language classes began for me tonight. monday wednesday friday 5:30 to 7:30pm. that will last until the 14th when classes will be 8:00 to 10:00am every weekday until i head down to long xuyen in the beginning of december.

the university is located on a dingy street which is always full of youth. there are three main buildings and a couple large courtyards. our class was to meet on the second floor (what we would call the third floor) in room 27b. there is 27a and 27c too which are all different partitions of the same room. my class was made up of me and three koreans.

the had a strange coat of paint on it. somehow it was a combination of silver, baby blue and green. our teacher was very soft spoken which was very frustrating when trying to understand the difference between co cô cơ cu cư câ că ca ci ce cê ce có cò cỏ cõ cọ cồ cố cổ cỗ cộ cờ cớ cở cỡ cợ etc. well, i believe you get the point. she would peep the difference and we would all try to repeat it. she would frown and peep something again barely audible above the scurry of gecko feet across the wall. peep peep.

the other students are a very motley crew. one student was an older lady trying to preserve her youth behind a three inch layer of makeup and four inch heels. the other was a young man who tended to yell all the time. the final man looked to be in middle management. he was not in any stage to learn a language. he couldn't hear the differences but was somehow defiant about his mistakes. strange.

i'll be in this class for only one week. it will be a nice overview of pronunciation which, in my opinion, is the most difficult part of this language. i also found my self giggling a lot tonight. for some reason everything was absurd.

oh, and it rained hot like a sauna.

this website has been read by many more people than i would have ever imagined. thanks to all who have been following along with my adventures. please, feel free to email me. i have plenty of time to respond being quite alone. the larger size of my audience causes me to be delicate when describing certain things. i surely don't want to offend someone. one specific topic is religion. oh my. do i want to step into this potential mine-field? i will be careful and vague.

today i attended a church in central city saigon. it was at the saigon prince hotel. the hotel was ornate. pink and grand with marble steps and carpet. the service is held somewhere upstairs in a rectangular room full of plush seats and ice cold water in the back. i come from salford mennonite church. our style of worship would be classified as traditional. this service would be classified as contemporary. i'm not being vague with that description, only careful.

i sat down in the back and looked up at the cool glow of the overhead projector. we were singing praise songs. i'm used to four part harmony. songs like "praise god for whom all blessings flow!", and my grandpop's favorite "praise to god immortal praise!" (i think it's #91 in the blue book). i'm not as comfortable with songs that require a large band. i'm also not very comfortable when a piano is playing softly in the background when the preacher talks to add to the atmosphere. for all of my radical beliefs, i fall appropriately in line when it comes to church services. directly in line. right behind abe landis and right in front of earl frankenfield.

i also wasn't accustomed to the sermon. it started talking about peter and the boat and being fishers of men. jesus asked peter if he could get in the boat (boy, this would be embarrassing if it wasn't peter. maybe it was mark or john or judas even. i'm pretty sure peter.) well, jesus asked him three things and the final was to cast out his net into the water. he would be fishing for men. (i shut my eyes for a moment. i saw a net being cast into the water and, after a pause, it being hauled up into the boat. it was full of very small men (no women mind you) who were all slimy, flopping around and screaming.) my personal theology interprets the story being about faith, trust and helping us all understand the profound love of jesus.

the preacher kept referring to the audience as a net that was to be cast out into the city. i appreciate mcc because they don't require or expect it's volunteers to evangelize. i have enough questions of my own. read the first two sentences of this paragraph again and draw your own conclusion. (that was both careful and vague.)

well, the sermon ended with a call to inclusion. we needed to be more inclusive of people who respond to god in different ways. if people raise their hands, no problem. some people respond to god by falling down. (i'm not making this up) also, alter calls are not in the bible and so they should not be performed every sunday. (someone talked to the pastor and wondered why there wasn't one every sunday) it doesn't mean that alter calls are wrong, it just means that maybe they won't have one every sunday. like i said, i fall in line right behind abe landis and right in front of earl frankenfield. for anyone who doesn't know who they are, please, email my dad. davidray123@yahoo.com

we did have wonderful communion which i really enjoyed and the people there were also very interesting. a very diverse crowd.

i tried to use tact. i tried not to step on any land mines but, sometimes, even the best land mine sniffin' dog gets blown up. read between the lines. well, today is sunday. i'm going to bed and you're all getting up. enjoy the familiar and sing in beautiful, four-part harmony for me.

the most coming question i've gotten while living alone in this tiny room is, "are you lonely?"

well lonely no, but crazy... maybe. i didn't tell recount this story yesterday because i was caught up in the war museum. i was supposed to have lunch at the keener's house (eastern mennonite mission folk) on saturday at noon. yesterday, i thought, was saturday. now, for those of you who know me, i'm not an absent minded fellow. however, living in a one room hovel, having traveled extensively earlier in the week, having no recognizable schedule and no solid human contact, i lost track of the days.

i walked to their house and rang the doorbell. no one answered. i rang again and again. finally, their house keeper came to the door. "are the keeners there?" she replied, "no." well... i stammered, confused, but plodded onward. "when will they be back." "tonight." oh, so they forgot about our little luncheon. not so fast buco. she happily (giggling all the while) explained to me that it was friday, not saturday. i walked home very frustrated. old age? am i going crazy? well, to say the least, i lost faith in my common sense.

enough of that. laugh if you must but enough of that.

about being alone: i love it. i feel that the best thing to do is to spread out your daily tasks. go for a walk, read, write, read, email, sit and watch the city, read, write letters, sleep, and eat. if one has a variety of tasks and they don't mind some alone time, two months alone in ho chi minh city is a dream come true. i'm in my element.

except for one part of being alone: eating alone irks me. tonight i went out to eat. i'm getting more comfortable with this culture so i'm starting to go to the little mom and pop restaurants. they're usually run by some extended family and rarely have menus.

tonight i stumbled on one that was particularly interesting. i walked in and, as always, people stared at me as if i had just risen from the dead. i took a seat randomly. suddenly, people realized that i was intending to eat at their humble establishment. the world springs into action. people set a place for you and bring you everything you need. this place happened to be fairly high class. it had a menu and even had some of the items in english. i was fine dining. i decided on the "crispy cuttle fish". i had no idea what i was getting.

the walls of this place strike me first. they’re made of pink plaster that's partially crumbling either because of the humidity, age or some form of plaster suicide (maybe it realized that it was, in fact, pink plaster) there are also geckos on the walls. they run around defying the laws of gravity. oscillating fans churn the thick air. the heat is such that one waits with frustration every time the fan moves away from you. moments, anxious moments before the fan returns. cool air. agh. they don't have covers on them and look as if they could fall at any point adding to the atmosphere.

i believe that 10 people were working in the eatery at that moment. one lady was taking a fish out of a large tank. i looked away at the geckos until i heard "thwap, thwap". i looked to see her beating something with a metal rod. i don't think it was my cuttle fish.

i also always bring a book when eating alone. it passes the time and makes me look ever-so smart. actually, i love reading. reading made me think about being a writer in this town. how wonderful. how luxurious. how does one become one of these strange creatures? there would be so many stories to tell and so many faces to describe. how does one get good at making everything seem so real on paper? oh, i wish i could make reality and fantasy dance together so subtly that no one would notice.

my food came and three people gathered around me to, i'm convinced, evaluate my chopstick skills. i'm getting better and deftly picked up a sliced tomato. the onlookers, apparently satisfied, settled into the background. i sat back and watched the traffic. it ebbed and flowed and my cuttle fish was tasty. now this is the part of eating that bothers me. no one to talk to. no one that i can say, "boy, this cuttle fish is sure tasty!" it's a lonely moment where i can hear each bite i take. i can feel the food pass down my throat. i hear my stomach moan "more! more!". the most difficult decision, when there isn't conversation to be had, is whether i pause before the next bite to observe the scenery or whether i just dive in for more. the loneliness usually passes quickly after i drop a piece of food on the table and look around to see if anyone was watching. inevitably, someone is.

the bill came. they charged me 25000 dong instead of the 20000 dong it said on the menu. i almost objected but gave in. i'd pay 30 cents extra for this meal. i walked out the door and a fuzzy rat ran into the hollow of a tree stump.

the cuttle fish was good though.

"are there war museasums in ho chi minh city? i am not interested in seeing the mall..but the war related stuff...i will look on the internet and look into what there is to see related to the war...." dad emailed me this after my last post. i thought the mall was fascinating but i decided to see one of the war museums here in saigon. here ya go dad. you asked for war.

i walked down past the park that i talked about earlier. the one with the numbered trees. it's right next to the "reunification palace" where the north vietnamese tanks broke down the gates to reunify the country. after the breech of the palace, the southern president duong van minh supposedly greeted the northern general bui tin with, "i have been waiting since early this morning to transfer power to you" to which the northern general replied, "your power has crumbled. you cannot give up what you do not have". the tanks still stand inside the gates.

i made my own reunification trip from hanoi to saigon. didn't do much damage along the way though.

today i visited the war remnants in vietnam museum (formally called the war crimes museum). i didn't know exactly what to expect but knew the museum dealt with american involvement in vietnam. the day was very hot and the sky was blue. i entered the nondescript building and paid my 10,000 dong fee (75 cents).

in the first room my relatively happy day turned sour. pictures upon pictures of war tragedies. old ladies with guns held to their heads. you could see their skin was leathered and their face contorted. what must have been going through their minds. rows and rows of suspected vietcong bound hand and foot. children dead on pathways. old men crying. american troops wounded in ditches. another row of pictures displayed the victims of differing air attacks. victims of "frag bombs". laying on their sides and their backs were riddled with small pieces of debris. sitting up crying. victims of napalm attacks. their skin was charred black like an old campfire log. dead babies lying on tables. they looked like a charred mannequin. a picture of a person being thrown from a helicopter. what must they have been thinking as the wind rushed all around them and they struggled fruitlessly. a picture of a dead man dragged behind a tank. was he alive when they started dragging him? was he just a body they were taking home? did no one have a conscience?

this war was not my war. i remember it through pictures and videos. nice, well narrated documentaries about american involvement. i never saw the news. i never saw the body counts or was given a draft card. my generation has lived through television wars. clean wars. viedo game wars.

another room listed international calls for peace. there was every country you could imagine and a picture of a protest that took place there. everything from the congo, malaysia, uganda, chilie, norway, germany, italy and the us. there were the stories of the three americans that lit themselves on fire. there was the story of the american piolot that refused to fly more missions over north vietnam. by this point i was feeling exhausted.

there was another large open area that displayed american arms. there were fragments of all sorts of bombs. they had sunk into soft rice paddies and had not exploded. there were helicopters, jets and tanks. artillery, machiene guns and personel carriers. two statues cased in plexiglas caught my attention. they were replications of american soilders. one looked just like me. he was tall and had a pale face. he had dark eyebrows and a concerned look on his face. it wasn't angry. he looked right into my eyes. he held a gun out towards me. he could have been me 35 years ago. i walked around the munitions for a long time imagining them roaring through jungles and paddies. the sky darkened and started to sob. it didn't rain, it just sobbed slowly and quietly.

i walked into the final room. the first part was full of pictures of deformed babies and fetuses. there were over 75,000,000 liters of defoliants sprayed all over the countryside. 75,000,000 is a big number. babies born with part of a leg deformed the foot twisted inside as if cowering out of fear. children with faces that seem to be made of melted wax partially dripping to one side. children born with all form of brain defect. cancer. a documentary was being shown in english. the majority of peole there were korean or japanese tourists. i guess it was in english for a reason. i listened.

it interviewed person after person whose families lives were destroyed by chemicals sprayed on the countryside. the rain picked up. the roof was tin and seemed to roar. i watched for 10 minutes and saw hundreds of people. i wanted to cry. i walked into the last wing of the building. it held picture after picture of soldiers on all sides and their stories. story after story of suffering. american suffering, vietnamese suffering, laotian suffering, cambodian suffering. the rain caused the tin roof to scream. i waded through the pictures reading them all. photographers who stepped on land mines. villagers who watched their father shot. children who died while running away. children. there were american's in ditches covered in mud bleeding. mothers dragging their children across swollen streams. the tin roof moaned. i walked to the end and stood in the doorway. the little water bombs dropped on the metal tanks and exploded sending water shrapnel in all directions. people ran from building to building as if bomb shelter to bomb shelter. the rain's assault was relentless. so many people were wet.

i stood there and watched. i was sad. i felt helpless. i was ashamed that war still exists.

it didn't seem important whether i was wet or dry at this point. i had to escape the moaning and screaming of the tin roof. it was haunting me. i walked into the downpour.

i held my head low on the walk home. i was hiding from the rain's force. this museum had brought on a flurry of thoughts and emotions. the pamphlet i was given says that "nearly 3 million vietnamese were killed, and 4 million others injured..." and, "over 58,000 american army men died in the war... in retrospect, it (the museum) is not for inciting hatred, but just for learning lessons from history: human beings will not tolerate such a disaster happening again, neither in vietnam or anywhere on our planet."

this war, as i said, was not mine. the war in iraq will be mine. it will be my generation's. i don't want to visit baghdad in 35 years and see a museum dedicated to depleted uranium bombs causing cancer and deformities and daisy cutters destroying whole villages in a single swoop. i've had just about enough of our state run military machine.

i returned to my apartment, soaked to the core. i walked to the roof to think about what i had seen. the storm was passing. there were blue skys on the horizon and the sun was about to shine again.

i can only hope.

the trashcan in my bathroom proclaims: "waste basket" and underneath "happiness to everybody!". it's short and fat.