-^-for posterity-^-

what to type when there’s nothing to say.

i’m going home this summer and that really scares me. i’ll be home sometime in early june and will be back in long xuyen sometime in early august.

if quite adapted here and wonder what the transition will be like. after spending a year in spain i remember that i was seriously shocked when we were driving through new york city. the size of the roads and the sizes of the vehicles. my parents picked me up in the evening and, by the time we got out of the big city, it was quite late. i remember staring out of the windows of the car as we drove down four lane roads in shock. we stopped at a diner and i had two eggs over easy with toast and home-fries. it was good and i felt like there was some real culture shock going on.

spain is quite different from vietnam. spain was strange because everything was european small and people were more european open-minded. vietnam is a different world.

i have gotten used to having coffee and lunch at my normal coffee shop as hundreds and hundreds of people pile by on their motorcycles and bicycles. i’ve gotten used to people selling things everywhere. there will be a house that sells random goods and in front of the house there will be two ladies selling two different types of food with small stools set up all over the ground while someone walks by them pushing a cart with meat grilling on a charcoal grill.

i find it hard to imagine a place where there aren’t people everywhere. i’ve gotten used to standing in lines and having to push yourself into any available space because, if you didn’t, someone would get there before you and you’d never get anywhere.

i’ve gotten use to never traveling in a car. traveling in a car or a bus now feels very strange let alone driving one. almost two years without driving a car. i wonder what it’ll be like again.

i’ve gotten used to eating rice every day. this probably took the longest time to get used to but i now savor a nice plate of rice and pork covered in fermented fish sauce with a soup made out of a type of gourd that is incredibly bitter and more ground up pork. eating cheese is rarity. they don’t sell it here and one must go up to ho chi minh city to buy some.

i don’t really know if south eastern pennsylvania will even feel like home any more. i don’t know what home is.

i’m going to keep writing in this blog when i’m at home. i think i’ll be able to much more clearly compare this culture to my original culture and i think there’ll be some interesting observations that come out. i’m excited, nervous and worried.