A year (or more) in Vietnam

let me talk about this weather in vietnam. wow. i went from sweating like mad every day to the point where my students would sometimes give me tissues to mop it up, to wearing a light cardigan to work and feeling breezy and fine. i love this. i heard that december will be even better. some mornings may get down to 61 degrees. all of the kids at school are wearing jackets and hoodies.
it's hilarious. i told them how cold it is back in my country and that it has even snowed.
they told me it snows sometimes in the mountains in sapa.

discovered that metro sells frozen turkeys from the good ol' u.s. i'm buying one. i only have a toaster oven. i found a recipe for grilled turkey and you cut it up first. there is some oven time, but maybe i can fit it in the toaster. sorry for grossing out my vegetarian friends.
i'll really miss not being at my dad's house tomorrow. it's the first time in my life i've been away during the holiday. sad. my dad starts cooking everything the night before. we eat around 1 in the afternoon. we drink champagne. i will miss his seafood casserole. :/

here is what i will make on saturday. we have to work thursday.

-grilled turkey with apples and cider
-mashed potatoes
-gravy
-vegetables (squash and creamed spinach)
-grilled or boiled shrimp


i won't have the energy for dessert, i reckon. we'll just go out for ice cream if we can roll ourselves out the door.

joanna newsom is playing australia in january and i'd really like to try and go.. but probably not. we don't have enough time off then.

we're in saigon now. our plan is to have sushi, have mexican food with ben and have a farewell drink with my lovely friend of only a few weeks, kelly. i was thinking maybe one drink on the rooftop of the caravelle and then go someplace cheaper. i figure it'd be a nice way to say goodbye to the city, to just look out over the whole thing. i'll sure miss having a friend in can tho! i can see why she's going back home though. she'll be in buenos aires in a few months.

derek's birthday festivities were fun. the night before his birthday i made seafood fettucine and fried clab claw things as an appetizer. our neighbor girl came over unexpectedly to help me. she's so sweet. we drank some wine. i bought him a juicer. the next day derek's kids at school bought him a cake.. can you imagine that happening in the states? teacher's day celebrations took place at the school and a buffet dinner was provided for the teacher's after school!! one of my kindergarten girls brought me a gift of fabric for more ao dais. man, the pressure is on for me to wear the national dress every day.

time to finish my cappucino before it chills and then on to have a manicure. i've messed my nails all up.

I want




an electric bike.

i use a lot of my cell phone's pay as you go minutes to text and call the united states, so i went in to add another 100,000 dong to my account. i forgot to grab the little receipt i normally get and i alsoleft my cell phone at home, but by calling from the phones in the store they can add money to my account. when i got home, i tried texting my mom and got the error signal on my screen. augh... i was so mad. someone just pocketed my money and added zero minutes to my account.
one short motorbike ride later and a complaint to the manager about my account and i'm able to contact the u.s. with my phone again. at least the mobifone places have decent customer service. i shan't forget a receipt ever again.

lazy sunday included a trip to the salon. manicures are so cheap here i usually get them every two or three weeks. i will sometimes go for a shampoo, manicure, facial and scalp massage in one trip. still very cheap. went to a fancy pants nail painting place this time where the manicurist gave me a french manicure and then added a little flourish of her own by way of a tiny white flower on my ring fingernail. :)


i had my first tailored outfit made, a cashmere blend one. i showed the tailor a picture of a calvin klein suit i ripped out of vogue. didn't turn out exactly the same, but i'm still happy with the result. everyone at work said i looked really business like. one of the secretaries said i looked really "normal".
i didn't wear this outfit to work. mini skirt wouldn't go over well. i wore this jacket with a very modest grey shift dress instead. took this photo on saturday. i'll take a picture of the pants later.


this is what i look like when i ride around on a motorbike. after the sinus infection from hell, i'll be adamant about donning a smog mask. most women in vietnam sport a full wrap around mask for protection from the sun.

i've been sick with a bad cold for two weeks now. lots of congestion and coughing. yuck.
haven't been to a doctor since it's only a cold. drinking lots of fluids.
it's made me have a bad headache today plus the rain has kept us inside. i'm hoping there's a significant drop in the rainfall as october ends in one week's time.

friday night we went out to eat with a couple of american expats we met through our old friend zen.
we ate at alo 100. i think it's the nicest vietnamese restaurant in town, really spacious and nice.
we had fried rice, tamarind chicken wings and crab soup. tamarind sauce is out of this world. i'm determined to figure out the recipe. i could use some soup now to soothe this cold!

thursday and friday at work was unbearable. i thought i'd really like not having to teach in the morning those days. the students were going have vietnamese testing, but we still needed to come in and plan lessons. the day drug on so long. i felt trapped in the teacher's lounge. really looking forward to the three day weekend we'll have in november. also derek's birthday's coming up and mine too in december. my how the time flies!!! school halloween party is on friday. for my costume, i need to shop for a blue dress, red shoes and a basket- oh, a toto too!

an all-american consumerism post after dealing with grades this morning..


coconut lotion. especially nice for smoothing out all my bug bite scars/motorbike burn accident scar.
shouldn't complain too much though since there are real coconuts everywhere here. yum.



lavendar deoderant stick. why is all the deoderant here the tiny roller ball kind??



a lush store

did a pretty good job of stocking up on this stuff. i still have a huge shampoo bar and full bottle of american cream conditioner which is the best smelling stuff on the planet.


what else? mac makeup, certain spices, vitamin C facial toner, evening primrose oil capsules, burt's bees...
good vitamins are hard to get here. i can't find the food based vitamins. they sell centrum vitamins individually at the drugstores.

ah, i do have quite a bit left of all these things and we'll be back in summer anyway whether it's back for good, or just back to visit.
i'm also looking forward to drinking some water from the tap!

other things we cannot get here and it's a shame! :

high fructose corn syrup and genetically modified food

j/k

things i want to purchase in vietnam because it's a lot cheaper to do them here:

white gold wedding band for derek
lasik eye surgery
tailored silk wedding gown
a suit for work
tailored button up shirts
tailored leather jacket
tailored wool cape
a couple of fun dresses copies from designs i like


basically a small wardrobe of tailored clothing. i have 7 more months to take care of this stuff unless we decide to stay on another year...

going to saigon tonight after work. i better remember to upload more music to my ipod. i've had the same things on there forever. i think i'll listen to the neko case album this tornado loves you. i've sort of neglected it for a couple months and i'm craving her voice again. we've made a list in our heads of where we want to eat in saigon.
i know we'll have sushi at some point and breakfast at sheridan's again. there's this awesome looking ice cream place in asia life magazine that i think we'll try. they have gelato. yuuum.

really bummed i'll miss jessica's wedding saturday. i hope it's a wonderful time!! you better be coming to mine when i get back- unless you're out of the country..
miss all my friends generally and so does derek. we've made more here which is nice although we just befriended a belgian boy who lives right across from us in the alleyway who's moving in two weeks back to belgium.
i'm just saying I MISS YOU ALL BACK HOME.

Mid-Autumn Festival
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For other harvest festivals that may be known as Mid-Autumn Festival, see Mid-Autumn Festival (disambiguation).
Mid-Autumn Festival

Mooncakes are often eaten during the festival.


Mid-Autumn Festival at the Botanical Garden, Montreal.
The Mid-Autumn Festival, also known as the Moon Festival, or in Chinese, Zhongqiu Jie (traditional Chinese: 中秋節), is a popular harvest festival celebrated by Chinese people, Japanese people (Tsukimi festival in Japanese), Koreans (Chuseok festival in Korean), and Vietnamese people (even though they celebrate it differently), dating back over 3,000 years to moon worship in China's Shang Dynasty.[1][2] It was first called Zhongqiu Jie (literally "Mid-Autumn Festival") in the Zhou Dynasty.[3] In Malaysia, Singapore, and the Philippines, it is also sometimes referred to as the Lantern Festival or Mooncake Festival.
The Mid-Autumn Festival is held on the 15th day of the eighth month in the Chinese calendar, which is usually around late September or early October in the Gregorian calendar. It is a date that parallels the autumn and spring Equinoxes of the solar calendar, when the moon is supposedly at its fullest and roundest. The traditional food of this festival is the mooncake, of which there are many different varieties.
The Mid-Autumn Festival is one of the few most important holidays in the Chinese calendar, the others being Chinese New Year and Winter Solstice, and is a legal holiday in several countries. Farmers celebrate the end of the summer harvesting season on this date. Traditionally, on this day, Chinese family members and friends will gather to admire the bright mid-autumn harvest moon, and eat moon cakes and pomelos together.

Accompanying the celebration, there are additional cultural or regional customs, such as:

Eating moon cakes outside under the moon
Putting pomelo rinds on one's head
Carrying brightly lit lanterns, lighting lanterns on towers, floating sky lanterns
Burning incense in reverence to deities including Chang'e (simplified Chinese: 嫦娥; traditional Chinese: 嫦娥; pinyin: cháng'é)
Planting Mid-Autumn trees
Collecting dandelion leaves and distributing them evenly among family members
Fire Dragon Dances

typing this entry out while standing up.
things have been good here. i'm staying cool inside with the a/c and fan on. i was asked this week to teach an evening business english course for three hours every monday night. i said yes at first, but then speaking to a colleague at work he said that business english is something he might be interested in, so i talked him into taking it for me. i really don't want to work nights too. if they have a writing class opening i might take that. i just don't think i am the right candidate for teaching business english especially if i am to instruct them on how to give presentations. they told me that it was unfortunate i didn't want it because they want a female included in the now all-male staff ("you seem so attractive & friendly", gee thanks).

last night marked the mid-autumn festival in vietnam. we had a moon party at school last night. students gave us plenty of moon cakes which is a cross between a fruitcake and a meat bun. :P
plenty to spare!

i'm going to try my best to get myself up at 5:30 tomorrow morning. one of derek's students in his night class invited us on a motorcycle trip outside of town. he wants to go fishing, pick fruit and eat at his grandfather's house. it sounds really nice so no lazy sleeping in 'til 9:30 tomorrow. ::sigh::

pictures to come from moon night. they're funny since i'm twice the size of most vietnamese women.

saturday afternoon. I've been up since about 7:30. Getting up so early during the school week now gets me up early on the weekends. I can't believe I used to be able to sleep in until 11 or 12.
Cleaned house this morning. Swept and mopped floors, washed dishes, did three loads of laundry and cleaned bathroom including bleaching the drains. We discussed having a house cleaner once or twice a week, but it's not too bad.. we get everything done in about 2 or 3 hours. It's so affordable here that many people have help. Some people never go to the market or cook either. I don't really mind cooking. I like to do it. It just sucks doing laundry during the week. It's best to dry clothes outside (we don't have a drier) during the hottest midday hours. We're always at work then. Ironing takes up a lot of time too.

I have to ao dais now (the Vietnamese traditional dress). I prefer wearing Western clothes to work, but I'll start wearing the ao dais sometimes. The Vietnamese teachers at work keep bugging me to and went to the trouble of helping me get a couple made. They were only about 7 dollars each to tailor. The fabric was free- supplied by the school. It's bright orange silk. You can't say that Vietnamese people are afraid of color! I sort of stand out wearing black and grey all the time.

In only a few weeks we'll have testing and it will be the end of the first term. We have four terms this year. We're thinking about what we want to do for Tet in February. Maybe we'll go to Singapore and Thailand.
My students have been pretty good. I'm lucky the Kindergarten class is so small, only ten students. The older ones talk a lot but they are good natured.

Discovered Metro recently, an awesome huge "cash and carry" place. I have to show my passport to shop there. I don't know why. Everything there is of good quality and they have a good variety. I went twice last week. They had huge bags of fresh sweet basil which I haven't seen anywhere else. Most Vietnamese people eat Thai purple basil. I bought a bag and made pesto and a salad with cherry tomatoes, basil and mozzarella cheese. They have a good cheese selection too!

We traveled to HCMC last weekend just to get out of Can Tho for a bit. I bought an Ipanima handbag and a pair of Clark's high heels. Also some dvds and a couple of French fashion mags. We ate a ton of good food too. Went out to the Czech beer place Derek likes so much and had dark beer. I ate oysters with cheese.

I've been adjusting to being here. I still miss home sometimes of course, but I feel a lot better. I keep reminding myself that we're making pretty good money for Vietnam and I'll be able to send some of my paychecks home to save for later. I'm so relieved all my student loans will be paid off soon.

going to watch Little Britain Abroad now. picked that up for less than a dollar in Saigon. We might head to Mekong for dinner tonight. I want to take my bottle of sparkling Rose with us that I bought at Annam's
Fine Foods last weekend. I don't know if they let people do that there. Maybe I can surreptitiously open it up under the table and pour it into my water glass.

a little 6 year old girl at apc has been refusing to go to derek's first grade english class for a month, because she's afraid of foreigners. she told the principal she's afraid of his beard. he told her that her mother paid for her to go to the international program at school so she has to go to derek's class since he's a native english speaker. she told him, "no! it's a mistake! my mother didn't pay for it!"

LOL

Busy busy teaching and planning every day. It's making the weeks go by really fast.
thinking I'll be ready to come home at the end of the school year. We may take a trip when school's out, but I don't think I can be gone two years. My dad's getting older too.. He'll be 74 on Monday. He told my stepbrother that he thinks he's shrinking. He says he measured himself and he's lost an inch. I miss him and I miss a lot of things about America. I didn't know I'd get this homesick, but I guess I really am. Maybe this is when it's worse, when you've been gone a couple months. I miss the diversity in food. I miss understanding what everyone is saying around me. I miss my friends. I miss my family. I miss the dog. I miss the library. I miss drinking wine with Lexie on our little "porch". I miss getting a magazine at the grocery store for 5 bucks. I kind of miss driving my car too. Riding around on a motorbike in busy traffic can be harrowing. I have to put on my helmet, sunglasses and a smog mask. I don't even know how to drive it yet. I just make Derek drive me around.

Sorry this is a whine fest. I do like the people here. Everything is extremely cheap (except foreign magazines in Saigon). Teaching at the school is fun. It's nice working with Derek and having the same hours for the most part. We go out for lunch every day and can afford to. We live in a nice house for cheap. I know time will go by super fast here and we'll be back home in no time, so I better enjoy everything while it lasts. I can't wait for a school break so we can take a trip somewhere. Japan? Thailand? Australia or New Zealand? I'd like to figure out where the hostels are and make it an affordable excursion.

No getting Fall clothing this year. I'll wear light clothing for hot, humid weather all year long. I don't even know what the Fall clothes are. I s'pose I could just look at Style.com instead of looking at magazines anymore. I think Paul is going to finally send me some and a couple of my paperbacks from the basement of my mom's house.


I think I'll get these boots at the end of the school year and have them mailed to my mom's house as a gift to myself. It'll be to celebrate getting a nice, cool, crisp Autumn season again. Perhaps I'll buy my own laptop too for a year well done.

photos from school taken with my phone



( apc )

we didn't get the big house we looked at. the owners decided to sell it instead of renting it out. we did find something that suits us better with the help of one of my vietnamese relatives back home and her friend here in can tho.
this place has one bedroom (two if you count the attic room), a living room, kitchen and full bathroom. no backyard garden unfortunately, but the house is cozy and nice. the walls are a little dinged up, but we don't mind. what's especially convenient is that it is already furnished! there's wicker furniture in the living room, a bed, bureau, dining table, big storage unit, a fridge, washing machine and gas stove top. no oven, nobody seems to have an oven. we don't have to go back to saigon to pick up all the things we thought we'd need to retrieve. my brother paul visited. he's traveling around vietnam for only twenty days. he brought down some kitchen stuff for me from my mom's place. i feel pretty lucky to have found a place so quickly. several teachers are still in hotels taking their time to find a place. i think we were just really desperate to get out of hotel living.

school has been in session two weeks now. we had an orientation week and then a week to just do introductory activities with the kids. my day is like this: i teach teenagers from 7:30 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. (reading and writing) and then i have a four hour break to plan, eat and uh, go online. then from 2:30 to 4:30, i teach kindergarten. it feels like a really long class with the little ones, but they do get a break to have a snack. the kids that go to apc are all pretty well off. there are five kindergartners and they have one regular teacher and two aides. the aids basically hand feed some of them, make sure they stay clean and behave with their teacher. they even get baths at school. everyone gets a nap in the afternoon which i think is nice. i heard some of the kids complain about the lunches they get, but they look ten times better than american school lunches. they even sit at nice tables with tablecloths.

i got really sick last thursday with the flu. i just started feeling very lethargic. i stayed home on friday and slept. felt delirious from fever. derek brought me medicine during his lunch break and some of the vietnamese teachers came with him to say hello and look at the house. all the women vietnamese teachers wear the traditional vietnamese dresses while i just wear western stuff. i may get a couple ao dais made and wear them once in awhile.

derek's out at the school right now looking at stuff for tomorrow. he couldn't bring his books home yet. once he's got the hang of it he'll take me out on the bike. maybe i'll just get a regular bicycle. hopefully i'll make some friends with the teachers at school. i talked to loren, lexie and virginia on skype yesterday morning and i started crying. ah, homesickness.



the front gate that didn't stop anyone from stealing derek's work shoes!


( more photos of the house )

waiting for derek to get back. we bought a bike! one that you do not need a driver's license for..
we may also be getting a house soon too. the owner of the house has to check with the police to see if he can rent it to foreigners. it should be just a matter of paperwork. it has a gate, garden, three bedrooms and a rooftop porch with tiled floors and cover. the back garden has a pond with little fish living in it. mosquitoes might be a problem but i'll have to get some potted lemongrass or something. i hope we get it!!

all of last week was orientation at apc. a lot of assemblies and team building activities. we'll start teaching our classes this week.

can tho has been a much more manageable city for us. it's easy to walk around since there aren't as many motorbikes or people in general. compared to saigon we really like it.

well, time to get myself ready.. i'm sure we'll be practicing zipping around on the bike today.

i went out to district 1 with my mom and derek today. mom and i took our umbrellas to shield ourselves from the sun. surprised the sun came out today at all. it's been cloudy/rainy for days.
we took the bus which was air-conditioned for 3,000 dong which equals about 17 cents u.s.
ate pho for lunch at pho 2000. showed my mom the annam gourmet import shop we discovered a few days ago. she bought me a jar of bonne mamain blueberry jam. looked around the yves rocher store. they had a really nice smelling perfume of rose and i think vanilla. yummy looking strawberry lip glossies. it's nice to know where to go in saigon to get these sorts of things.

found a really good looking bakery and we wished we would have waited and eaten there instead. we had fruit shakes there with mango, strawberry and orange juice. found another import shop that looked like a regular vietnamese grocery from the outside. they had tons of condiments, tons of spices, wheat (!) bread, marshmellows, wines, chocolates it was a western foods wonderland. nice to know where that stuff is too.

we've been really craving mexican food so last night i tried whipping something up with what i could find around here. i found dried black beans, a can of tomato paste, lots of fresh tomatoes, limes, onions, cilantro & peppers, of course. had trouble finding cumin though. i thought it was pretty common around here. i asked three different vietnamese women about it, including my mom and they had no idea what i meant even after translating it.
anyway, i made refried beans, spanish style rice and "mexican" beer chicken. the beer was vietnamese, but it tasted about the same as a corona or something. vietnamese people like lighter beers. we topped everything with some cheddar cheese from australia and pico de gallo. turned out delicious.

now i have to get ready to teach tonight! it's getting down to the last few days at aston and then we'll start training for asia pacific college next week! paul will be here monday night too. then soon after that we'll move down to can tho. i need to find a few big boxes and packing tape. i hope the bus will let us take all of our stuff with us. my mom wants us to even take the washing machine from here to there, but i doubt we'll be able to. although, the washing machines here are much smaller than the ones we have back home in the u.s.

derek is shaving off his beard in the shower and he will look completely different when he emerges.

had the day off. went shopping with my mom. we went to the mall first and checked out french connection and mango. fc didn't have the sailor shorts i wanted. we checked out some tailor shops. those girls do some beautiful work. silk dresses that looked like rodarte and chanel. i might have to go back and get one before we move away or at least before we go back to the u.s.
we headed over to saigon square after that where people come in throngs and haggle for basics, luggage, shoes, etc. i got a pair of mango shorts there (are they real? who knows) for around 6 bucks. also picked up a couple of tank tops for cheap. i will dream about those dresses though! so gorgeous. must get one someday.
checked out ipa nima on pasteur street. really beautiful clutches... i really liked one with a snake embroidered on it. i'll wait 'til i have monies!!

ipa nima

grey beach days


( Mui Ne )

just returned from mui ne last night. i couldn't swim because the burn is still healing on my leg. it was so nice to have it nice and quiet a couple days. a lot less tourists go to mui ne. most people here like going to nha trang.







more pictures later. takes forever to upload pictures!