education department? or, would i stand my ground, try to lunge forward and risk letting him get the shot off? there was no choice. it was my duty, my honor, to drop to the ground and block the shot. in doing so, i bloodied my knee pretty badly. it turned out that i ended up sliding on one of the only patches of cinder on the entire field. there are many patches of rough stones but none of cinder. i was taken to the nurse, she cleaned my wound (picking out little stones) and i played the second half. our team won and glory was brought upon the education department.

here is where things become completely illogical (not saying my servitude and idolatry of the football match isn’t illogical): one teacher decided he understood why i fell down. he thought i was too big and that, when running at any speed, i would have to fall down to stop. if i didn’t fall down, who knows what would happen. i may end up running headlong into a building or a motorbike or a 80 pound girl in an ao dai. he also decided that my equilibrium was off kilter because of my nose injury. i was assaulted a year or so ago and the teacher knew my nose was broken and i couldn’t smell. because of this injury, when traveling at high speeds, i was prone to falling. mind you, i have fallen two times in a year long period, somehow, the teacher was not going to be moved from his point. his point was simple and he was frustrated i wasn’t buying it: you are big, you run fast, you broke your nose and have fallen twice in the past year. that all adds up and all of those events are tragically interconnected. if i do not return, it may be because i got a good head of steam up, ran towards the road, forgot to fall and was hit by a truck. i love you all.

whenever it was dark, i could always rely on my car’s headlight system to get me home safely. i would turn a switch and all of the sudden the road would be illuminated. i didn’t really have to do anything except make sure the battery was good. i took it all for granted. how many nights did i drive home following the safety of these glowing headlights. here, things are different.

my bicycle doesn’t have any lights. it is actually equipped with a small light that is supposed to be powered by the movement of my front tire. it doesn’t work and i have not fixed it. when it did work, it cast a shallow beam on the road ahead of me. if it was pitch black and there no motorbikes to show the way, i would be able to see a frog in my path. if i was observant enough, i would be able to avoid said frog.

when it is raining and after about six o’clock (it gets dark here at about five thirty), the drive home used to be an adventure. driving down the main streets, i would be guided by helpful motorbikes driving the same direction. they would honk and beep and warn my humble bicycle that someone was coming. their light always gave them away before their aural alarms. after the main street came the back road which was not paved and which did not have light from other motorbikes. this road was a desert covered with pressed rock. there was no pavement here. this road was dangerous. i have often hit a piece of rock that had jutted out to the side and swerved off course. i have often slid in a small patch of mud that acts as ice. the road was a hazard.

yesterday two road lights were installed. they were placed high above the road between trees. how magnificent such a small improvement can seem when you’re driving home without the aid of a headlight. how amazing it becomes. i drove home tonight and easily avoided any displaced rock or treacherous patch of mud. the moon was covered with clouds and rain pattered down on my jacket but i was safe. the night was dark but the road was clear. thank your car’s headlights. in the morning, go out and give them a kiss (especially if you travel early!). flick them on and off just to remember that you do not have to travel down murky roads as if swimming in a pool of pitch.

the hippy man.

he sits on the side of the road and sticks out like a sour thumb. he wears two or three hats, has a long graying beard and stringy hair that hangs over his shoulders. he doesn’t wear shoes but his feet have built up a kind of callous around them that serves the same purpose. his shirt is unbuttoned half way down his chest and he has red soars on his chest. he drinks a lot of rice wine which he holds in a clear plastic bag. he sits and stares at everything going on around him. his eyes are different. he looks observant and strangely wise. he looks like he has figured something out about the world but he sure isn’t going to tell anyone.

he looks so strange that we wave to him a lot. it just feels like something you should do to someone you see every other day. he normally doesn’t react to us and continues to drink his rice wine and slouch on the side of the road.

today we were having coffee at our normal coffee shop and, for some reason, the man came up to us and decided to talk. the first think i noticed were his teeth which had rotted through. they were nothing but black stubs inside of his mouth. he had something in his hand and i asked if it was rice wine. he said it wasn’t rice wine because today he didn’t feel well. today he was only drinking lemonade. he raised the bag and asked us if we would like some. it looked harmless but we declined. he spoke quickly and very sharply. his eyes darted around our table searching for something. after a few cursory comments he left. he didn’t smile, but i’ve yet to see him.

we drove back home and he had returned to sitting by the side of the road in the sun with his hats on. i smiled and nodded my head respectfully. he started at me, his eyes trying to say something.

vietnamese woman’s day is two days off. i was wrong yesterday. it’s actually not even woman’s day. it is the 73rd anniversary of the founding of the woman’s organization. here are some stories of historic vietnamese women.

china had subjugated much of the surrounding area and had exported their cultures and customs. they moved south and tried to assimilate vietnam but without success. the vietamese were happy to take some of their customs (namely confucianism) and many of their technologies but refused to be a vassal state. the first real attack on china came from a female vietnamese noble named trung trac. she was avenging the murder of her husband who did not agree with the politics of china. she rallied other noble women, namely her sister, and they defeated the chinese in 40 ad. one of the women, phung thi chinh, is said to have given birth while in battle, strapped the child on her back and continued fighting. the chinese came back and the trung sisters committed suicide.

another famous lady, trieu au, lead thousands of men into battle with the chinese at the end of the third century. she is said to have ridden on top of an elephant wearing golden armor. she was powerful but was defeated and committed suicide rather than suffer the humiliation of surrender.

today there was a television program that talked about all of the women from keing giang province that fought during the american war. the program focused around the lives of three old ladies. they interviewed them and followed them around listening to their stories. they showed pictures of young, determined women with glassy skin and passionate eyes. the women were old now. their hair was grey and their skin was wrinkled. they told stories with passion as if they had happened only a few days ago.

this place has had an incredible history of war. thousands of years with the chinese, a hundred with the french, a few with the Japanese during world war two and then a few with the british after world war two ended and finally, those hapless twenty odd years with the americans. there is quite a lot of energy in the air here. there’s a lot of enthusiasm. people are proud of their country and are excited to see it grow independently. the television show ended with this line: ‘all of the wars have finally passed and now it is time for us to enjoy peace.’

there was interenational women’s day. that was about a half a year ago. that was the day a woman drove past me on her motorbike with her husband sitting behind and yelled, ‘i’m liberated!’

tomorrow is vietnamese woman’s day. we talked to the girls in some of our classes and the girls felt they were completely liberated. they were equal to men. i wondered if that was true anywhere.

when a girl gets married in vietnam they must live with the parents of the groom. they move into this foreign house and live and work until they raise enough money to buy their own house. they live with their mother-in-law and take all directions from them. the mother-in-law is the boss and the new wife must obey.

women here have two jobs. they are in charge of raising the children and, in today’s world, they must have a paying job. women rarely go out with friends and, after a hard day’s work, they must cook. this isn’t a society of ordering out. the food must be bought at the market, brought home and prepared from scratch.

women generally work harder than men in both societies. women generally are not able to rise to the same levels of power as men. in our western society, we feel we are fairly equitable but, in reality, where do we see women actually leading? laura bush going to russia to read books? is that leadership? sure, we have some higher ranking women in government but they are normally placed in marginal positions. our true leaders have always been male and, i’m sure, will always be male.

my cultural observations:

confucianism and individualism. that’s how the class would describe the difference between the west and the east. some of them would start by saying, ‘individualism and communism’ but i would quickly note that communism was a western import. where was marx from anyway?

what is confucianism and what is individualism? this is my view: individualism says that we are all islands; we all make decisions. we choose the food we eat, the clothes we wear and the lifestyle that we adhere to. our society had a number of different groups or cliques and we are diverse. we are all islands. we stand apart from one another and make our own choices. this does not mean that we do not influence each other. some islands that are closer to me will influence me more greatly. for example, my parents will have a larger impact on me than some farmer in western wyoming.

confucianism is similar. everyone is still an island for no one can escape the reality that we all make decisions for ourselves. even if the decision is to follow someone completely, that is still a decision made by the individual. so, we are still islands. the difference is that the islands have a greater effect on one another. if one island says something, the other islands can easily observe and follow course.

there are some similarities that people don’t normally look at. for example, in western culture, sometimes the islands are in close proximity to one another. when high school students attempt to fit into cliques, they do everything in their power to be as uniform as everyone else even if it means being different from the whole. people will watch one another and emulate the most fashionable clothes and the most popular way of relating to one another. in this way, islands are grouped closely together. in eastern society, the islands are grouped closely, but nothing like the close grouping of cliques. fashionable cliques, whether they be pro-status quo or anti-status quo, are islands that influence each other, in some ways, more powerfully than family.

in eastern culture, these cliques do not exist. there are some groupings of people but nothing as strident as we can see in america. when people follow one another, they do so following preset guidelines. these guidelines have been understood for generations. the laws of society are known. in america, the laws are ever-changing. the laws do not exist.

so, in my view, we are all islands, east and west. we exert different amounts of pressure on one another based on predetermined cultural differences. sometimes the east can put more pressure on an island and sometimes the west.

culture’s are fascinating. understanding them is all assumptions. the above was wholly my opinion.

restaurant.

they come to ask what you would like to drink. they ask you what food you would like. you tell them what you would like and they alter it fifteen times. they tell you what is special tonight. you listen and change your order.

you sit and wait for your food. the waiters and waitresses fill your glass with ice umpteen times. they don’t wait and ask if you want more ice. they take old pieces of ice out and put larger, fresher pieces in. they bring mosquito coils which burn and keep bugs away. they sit on their haunches and work feverishly on lighting them. the food comes and it’s wonderful. the waiters and waitresses stand in the background watching everyone’s move. between courses they change bowls and chopsticks. they watch the tables like hawks. they bring new straws in the middle of meals. they change napkins. they bring new chopsticks in an instant if one of them hits the floor.

all in all it’s like being a king. these restaurants are not posh places, they are simply places where a family can eat for about 10 dollars. the waiters and waitresses serve you hand and foot. they tirelessly work with a brilliant smile only addressing you in the most formal vietnamese only to watch you pay your bill and leave. you leave no tip and it is rude to thank them. you don’t thank people in this society who are doing their job. if you thank them it means that they are going above and beyond the call of duty. you thank them if they were bad waitresses or waiters. the thanks they receive is a brief smile and a partial hint that they did their job well. what a world.

we met a number of young, happy vietnamese girls the other day. they all wanted to marry.

'which one of us is the most beautiful?', the ugliest one asked. it's a question i've never figured out how to answer. i shuffle a bit, look up to the sky and say, 'well, it's hard to choose. you're all so beautiful.' that satisfies something and they giggle. 'which one of us would you marry?', the same girl asks. another question that's hard to answer. i say, 'um, i'd like to marry all of you but i don't think it would work. our cultures are so different.' they laugh. i don't want to offend them but probably just should and get it all over with.

i'd say something like this, 'i can't marry any of you. do you know where i come from? do you realize how drastically different everything is over there? can you imagine living in a world where people don't understand the most basic elements of your culture? at some point i would like to go home. i couldn't live here with your family. i'd be miserable. i don't know what i would do. would i teach at a university here my whole life? i don't think i would enjoy it. would you come home with me to america and eat pizza and watch cnn? do you think you would enjoy that? what about your family and your homeland which is sacred. how could you possibly leave them for adventures in another country and still be happy?'

i'd say something like that. many people here believe that a cross-cultural relationship is necessary for the enrichment of my stay here. they think that spending the rest of my life with a vietnamese girl would be the most absolutely necessary thing they can think of. i've been told hundreds of times to, 'lay vo viet nam di!.' which means, 'take a vietnamese wife now!'

i personally couldn't imagine spending my life with a woman from such a drastically different culture. maybe i'm selfish.

still, i tell everyone here that i'm looking; i'm waiting and hoping. someday, i say, i'll get lucky. i smirk and they smile.

when mud is pressed down and wet it is brown ice. i drove on brown ice today and had an accident. there was no one else involved in the accident except someone i was carrying on the back of the motorbike.

we drove along slowly on the outer edge of an island in the middle of the river. the road was only a footpath that was still very wet from earlier rain. we drove very slowly amazed at the beauty. the river and the clouds and the wind. then, out of no where, we lost our center of gravity. we slid down an embankment. we slid towards the river and i couldn't stop. i would grab something and the person behind me would push and the bike would pull and the mud continued to give way. we stopped. i escaped with no burns and minor bruises. the bike was muddy. my friend was muddy. the mud was fine.

i was shaking but we drove on. we drove on and on and on. we were trying to reach the end of the island before darkness came. we were going to eat.

on one of the roads i got a flat tire. the road was covered in large rocks and we bounced up and down and all of the sudden the bike was flub-dub-dubbing along. we stopped to fix it.

it was now dark and a family had gathered in a small room next to a small house on stilts. a man fixed my bike and we chatted with the family. there were eight people there, all living in teh same house. the youngest boy of the oldest man was the mechanic. he was 24 and looked 18. he was married to a girl who was holding a baby and kept asking us to hold it. the baby was a year old, or so. the oldest man asked me how much money i would buy the baby for. i really didn't know how to answer that question. i ignored it. the girls came with water and washed our pants and feet. the mechanic kept making wise-cracks and fixed the back tube. they fix the tube like this:

the bring the bike into the garage and move everything to make space. they remove the tube from inside of the tire without taking the tire off of the frame. they slide the tube around and around placing parts of it in a bucket of muddy water to look for holes. they find the hole. a man begins to light a fire in a small, metal tin. he lights it and pours more and more oil in making the fire hotter. the mechanic cleans the tube and prepares a patch. he places the patch on the tire and positions it on top of some sort of a press. the fire is placed on top of the tube and the patch and the press is tightened. they leave the fire on the tube for a few minutes. by this point the man asks me again how much i would buy his grandson for. i skirt around the question. they let the tube cool and try it again in the water. they place it back inside the tire, put the tire back on the rim and fill it with air.

i decided to say i woudl buy the baby for one million dollars. the man looked excited, shocked. he asked how much that was in dong and i said it was about 1,550,000,000 dong. he smiled broadly. i told him i didn't have the money but would maybe return someday. i paid 10,000 for the tire to be fixed. i don't think i'll go back for the baby.

i've never been so flattered in all my life.

movie night. this has little or nothing to do with vietnam and everything to do with my shock and awe (nothing to do with bombing).

we show a movie every friday night. we always ask the students to post about the movie on the internet. the students who have the most enlightening things to say will win a prize. we give the prizes out in the middle of the movie when most of the people are there. we give out copies of last weeks movie (thanks to no intellectual property rights) and money. we give four prizes.

i announced the prizes with the normal fanfare of a basic powerpoint presentation and lots of hype. everything went to plan. then things turned chaotic. i have never been so honored in my life.

we had about 150 students there last night. they stood there and jack came to the front to talk a bit. i knew something was going terribly wrong. they were going to give me something. i stood off to the side in my khaki pants and red, button-up shirt with my arms folded. a gigantic grin was plastered on my face. i couldn't seem to get rid of it.

he talked about the difficulties i had setting up movie night and how much work i put into the event every week. i had worked hard. i had to write a number of petitions and have a number of meetings with people who didn't like the idea at all. that's all not to mention the political implications. i knew i worked hard but i also knew i didn't deserve this.

they presented me with a vase imprinted with the universitiy's logo, two bunches of flowers and an incredibly well made certificate of appreciation. it is embroidered on black satin and says, 'in appreciation to jonathan moyer, president and founder of mnapcu.' (mnapcu is the abbreviation for the fake organization i thought up, 'the movie night association for the perpetuation of cultural understanding. sounds real important.) jack also sang a song he wrote about me. the title of the song was, 'old hobo.' lines include, 'he loves chomsky and thoreau and hates george w.' and many references to me being a hobo. long story.

i left feeling lighter than air. i have never been singled out for such recognition in my life. i understand that, in the scope of things, this is really nothing but it's so nice to know that the students really appreciate what i'm doing here. i almost cried.

there is a german family living at the international guest house. they have a small child who walks around freely. he goes where he pleases and makes friends at random.

he comes up to our room and talks to us. i don't know any german and simply respond with, 'das es gut.' i think he knows that we're just bluffing, but he plays along. sometimes he speaks to us tirelessly when his mom is around and she translates. she says he is just speaking nonsense. he says things like, 'i want to ask you a question, umm, i was thinking the other day that... well... what do you do over here when...' he fools us completely.

the other day he was in julie's room and was speaking to her quickly in german. she was agreeing with whatever he said. he became nervous and started to walk around the room. julie said she didn't really notice. she went about her work. it turns out he wet his pants and was asking for the bathroom. he asked his mother to tell julie that he didn't know where the bathroom was and just wanted to go.

vietnamese is a fascinating language. i know i’ve spoke of it in the past but i would like to give some general observations.

grammar is fairly rudimentary. you do not conjugate any words like we do in european languages (i go, i went in). if you say something like ‘i would like to go and eat’ you can simply say ‘i want go eat rice’ ((ignoring tones and vowel marks) toi muon di an com). to say something that occurred in the past or in the future, you simply add tag words like da, se, sap, moi, roi, chua. they all mean something slightly different. most of the time, if it’s established in a story that it happened in the past, you don’t have to use them.

while the grammar is incredibly simple, the tones, complicated vocabulary and the varied use of pronouns make it very difficult. there are six tones in vietnamese. one rises, one falls, one is a very low tone, one is a falling rising tone and one falls, breaks and rises sharply. each word has a different tone and the tones are indispensable. you will not be understood if your tones are not flawless. (it would be like someone saying IM-por-tant instead of im-POR-tant. it’s very hard to understand. sounds like impotent.) each word (as we define a word) is monosyllabic and has six different meanings. things get much more confusing when you beginning making compound words. for example, the word ‘ba’ can mean (knew some of these, had to look the rest up): three, old lady, poison, waste, at random or count. that’s ‘ba’ with the regular ‘a’. there are three kinds of ‘a’ and if you use all three combinations, ‘ba’ can mean 18 different things.

the use of pronouns is fascinating and it says a lot about vietnamese culture. i surely don’t know all the pronouns but i can give you a good listing of them. in every conversation you have to qualify the person you are speaking to into a category. if it’s someone you just met and they’re about your age or a bit older and male you refer to them as ‘anh’. if they are a bit older and female you call them ‘chi’. if they are very old and female, ‘ba’. if they are very old and male, ‘ong’. if they are younger than you but older than a small child, they are ‘em’. if they are a small child, they are ‘con’ or ‘chau’. if the person is your acquaintance, you can call them ‘ban’. you also have to refer to yourself in the third person. if someone calls you ‘em’ you have to start calling yourself ‘em’ when talking to that person and referring to yourself. different professions also have different pronouns. for example, male teachers are ‘thay’ and female teachers are ‘co’. also, if you have a closer relationship with someone you have to use different pronouns. if someone is older than you, male and you are very good friends, you can call them ‘dai ca’. you can also call people by aunt and uncle, or ‘chu’ and ‘di’. also, there are imports from china that are used. a master is ‘su phu’ and a apprentice is ‘de tu’. also, an older lady who is a good friend is ‘su ty’, a younger male is ‘su de’, a younger female is ‘su muoi’ (or su moi, don’t remember). this is just the tip of the iceberg.

everyone has to qualify themselves in conversation they are placed in society’s hierarchy. it feels strange to lower yourself and call yourself ‘em’ to someone. it feels strange to call someone else ‘em’. it feels strange when someone calls me ‘ong thay’, a very respectful form of calling someone a teacher. i don’t deserve it. i also don’t want to lower someone else. here, as i see it, people don’t see it as lowering someone or raising someone else. it’s all simple a matter of tradition and culture. no one feels bad when they are called ‘em’ and no one gets a big head when they’re called ‘ong thay’. what a wild, wild world we live in. there’s so much for us to do. there’s so much for us to learn and who really takes advantage of it all.

this is a picture of the ad building at school.



this is a picture of the long xuyen market, albeit a bad one.



this is a picture of me and ho chi minh city.



this is a picture of jack.

we show movies every friday night. it takes a lot of time to prepare and select the movie but it's always a big hit. last friday we showed a movie called 'ice age.' it is a disney cartoon about three animals trying to save a baby. i thought it would be a little below all of the students but the response to the movie was amazing. here is one email:

Hi Jon,
I drop you some lines to show the fullness of my heart about “Ice Age”. It’s truly to say that it is the best cartoon I have ever seen…When I was watching the film, I got many feelings. Fristly, it seems to be very humorous, lovely and lively. Though Manny, Sid and Diego have specific charaters, I love all of them. I felt moved when Manfred was upset reminding about his family broken by human, yet he determined to return the baby to its owners…The irreplaceable character is Sid- a clumsy and funny sloth. He makes the film more comfortable by his lovability.
In the end, I was choked with emotion watching their separation . After such a long and rough trip, they hang togethervery well. Surprisingly, Diego was still alive. It is a big reward for audience who melt into tear seeing his dead( including me ).

here are some questions one of my old teachers asked me in an email.

Where do you feel Vietnam is headed?

well, this country is definitely headed upwards. the development here and the changes have been so rapid that they are visible even in my short stay here. ho chi minh city is growing rapidly. new bridges and roads are being built all over the place. it's really hard to go anywhere and not see development.

This afternoon I noticed the tag inside my pants that they were from Vietnam. Are people there encouraged about prospects for the economy?

yes, people are surely encouraged about their options especially economically. there are many jobs available and people do not have to make much money to have a pretty healthy existence. i was talking to some of the government officials in one of my classes and we were discussing the 'doi moi' program instituted in 1986. basically, 'doi moi' shifted vietnam from an entirely socialist doctrine (binh quan chu nghia) to one that was less so. it offered people more options. before, everyone had a very similar amount of money and resources. now, some people are a little better off than others. sure, people work in factories that make clothes and they don't make a lot of money but it also doesn't take a lot to live. the government has done a wonderful job of keeping prices down for household essentials. to go out and buy a filling meal can cost as little as 5,000 dong (about 33 cents) and i've bought shirts for 10,000 dong. also, one thing that i was surprised about upon entering a socialist country was that every person can own their own shop and there is a real variety of products to choose from. i once heard an argument from a friend about why communism wasn't good. he said he wanted the freedom to sell things wherever and whenever he wanted. that was freedom. he gave the (odd) example of selling italian water ice in front of wal-mart. he said that in communist countries no one was free to buy and sell things at will. well, here that isn't the case. here you can sell things anywhere you choose. roving vendors are ubiquitous. people selling fruit are on every corner. in reality, there would be less freedom to sell things in front of wal-mart. i'm sure they have signs up everywhere that say, 'no solicitors'. odd, that.

What would you feel would be the optimum direction for the country?

well, they're stuck in a bind when it comes to joining the wto. they have to decide whether or not that is going to be their best option. the wto will provide some benefits for the country but it will also take away a lot of their bargaining power. i think they're doing a good job of fostering native industries and not letting them get demolished on the global market right away. it's kind of similar to what america did when it was a young nation.

What choices do they have?

they're stuck between a rock and a hard place. they'll keep developing rapidly because the people have tasted success, peace and they love it. they develop but they have to watch out for the global trade institutions that could end up taking away a good deal of their sovereignty.

one of my students is the vice-head of agriculture for the people’s committee in an giang province. he is an amiable fellow and the class has elected him the classroom monitor. every class has a monitor. they’re in charge of taking roll and making sure everything runs smoothly.

he invited me to his house today. i went. i enjoyed.

his daughter is confined to a wheelchair. he tried to explain what ailment she had but i didn’t understand. today he was killing a cobra. she was to drink its blood and that would help her. he said he knew it wouldn’t cure her. he just thought it would help her in some way. this man is not a witch doctor. he’s quite pragmatic.

i arrived at his home and drove my motorcycle into the front yard. his home was a sand lot and a small pool surrounded by rice paddies. this is the flooding season and, while there hasn’t been as much rain as normal, the surrounding fields were completely flooded. they looked like a sea with small tree stands growing sporadically. it was truly beautiful. boats would pass up and down the canal. the canal looked indistinguishable from the fields. all were covered with murky brown water. i had no idea how the boat captains knew where the river ended and the shallow fields began.

his daughter was sitting on the porch drinking a large glass of cobra’s blood. it was deeply red, as blood should be. we were invited in and we ate. well, as usual, the men ate and the women prepared things.

we had cobra covering a flower that was picked from his pond. the cobra was bony and tough and the flowers were bitter but my face didn’t give away what my mouth was experiencing. we had cobra curry which was actually wonderful. i tried to avoid the cobra but did not have too much success. it is the custom to fill the bowl of the guest at random and the guest is obliged to eat.

i was given a small glass of cobra’s blood for my health. i smiled, ohhed and ahhed and drank. it tasted like iron and dirt and life. that was my saturday.

the school year. people sitting around on long, wooden benches in stuffy, concrete classrooms. i teach every day under a portrait of uncle ho chi minh. i yell over the constant whap, whap, whap, whap, whap, of the overhead fans. life is beautiful.

today we talked about dying for virtue and dying for country. this is a very nationalistic country and the students are no exception. they argued that dying for country was the same as dying for virtue. i tried to walk a fine line and disagree.

people routinely faint in the classroom next to me. about every other period you see a thickish man running with a thin, frail girl who has no shoes on. i don't know what class they are in but the bodies of the girls flop and bounce as dead.

the bell that separates classes is rung by the security guards. they amble out to a tall, thin and round bell, stare at their watch, hold their one ear shut and clang away with a small metal rod. they normally do a good job with the bells except for saturdays. saturdays and sundays is when they drink rice wine. sometimes the bell is about ten minutes late and someone has to go wake the guards up.

there is a german couple staying here. they have an adorable child. we have taken to them and they to us and we have planned to have a little food party this saturday. i forgot how different things operated in other countries. the party is going to be small, only about 8 people but they asked us to go to their house on wednesday to have a pre-planning party. we were having a small party to plan for saturday. 6 people were at the pre-planning party. i couldn't stop giggling.

there is a very annoying person here. he is doing research for his master's degree and always makes sure to tell us what to do. his hair is floppy and circles his head. he is short and smiles a lot but the smile is hiding something sinister. i don't trust him and lock my door.

other than that, things are rosy in the middle of the mekong.