| I cave under pressure, so here is my second month (September 2006). The next post will be of the Central trip. I generally don't write about how I feel, I generally just recap my memories. But if I provide enough details, I can put myself back into that place and remember how I feel. So for people on the outside this is probably dry and detail oriented, but if you were there or if you were me it might stir up feelings.
THURSDAY September 21, 2006
We had a paper due for Globalization today. I thought I had finished it, but I really
didn’t so I stayed up with everyone else in Michelle’s room to work on it. And work on it we didn’t. We just
played around in the room--Matt with his wine and Michelle with her cracker box. Freaken Michelle
decided to empty a cracker box and turn it into one of those old fashion cameras with the ghetto pop up flash. She used the flap of the box to make the flash. She then took pictures of Matt with her camera, and drunken Matt posed every time.
It was ridiculous. Angie,
Matt, Michelle and I stayed up passed three not studying, not essay writing, just plain fooling around. We paid for it in the morning when we all had
to take a midterm for our language classes.
After the midterm we took our break and headed off to history class. The
professor was so kind. He let us leave class 30 minutes early so we could
shower before heading off to the train for our central trip. After we got to our dorm room, Millie and I had
one hour to shower and pack. That was some intense rushing but we made it in
time.
The bus took us to the train station and we set our stuff
into our rooms. I shared the room with
Chi Hoa, Angie, and Michelle. Gerard
asked about the sleeping arrangements in the bus, I raised my hand to sleep
with Michelle and Angie because they were not planning to drink on the
train. I didn’t want to get motion
sickness on the train which would be exponentially worsened with alcohol. So my sleeping arrangement became a huge irony when 9 oclock hit
and everyone congregated to our room.
The party ended up being in our room.
I fully blame Gerard because he was in our room visiting when the party
came looking for him.
The night was fun, even with people dropping rice wine from
the top bunk to the ground floor. Millie
challenged Gerard to chug 2 beers in the time she finishes one. Gerard didn’t know it was a race, so he
lost. After a few good hours everyone
left. In the morning, the ride was exponentially worsened for Shane who had a little too much of Hanoi Vodka and rice wine. It was a sad sight, he looked like crap. The previous statement was also true of others, but Shane was the worse.
SUNDAY September 17, 2006: I grew up not really liking kids
that much, especially the ones
around 6th grade to junior
high. But today I went to a village on
the outskirts of Hanoi to teach English.
These kids blew me away. They are
so smart and funny. They also love to
learn. They are obedient. They defy all the traits that are typical of
kids this age, at least by comparison to the American brats I know. But I loved teaching
these kids and it helped me realize that I really want to teach after
college. These kids live in Soc Son
where the newest and most modern technologies do not affect them directly, the
way they affect city kids in Hanoi. We took a van all the way to the village because taking the bus and xe om would be way too far. Even on the van, it
took about 1.5 hours, of which I sleep away.
This project is a bit similar to xa me, but I would say it is more
organized. It’s headed by this guy name
Hung who graduated from San Diego. Matt is
the the leader of this project, but most of the time Julie is the wake up Nazi/alarm clock. She woke most of us up so we can
get our asses to the bus by 6:45. My eighth grade students are the shizznizts.
They are so cute.The XaMe kids are cute too!!
 
SATURDAY September 16, 2006: We went to the Museum of
Ethnology today. The museum
has many permanent exhibits about the many (56) ethnic minorities in
Vietnam. However, there were also a
temporary exhibits as well. This month featured a period in Vietnam’s recent
history called the Bao Cap period, which was the focus of our trip. The Bao Cap period
was after the 1975 war and lasted till the late 1980’s. During this time, the Vietnam was so poor and
scarce in resources that the government controlled the distribution of food and
necessities. In order for people to buy
anything they had to have the stamps issued by the government. The booklet of stamps was very important
because it determined a family’s monthly supply of food. Each stamp would allow purchasing power of
the indicated items on the stamp. The
amount of stamps and kind of stamps each family received depended on their
family size, among other factors.
The exhibit featured some really sad stories. For example, one of the stories on the wall
was about how one lady was in line to use her stamps. Some scoundrels came to her and told her to let
them see her stamps and that there was a
shorter line elsewhere. After she pulled
out her stamps they screamed something to distract her then ran off with her
stamps. This was devastasting to her
because she didn’t know what to do for the rest of the month. Her family would have to starve.
Another story was about a woman and her brand new bike. Back then, bikes were a luxury and they
actually have to be registered with licenses. So this lady worked really hard to finally
buy a red bike. She rarely used it. Then her grandchild (or son?) took it out for
a ride, fell, and scratched it. She was
so devastated that she couldn’t eat anything the entire day. Since the bike was of great value, she was afraid something bad might happen to it again so she put it back in the box and never used it again. She explained, “That’s why it still looks so
new”. The bike was also displayed in the
museum. I didn't see scratches but it sure did look new.
There were many stories like these. Its so interesting how much people cherished
the little things they had. Even soap
was of great value. One man had a bar of
soap but valued it so much that he couldn’t bare to use it for washing. Instead, he broke it up into pieces and put
the pieces into the pockets of his shirts so that his clothes would always
smell good. These stories really pulled
at my heart because my mom used to talk about how hard it was to raise us (my
sister and I) in Vietnam. She said we
were really poor. It never really hit me
that it wasn’t just us who were poor, the entire country was. I grew up in the Bao Cap period. It is just so sad to understand what my mom
was talking about through the words of
other people who went through the same experience.
I found a quote that was really interesting. You know those quotes about which good traits
to look for in a man? For example, love
a man who can make you laugh and so on.
Well there was this famous quote for the best kind of mate to look for
when looking for love. Its interesting
what is valued during times of depression and times of wealth.
 
MONDAY September 4,
2006: There wasn’t an agenda for the
morning. Some of us went swimming in the
waters and then the boat headed back to shore around noon. I miss
the crew. Two of the guys were really cute. I don’t remember their names though. But the cute one is named Cuc I think. But
from the boat to the shore to the bus toward Hanoi to the taxi home took about
four exhausting hours. We got home
around late evening. Kim dyed my orange
streaks to brown. It looked better. Then I rested and prepared for the next
school day.
SUNDAY September 3, 2006: This morning I woke up late so I
missed breakfast. Kevin told me not to fret because the food wasn’t
fantastic. It was about 10 AM and the
half of us had gone off kayaking earlier and were on their way back. I went kayaking with Tim. It was the first time I’d ever been on a
kayak so I didn’t really know how to use the paddles.
But I surprisingly picked the skills up quick. I also thought my arms would be really tired
after a short time. Again, I surprising
didn’t get tired nor did I complained like the little unfit princess that I am. Tim and I went pretty far. We went under three caves. They were so
nice. We stopped at one of the caves and
swam. I’m not a good swimmer so I stayed
near the kayak. I was going to swim toward Tim when he screamed because
something attacked him. It turned out
that he was attacked by some Portugese Man-of-War (jellyfish). It wrapped
around his arm and stung him. He was
trying to get away when he realized there was a bunch of them in the water. He got stung again on his wrist. He told me to get into the kayak before I get
stung. Tim held one side of the kayak
while I tried to get in. But before I
could fully get in, Tim tried to get in and it offset the balance of the kayak. The kayak flipped and we both fell in. I freaked out a little bit, but still managed
to keep afloat. Both of us laughed
really hard as we tried to flip the kayak over.
We tried to get into the kayak again, but this time it was a lot harder
because we just kept laughing. But we finally got into it and realized we had
lost one of the seats in the water. At
least we didn’t lose a paddle. I think
our kayak went the furthest because on our way back to the boat, a smaller boat
came to pick us up because our time had run out for the kayak.
I stayed in the water for a while. Shane was also in the water and he didn’t
believe that I really couldn’t swim well. He convinced me to swim to him and
that he’d grab onto me if anything happened.
So I did. Getting to Shane was
fine, but when I got there I didn’t feel safe because it hit me how deep the
water was. So I flipped out a bit, and Shane made me flip out a little more.
Then he went under water because I was putting a lot of pressure on him. He told me that he was afraid I’d drown the
both of us while he was trying to save me.
Anyway, I got to the ladder of the boat, climbed up, and had lunch. After that I wore a life jacket. Stupid Shane, I blame him for potentiall killing me with his words.
In the evening the swimmers decided to jump off the roof of
the boat. The nonswimmers stayed on the roof, watched and took pictures. Ha
Long Bay in the sunset is beautiful. Two
semi-funny stories happened today. The guys on the boat had a guitar and it was
so out of tune. Shane wanted to tune it
and play it. But the screws used for
tuning weren’t there. It was a hella old
guitar. So Shane asked for plyers and
tuned it that way. I told him to becareful and not break the string. And so he broke a string. The other funny story was about our tab. They record our drinks down in a book, but
one of the pages ripped off and flew out the window. They didn’t know what happened to the page
and started searching the boat. They
murmured under their breath, “Who took it?”
Then one of the guys looked out on the water around the boat and saw a piece
of paper pretty far away from the boat.
They had to turn the boat around to get the paper. Since there were 3 crew members, they were blaming each other for the ripped paper. The bickering was hilarious. Try and spot the paper in the picture  
At night we bought some crabs and shrimps and had them with
our dinner. Then we hung out with the crew and had the best sashimi ever. The crew was really cool but they kept making
me translate stuff. It turned out that
they often look at our passports because they knew I was born in Vietnam and
other random facts. How stalkerish.  
SATURDAY September 2, 2006 VIETNAMESE INDEPENDENCE DAY: Today is Vietnamese Independence Day. On the roof of every building there hangs the
Vietnam flag. The holiday celebrates the
segration between Vietnam and foreign controllers such as the French. So it is much like the American Independence
day, but perhaps not so much fireworks and barbeque. I actually don’t know how they celebrate this
holiday because I didn’t stay in the city for any of the celebrations, if there
were any. Eleven of us woke up early
this morning to head downtown and catch a tour bus to Ha Long bay. We were planning to go by bus at 6:30 but
people lagged. So we took a taxi down there instead. We finally got down there. We waited around
for Kimmai to finish all the proper documentations and money payments. The people at the tour office were pretty
fluent in English. For example, Matt
didn’t pay for this ticket yet (roughly $40) so Kim Mai asked him to pay. He responded, “Do you want that in dollars or
in sex”. The Vietnamese tour guides
cracked up. Freaken Matt.
The bus that took us to Ha long bay was a bit small but it
fit all 11 of us and a few more people who where not part of our group. Three of the girls were quarter French but
looked like they were half. One was
really pretty and Matt kept checking her out.
They sat right in front of me, so I checked them out too. One really was pretty, and all of their faces
were so fair and flawless. Wow! Anyway,
while we were on the bus I started to smell a really foul odor. I knew someone farted, but who? I also knew if I said anything everyone would
say that it was me. That's just a rule right? So I just looked
around to see if anyone else smelled it.
So then Kevin, who was sitting next to me, finally smelled it. He asked me who it could be, so I pointed to
the French girls. Then suddenly I hear
Matt say, “UGGHHH!!!” I wanted to laugh
so hard. Kevin and I were looking
around at this point. Chris and Millie
were sleeping. But within a few seconds,
Chris opened his eyes with the most disgusting look on his face. OMG! It was priceless. The thought that a smell can wake someone up from their sleep. It was so funny.... I almost died. The smell finally went away.
Damn it was foul.
The road from Ha Noi to Ha long was really pretty but I
slept through most of it. It was about 3
hours long with a 20 minute break in the middle. We stopped at a stop where handicap children
embroidered paintings. These were really
nice pieces of art and depending on the size, some take about a three months to
complete. Before going onto the boat we
stopped by a restaurant for lunch. We had
fried spring rolls, squid, rice, tofu, stir-fried onions, and fish. Then we headed to our boat and had the same
thing for lunch again. Ha Long bay was
SOOO beautiful!! Our first destination was a cave. Our second destination was another cave. Then
we found out the next few destinations were also caves. We cried turned our third
destination into the beach. I mean caves
are cute, but four caves in a row? That’s crazy. Plus, I thought the two caves
we went to were sort of tacky because they had these colorful lights installed
in the back of rocks. It gave of this
weird Disneyland wannabe aura. The beach
was fun but I don’t know how clean it was.
The water was also pretty warm, but nonetheless it was fun because we
all of us were waiting all day to get into the water.  
After the sun went down the boat went to park for the night.
We had dinner, similar food as lunch.
Most of us spent the evening on the roof of the boat and drank. I fell
asleep up there and woke up with some horrible back pains. In addition, those lawn chairs are sticky and
the morning dews did not really help. So when I woke up, it was like I slept on a giant human sized sticker, or it was like getting your whole body waxed with one giant sticky pad. OWW!!!
 
 
They actually make Iced Coffee flavored Pepsi to satisfy the Vietnamese people's tastebuds.
 
 
This is Sunburned Matt whose grumpiness is much like Hungover-Matt, High-Matt, Mosquito-Bitten-Matt, Big-Scrunchies-Loving-Matt, and One-of the-Locals-Rubbed-My-Thigh-Matt's.
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