pounce. run a bit, slide. grab the dust broom with your mouth and swing your head back and forth violently. stare at it for a bit as it helplessly lies on the ground making sure you killed it. amble into the bathroom. stand on your hind legs and peer into the tub. search around the toilet looking for the source of the smell. lick the drain in the corner that’s full of old water because it never drains right. exit the bathroom and stare at the dust broom. lower your body to the ground and dart at it. you’re not quite coordinated enough to pounce quickly so you loose your footing a bit. grab the dust broom and swing it around again. stare. walk over to the wall and look for bugs. if you find one put it in your mouth. walk under the desk and lay there for a bit. get up. find one of jon’s shoes and stick your head in it as far as possible. smell and snort. pull your head out and eat the shoe laces. search around the trashcan. amble back into the bathroom because you’re still not sure where the smell is comming from. lick the drain some more. come back and chew on the phone chord. walk around the room smelling things and trying to put them in your mouth. pull things off of benches and chairs. hopefully you can find food somewhere. food or bugs. bugs are nice because they run around a bit before you eat them.

that’s what jota normally does because he’s terribly bored with us. we’re terrible parents. all day long we sit in our rooms reading or occupying ourselves with things that don’t involve bugs, other dogs or putting things in our mouths. i’m sure he’s mildly depressed but i’m no pooch psychiatrist.

dogs here are all tenth generation mutts. there are no two that look alike. there is the large grey dog with no tail and a pug nose that sits at the university’s gate. there is the very hairy dog with stubby legs and a wide body. he looks like he has a self esteem problem. there is the small, lean dog with ears that stick straight up and odd blotches all over its body. he is the alpha dog. then there’s jota: small, floppy ears and well proportioned legs.

they roam in packs. they all run around at night and dig and play and bark at each other and, i’m sure, at other packs. the other night i watched four dogs dig a hole next to a coconut tree. they took turns butting each other out of the way and yelping. jack and i are not nearly that interesting. i’m reading “great expectations” and jota will have none of it.

our poor little beast still hasn’t learned how to control his bladder. he has it down somewhat but, when he does make a mistake, we punish him. one of our favorite methods is to give him a quick bath. there is no hot water here which really isn’t a problem for us. it’s at least eighty every day. we put the dog in the shower and he yelps and cries. what sadistic parents we are. i’ve never seen an animal that’s wearing a fur coat shiver for so long. he sits on the roof in the late afternoon sun and shivers pathetically. he looks like an orphan or a boy that lost his favorite toy or maybe an orphan that lost its only toy.

debacles come in all shapes and sizes. you can have simple misunderstandings or instances that seriously impact.

this was a combination of small debacles.

first we couldn’t get tickets to chau doc. chau doc is a small town that is nestled along the cambodian boarder. it is home to the lady pagoda and some quaint mountain. we’ve been told that you can hire people to carry you up this mountain if you can’t make it up under your own strength. you sit in a hammock between them as they struggle along. this, i wanted to see.

the bus companies were making too much money running between long xuyen and ho chi minh city. they were in no mood to travel short distances. most prices are slightly inflated during the lunar new year and bus tickets are one of them. the price for a one-way ticket went from 40,000 to 80,000.

communication was a problem. they said that the bus would leave at noon, then one, then two. we sat, and sat and sat eventually giving up. that was the first debacle.

the second debacle happened when we tried to eat lunch. we ordered bun bo hue which is noodles, beef and broth all fashioned in the styling of hue city. it’s a bit spicy and not too filling. we asked for the bill and the waiter quoted an outrageous price. it was three times what would normally be paid, or so we thought. we were sitting with all of our bags and looked like tourists. we thought we were being had.

we told the waiter that we lived here and that we were teachers at the university. we said that we were volunteers and that we didn’t earn a salary. the small man looked on with no empathy. we made a bit of a stink about it and, it turned out, we were paying the normal price. i found out later from friends and felt terribly that we had made such a scene.

nothing terrible happened. i’m still able to breath, talk, laugh and sing. today was just a combination of frustrating events. waiting and waiting followed by poor communication, ignorance and fear on our part.

the second version of the chinese new year.

jack and i went to the local chinese highschool to participate in the festivities. during the lunar new year, the first three days each have specific functions. the first day of the new year you are supposed to spend with your family. the second day you are to spend with your in-laws. the third day is reserved for teachers. we heard this and thought, “wow, our room will be a joyous mess of phone calls and visits. how much fun is this going to be!” we ended up sitting around all day reading. no one called.

the chinese high school is a u shaped building. jack and i were adorned in our lunar new year’s best and we sat in one of the front benches reserved for guests of honor. we listened to speeches in vietnamese, chinese and cambodian. we understood a bit of the vietnamese but the chinese and cambodian was only an odd mixture of hand gestures and sounds. the treasurer of the chinese cultural preservation society in long xuyen stood up. we had no idea what lie ahead. we sat through a solid hour of number reading and an entire analysis of last year’s spending. i could feel my eyelids weighing my face down and my stomach was angry with me.

he ended after banging his glasses into the microphone randomly. he was so absorbed in the numbers that his depth perception was off. we all turned to watch the dances.

a large dragon carried by nine men ran about to the rhythm of a large drum and some sort of bell looking thing. the dragon was an incredibly bright shade of green and yellow. the nine men all ran and swooped and dipped the dragon while three smaller dragons danced with some fat man with a mask. the three dragons in the middle were teams of two men. the man in the back would bend all the way over to make the back legs of the dragon. the man in the front would hold the dragon’s head over his own and jump up and down and sway back and forth. the head was connected to the man in the back by a large cloth that made everything look bright. each team would move in unison. they would crouch low to the ground and then jump high in the air. the fat man in the middle was actually a skinny man wearing a prosthetic paunch. he wore a pink mask and carried a fan. he would run among the smaller dragons and they would respond in ways that i could not interpret. i had no idea whether they were all friends or whether the fat man was evil and the dragons were good or whether it was the other way around.

that dance ended and the treasurer stood up again and had some more numbers to report. we sat and listened again to his mumbling which was only interrupted by his glasses banging into the microphone.

the next dance was a group of about forty boys and girls from the high school. they came out and all ran around with fans and long pieces of cloth. the pieces of cloth were in all sorts of colors. there was fluorescent blue, day-glow orange, cosmic pink and bright, bright, green. some of the dancers were leaders and others were followers. some of the girls spent all their energy trying to get everyone to dance in unison and others just giggled and danced oblivious to the beat.

that dance ended. the next dance was less of a dance and more of a stunt show. a large bamboo pole was set up in the middle of the school. it was at least twenty five feet high and one of the members of the dragon team climbed up on it. he reached the top and put on one of the smaller dragon costumes. he proceeded to defy gravity and all laws of rationality for the next five minutes. the crowd was please and he was too.

we sat around eating un-ripened mangos and talking. some of the agricultural department invited us to their shack and we were more than happy to oblige. one of the men asked us if we liked mangos and we said yes. he ran out of the room, climbed a tree, and picked some off. they taste like sourness and had the texture of dirt. we’re not sure why people eat mangos when they’re green instead of when they’re fleshy and orange. i guess people’d rather eat un-ripened mangos rather than not eat any at all. if they let them wait, someone’s bound to take them first.

i learned a really important lesson. we were talking about age and culture. how, in vietnam, it’s not offensive to ask anyone anything. there are four basic questions that strangers ask: what’s your name? how old are you? do you have a wife/girlfriend? and how much money do you make? you surely are able to answer these four questions after a month of vietnamese training.

we went around the table talking about age, birthdates and the year of the goat. the year of the goat is jack’s year. he doesn’t look like a goat at all but i’m sure he exhibits some goatish qualities. my year is the year of the monkey. nothing more needs to be said.

the man across from the table said he was also twenty two years old. i smiled and we looked at each other and pretended to have something in common. i don’t believe either one of us decided in what year we were to be born.

it turns out that he was twenty two according to vietnamese standards. the year of your birth counts as year one. you gain another year every time the lunar new year comes around. the man was only nineteen. it turns out i’m twenty four.

i can’t tell you how difficult it was to understand. all this time i had thought i was twenty two. i thought that every june seventeenth i gained another year. i cut another notch. it turns out i’m much older. twenty four. twenty four. i should be doing something else if i’m twenty four.

i looked in the mirror today and still looked twenty two.

the first day of the new year is not that exciting for foreigners. the streets are empty. the shops are boarded up and nothing moves, only the red and yellow flags that are perched outside every house.

we went for breakfast fairly late. nothing was open. all the normal shops were boarded up. all of our usual cafés were closed. tet is a time for family, not business and having no family around makes for a boring lunar new year.

we finally found some young, enterprising lady who was selling some sort of meat and noodle combination. we ordered a couple bowls but without the meat. the flesh looked old and was sitting in the early morning sun and had attracted flies.

the soup was good but nothing else was. streets that are normally packed with people were deserted. it was as if an air-raid alarm had sounded and all had fled for their lives.

later on in the day things started to pick up. there were large bands that roamed the streets banging drums. they were headed up by a small dragon that directed by two young boys. they would strut around proudly as the drums thumped out a loyal rhythm. the dragon visited many random houses and we were able to watch from our balcony as it danced towards a small, tin-roofed shack where it was greeted by a flock of children. the dance ended and the dragon moved on.

hopefully tomorrow the streets will have come alive again.