Happy Turkey Day!

I love Christmas.  It really doesn’t bother me that they start playing holiday music in stores before Thanksgiving, and I love to see decorations and lights go up.  I love the festivities, the candy and cookies, eggnog and mulled wine, wrapping gifts.  I love cheesy Christmas movies.  I love how pretty the house looks when the tree goes up in the front hall, lights on the banister, stockings on the mantle.  I love the Shiner Family Talent Show, and the slightly-patronizing-but-always-genuine chorus of “you did a good job.”  And I love our Christmas tree, which is always overloaded with strings of lights, clumps of tinsel and so many mismatched ornaments that the branches are always weighed down.

(decorating the tree over Thanksgiving 2007)

But if I love Christmas (at least in part) for all of the “stuff” that goes into it, I also love Thanksgiving precisely because it lacks the “stuff.”  Thanksgiving is wonderfully simple: a big meal, family, being intentional about the things we are grateful for. 

Thanksgiving’s simplicity is also why I think I’m more homesick right now than I will be around Christmas.  We’re planning a trip to Hanoi a month from now, and I’ve already picked out some fun decorations.  There’s really no way to recreate Thanksgiving, though.  Our families are half the world away, and I don’t think they even have turkey here (much less Tofurkey).  No cranberry sauce, either.

It was a pretty average day here:  Joey had the day off, but I taught in the evening.  I was pleasantly surprised to find that the Thai place we go to for dinner often had put up a tree and was playing Christmas music. 

This morning I called home and got to talk to almost everyone around the dinner table for a minute or so before my phone conked off.  I could hear the Sherrill Sister Cackle in the background, which made me miss home even more.

All in all, I’m incredibly grateful for this opportunity to travel and see the world, but I’m also thankful that I have wonderful family and friends to come home to after it all.  Love to everyone.

(Okay, so the picture is of Halloween and not Thanksgiving, but there is a hand turkey and an Indian involved.)

The Vegetarian’s Wife

Eating has been a challenge since we moved to Bien Hoa.  I’ve mentioned before that Joey is a vegetarian—he has been for five years, and is pretty strict (no meat whatsoever, no seafood, no gelatin).  This was no problem in Ho Chi Minh City.  In fact, we found tons of vegetarian places that even I enjoyed!  This is largely due to the heavy Buddhist influence in Vietnam.

Bien Hoa is a different story, however.  The area is predominately Catholic, which means that there are much fewer people eating strictly vegetarian.  Fewer vegetarian eaters means fewer vegetarian offerings for us. 

The language barrier affects us much more here, too.  Although we know how to say that Joey is a vegetarian, people have a difficult time understanding us.  Often they just smile and shake their heads, and we move on to the next place. 

As a result, we have about four options for our meals, and most of them are really pricey for Bien Hoa.  There’s one really good vegetarian place, a pricey pizza place, a Thai hotpot restaurant, and one other.  The Thai place is affordable if you’re just getting the “healthy platter”—lots of vegetables and some tofu.  But since it’s a hotpot meant to be shared, that means no meat for me.  Same with the last restaurant I mentioned: the only reason we can eat there is because someone from the school went with us the first day and explained that we needed something with vegetables and tofu, no meat.  They make a really good dish with noodles and veggies, and a big platter of tofu on the side, but they make enough for two.  Anytime we go there they know what we want, and I don’t know how to explain that we’d just like one so I can order something different.  I’ve basically been a vegetarian by association for these past few weeks.

We also spend a few hours at a cafe every morning to use their WIFI and eat breakfast.  I can always order something with meat, which is nice, but the food isn’t great.  Joey can get banh mi op la, which is baguette sandwich with fried eggs, cilantro, soy sauce and cucumbers.  It’s available everywhere on the street, and is really delicious, but he’s eating one at least once every day, and I know he’s really sick of them.

So.  Very frustrating.  It’s also awkward that we keep going back to these same four places—I’m pretty sure the staff there think we’re really weird.  And it’s always difficult for me when we’re passing up so many places that look really delicious on the street.  They would be cheaper and probably tastier than a lot of what we’re eating, but without being able to find a vegetarian option, it’s not really a possibility.

This will all change when we move out of our hotel (one week from today!!) and start cooking for ourselves.  I am so psyched to have options!

Our Hotel Has An Hourly Rate.

This puzzled me when I noticed it for the first time.  In fact, even before I noticed the hourly rate, I noticed the number of little hotels in our area.  Bien Hoa doesn’t exactly attract tourists.  Although the existence of a few motels could be explained by the need to accommodate visiting relatives or business travelers, there are way too many for that.  How on earth could they all afford to run?

Out particular hotel is nothing special.  It’s pretty new—maybe built a year or two ago?  Apart from lacking sunlight and smelling a bit like a nursing home, there’s nothing sketchy about it.  The owners are a very nice family.  No unsavory characters lurking in the halls.

So why the hourly rate?

The owner’s daughter, Duong, who’s fluent in English, cleared it up for us.  I was a little too bashful to ask, but luckily she was chatting to us about the entertainment options for young Vietnamese on the weekends: they either go to the cafe, sing karaoke, or go to the motel.

Oh.  Good!

Actually, it’s usually young married couples who go to the motel to get a room.  Typically, newlyweds live with the husband’s family—probably three or four generations of it.  40,000 dong ($2.29) at their local motel buys an hour of privacy. 

Now that we know what’s going on, I see this happening all the time.  When we get home on Friday, Saturday and Sunday evenings, the lobby and hallway is crowded with motorbikes.  Occasionally we pass a couple doing the walk of shame…

Duong said around Christmas things get so busy that they can charge as much as 300,000 dong for two hours—that’s double what we pay for a night!  And they still have to turn people away!  No room at the inn, indeed.

No Facebook.

Good.

Can We Talk About This?

I know it’s not very sophisticated of me, but I love tv.  Love it.  And I can’t get any of my shows online here due to international copyright laws. 

But while I’m missing the real thing, Sesame Street’s version of Mad Men is pretty awesome.  Too bad they didn’t include any of the ladies in this episode—a muppet version of Joan Holloway?

An Update

Things are more or less the same as last time I posted—we still don’t have a house, but I’ll spare you the recap of the three possibilities we’ve seen in the last few days, and the various reasons they didn’t work out.  We’ll see two more options tonight and tomorrow morning, and we’re really crossing our fingers that one of them works out!  We now know that at the end of the month there’s a definite possibility: the twin to Contender #1 will be vacant right now, and we could definitely live there.  It’s far enough that we couldn’t walk, but it’s a very good price (3,000,000/month plus utilities), and we already know what it looks like: simple, but spacious with lots of light.

Anyway.  That would be another two weeks in the hotel, which I am really praying we don’t have to spend.  In a lot of ways it feels like life is more or less on hold until we have a house:  we haven’t unpacked, haven’t bought some things we know we’ll need, haven’t settled into a routine…you get the idea.

On the other hand, the last few days have been really fulfilling for me in terms of teaching.  I’m beginning to get a better feel for how the classes should run, what material I’m expected to get through, what the various textbooks are like, etc.  I’ve also taught the same classes several times by now, and that helps a lot.  I think I may really enjoy this!

All of our observed teaching practices were with a high school that doesn’t employ foreign English teachers, and so although the students were learning English on a regular basis, they were typically of a very low level.  I don’t think I had one class that made it through everything I had on my lesson plan, just because the students needed more practice and more modeling to understand the concepts.  It was very difficult, and very frustrating.

Here, classes are two hours long (which seemed like a lot at first), and I feel like I’m really accomplishing something.  It’s really satisfying, especially with kids, to see the difference between the beginning and the end of a class—communicating something by the end of the class that they didn’t know at all in the beginning.

This morning I taught a Tiny Tots class, which is 3 and 4 year olds—they were hilarious.  We were working on animal names, and for each one they acted it out: meowing, making fishy faces, holding up bunny ears, etc.  When we got to “turtle,” I wasn’t exactly sure how to model it.  I held up the flashcard, and they all got down on the floor and moved around really slowly…adorable. 

Chuc Mung Sinh Nhat!

Joey is 26 today!  He doesn’t really like people making a big deal about his birthday, but that’s too bad.  Every day I’m incredibly thankful to be sharing this adventure with someone who is so good, grounded, genuine, unique and funny.

And awesome at karaoke.

How did I get this lucky?

???

I’m perplexed.

Contender #6: A three-story house, 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, 1 small balcony and one rooftop balcony, 2 big open rooms (computer room? extra bedroom?), living room, kitchen, a little backyard.  Nearly brand new, lots of natural light, a 3-minute walk from school, partially furnished.  3,000,000/month plus utilities.  We could paint or make whatever superficial changes we wanted to.  Except they decided not to rent.  They want to hold onto the house in case they have relatives visiting from the countryside.

How does this work?  How is it that this lovely house in a perfect location for us costs 2,000,000/month less than the one where we have one floor on a loud and busy street, and have to move in with the family for a week to get it?

Really, Bien Hoa?

A Good House Is Hard To Find…

Things are moving slowly here—reeeaaally slowly.  We’re still in our unfortunate little hotel room, and haven’t yet found anything we’re enthused about moving into.  Honestly, I really wish we hadn’t even seen the first house, because nothing else has even come close!  Here’s what we’ve seen:

Contender #1: the house we saw last week had two floors, two bedrooms, two bathrooms, two (very simple) balconies, a living room, kitchen, and study/loft space.  It was simple, but very airy, lots of natural light, relatively close to the school, furnished. 3,000,000/month plus utilities.

Contender #2: a small house with a really pretty front courtyard, one floor, one bedroom, one bath, kitchen, living room.  Sketchy furniture, desperately needed a paint job, a solid 10-15 drive from school.  3,000,000/month plus utilities.

Contender #3: teeny-tiny place with a shared front courtyard/gated space, living room, bedroom, bath, closet-pretending-to-be-a-kitchen.  Unfurnished (although buying furniture would be pretty cheap), very little natural light, 10 minute drive from school.  1,200,000/month plus utilities.

Contender #4: the bottom floor of a house: 2 bedrooms, one semi-sketchy bath, a big kitchen, living room, gated front. Looks like a decent amount of natural light, within walking distance of school and the open market, would be freshly painted.  Unfortunately, the first floor is currently attached to the rest of the house, and it would take a week for the painting and renovations to block off stairways and entrances.  On a busy street.  The owners want us to move into their daughter’s room (she’s studying abroad in the US) upstairs for the week so we don’t have to stay in our hotel.  5,000,000/month.

Contender #5: an apartment: 3 bedrooms, 2 baths, very modern kitchen, living room, small balcony with a great view.  Furnished, plenty of light, we could rent for a month while we continue looking.  A 15 minute drive from school.  7,000,000/month plus utilities.

This is getting ridiculous.  Don’t get me wrong, we are very anxious to get out of our hotel room, but we really don’t want to settle for something we don’t like.  Part of the stress here is that the school’s owners are spending a lot of time and energy looking for something, and every time they show us a place that we don’t like, I feel as if I’m seriously letting them down.  It definitely felt that way last night when we looked at Contender #4—I think they were really excited about it, and thought it was a really good option.

Another piece of the puzzle is our current transportation situation.  The school’s owner has been very patiently working with Joey and I to teach us to drive a motorbike.  Oohhhh goodness.  Before trying, I was confident (probably too much so) that we’d be able to learn without too much trouble.  Not so much.  Joey’s doing much better than I am, but I ride with a perpetually terrified look on my face.  Luckily, that is usually enough to tip of pedestrians that they should move out of the way, since at the current time, I’m unable to move my hand far enough off of the handle to hit the horn.

Part of it is a balance issue—I’m not particularly graceful on my feet, and balancing the weight of the motorbike isn’t something I have the hang of yet.  I know it’s easier at higher speeds, but I really don’t want to get to higher speeds right now!

Another issue is adjusting to what my hands need to be doing—the difference between the gas and the brake, etc.  I tend to panic when I start going faster than I like, and my first inclination is to do the opposite of what I was doing.  Unfortunately, I frequently get mixed up and tell the bike to speed up instead of slowing down.  It’s very reminiscent of my disastrous first driving experience, which makes me very, very nervous.

Anyway, you can understand why a house that’s a 15 minute drive from here (or any drive, really) is sort of a problem right now.  I’m sure we’ll get the hang of driving soon enough—at least Joey will—but when we’re talking about moving in somewhere immediately, it’s sort of an issue.

At the same time that I’m feeling incredibly stressed/frustrated by our living situation, all of my reservations about the job itself and the school’s owners are gone.  They have really done everything they can to make us feel comfortable here.  Both the school’s owner and her sister lived in the U.S. for 10 years, and have said multiple times that they understand how difficult it can be to move to a new country where you don’t speak the language and may not fully understand the customs.

Phew.  If you made it through all of that—good for you.  I think we’re going to see another house this afternoon, so maybe I’ll have good news later! 

Bien Hoa, Day 1

We made it in yesterday afternoon, just in time to prepare for our first classes (!) last night at 5:30.  We’re back in another teeny tiny hotel room, except that this one doesn’t have a window and smells sort of funny.  Awesome!  It’s our own dumb fault for taking so long to accept the job, though—by the time we called to say yes, the house we looked at a week ago had already been rented.  It’ll only be for a few days until we find something else.

Teaching last night was very interesting.  All of our teaching practices were with high school students, so little ones were a big change.  I had a class of 10-11 year-olds, and Joey had the primary students—5-6 year olds!  I’m not sure how they decided who to assign to which class, but it was fun.*  We more or less walked in there with textbooks and winged it…  Jeff, a crazy 59-year-old Frenchman from our TEFL course, would say:  “I think—eez good!  But we need more prac-teez.”

Neither of us teach today, so we’ll be exploring Bien Hoa, finding a motorbike to rent, and looking for a house.  Wish us luck!

 

 

*Tangent:  I’m writing from an open-air cafe with WIFI, and there’s a huge lizard crawling around on the floor near me.  There are always little geckos on the walls no matter where you go, but this guy is definitely a lizard!  Is he going to come over here and chew on my toes?

Changes, Courtesy of Stitch Machine

The amazing Sarah Terry made this awesome blog header—I feel so official now!  Be sure to check out her blog and Etsy shop.  While you’re at it, if you aren’t already familiar with Etsy, explore a little bit!  The website is a huge marketplace for independent artists and crafters, as well as vintage wares.  There’s also a “Shop Local” option to check out sellers in your area.

Anyway, thanks so much to Sarah!

Aaaaand Ice Cream.

We accepted the job in Bien Hoa.  There was a job on the coast that would have been lovely, but it only offered one position, and we would have had to make a trip out there to look for a second.  There was also a school in the highlands with two positions, and it’s a really beautiful location, but a seven hour drive from Saigon—four hours from even the nearest touristy area.  Even if we don’t love Bien Hoa itself, we’ll be an hour outside of Saigon and an hour from the beach.  

To celebrate, we spent about $10 on ice cream…and it was soooo worth it!  Fanny is a pricey ice cream place we’ve been eyeing up for the past month, and it did not disappoint.  We ordered the “Creation,”  a platter with ten scoops of your choice, plus two little fruit salads and three toppings.  It’s made for three people, but Joey and I knew we could do it.

  Fanny has some pretty amazing flavors, and we chose (in descending order of awesomeness): salted caramel, chocolate chili, Bailey’s, ginger, lime, raspberry, cinnamon, soursop, rum raisin, and tutti frutti.  Unfortunately, they were out of avocado.  Here’s our platter before…

…and after.

We’ve since learned that they have a Friday all-you-can-eat ice cream buffet for 75,000 dong ($4.30).  We are most definitely coming back for that.

For now, we’re packing up and getting ready to move out of our hotel tomorrow morning.  To be honest, I’m not exactly sure what the next couple of days will be like—the house we looked at last weekend has already been rented, so we don’t know where our stuff is going in the immediate future.  We may or may not be teaching tomorrow (yikes!).  I don’t actually even know when we’re leaving in the morning…