Uncle Ho

This past week we had our practice teaching at the University of Diplomatic Relations in Hanoi.  We each taught two or three times to sophomore students.  I was terribly nervous to do the teaching because I didn't feel like three weeks of training was sufficient... but it went good and it was so much fun!  It will be so fun to get to know my students in Laos and to be able to see the same kids each week instead of only once like in Hanoi.  Friday night we had a little ceremony to celebrate finishing our classes and practice teaching.

Early tomorrow (Sunday) morning, we will fly to Vientiane, Laos!  We will start Lao language school on Monday where we will have classes a few hours a day for about a month.  It will be nice to actually be able talk (a little) with the fruit vendors and taxi drivers.

Since we have been teaching this whole week, we have not been as busy. So we took advantage of some of our extra free time and did some fun things before we left Hanoi.

On Wednesday a few of us headed to the Hanoi Zoo, which is very close to our hotel, and where Julia and I have been running in the mornings.

We saw hippos, tigers, birds, bears, lots of monkeys, ostriches, and more.

We didn't really know why the elephants had such short chains...

The monkeys were the best! I think they knew that if they did turns and jumps and twists on the bars at the top of their cage, they would be hand-fed Vietnamese Cheetos from the spectators.

We also heard about big plastic balls filled with air that people float in and roll around in on the lake, sort of like hamsters.  

Julia and I got shoved in the water by the workers

We're actually standing!  It was pretty hard to balance inside, but we had lots of fun rolling and trying to run on the water in the ball.

There were lots of funny statues and rickety little kids rides.  We didn't think it would be wise to ride on the roller coasters and other rides, but we still had plenty of fun at the zoo!

Elise and I and a little monkey statue

Steph in dinosaur land!

I also got to experience my first 3D movie!  We watched Step Up 3.  It was pretty cheesy, but the dancing was fun to watch and the popcorn was delicious!  I would definitely recommend watching movies NOT in 3D.  I felt like I was looking cross-eyed the whole time, but it was fun!

Steph, me, and Julia with our 3D glasses

On Friday, Beka, Julia and I went to get foot massages, or so we thought.  We ended up getting full body massages for about $7.  They did the reflexology something...  so sometimes they were pushing a little hard with their knuckles on my feet, but other than that it was pretty nice!

We even got pajamaish things to wear!

This morning we finally got to see Mr. Ho Chi Minh's body. Steph and Elise taught some Lao students in class on Friday who are in Hanoi to study.  They were pretty excited that Brad and Stacy, who are in Hanoi to observe us, but have been in Lao for the last four years and who are pretty good at speaking Lao, could speak Lao so well; and that we were all going to be going to their home country to teach.  We met two of the Lao students at Mr. Minh's mausoleum this morning.

Ho Chi Minh was a communist revolutionary, President and Prime Minister of Vietnam during the 40s, 50s and 60s.  He is a pretty special guy in here in Vietnam, especially in the north. He died in 1969, and against his wishes to be cremated, his people decided to embalm him so anyone can pay their respects.  We had to go through lots of security, and then we could walk quietly through a small room with a few guards to view his body.  He looks pretty good for being dead for 40 years.  Every September to November he is shipped off to Russia to fix him up a bit, so we just made it!

We then visited his home and study and garage and saw a museum about Vietnam.  It was interesting to see. And fun to spend some time with some people from Laos!

These are the girls that are headed to Laos standing in front of Mr. Ho.  Unfortunately I don't know much about him or what he did. From what we saw today and I've heard since being in Hanoi, he seems like a pretty decent guy... but I don't really know. There are statues and posters of him all over, and he really is looked at as the Uncle of the people. 

It has been raining for the past three days almost non-stop!  I think it has something to do with a typhoon that is/was on the coast. Usually it only rains for like a half hour and then stops. It's fun to see everyone riding their motorbikes in their ponchos. It is also a nice break from the heat and humidity...  but now we're wet with rain water instead of sweat, and I don't know if that's much better.

Tourists

On Saturday, six of us decided to be tourists for the morning as we visited the Vietnam Museum of Ethnology and Hoa Lo Prison.

Our original plan was to visit the Temple of Literature, which is an old Confucian temple and also Vietnam's first university.  But it was raining, and the Temple of Literature is mostly outside, so we went to the Museum of Ethnology first.  We had a wonderful taxi driver who stopped and asked for directions a couple of times (instead of being too proud to ask like some men) to make sure we got to our final destination, and not just dropping us off in the middle of some random road - which unfortunately has happened a couple of times. He even let us sit in his taxi, out of the rain, until the museum opened.

I was really impressed with the museum!  It is all about Vietnam's 54 different ethnic groups.  Some consisting of more than a million and some having only a couple thousand.  The museum had many photos and exhibits with mannequins dressed in traditional clothing who were weaving or cooking. They also had quite a few artifacts from different ethnic groups.  And lots of words explaining where the groups live and what they do - farming or weaving...  There were many beautiful clothes that they wear!  I don't understand how they can wear so many layers in this heat though! This also reminds me that Hanoi (just the city, not Vietnam) is celebrating it's 1000 year birthday on October 10 of this year.  That is a long time that people have been living in the city!  There are already many signs and big plannings for the celebration.  I've also heard rumors that school will be closed for a weekish to celebrate!  I'm imagining that it will be quite a big deal. 

This was a bike filled with hundreds of fishing traps that some guy would ride around selling his fish and such. 

Some traditional clothes (taken through the glass)

This picture is taken for you, Dad!  These are different styles of windows that were in some people's houses.  I'm not really sure how they worked...  I know they slid up and down and I think were more for decoration than for actual use... But they are beautifully and intricately designed!

Outside there was a little trail that we could follow that took us around to explore 6 or so houses that are built like traditional houses for some groups.  We could go inside and see how they were set up.  Some had different buildings for the kitchen, living room, bedrooms...  Some were really long and skinny, and this one was really tall with a very high roof - I don't know what the purpose was... 

The floor and walls (of the high roof house) were like this.  I'm going to say it's pieces of bamboo woven together supported by thicker pieces of wood underneath.  It was pretty cool and breezy in this house!  And underneath was lots of room for people to eat or cook in the shade.  The stairs to get up to the house were pretty steep!

We also saw some water puppets!  Which are supposedly a big deal in Hanoi.  

It's hard to see on this picture, but in front of the house/building, there are two farmer puppets with their water buffaloes preparing the rice fields. The puppeteers are behind the screen, in the water, maneuvering the puppets in their thigh high waders.  It was a little different, but interesting to watch for a few minutes.

Our next stop was the Hilton Hanoi or Hoa Lo Prison.  (I had never heard of the Hilton Hanoi until Saturday.)  This was the prison where US POWs stayed during the Vietnam War.  It was originally built in the late 1800s by the French to hold Vietnamese who were trying to overthrow French control of their government.  Most of the jail was demolished in 1993 to make room for a high rise building.

This is a sculpture of Vietnamese who were in the jail while under French control.  The majority of the jail was about the courage of the Vietnamese who tried to overthrow the French.  Which makes sense because everyone wants to make their country sound good!

Another art piece depicting French mistreatment of the Vietnamese in the prison.  I wondered if the jail would be sorta creepy, with the few things I have heard about Americans in the war, but it wasn't creepy at all, thankfully!

This is sort of a shrine for all the Vietnamese who fought for inependence.

The first photo might me hard to see, but this bottom photo says, "The American pilots decorate the Christmas tree."  The top photo is a bunch of pictures of the US pilots cooking their turkey dinner, receiving Christmas gifts from back home and singing Christmas carols.  There were other photos of them playing chess and badminton and Monopoly and having a jolly time.  This isn't exactly what I've heard from the other side about life for the US pilots in this prison... 

I know this is getting long, but all this war stuff reminded me of a story some of our Lao teammates just told us about one of their students.  When he was five years old, he found a ball to play with, which was actually an unexploded bomb that the US dropped in Laos during the Vietnam War.  While he was playing with the "ball" it exploded and he became blind in one eye and has a hard time seeing in his other eye.  His parents dropped him off in Vientiane at a place for the visually impaired.  He is now a student at the University. He has a hard time learning because of problems with his sight.  He really wants to get his eye fixed... maybe he can have surgery in Thailand...

Just so sad to think of all the bad things that come from war.  And how they are still effecting people thirty years later.

English

Today was our last day of classes!!  :)  But now that means that we have practice teaching next week.  :S  I don't really know if only three weeks of classes is enough to be qualified to teach 40ish sophomore university students!  I know I sure don't feel ready.  But I don't teach on Monday, so I'll do some observing of my fellow teachers/classmates and hopefully learn a few more helpful teaching tips before it's my turn.  I don't know what will be more intimidating - standing in front of the students for two and a half hours or my teachers and the Vietnamese administrators who will be observing me. Hopefully I can come up with some great lesson plans and everything will go alright. 

We, the teachers going to Laos, will actually be able to teach some classes to Lao students who are in Hanoi on exchange programs.  Which should be fun!

This is a little poem that one of our teachers gave us to show us just how confusing the English language is.

When the English tongue we speak
Why is "break" not rhymed with "freak"?
Will you tell me why it's true
We say "sew" and likewise "few"?
And the maker of the verse 
Cannot cap his "horse" with "worse"
"Cord" is different from "word" 
Cow is "cow" but low is "low"
"Shoe" is never rhymed with "foe"
Think of "hose" and "does" and "lose"
And think of "goose" and not of "choose"
"Doll" and "roll," "home" and "some"
And since "pay" is rhymed with "say"
Why not "paid" with "said," I pray?
"Would" is pronounced like "could" - 
Wherefore "done" but "gone" and "lone"?
Is there any reason known?
And in short it seems to me
Sounds and letters disagree.

Ha Long Bay

Last Saturday, six of us rode in a bouncing van for three and a half hours to get to the coast and Ha Long Bay.  It was a wonderful day of relaxation and seeing more of Vietnam.  Since being in Vietnam, we had not left Hanoi; but Saturday, outside of Hanoi, we glimpsed another side of Vietnam.  There were so many beautifully green rice fields!  It reminded me a little of the corn fields of Iowa, but the green of the rice field is a different color – brighter maybe?  But it was definitely nice to see some green instead of only city for a change! 

On our ride, we saw many animals nearing the end of their lives.

 We were pretty sad, but also laughed really hard when we saw this motorbike outside of our window.  Our tour guide was trying to help us understand, "Well..., in Vietnam, some people think of dogs...  like pets, like in America...  but some think of them more like... more like the Koreans."  In other words, these dogs were soon to be cooked for lunch!  Most of you probably know that I'm not a huge fan of pets or dogs but I really do think it's sad how they are all piled on top of each other in their little cage!  But still kinda funny! :)

When we arrived in touristy Ha Long, we boarded our own private pirate ship!

All of the tour boats looked just like this ship - like something from Peter Pan!!

Rocks like this are all over in Ha Long

We were served lunch soon after we got on the boat.  We had shrimp, fish, scallops and other Vietnamese cuisine.  I'm not a huge seafood fan, but it was pretty good.

We also explored a big cave. Sally, our American-nick-named Vietnamese tour guide, told us the story of the cave of Ha Long.  There was a couple who lived in the clouds who got married in the cave.  They honeymooned in the cave too because it was so beautiful; and then they got pregnant.  The people native to Ha Long area come from these cloud people.  She obviously told it much better than that, but that's the jist of Ha Long cave!

We enjoyed relaxing and chatting on the deck of the boat.  It was so peaceful to just float along and feel the sea breeze.

Elise & Jennifer

Steph & Joe

me and Julia

Then we went kayaking!  Just before getting on the kayak, we saw a lady who was selling her catches of fish, lobster, crab, shrimp and baby shark!! to the cooks on the ships.  Steph and I were a little nervous about getting in the water with only a thin layer of plastic kayak protecting us from the potentially attacking sharks and other animals... but we toughed it out and had fun in the kayak!

Then we relaxed on the boat again as we headed back to land.  It was a very nice day - just getting away from homework and the city!!

Chopsticks

We have been in Hanoi for one week now and have tried - or at least seen - lots of different foods. And I can say it’s growing on me. I’m getting much better at using chopsticks in place of forks and spoons. And we have definitely been eating lots of rice! The first couple of days we had morning glory (the flower) with every meal, which is boiled leaves and stems, no flowers. It isn’t gross, there just isn’t much flavor to it.

morning glory

We have succumbed to eating Western food a couple of times already. :) We have had hamburgers , spaghetti and chocolate mousse, and they were delicious!

But there definitely is good Vietnamese food here! The best two being different yummy fruit and coffee. Some of the fruit we’ve tried include:

dragon fruit - the plant actually looks like a dragon!

mangosteen

 

custard apple

Vietnamese coffee is delicious! It is very strong. When it is served, there is a small metal drip filter sitting atop a little coffee cup. The coffee drips through the metal filter into a quarter to half inch or so of sweetened condensed milk. When the coffee is finished dripping, the sweetened condensed milk and coffee are stirred together and usually poured into another little glass filled with ice cubes (they like to drink cold coffee because the weather is hot!) .

As we have become more familiar with the city and what it has to offer, we have discovered a variety of good foods.  While wandering around in the city, we noticed many “mom and pop” street side restaurants that are much cheaper than “nomal” ones. The other night a few of us strolled down a side street and decided to try one of these little restaurants. The mother/owner was very warm and helpful as she guided us toward the food she thought we would like and away from the cow (?) tongue, fried scorpions and crabs. We choose delicious green beans and sprouts to go with our heaping plates of rice, which cost us a little over fifty cents. We’ve gone back to this same place a couple of times now, hoping to form a little bit of a friendship with her, even with our limited ability to converse in Vietnamese. It is fun to see her smile of recognition when we return to dine on her tasty food.

Julia, me & Nadia enjoying our lunch

Eating in Vietnam is very communal. There are usually dishes in the middle of the table that everyone shares off of. You just reach for a spring rolls in the middle of the table and grab one with your chopsticks. Put it on your plate (or in your mouth) and help yourself to more food.  It has been fun trying new foods and getting to know our fellow teachers while chatting over a bowl of rice and chicken. 

Traffic

This morning we had a 15 minute lesson on crossing the street in Hanoi.

1. Cross in groups
2. Line up parallel to the flow of traffic
3. Look at oncoming traffic
4. Start walking slowly
5. Do NOT stop walking, only adjust your speed

These are the “rules” of Hanoi traffic according to our teacher

1. As a driver, do not hit anyone (and so you can drive or walk as if no one will hit you)
2. Don’t interrupt the flow of traffic
3. The driver is responsible for his/her front tire(s) –so look and be aware of what’s in front of you
4. A friendly tap on the horn lets others know you are coming behind them
5. “Front Wheel Rules” – If you get your tire in the space first, it’s yours
6. Most city streets have 6 lanes of traffic, instead of 2 in the US, but aren’t clearly marked.
Nearest the curb – for vehicles going the “wrong” way
Right lane – for slower vehicles – bicycles/scooters
Left lane- for faster/bigger vehicles – cars/busses
Vehicles change lanes frequently

We then went outside and crossed Cau Giay Street a couple of times to practice. Some Vietnamese befriended us and grabbed our hands to guide us through traffic.

We arrived in Hanoi last night and started classes this morning (after our street crossing practice) for our Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) Certificate. We are learning about South East Asian culture and how we relate to it through our US culture. Even though the rules of driving in Hanoi are much different than rules in the States, neither one is necessarily right or wrong. We all made it safely across, and we won’t have to sit and wait for the stop lights to change to tell us when we are allowed to cross the street.