choose your favorite team. place them in the most important match they could be in. tonight vietnam played against thailand in the 22nd seagames. events do not get any bigger.

we sat down in the restaurant to watch the game. we were the only foreigners there. i was wearing my vietnamese jersey. people stared. one hour and a half of pure energy.

the game was being played in ha noi and everyone was ecstatic. there was a large sign that was held up by the crowd. it said ‘vietnam is invincible’. there were huge flags being carried through the stadium. every other person had their face painted. tonight was important. tonight was special.

in every middle school across the world there is that one kid who beats up on everyone else. in the south east asian games, that one kid is thailand. they are always sucker-punching everyone else. they are the strongest country and they come into the seagames with a bit of an advantage. the first football match for vietnam was against their long-term rivals.

we wanted the bully to loose and the underdog to win. we sat in a restaurant with families and groups of friends and watched the television in anticipation.

the game started slowly. people watched but no one really cared. then, out of the blue, everything changed.

a vietnamese player drove up the left side of the field in the second half. the score was tied at zero. he juked out one player and faked out another. he was to the left of the goal when he changed direction and shot a beautifully arching ball over the outstretched hand of the goalie. everyone rose. they all jumped in their seats and we were in a different world for a moment. the entire restaurant was electric. we walked around and people hugged us and started to cheer 'goal! goal! goal!'

a few minutes later a thai player scored. we spent the rest of the game watching the screen and hoping for a win. we hoped for a win and pushed the thought of losing out of our minds.

after the game we talked to a couple of people. they told us how important this game was. here we were, sitting in a small restaurant in long xuyen, a tiny town in the mekong delta. the people we talked to said that this game was being watched by everyone in vietnam. everyone was in a coffee shop or a restaurant. everyone roared when vietnam scored and everyone sighed when the final whistle blew. this was football. this was a real game with real passion.

i never wanted to really talk about this but i can’t quite get it out of my head. every time i drive down the road i see it again. every time i see motorcycles driving six abreast and people crossing in front of them, the memory comes rushing back. at dusk, i always drive slowly.

one day i was driving with jack. he was riding on the back and we were talking about traffic. we were commenting about how drivers simply give and take without caring. no one holds a grudge if someone cuts them off or makes them drive more slowly. traffic flows like water taking the path of least resistance. if someone is driving slowly, just pass them on the other side of the road as long as you don’t see anyone else. on major roads (roads we would call two lane roads), normally motorcycles drive in both directions riding six or seven abreast. the slower drivers are always on the right.

if you want to cross the road, simply walk slowly and watch. the drivers will see you as long as you don’t make any sudden movements. you can cross the busiest road as long as you simply keep a slow, consistent pace.

in this culture as in any culture, the youth always drive recklosly. they feel power for the first time and they take advantage of it. they leave the constant care of their parents and they are free. when i was 16, i too took advantage of my freedom. i drove, at times, wildly. i pushed the limits only because i could. there was no one there to tell me to stop. i drove down back pennsylvania roads and kicked up a cloud of dust. i was in my own world. here, young people also drive wildly. they zip through traffic. they weave and slide. one moment they look graceful, like birds. the next moment they look suicidal.

we were driving and chatting when we saw two motorbikes driving towards us. they were flying. their lights were on and they were weaving through traffic, following each other closely.

there was someone crossing the street. i didn’t really notice him until he was too late. he was a man in his mid thirties normally dressed. he was walking slowly and following all of the unwritten rules.

the first motorcycle saw him at the last moment. he jerked out of the way smoothly and gracefully. it was a skillful move and i, for a moment was stunned.

then time slowed down.

the other bicycle was following him. he didn’t see the man walking because his friend was in the lead. he was driving a white motorbike and the light was on. the man walking across the street was looking at the bike that narrowly missed him. slowly the white motorbike impacted the man. the light seemed to hit him first. the man slowly crumbled under the speed and weight of the bike. he fell like someone took an axe and chopped off both of his legs. he fell quickly and was engulfed in the motorbike. the light went out and there was a sound. it sounded like a baseball bat hitting a plastic wall. it run through the air and was, for a moment, louder than the honking and the whirring of engines. one of the man’s shoes flew into the air. it flew high and spun. it flew forever. it tried to get away. the shoe spun and spun and was orange. the man was crushed by the motorcycle and time resumed its normal pace.

we drove and slowed. the man was on the ground and wasn’t moving. the bicycle was on its side and the two people riding on it were also on the ground. their legs and arms were slowly moving. traffic slowed and stopped. no one said a word.

the sound will stay with me the longest. the sound of a human body being brutalized. the sound of technology meeting flesh. the sound of a person’s life being changed in an instant.

i don’t know what happened to him. i don’t know if he lived. i know nothing except the sound and the light.

the barber shop.

it's always full of a strange mixture of men. the are the least homogenous group you can find in long xuyen. today i had my hair cut in the 'style of the vietnamese teacher' as i requested. it is floppy and short on the sides and i feel like i am once again in fourth grade. oh, yes, and i do part it over to the right. if only my brother could see me now.

the barber shop is hot and poorly lit. there are eight chairs crammed together facing grey mirrors. one of the barbers is a very fat, middle aged man with short hair. another is a very young man with red hair who is pushing every social norm he can find. another is very old and thin and doesn't seem to have time to tend to his own hair. another is middle aged, in good shape with a blazing head of blonde hair. another looks like a mechanic.

they stand behind you silently cutting with some sort of perforated scissors. they look and cut and walk around and put white powder on your hair. they don't say much except when it comes to yelling at one another.

my barber is the red headed one. i didn't choose him, he was chosen for me. he did a good job of making me look like a 12 year old. he ambled around my head six or ten times admiring his work. he sprayed hairspray on my head that was called 'darling hair spray'. he parted my hair in the 'style of the vietnamese teacher' and i was on my way. 10,000 dong (70 cents) for a haircut and thirty minutes of interesting people to watch. not a bad deal if you ask me.

thanksgiving in vietnam. agh, what to eat...

for breakfast, instead of a nice, raisin bagel with cream-cheese and a strong cup of black coffee or maybe two eggs over-easy with rye toast and butter or instead of chipped beef on toast with a side of hash browns, i ate a bowl of noodles. there were small strips of pork on top which had cooled in the morning sun. they were tough but eatable. the whole thing was covered with fish sauce, which smells of old socks, and spicy, ground up chili. i did have a cup of coffee, but it wasn't hot.

for lunch, instead of a slice of turkey with moist stuffing covered with rich, brown gravy, instead of mashed potatoes a little chunky with a slab of butter, instead of creamed corn or beans, instead of cranberry sauce or pickles, i had rice. i had three bowls of rice with small pieces of pork. the pork was also cool after sitting out for a few hours. we also had soup. it's not really soup, rather pieces of vegetables boiled in water. you can dip them in fish sauce and they're not that bad.

for supper, instead of a slice of pizza with mushrooms and peppers where the cheese slides off onto your plate, instead of a cold turkey sandwich with bbq chips and a side of applesauce, we had what we could to replicate thanksgiving. we ate fish and onion rings. we ate couple different fish dishes. some of them were covered in a sauce, some of them were just fried and some of them were boiled. the onion rings are a complete anomaly and they remind me of home. we ate a couple of plates of onion rings.

i wasn't able to watch the detroit lions get pummeled or pass out on a sofa after eating, instead, i've returned home and continued working. i miss home. i miss the tradition that thanksgiving is. i miss my family and friends. missing them doesn't feel like a sharp, burning pain in the side, no, missing them feels like a dull ach in the back of your soul that doesn't ever quite go away. it's always there. you can ignore it if you choose, which i do most of the time, but a day like thanksgiving brings it all to the forefront.

well, know that i love you all. i wish you all the happiest thanksgiving you've ever had. eat until you are stuffed. pass out on the sofa in front of the tv. watch the lions get trounced and eat a cold turkey sandwich with bbq chips and applesauce for me.

happy thanksgiving.

this may be familiar to some of you. i was asked to write something for a special thanksgiving service at church to be read aloud. this is what i’m thankful for:

I have wonderful memories of Thanksgiving from when I was younger. I remember sitting in the living room in my grandparent’s home across from the Franconia Elementary School. All of us cousins would play games, watch football on T.V. and laugh. Thanksgiving was always a time for family. It was a time to eat too much, watch TV and fall asleep on the sofa.

For me, being away from home on Thanksgiving is bitter-sweet. I loath the fact that I am so far away from my family and friends but I know it will all be worth it in the end.

I miss the food. Who wouldn’t miss their grandmother’s home cooked Thanksgiving meal topped off with my great-aunt Eva’s oyster stuffing. In Long Xuyen, the small Vietnamese town where I teach, I’m lucky enough to have two other foreigners. We have spent the past week and a half trying to replicate a traditional Thanksgiving meal. We found a turkey on a local farm. We decided it wouldn’t be too hard to make stuffing. We gave up on cranberry sauce and are going to mash our potatoes with a fork. Our largest hurdle is finding an oven. This culture doesn’t use oven’s to cook and we have gone to a metal shop to see if someone could make one for us. We don’t know if it’ll work, but we have our finger’s crossed.

While we are not guaranteed a traditional meal, there are still a number of things I am thankful for, things I took for granted when I was soundly napping on my grandparent’s carpet.

I am thankful that I have been able to explore the world. I have been blessed with the resources and opportunities that only a handful of people in the world have access to. Many of my conversations in Vietnam have been with students, or young people who want to go and see another part of the world. They want to learn a new language and a new culture. However, there is always a problem. Normally, there is no money or no scholarship support. I sit and talk with them and watch their eyes. Their eyes tell the whole story. Their eyes are deep and sad. They long to have the same opportunity that I had by right of birth.

I feel guilt and frustration. I’m not making the best of my time here. I should be working harder and making something spectacular all of that I have been given.

The world’s an incredible place if you let it be.

I am thankful for all the opportunities and resources that I have been given. Those that have given me those things deserve the thanks. In Vietnamese culture, people pray to their ancestors. Every house has a small alter with a grainy, black and white picture of the family’s grandparents. Every day the family lights incense sticks and places them in front of the alter after saying a short prayer. The idea of praying to ones ancestors doesn’t really resonate well with me. I was raised in the Mennonite church and still believe in Jesus’ teachings of love, peace and justice.

However, while the idea is a bit strange, ancestral veneration has taught me an important lesson that I have overlooked most of my life. Everything I am rests on those that came before me. I am my family’s history pushed on into the next generation. For me to be thankful for what I am and what I have, I must also be thankful for my relatives who allowed this all to happen. It’s a simple lesson, but one that I gleefully ignored thanks to the flash and pomp of our info-tainment culture.

I thank Raymond and Anna Moyer for putting so much energy and love into raising my father, David. I thank Kenneth and Violet Aeschliman out in Archebold Ohio for teaching my mother patience and love.

I am also grateful for all of the hundreds of people who have shaped me along the way. I am thankful for the Salford community and all of their support. I am thankful for every Sunday school teacher, song leader, pastor, janitor and member of the church who has given me a bit of advice, some direction or even a friendly smile.

I am grateful for all the teachers who have helped me to see the world from a different perspective. Without their guidance I would surely not be where I am today. I am grateful for their help, their guidance, their patience.

The list of gratitude would go on indefinitely. I would thank all of you and all of those who supported you and all of your ancestors throughout history. I would eventually end up in one place, I would say thank you to God, the creator of all of us.

Thank you God for blessing me in so many ways. Thank you for the opportunity to travel and the joy of seeing the world from a different perspective. Thank you for allowing me to be raised in such a wonderful community and with such a loving family. And most importantly, I would like to thank you for giving us all the ability to love and to do so unconditionally. May we all be grateful for that gift.

i spend my english literature class talking about god. the last few books we covered included dante, Augustine and Milton. each of those books deals with christianity and we spend most of the class explaining the nature of god.

i have a hard time discussing the christian god in class. besides the political ramifications, i have a very hard time making the whole idea sound solid. the books we have covered early on in the semester talk a lot about greek and roman mythology. they talk about zeus and Apollo and every god in between. the students love talking about greek and roman mythology. they find it hilarious and fascinating. ‘you mean to tell me that the god’s had affairs with each other and some of them fathered half human-half god children?’

it’s hard to follow up a number of lessons talking about mythology by talking about christianity. in milton’s ‘paradise lost’, we are told that adam and eve at from a tree and that god sent them out of a perfect garden. satan ponders his fate in hell after being thrown from heaven. he says that he fell because of his pride, which god created. what kind of a god is this that would put an obvious temptation in adam and eve’s path? what kind of a god is this that would create pride in satan that would eventually lead to his eternal suffering? the students ask the same questions they asked for greek and roman mythology.

i teach in a tornado of chalk. the dust flies up and i draw pictures and make lines and write incoherently on the board. i walk from one side of the board to the other trying to tie points together. teaching about how religion has influenced western thought has only increased my movement. it has only made the cloud of chalk dust grow around me as i move. the students are sincerely interested. they want to understand what our president believes. they want to understand what the normal american believes. they do no understand christianity and i have not explained it well.

ho-ho-jota
our dog is getting into the christmas spirit

escapism.

i need to get away every once in a while. last time we were in ho chi minh city we went to one of the numerous shops that sells burnt dvds for a little more than a dollar. we bought an entire season of ‘the sopranos’. if you don’t know the show (i didn’t before watching it), it is a mini-series that goes over the trials and tribulations of a modern day mob family. it’s a soap opera with guns.

we borrowed a dvd player from a teacher, sat in the room with a bag of corn fried in butter and watched all afternoon.

it’s amazing what tv can do to your brain.

i haven’t watched tv for a very long time. i think my absence from the drug has increased its effect. i was magically transported to northern new jersey. i was a member of this mob family. my mind completely removed itself from my body and went to live in the television. my body was an empty vessel sitting on the bed.

after a few hours watching and escaping, we pulled the needle out of our arm and headed out to get something to eat. the reality of vietnam hit me square between the eyes. everything was dusty and moving. there were people everywhere and they looked nothing like the sort of people that live in northern new jersey. i drove my motorcycle through the crowded street making sure not to hit little old ladies as they warily crossed and felt utterly out of place. i wasted an afternoon and was confused to boot.

the internet cafe is quite an experience. when the electricity is outed in our room, we are forced to bike down dusty roads to small, dimly lit internet cafes to find out what is happening in the world. the internet is our portal. the internet lets us feel relatively connected to what is happening in the world.

this internet cafe is filled with computers paneled off by fake-wood sections in an attempt to prevent spying. it’s is a complete failure. when i go to an internet cafe, i spend the majority of my time waiting for pages to download and the three young boys standing behind me also wait patiently. they talk about what i'm looking at. they talk about what they understand and what they don't. they read all my emails. 'i think this one is from his mother!' and so on.

one hour of interent time is only 3000 dong (about 20 cents) but you have to be prepared to wait for pages to load. the owners make money because they link 10 computers to one phone line. this means that a number of pages are trying to load simultaneously and everyone sits with a blank look on their face. most of the time, since the internet is so slow, people play games. they play games like 'ages of empires ii', which is a sort of conquest game where you amass armies and try to kill the other guy in the height of virtual battle. they yell back and forth at each other. 'what are you doing? i'm going to kill you!' 'no way, you don't have a chance. you don't have enough men and you're going to be too weak.' 'let's play again.'

so, the internet cafe is not the most comfortable place in the world. it is hot, like a sauna. young boys stand behind me and talk about what i'm doing. the rest of the people threaten to kill each other while pages load dreadfully slowly. it's stressful and irritating.

the dust from teacher's day settles and all is back to normal. the routine of waking at 6, taking a cold shower, eating rice for breakfast and drinking iced coffee only is interrupted for a day. the warmth and the dawn make every morning feel like a july morning in south eastern pennsylvania.

the dust also settled on my tv appearance. it was rebroadcast a number of times. all the students saw it. the people at the coffee shop saw it. the lady that makes my lunch saw it. the lady that lives in the guest house saw it. i spend my whole day walking around and having people tell me they saw me on tv. the 6 o'clock an giang local news. i had to appologize to all of them for my poor vietnamese but no one cares. for most of the town i am just that 'one white person who teaches at the university who can speak vietnamese.' that phrase will soon be amended with, 'and i saw him on tv the other day.' the attention is wonderful and i revel in it while pretending to be aloof and naive. it’s strange being famous in this small town standing in a red tie with yellow stars behind me.





and here i am pretending to know some vietnamese.

teacher's day 2003. hilarious.

they day begins early to avoid the effects of the sun. we wake at six and are at the school by six thirty. the main yard has been filled with small, six inch high stools. the students sit on them mostly wearing pastel bucket hats. the teachers sit in the middle on wooden benches. we watch singing, dancing and listen to speeches. the speakers talk about how important teachers are and what they offer society. the speeches are all incredibly similar.

speakers talk and the crowd talks. the crowd rumbles with murmors. the sound system blasts the speakers voice, which normally overpowers everything else. when the speaker pauses, the crowd overpowers. it's a strange combination of bored students, important speeches and constant noise.

some people are honored. they are asked to walk to the stage and they receive flowers and, if they are important enough, a plaque. the foreign teachers go to the stage and are only given flowers. we must contribute more to receive a plaque. flowers are nice.

in the middle of one of the speeches i'm tapped on the shoulder by a man with a camera. he tells me he works for the an giang television company and would like to interview me for television. he wants to know how i feel on teacher's day. in the middle of one of the speeches i am told to stand near the front with the speaker in the background. he continues to bellow and i'm told to talk over him into a microphone. all of the sudden i become incredibly nervous. my hands start to shake and i can't look into the camera. i talk for a minute or two in vietnamese which is probably a bit too colloquial and sloppy for television. my talk borrows heavily from the propaganda banners that surround the campus. 'education helps to develop society and we need teachers. teachers have an important job. this day is important and i feel very happy here.' people tell me that it is a good talk but i know they're just being nice. i'll watch it tonight when i'm calm and surly will be embarassed.

after the ceremony, we are invited into different classes. in one class we sit and listen to an english student explain to us why she thinks teacher's day is important. she stands up and gives a speech. she gives it all in vietnamese. she's a senior. strange.

she talks quietly about where she is from and how she got into university. she's a small girl in an ao dai dress. her hair falls on her shoulders and she looks up at the corner of the rooom softly. she starts to get emotional and she smiles. it's the smile that could mean one of a hundred things but she's embarassed. she starts to cry a bit and someone gives her a tissue. she looks helpless, like a fawn whose mother died. she promises us all that she will be a good teacher one day. she says it's her duty to be a good teacher.

we are now going with other english teachers to eat beef and beef parts (brain, stomach, everything). hilarious (a word that has as many meanings as the vietnamese smile)

and then...

we all went out for random pieces of water buffalo boiled in water. it was uneventful and the restaurant was hot. we sat on small, wooden stools with boiling pots in front of us. they are heated with charcoal and the black smoke gathered on the ceiling. we didn't talk about anything and all wanted to leave quickly. after eating our fill of water buffalo and listening to hilarious (read terrible) jokes, we drove down dusty roads home.

our last day in saigon and we feasted as no other. we found a grocery store that stocked western junk food, the first time we have had access to such a drug in over a year, and sat in our room watching dvd's.

jack and i sprawled out on the bed and ordered a pizza. the pizza came and the cheese slid off and we scooped it up ravenously with our fingers. we ate the pizza with chillies and didn't leave a strand of crusted cheese on the cardboard bottom.

we ate cheesie puffs. they came in a huge bag and were moist with grease and overflowing with artificial cheese dust. the dust clung to our fingers and lips as we munched savagely.

we ate doritos. we opened the bag and the inside of the bag was silver and the chips glistened and beckoned. we ate them and didn't mind the cheese dust falling on the bed, our shirt or our face.

then we had a wonderful idea: order some kfc. we were already stuffed but it is a rare occasion for us to have access to western food. we ordered kfc chicken and mashed potatoes. the chicken was meat that somehow was made spongy. the tender flesh was super-saturated with grease and coated in a thin layer of salt, some bread and more salt. we ate and grease dripped off of our chins. we ate like cavemen.

after our hedonistic grease fest, we laid back and rested. we watched the rest of the movie uncomfortably; we were much too full. i went to sleep but couldn't rest. my stomach was turning and bubbling. my stomach wasn't used to the grease. i woke up in the morning with serious digestive issues and heart-burn to boot. i burped all day and suffered the aftershock of such terrible lack of any self restraint.

the 22nd seagames are arriving in vietnam and no one could be more excited.

no, the seagames are not an aquatic event, they are the south east asian games, similar to a mini-tropical-olympics. the powerhouses that will be coming include cambodia, laos, thailand, malaysia, vietnam, indonesia and other relaivly un-important nations. they will meet in vietnam. they will play, win, lose, feed the economy and generally feel good doing so.

the country is incredibly excited about hosting the seagames. i have already posted the lyrics of the song (i think i did) which is played in coffee shops all across the country. the posters that hang above the roads that normally extol the virtues of good family and society have all been changed to remind people how excited they all are to be hosting such an event. in the middle of hanoi's hoan kiem lake, one of it's most famous and historic sites, there is a giant neon sign that says, 'welcome 22nd seagames'. in the middle of ho chi minh city there are also a number of signs and banners that flutter quietly in the hot wind. at the ben thanh market, one of ho chi minh city's tourist hot-spots, there is a large sign that counts down the days to the seagames. there are 19 days left.

the mascot of the seagames is equally hilarious. he is a bull or water buffalo, depending on how you look at him. the bull is orange and yellow. he is usually positioned facing his left with one hand stretched high above his head and the other hand across his waist. his feet are spread. around his waist is a superbly positioned, red loin cloth. there are also shirts with the bull participating in different sports. there is the bull kicking a soccer ball, the bull playing ping pong, the bull doing gymnastics and the bull in some sort of karate stance.

i have been getting into the seagames spirit too. i routinely ask taxi drivers if they and the city are ready to host the seagames. i watch them fiercely and wait for their answer. they all assure me that they will do their best to make the seagames wonderful. no one has ever hinted that the city is anything less than fully ready and capable to host the games. everyone is on board.



and this is the bull...

supper with the infamous xe om drivers.

i went to meet them at the bus station at about seven o’clock. they were all perched on top of their motorcycles talking and quietly smoking. as i approached, they smiled and all kick-started their honda dreams. gentle hello's were exchanged and we headed off to eat.

i followed them as they zipped through traffic. they drove smooth and fast and slid between other slower moving vehicles like melted butter. driving, after all, was their profession.

we stopped at a small, road side eatery that served two things. we sat down and talked.

of the three other drivers there, it was easy to see the hierarchy. the oldest man sat to my right and always told jokes and had a dirty nickname for each of the other drivers. the other drivers called him 'blinky' because he could do some strange things with his right eye. he was short and thick and smiled a lot. the man that sat across from me was the most amiable. his vietnamese was the clearest and we talked about what life was like in america and what i thought about vietnam. he was very interested, a bit pudgy, and he had a very round, bare face. the person that sat to his left was the youngest of the group. he smiled and spoke quickly. his hair was high and windswept. he was absurdly thin and, at appropriate moments would be very serious. when he was serious he would lower his head and raise his eyebrows.

we talked about when people were born and one of the drivers said that he was born in november. i asked what day and told him we should have a birthday party for him. he looked at me wryly. how could he have a birthday party when he could barely make enough money to get by. birthdays were for rich people.

we ate both of the dishes that the roadside stand offered. one was a kind of duck salad and the other was duck porridge. both were quite good and the whole meal cost three dollars. the drivers paid and refused to let me do anything.

they all showed me their national identity cards. it's a small card, much like a driver's license, that is issued to every person when they turn 18 years old. the pictures were old and worn and no one really looked the same. the cards said where the people were from, when they were born and, on the back, it described one identifying characteristic. for example, one of the drivers had a tiny mole on their left, lower eyelid and the card said that.

the youngest driver had two identification cards, one for him and one for his mother. his mother died recently and i could see it still really affected him. he was keeping her card to remember her. the card was well worn and there was a black and white picture of a very pretty, young girl. he looked at the card and fiddled it around in his hands. he was very young, only 18, even though he told me he was 24.

we said good-bye and they headed back to work. they would work through the night and sleep in the late morning. they would sit on their motorbikes as dirty, ancient busses drove by kicking up clouds of dirt. they would wait for little old ladies and business men to come home and they would ferry them anywhere for about twenty-five cents. i headed home and went to bed in my air conditioned apartment.

all singing, all dancing, all in preparation for teacher's day 2003.

the foreigners were, as always, honored. we were placed in the front and upwards of 400 students sat behind us. we were given bottles of water. we were introduced as the 'valued foreign teachers with whom we have the pleasure of studying.' the mc was a thin man from my literature class. he had a quirky smile and didn't bow too low when he walked on the stage. we were in the palm of his hand and he made sure we ate directly out of it. he wore makeup, which is hilarious. he wore pink lipstick and had a nice, light foundation which hid his pimples well.

there was a large band in front of us. two keyboards, one man controlling the microphones, another man controlling the cd players which were small and hastily wired, a guitarist who hunched over his guitar as if dead, a plain bassist and two men who would rotate on the drums. one of the drummers would always play with a cigarette in his mouth and the ashes hung limply off the end and never seemed to fall. i would watch his cigarette and wait for the ashes to fall on his snare drum as he thumped and bounced to the rhythm but they magically stayed.

the lights flashed and the show began. this was the english department's preparation for teacher's day. each class could perform as many dances or songs as they wished. there were twenty eight groups that were going to perform with mindless chatter between each. the winners of this competition would go on to compete in an all-school event this friday and the winners of that would perform on teacher's day.

the singing began. students would shyly walk out onto the stage dressed in their beautifully and flowing ao dai dresses and the men with ties. some were shy, others were incredibly outgoing. girls would shake as they began. the voices of the boys would waver. the students who enjoyed the lime-light would eventually get used to the stage. they would begin to sing with more fervor, their voices rising and falling. the music was so loud it seemed to penetrate all parts of your brain and not allow any room for logical thought. we sat in front of three huge speakers stacked on top of one another.

the students who sang solos or duets were unbearable. some had a nice voice and others were doing it simply because they liked the 400 pairs of eyes staring at them and the applause at the end would ring in their ears long after their performance was over. on girl sang four songs and i was about to walk onto the stage and kindly remind her that she had sung enough tonight and that i had to go to bed

the dances were something else entirely. the dances were incredibly patriotic. an entire class would participate. every student would have their roles. it is in all of our interests to describe one:

the girls of the class started on the sides of the stage. they were wearing long, blue skirts, white shirts and a strange sort of cape that was sewn to the back of their shirts. the cape resembled the wings of a butterfly. three of the girls would run across the stage with their leading arm high in the air and their following arm behind. they tried to emulate ballet dancers by stepping slowly and quickly. they would fall to the ground on the other side of the stage. three more of the girls would follow after a bit and also fall down. three more girls. three more girls. there ended up being an odd pile of blue and white cloth with black hair to one side of the stage. they would all slowly rise and fan out across the stage. they would dance in unison. they would twirl around and lift their hands. they danced with their hands. they would then form a circle and prance around for a bit. next, they would all run to one side of the stage together in a massive group with their leading arm high in the air. they would run back. back and forth again. finally, a male student would walk out onto the stage wearing a completely green suit which, i assumed, was to represent an army uniform. he would run in the middle of the girls with his leading arm stretched high above his head. a girl would walk out in an equally green uniform with a revolutionary scarf tied around her neck. by this point, the blue and white fairies were standing still in the middle of the stage. their arms were outstretched and they didn't move. the army girl and boy would frolic for a bit. they would twirl around and make sure not to touch each other too much. eventually, they would both fall down on opposite sides of the stage. the fairies would dance again for a bit. some more army boys came out in green. they picked up the girl and the boy and carried them around for a bit. i assume they were now dead because of revolutionary struggle. the fairies formed a line in front of the stage with their wings outstretched. the two bodies were carried high above the fairies as if a funeral. all the while, patriotic music was blaring. now there was a pause. the fairies stood there and there was no movement. the army girl who had died changed her clothes and the music picked up a bit. she wore pink peasant's clothes. the fairies all poured to one side of the stage and stood silently. a girl emerged wearing a school uniform. she started to prance with the once army girl now in pink. they pranced together for a while. she was the daughter. now, after much prancing and frolicking, more people poured out wearing violently red shirts with black ties. they ran in formation much like the fairies who were now fanned out in the back. they held their hands high in the air and ran around in a large circle. they were the new generation. the army boys now poured out also running with their hands in the air. everyone fanned out into a large 'v' on the stage. there was a flagpole in the background. the soldiers hoisted the once army girl now in pink who had died but now mysteriously lived and who also had a daughter up on their shoulders. she stood with her fist in the air, her face defiant. two flags were raised on the pole. the vietnamese flag with the large, single star in the middle and the hammer and sickle. the music reached its crescendo and the performance ended. everyone walked to the edge of the stage and bowed. all the students cheered and howled.

there were four or five dances that were quite similar to that.

we sat and sat and sat and sat. we sat for four hours and change clapping and growing more and more sarcastic. we slyly commented to one another in violent and hushed whispers making sure to use as much slang as possible so no one could understand. the last person sang; a thin boy who had an even thinner voice who squeaked out a love song to a tired crowd. we cheered and thanked him because our long journey was finally over.

i have the wonderful luxury of teaching twenty some members of the people's committee here business and english. they are a joyful lot and i thoroughly enjoy their smiling faces.

since we've run through the book, i've been coming up with activities to give them. in one activity, i gave all of them a different product and asked them to go around the room and try to sell their product to one another. i tried to make all the products interesting. i also tried to make some terrible products (a mobile phone with a built in pen) so the students would have a difficult time selling them.

one product was a belt with a built in calculator made in china. i called it 'pants 'n numbers' which was hilarious. i said the calculator was hard to see and that the buttons were too small. i thought it would be an obviously terrible product. i got this spirited response from an older member of the class.

i decided to choose the pants 'n numbers that is the best product to buy. as you know, some reasons for my decision to buy the pants 'n numbers were to provide us many advantages such as:

it is very attractive and it is hard to see the calculator.
the calculator is very small but also very fast.
the calculator's buttons are very small.

i like this product because of the pants 'n numbers has a calculator built into it. i hope that you also like this product because it is very wonderful.

eagles football.

i have been indoctrinated since i was a child. my father was a football coach. i remember sitting in front of the television and asking him what color our team was. he said it was the white team. i remember asking again. he patiently said it was still the white team.

as i grew older, i learned more about football. i learned the positions and the strategy. i knew the eagles backwards and forwards. i watched the games every sunday and ran outside with my brother and played a game that involved punting, passing and tackling in the dry leaves. we always ended up getting in a fight and i was always bigger and could pummel jason. he always said something smart and i pummelled him again.

today i watched football on the internet. i sat in front of a screen and watched blips and refreshed pages because my internet connection is 1990 slow here. i watched the eagles drive and the packers fight back and the eagles drive again. i walked out on the balcony in the mid-day heat and waited for the page to refresh. i ambled around the room, more like paced, and hoped that my boys in green could pull it off.

the eagles scored a clutch touchdown in the fourth quarter. there was a minute left on the clock and they were punting the ball to the packers with a slim, three point lead. i watched my espn powered window flash and gather information from america. it sputtered and stopped. i refreshed the window and made another trip around the room. i sat down in the chair and watched the window refresh incredibly slowly. i looked like a moron staring at a blank screen. the screen refreshed and the packers were driving with seconds to go. as the plays unfolded, i was told through simple blurbs. 'favre pass to so and so good for seven yards.' they were in field goal range and my hopes were dashed. then, all of the sudden, as if an act of god, the screen blipped and it said, 'favre rushed for -7 yards.' i knew the game was over. the eagles had sacked the formidable quarterback of the packers and my team would gloriously win the day. ever since i was a child, i was taught devotion to the eagles and, in this small town of 200,000 vietnamese people, i was the only person to give a triumphant shout of zeal at 12:15 on a tuesday afternoon when the sun beat down and everyone was asleep. the dog jumped with a start and stared at me. he understood nothing about the eagles and i pitied him.

xe om drivers

i left on a terrible red-eyed trip from lx to hcmc. i was crammed between a fat lady wearing all black and a lot of jade and an even fatter twenty-something girl who tried her best to avoid moving at all costs. the bus left at midnight and we were expecting to sleep. being stuck between a hormel ham and a tyson turkey lead me to inevitably sweat. the man behind me would not stop snoring and making odd noises. at one point it sounded like he was trying to drink something in his sleep. i dozed off for only about an hour and a half.

before jumping on the bus i met a bunch of xe om drivers. xe om drivers are an interesting lot. they are all men in their twenties or thirties that can find no other employment except to drive people around on their motorbike. their one asset is that motorbike which they perch on rather like birds waiting for the next customer. they huddle together and chat and have a reputation to be drunkards. before you get on a xe om, you should do your best to smell their breath.

these men were sitting outside waiting and i had twenty minutes to kill so i sparked up a conversation. they were wonderfully friendly people and had disgusting nicknames for each other which they proudly explained to me until one of the older drivers said, 'hey, guys, he's a teacher we shouldn't be telling him these things.' we talked about where i was going, hanoi, and how i was going to get there. they said i should have gotten a bus at about three o'clock which would have put me in saigon at about seven thirty with a flight leaving at eight. they said it was no problem and that the plane would probably wait for me anyways. our experiences have been an entire world apart. we talked about september 11 and they said how terrible it was. i normally explain that i am from america and normally people ask, 'what state?' hoping that i'll say california or texas. i say pennsylvania and they all nod and pretend to understand so i always say, 'it's really close to new york.' so, that's what started the september 11 conversation. they wanted to know what the city was like on that day and me, not being one to explain to them that i was in university and that i don't normally even visit the big city, simply said it was crazy.

we're all going for coffee next monday.

then i arrived in hcmc. i came a bit too early and wanted to get some breakfast and have a cup of coffee before the trip. i walked around in the early morning right after the sun began to rise and illuminate everything. i walked for a few minutes constantly being hounded by more xe om drivers. everyone thinks your a tourist so when you say something in vietnamese they get a bit of a shock. i told them that i was happy walking and that, in fact, they should try it seeing as how it is healthier than driving a motorcycle. one driver puttered beside me while i was walking. he chatted me up and was determined to find out where i was going. i told him i was looking for a place to eat breakfast. he said he knew a place. i said it was probably very far away so he could charge me more. he said it was close. i asked if he had breakfast yet. he said no. i said, if he took me there, i'd buy him breakfast. he said sure.

i'm so much like my dad and uncle phil standing on the sidelines of a soccer game it's not even funny. taking a complete stranger to breakfast and asking a million questions about their life, how much they make, how long have they been doing it, everything. it's the exact same as chatting up the old guy standing next to you while you watch your 14 year old scurry around on a windy autumn day.

my xe om driver looked exactly like dean frankenfield except that he was vietnamese and poor. he looked like what dean frankenfield looks like in my mind if he's going out hunting. he had on a thick jean jacket over a long sleeved practical shirt. he had on a type of hunting hat and had a thin mustache and a very sincere smile. i found dean's long lost vietnamese brother and he drives a motorcycle in ho chi minh city.

we chatted it up and he had things to say and ask. he wanted to know where i was from, what i was doing, where i was going, where i came from, everything. we ate pho. he is obviously poor (as all xe om drivers are). he had a wife and four children and he had been a driver for the past fifteen years. he doesn't make much money but he enjoys taking people around. he says that the korean girls are the most beautiful and he enjoys taking them the most. he says he also takes a lot of foreigners and makes the most money from them.

i enjoyed this man. he was a clear headed, kind hearted person. he listened patiently while i spoke and answered all my questions thoroughly. he was not a very smart man but you don't have to be smart to be amiable. sometimes, smart people are the hardest to handle.

we began our trip to the airport and i wasn't sure if he was going to rip me off. sometimes xe om drivers will chat you up and not name a price until you arrive and then try to 'ban cat co' or 'sell to cut ones neck'. i thought he might try to pull something sneaky. on the way there he said that i should meet my family. he fingered it was a domestic flight so check-in wouldn’t be a problem. his family lived near there and it would only take a second. i agreed.

his house was small and packed with people. his wife, four children, mother in law, two brothers and their families. they were all waking up and he brought me in like a freshly killed 12 point buck. i was introduced to everyone, offered tea and more things to eat and then wrote down all my personal information. he wanted to know my name and what it meant and listened patiently when i tried to explain it all. he wanted me to draw a map of the united states and show him where i was from.

he wrote his information down and his youngest brother was sitting next to him in his underwear. he wrote slowly and meticulously. every tone was correct and every word spelled right. at the end, his brother cajoled him because he forgot to put the name of the city down so he jotted 'thanh pho ho chi minh' at the bottom.

he took me to the airport and chatted with me the whole time. he showed me buildings and told me where i should go and what i should do when i have a free chance. we got to the airport and he let me off. i tried to pay but he refused. he was sincere and truly was only interested in being friends. he smiled broadly and sincerely, raised his hand and drove away making sure his thick jacket and hunting hat were still in place.

being in hanoi, one is obligated to travel to ha long bay and lazily float through the historic and legendary islands. islands is not the right word. one word could never capture the islands. they are white limestone rocks that jut out from the water and shoot up violently and are spaced so that they give one the idea that they are large scales on a dragon's back which are covered with black film and a spattering of green plants that seems to flow from the top. they are spaced closely together. they are ominous and beautiful. they look alien and uninhabitable. there is no space for life. ha long means descending dragon and that is probably the best way to describe it.

we eventually made it to our boat. it was made from a deep red wood and had three stories. the boat was filled with red, wooden benches and tables and we were going to sleep the night there. we were going to sleep in the historic ha long bay.

we had a tour guide. he was a small boy of a man that spoke entirely with his hands because words barely made it between his teeth. he was wiry. he was powered entirely by rice.

our first stop was to move slowly towards the rock formations that surrounded the bay. the rocks poured around us as we pushed through the water. we slowly headed towards an island and were promised caves.

the caves were incredible in every way possible. we followed our wiry tour guide up the hand-made stone stairs. we followed groups of koreans and chinese who were following very experienced tour guides that held up signs and bullhorns and pointed with tiny lasers. they spoke quickly and knew the caves inside and out. our tour guide was a novice; he would amble ahead through the large groups and stop in odd places telling us stories that were of little significance. he tried hard and we loved him for it.

the caves were pale and smooth on top and filled with dripping rocks that had long frozen.. they looked like caramel and marshmallow’s oozing from the walls. they looked hard but fragile. they had a character that was not entirely familiar.

things were made more unfamiliar by the additional features of the cave. someone had dug a wide path through the cave and paved it with concrete. someone else had placed different colored lights all over the walls which made the dripping rocks light up in odd formations. there was pink and blue and green and purple. it looked like disneyland spelunking. then there were the voices of the surrounding tour groups. they were korean and japanese and chinese and the voices of the tour guides bellowed and echoed off of the pastel lights.

more importantly there were trashcans throughout. they were shaped like dolphins and penguins. their mouths were where you put food and they only added to the 'it's a smallworld' theme. there were also fountains in the middle. the fountains were powered by the gentle hum of generators. i was looking for something more natural.

we stumbled out of the cave recovering from an odd, disney-like hallucination and emerged to the beauty of nature. humans can do nothing to improve nature and that's a lesson we really need to learn. the stairs striped down the side of the island towards the boat. we rolled onto the boat and rumbled off.

we sat on benches and behind tables and talked about reality. black rock sporadically jumped all around us. they were all too real, more real than television even is. they rocks surrounded us and we tried to take pictures of the water and the gigantic fence the rocks made. we tried to put it into words, pictures but no one could replicate it; no one could really explain the randomness and majesty of simple rock formations jutting out of emerald green water.
and then...

the night comes and the boat continues to hum through the greenish-blue plasma. the thin film that covers the plasma seems to be thick, but fragile.

night comes. it doesn't come all at once but slowly creeps up on us. the moon appeared all at once as we passed by a low formation of rocks. it was pale and innocent. it was not dramatic, but swiftly grew. as we passed by incredible rock formation after rock formation, the moon increased in power and strength. the formations grew bolder too, but the intensity of their presence did not change at all.

as the sun retreated and the boat rocked, the moon grew and soon was at a perfect height above the rocks. the red-wood boat was invincible and chugged through the waves as we moved out into the ocean. the moon hung and lit our path as random, wispy clouds tried to shield it.

night fell on ha long bay. the dragon fell asleep and we stared wide-eyed at the beauty. moments like this will never be erased from our minds because of our revolting world.

and then...

ha long bay is the site of many historic battles and important military victories and losses.

back when the huns were trying to take over the world, ha long bay was the site of an important battle. the leaders of the huns came through ha long bay and tried to attack the vietnamese troops through the rock formations. the leader of the vietnamese, tran hung dao would not lose this battle and asked his troops to install large, wooden sticks between the rock formations. therefore, when the hun ships entered and stopped, the tide would lower and the ships would be stuck. the vietnamese attacked after the ships were stuck on teh wooden poles and many ships were simply sunk by the poles. the natural beauty of ha long bay and the cunning of tran hung dao were the reasons for the vietnamese victory.

another important military event with very different results: most americans are aware of the gulf of tonkin event and how that lead to the us' involvement in vietnam.

in the mid sixties, the us patrolled the waters off of northern vietnam regularly listening for radio frequencies and other things that would be militarily interesting. also, they would use the us boats to launch strikes on important military installations throughout the north. the strikes would be carried out by south vietnamese soldiers trained by the us using us equipment.

one of these strikes turned into a larger debacle when north vietnamese boats attacked the us ships waiting off shore. the boats that attacked were small and caused little damage (in the pentagon papers, they claimed that only one bullet actually struck an american ship). the us destroyed the northern ships. the whole event was repeated and used as an excuse by LBJ to get more support for a wider war in southern vietnam.

i now float through the waters of ha long bay. through spaces in the rock formations i can see well lit shipping lanes, boats sitting miles off of shore. only a few miles behind me sits the peaceful town of ha long and only thirty odd years ago an event happened a few miles from my boat that changed the shape of the world.

and then...

i sat on the side of the boat while people finished their meal and chatting. i was not a participant and wanted to see what there was to see at night.

the moon hung directly in front of me. behind me there was a large, wooden statue on the front of the boat of a dragon. it provided protection. the moon was above a valley created by the two large stone mounds in the near distance. the mound on the right was gigantic and stark. it rose directly out of the water and didn't stop for a good fifty feet. it banked sharply to the right and was flat at the top. the moon cast a straight shadow that engulfed half of our boat. the moon was to the left of the shadow. the other rock formation was a gentle banking rock formation that started directly behind the larger, more ominous rock. it rolled up from the sea and crested some distance to the left. it reached behind the angry rock as if trying to console it. the moon rested above, as if patrolling a valley.

the reflection of the moon was gentle in the rippling water. the rumble of the boat's engine shook the ripples and made the reflection jump sporadically. the reflection was vibrantly white. it reflected perfectly up to the bottom of my feet. the soles of my feet basked in the reflected glory of the moon off of the now pitch black water of ha long bay.

earlier tonight we had gone swimming. four or five people blindly jumped into the mysterious water that was now murky dark and almost black. the moon hung between two rock formations, the same ones, except lower.

my plunge into the depths was full of bravery. i pretended not to fear what was below and jumped. the water was as warm as bath water and saltier than expected. as i sunk to the bottom, i kicked as violently as possible. i had no idea what was lying under the pristine surface of the water and wasn't interested in finding out. images of mysterious eels and bands of sharks plagued my imagination. sharp rocks right below the surface was another irrational concern.

on the surface, i spent as much time as possible basking in the moon and the surrounding scenery. the rocks seemed more real as i treaded water. i was a part of the scenery. the lower half of my body that was hidden by the dark waters now belonged to the bay. the moon shone above and comforted. clouds passed by quickly and played tricks on it's complexion.

while reveling in my surroundings, i also spent much time trying to keep my legs near the surface of the water in an effort to fend off any mysterious beasts that may be roaming around looking for a night time snack. should i kick my legs quickly or should i tread softly? would they be more attracted to movement or stillness? i couldn't decided an oscillated between the two: sometimes i would kick and other times i would float.

at the given moment, male hormones began to take over. people decided that it would be a wonderful thing to jump from the top of the boat into the bay. people would climb up to the third story of the boat, about twenty some feet up, yell and jump. the beauty was all disrupted by a tribal mating ritual.

after the four men who were also in the water with me went, i felt it was my duty to fulfill my tribal rite. i too would climb to the top and plunge over into the abyss. i too would throw caution to the wind and be one of the guys. of course i didn't pretend to be so coy about it. i simply climbed to the top and, with teh aid of carl, one of the new mcc volunteers in hanoi, i climbed to the edge. i made sure we all knew it was a mating ritual (i yelled, 'and this will secure my masculinity?' after an affirmation, i jumped). carl jumped first and made it look easy. i edged out onto the slippery, tin roof, judged the landing and jumped. i made sure to jump away from the bottom of the boat which jutted out a good five feet. i did cheat by lowering myself to the ground.

all the male testing clouded my earlier fears about what lived beneath in the dark waters. i hit the water awkwardly, my ears nose and filled with water and i was miserable but proud. i casually swam around in a bit of a daze and happily exited when everyone else did.

i swam around in the mysterious waters that hold so much history. if i could see what these rocks have seen, i would be wise. if we all could learn the lessons that these rocks have learned, the world would be infinitely better.

and then...

the night passed without incident. we slept in rooms that resembled the coffin cinderella was held in: the bed was positioned between two large pieces of glass that were thin and stretched the length of the bed. the room had nothing else except a showcased bed. there were fans at the bottoms of the beds and those fans provided some cool air as the night passed. the generators of the boat were periodically turned off and on as the night went. sometimes the rooms were stifling saunas, and other times the rooms were cool caves best suited for hibernation.

we woke up in the sauna with the sheet wrapped around you and sweat soaked through your pillow. nothing will make you get out of bed faster than finding yourself in a damp, sweltering oven wrapped in a moist, foreign blanket..

we rose and the day began with more beauty and more moments that are indescribable.

the small, limestone hills that have been eroded over time still stood around us. the growth on these hills still arched towards the sun. the water was still emerald, except maybe more so in the morning sun.

the sun passed behind clouds and the rest of the day was overcast, but not depressingly so.. the clouds would play tricks with the different hills as they moved further away. the hills closer to me would be clear, even if covered by a thin layer of mist. the hills behind them were drastically lighter adn the hills in the back were ghosts. the entire scene, with our boat moving through the rocks and the rocks in the foreground moving faster than the rocks in the mid ground and the rocks in the mid ground moving faster than the ghostly rocks in the background, was beautiful, ghastly and magnificent.

we swam again and the natural came alive. we became part of the surroundings that seem so sterile from the deck of our boat. the water was green and, when someone took a picture from the top deck, it looked like we were floating in green space, suspended oddly on our backs with arms and legs contorted as a fetus must stretch in the womb.

the boat left and we somberly sliced through the green water. we left the rocks, a monument built by god who, bored one day, threw pebbles down from heaven, to remind us that we were nothing and that beauty could sometimes be impossible to comprehend. beauty could be too much for our simple brains that worked only with 0's and 1's. sometimes, things could be more powerful than ever expected, but only if we give ourselves the opportunity. we humbly and solemnly marched away. they stared at us the whole time, watching us and asking us not to forget everything they had seen.

hanoi is full of wonderful things.

i take a hot shower. the water spews out of the shower head and burns my skin. i stand with my back to the nozzle and shut my eyes. i take a long shower, something i rarely do in long xuyen. when i leave, the mirror is completely fogged.

they have television here. i watched football game last night and felt incredibly worthless. the game was fascinating and i sat back in my wicker chair and curled my legs up to my chest.

i watched cnn the other day and learned a lot about the war in iraq. i learned that there was a huge coalition and that coalition troops keep getting attacked. i fear for the spanish, polish, afghani, british, ethiopian and american soldiers put in harms way. i surely wouldn't want to be in their shoes. i learned that dick cheney thinks america will preserver. that makes me feel better because dick cheney is a really smart guy.

all in all, hanoi is pretty exciting. the other day i had a greek salad and some pasta in a nice cream sauce! it didn't taste anything like rice or fish sauce! i tell you what, if you're ever stuck in a small, rural town in southern vietnam and only have rice to eat, cold showers to take and south korean soap operas to watch, coming to hanoi is like experiencing a small slice of heaven.

hanoi. some of the streets are wide and checked. some streets are tiny and wind endlessly. some of the people are more orderly, others do not follow the traffic patterns as in saigon. the place is a hard one to get a really good handle on. the people seem to walk around lost in their thoughts. they speak in short sentences that sound like the mating calls of bees. they sell things but they don't have the same mentality as they have in the south. while the economic reforms of the mid 1980's began in hanoi, they seem to have began in ho chi minh city first and then worked its way up north towards hanoi. things are not as developed as the south. this is the capital of vietnam and therefore has a completely different feel. for example, today we went to lenin park.

in the south, i don't think a lenin park would be well received. ho chi minh (the man, not the city) and other vietnamese patriots are loved all over vietnam , especially the south. however, some foreign leaders of communism are not as widely accepted. in fact, i know of no building or large statue dedicated to lenin or marx in the south. every once in a while, however, you do see a poster of the two of them at certain events.

in the north, on the other hand, communism has been here since 1954 (actually, the anniversary is the 10th of the 10th month in the lunar calendar, coming soon). they have a large tomb that was built to hold ho chi minh after the war with america was over. it is molded on the tomb that was built for lenin in the ussr. you can still walk through the tomb and see the preserved body of the leader of vietnam. i have yet to go there because it is only open in the morning and, for some reason, i have just been busy.

hanoi also has a number of lenin parks. all five mcc ex-pats went there this morning to have meetings, talk about the future and talk about what god was.

a taxi left us off at a large, marble looking arch. it was grey and stretched from one side of lined trees to the other. at its base, at the end of a long string, sat an old man with a blue shirt on. his arm band was red and gold and said 'security'. we had to pay to enter lenin park.

the park is entirely too large. it's wonderfully large and, because people have to pay to enter, not many people are there. it's a perfect break from the hustle and bustle of normal hanoi. it's a refuge where those with an extra two thousand dong can go and have some space to move about. there are wide passes lined with tall trees that had to have been there for hundreds of years. there is a large lake that meanders about with a small island in the middle. ancient trees grow on the island and their branches sweep entirely from one bank to the other making it impossible to actually see any part of the island, just the huge trees which hang to the water. there are small paths and games for children. we sat down and talked.

we talked a bit about god and how religion was the opiate of the masses. (whoops... wrong guy.)

we walked out through a different door. there were boats there and we were going to paddle around in large swans and other oddly shaped plastic ditties. then we saw it. they had three jet skis. i have no idea whose idea it was to have jet skis roaring around the lake in the middle of peaceful lenin park, but someone had gone to the trouble of allocating enough money to buy four of them.

there was something incredibly wrong about having jet skies there. maybe it was because they were yellow and purple. maybe it is because they said 'yamaha' and 'wave destruction iii' on them. maybe socialism and jet skis don't go together. something about it is incongruent.

we decided not to do any boating and left. as we were walking out the door, we noticed that there was a small, kiddy train track that seemed to stretch throughout the whole park. (the park is quite large) we asked if it worked and the people said yes. we went over to the train. it was yellow and orange and red and purple and, for some reason, looked like it belonged. maybe it was because the engine was full of large rocks to give it some weight. maybe it was because the front was missing a panel. maybe it was because the seats were simple wooden benches. maybe it was because it said 'respected goat' on the side of one of the cars. whatever the case, my pigeon brain decided it belonged.

we asked the group of workers if the train was running. it was 11 o'clock. they were playing chess and said it wasn't working. then one said it worked but we were resting. we left and the train in lenin's park stood idle. it still looked like it belonged, maybe now even more so.

hanoi.

i have traveled north to strengthen the bi-lateral ties of north and south mennonite central committee vietnam. the two factions have not had a history of animosity but this good-will trip was made under the auspices of increasing cooperation and mutual understanding.

hanoi is different from the south. hanoi is stripped oddly with tiny roads much like a european town. hanoi is always bustling with activity. hanoi is also not as economically developed as the south. on the 13 km trip from the airport to the center of town, one finds themselves passing constant rice paddies and farms. anywhere 13 km outside of ho chi minh city one will find buildings and urban sprawl. the people also speak indescribably differently using different words and tones.

mcc recently moved to a new building located on a confusing stretch of twists and turns in the middle of town. the building is large and beautiful. the move is mostly completed and the mcc staff are in good spirits.

all in all, the trip has began successfully. initial talks have lead to promises of more coordination and cooperation with the north promising to supply extra funding to the south. the southern coalition has been very well received and a celebration is planned for tonight as a further demonstration of the two parties future commitments and everlasting relationship.

here are the pictures form my 'giac gio' treatment which sucked out the bad wind from my body. i do feel better and i don't know if it is because of the treatment or if i just got well.

english speaking club: the chaos, the glory.

tonight it all began. i organized a speaking club (with the help of a wonderful person from the library who studied in the us and can guide me along cultural lines) after weeks of preparation and meetings and proposals, we began.

the night was hot and musty and the sky had just finished giving it's last blessing of violent rain. we walked to one auditorium in the back of campus. students were milling about waiting for the door to open. all the important people from the english department were sitting on benches away from the students. the students were dressed in their gym uniforms or casual button-up shirts. they gathered in bunches and talked in muffled voices.

there was no key.

there was no projector for our computer.

there was no one there to work with the electronics.

debacle after debacle.

we sent people to get things while we tried to appease the patients of the waiting students. i ran around and sweated heavily. they brought a key but it was the wrong key. they got a projector but the cord wasn't long enough to reach the wall. people ran for an extension cord and another key.

finally all began with a speech from the head of the english department. she welcomed everyone and thanked everyone. formalities aside, i walked to the front of 150 people, grabbed the microphone and gave an energetic speech with lots of whooping and hollering. i wanted to suck them in. i wanted them all to love me and love languages and learning. i wanted them to be drawn to me as an infant to their mother. i wanted them to think about me before they went to bed and when they woke in the morning. i wanted them to thirst for my presence. such a combination of narcissism and altruism.

the activities began and things went incredibly smoothly. the students were given prizes and they cheered and clapped. they hung on words which were first spoken in english and then translated. they all sang a song by the beegee's called massachusetts. they students learned it and sang through it twice with fervour.

we had a scavenger hunt. i explained the game, gave the clues and the room emptied as i have never seen a room empty. 150 people poured out of the room as if it was tilted on its side and shaken. they left screaming and laughing.

all in all it was an incredible success. the faculty of the english department and the students helped tremendously. my fine friend from the library was invaluable. we ended the night after two hours of activities with cries of, 'more! more!'

i know most of you think i’m a quasi-socialist on the verge of a bolshevik-type revolution at any given moment but, i assure you, that is not the case. i often peruse conservative websites for entertainment and a good chuckle. i found these pictures on a website that was explaining the liberal bias in the media. while i still don’t understand the argument (it seems to me that the gigantic multi-national super-corporations that own them (ie. www.msnbc.com? controlled by none other than general electric, microsoft and nbc) would have quite a vested interest in not being too liberal), i was moved by a few of their photographs. i am not sure what the purpose of the photo’s is but, i think i can unequivocally say, they are hilarious. (oh, and the second one's pretty racist too!)

yesterday was a fascinating day.

we started out the day (after teaching four hours in the morning) by going to a friend’s wedding. this is the friend whose family lives right beside 2 million dollar hill. he is very petite and has a very handsome face.

the wedding was very pleasant and we all sat around circular tables in the middle of the road. it felt wonderfully comfortable and warm. i looked around the party and recognized almost everyone. familiar faces abounded and i couldn’t help but smiling. we ate and chatted and i felt completely at home.

in the evening we had a halloween party. about 150 students showed up to the party and the guest house where we stay was far too small to hold them all. they were all dressed in costumes and all the lights were out. people milled about and i didn’t recognize anyone. people chatted in large groups and laughed and had a wonderful time. on the roof we had a haunted house which i was in charge of. we set up long rows of black cloth and had some of the second and third year students hiding throughout. we would bring groups of students to the top of the steps where i would be waiting for them in the dark. i would tell them the story of a former volunteer teacher who, two years ago this evening, came up to the roof at night to lament being so far away from home. the next day some people found here dead. no one knew why. i explained that the ghost of this teacher still haunts the roof. they would proceed cautiously. the girls would scream and scurry around. the boys would be macho and would walk as if walking down the road on a sunny sunday afternoon. both sexes overdid it.

all in all, it felt wonderfully like home. the students faces are familiar. the teachers faces are familiar. this is one large family and i’m happy to be a part of it.

oh, also, one of my students wrote this in her last test that i'm currently grading: don’t ask what your country can make to help you but let think tht what you can do for yours. that made my day indescribably better.