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.