fitting.

i went and ate dog less than a week before i go home. i’ve been forging relationships with my friends here and this is how we celebrate.

i remember the first time i ate dog meat. it was at a small shop near the university. one only had to travel down a sidewalk off a road before they came to a house that was full of people. we sat on small plastic stools around tables fashioned from any assortment of wood one could find. we ate dog stew, dog curry and anything else dog that they could muster up. dogs were wimpering behind the wall to my right. i’ll never forget that.

that was strange. this was normal.

this final time, we ate dog in a restuarant fairly far from our home. we still sat on plastic stools but this time the food was better. while eating dog is an affair for those of the lower class, this restaurant was high class dog. we ate dishes of rotissery dog, dog soup that was cooked with young bamboo and even the most sacred part of the male dog boiled with herbs.

we talked about life, about going home. we joked and i felt beautifully comfortable. i felt more at home at that dog restaurant than i will feel after i step off the plane and sit in a van for the two hour ride to my ‘house’.

people here tell me that i should stay forever. i tell them i want to and i tell them sincerely. to stay forever would be easy. to stay forever would be to forever adapt to this culture. to go home is hard. to touch base again is nearly impossible.

after a person becomes a part of one culture, separating is quite difficult.

there was a party tonight for the foreign teachers. all three of us were there smiling.

they wished all of us well on our future travels and thanked us for our time spent in an giang. it was a friendly affair and we all left feeling cheerful. there were pictures taken and addresses exchanged. everything felt so final.

how should i begin to reflect on my time here? how can i be honest? is it possible or will i just be building up walls of assumptions?

i began my involvement with mcc in september of 2002. the year before that i was attending bluffton college and really beginning to feel like i was fitting in. that transitioned to the summer where i worked as a truck driver delivering chickens in philadelphia. i spent the summer expecting my future. i spent the summer fantasizing about what life would be like in vietnam. i hardly saw the narrow streets i drove down. i hardly knew the countless blue crates of chickens i threw.

the problem was, i really had no idea what to expect. i knew that i would be going somewhere wonderfully different but i had no idea exactly how wonderful or how different it would actually be. i knew so little about the place. i knew a bit of its history, a bit of what i was told by others and the rest was fantasy.

i jumped on a plane in philadelphia and said goodbye to everything i knew to be familiar. i said good bye to my family, friends and home. i said good bye to food, customs and tradition. i said good bye to it all. i sat on those planes and in those airports for hours not knowing what i would become; not having any idea how i would change.

i landed in hanoi and spent a couple weeks watching. i noticed the small, simple things first. i watched the ways that people went about their daily lives. i watched how people related to me and how people related to one another. the culture didn’t seem so different. things were easily understood, easily reconciled.

i moved south and began a stint on my own. the cultural differences began to open up to me. they did so slowly, like secrets. i learned more about this place and everything i learned i realized how much more i really didn’t know. i spent much of that time alone. it feels like i spent most of that time sitting in places and eating alone. i always ate with a book. i don’t know why, but i couldn’t eat without a book. i had to sit in these places and eat while staring down at a white page filled with black lettering. i couldn’t bare to look around me too long. i couldn’t bare to have people know how little i knew.

i finally moved down to the university and began to work. i slowly made my way into the culture and slowly began to see things with more clarity. life opened up. the world opened up for me. i sat at the center of the universe just taking notes on life. my pencil would waste away to nothing and i’d quickly grab another as to not miss one thing.

i became immersed in vietnamese. i realized that this was the key to truly fitting in here. i spent all of my time sitting in uncomfortable situations, on the edge of my seat, waiting and hoping to glean something important. i spent days not understanding anything, hundreds and thousands of moments where i had to sit and smile and admit incompetence. i learned how to listen with every part of my body and how to take everything in. i rehashed memories over and over again until they became a part of my experience. i sat in my room silently working things over and over again in my head. that is how i came to understand vietnam.

i also became immersed in work. i began to love the challenges of teaching. i began to learn how to act again like i did when i was in high school. i tried to define the role and play it to the best of my ability. i played the role of teacher and came to understand the joys and the hardships. i began to be asked to play different roles. i started to coordinate activities and events. i started to move up in the world here. i was asked to play the role of office worker. my work culminated about a month ago with the writing of a giant grant proposal. i slid to the top of the mountain and collapsed because i was exhausted.

i have changed in so many ways. things i can not see and things i will not be able to see for some time.

i have a very wise friend here who, when i asked him what i should do in the future, told me to ‘learn how to swim somewhere else.’ i have learned how to ‘swim’ in this setting, this culture, this place. he suggests that i learn how to swim in another setting, another culture, another place. before i go about swimming somewhere else, i have to go home and let everyone compare me to the person they knew before. the boy who ran around in old shirts trying to understand the world. the young man who liked to furrow his brow.

i want to know who i have become.

i have been concerned about going home. i have not yet been away from home for two years. last night i met someone who taught me about humility.

this man was an old friend. he has a wonderful smile and you would never know by his demeanor that he has an important position in this society. he has a friendly handshake.

he talked about his mother and her sister. they hadn't seen each other in forty years and they were going to finally meet after. his mother was from the mekong and his mother's sister lives in hong kong.

he sat at the table and showed emotion. it is so rare for anyone to show emotion here it moved me deeply. he put his hands on his face and sat quietly, not breathing. after a moment he removed his hands and said he was sorry. he talked about duty. he said that, after he took his mother to meet her sister, he would be able to die a happy man.

in vietnamese there is a word that we don't have in english. hieu thao. it means that a child does everything they can to help their parents because they owe their parents everything.

i don't know if i have hieu thao but he had it in spades. i envy.

agh.

the group left early this morning and i stood on the sidewalk outside of the hotel without sandals on waving to them. i walked up the stairs, glided up the elevator shaft and crawled back into bed. i woke up at noon.

i walked around saigon for hours thinking about where i was and were i was going. after spending the last two months furiously working on various projects, i finally had time to myself. eleven days before i board flight aa168 leaving from tokyo at 555pm and arriving in new york city at 525 pm of the same day, i mused about my experience.

the time to myself was wonderful though it did little to clear my head.

i boarded a bus and sat inside as it shook and bounced its way down to the mekong arriving a little after eight tonight. i didn’t talk to anyone. i didn’t sleep. i looked straight ahead and reflected.

there’s so much to say about what i’m feeling right now that i never want to forget that it will have to be saved for another day. i am free now and will write. i have independence and will reflect.

i can only see my parents driving me down wide roads full of big cars from new york to meetinghouse rd. i can only see the road and hear the hum of the car. it is night time and we’re all sitting there and no one knows what to say to one another. we drive and i stare straight ahead.