Would You Rather? -Vietnam Edition

You know the game. Now it’s time to do it up Vietnamese-style. Some of these situations may or may not have been based on real life experiences.

Situation 1:
Would you rather ride on a bus that is so crowded you’re basically spooning with the people in front of/behind you and then have a woman start puking (but you know where you’re  going, still, and can get to your destination
     OR         
Catch a xe om (motorbike taxi) and start riding, only to find out that the driver doesn’t actually know where he’s going (you have your final address, but don’t know how to get there either), doesn’t speak English (and you don’t speak Vietnamese), and is shouting in Vietnamese the entire ride?
 

Situation 2: Would you rather be in the afore-mentioned xe om situation,
     OR
Be lost on a bicycle with no map (and no knowledge of Vietnamese)?

Situation 3: Would you rather take an overnight train with 5 other Vietnamese sharing the same cabin who decide to talk and sing loudly all night,
     OR
Take an overnight bus and be sitting next to a couple who’s making out for most of the trip?

 

Situation 4: Would you rather listen to Vietnamese music 24/7 for a week,
     OR
Boy bands from the 90’s?

Situation 5: Would you rather eat pig ear,
     OR
Eat dog meat?

Situation 6: Would you rather use a western toilet with a slightly shaded/blurred glass window in the door (common, even in restaurants),
     OR
Use a squatty-potty?

The choice is yours. So. What’ll it be?

Signs of Singapore

Sarah and I were recently able to travel to Singapore over the Lunar New Year break in our teaching schedule. It's the largest holiday celebration here (think like Christmas in the US), so universities had 2 weeks vacation from class. While there, we enjoyed the warmth (80-90 degrees and sunny), the efficient infrastructure, the greeness & clean(er) air, the delicious food, and being able to communicate in English.

We also got a few laughs out of some of the signs we saw.

#1: Snow Route - This one made me feel at home. Granted, it was placed in a New York set at

                                   Universal Studios. But still. 

 #2: Unecessary Noise Prohibited - Hanoi definitely needs one of these signs. Actually, many.

 #3: Beware of Peacocks - Gosh darn birds and their "overt courting behavior." 

#4: Beware of Monkeys - Man, Singapore and its animals!

#5: Press for Little Green Man - So our first question was, where's the button for a tall, dark, and handsome? 

Belated Merry Christmas!

Below is a video I made as a Christmas gift for my family of my life (and some of its hilarious or strange moments) here in Vietnam. I had to split it into 3 parts so it would upload. Enjoy! If you're just looking for a good laugh, skip to the third video: "Strange, Intersting, or Random Pieces of Life."

1. http://s1221.photobucket.com/albums/dd472/sjyoung2388/?action=view&current=ChristmasProject-Blog1.mp4

2. http://s1221.photobucket.com/albums/dd472/sjyoung2388/?action=view&current=ChristmasProject-Blog2.mp4

3. http://s1221.photobucket.com/albums/dd472/sjyoung2388/?action=view&current=ChristmasProject-Blog3.mp4

Also, I have a new photo site, as my former flickr site turned out to be very limited in the amount you can upload. So photos from the past couple months can be seen here: http://photobucket.com/sjyoung2388

Home(sick)

Despite the wonderful experiences here, one theme of life these past couple of months has been homesickness. I passed the 3-month mark of living in a foreign country, which is my longest stint thus far. And 3 major holidays have recently passed. Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years were all celebrated away from home for the first time. I truly missed them. The season brought many remembrances of home and traditions that I would not be keeping this year. (Did I mention I ate a McDonald’s-like cheeseburger on Thanksgiving, Mexican on Christmas Eve, and Popcorn Christmas day? Ha!)

Yet beyond simply being gone for holidays, I’ve experienced boredom, loneliness, longing – often feeling the dull drone and ache of life. I’m forced to recognize that simply being “home” would not satisfy those desires. I’d find the dull drone and ache there also. Perhaps it’d be more easily staunched, cauterized by familiarity and materialism. But it would still leak out at times.

C.S. Lewis writes, “If I find within myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.” In his address “The Weight of Glory,” Lewis expounds. The appeal of a gold, pearly, shiny eternity is, admittedly, not very appealing to our senses. But have you ever felt a deep, sad, beautiful, paradoxical longing after listening to beautiful but ethereal piece of music? Or a thick nostalgia after digging through old photos? Even the happy or bittersweet endings of movies—from romantic comedies to epic hero tales—that leave you with this twinge of desire or longing?

These things that we name nostalgia, romanticism, or adolescence with its passions and dreams, are really a stirring in our heart for something more fulfilling than any of those things themselves can ever be. Lewis writes,

“If we are made for heaven, the desire for our proper place will be already in us, but not yet attached to the true object, and will even appear as the rival of that object. …In speaking of this desire for our own far-off country, which we find in ourselves even now, I feel a certain shyness. I am almost committing an indecency. I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of you—the secret which hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia and Romanticism and Adolescence. …We cannot tell [this secret] because it is a desire for something that has never actually appeared in our experience. We cannot hide it because our experience is constantly suggesting it

…Our commonest expedient is to call it beauty and behave as if that had settled the matter. …But all this is a cheat. …The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself, they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.

Do you think I am trying to weave a spell? Perhaps I am; but remember your fairy tales. Spells are used for breaking enchantments as well as for inducing them. And you and I have need of the strongest spell that can be found to wake us from the evil enchantment of worldliness which has been laid upon us for nearly a hundred years.”

I’ve been experiencing a homesickness for true home. If I take away from this year a recognition that this world is not truly home and a hunger and restlessness for my real home, it should make the difficulties of the process worth it. I’m also encouraged that the Son himself probably experienced many of these same aches throughout His time on earth, and it is just one aspect of what makes him a perfect intercessor, familiar with our weaknesses.

Christmas Elf

Things happen here that just make me laugh because they are so foreign to my experience. On our way home from the city center yesterday, we stopped at KFC for dinner. Some of the employees at the counter speak some English. Everyone is getting out their Christmas decorations this time of year (which still baffles my internal clock since the weather just began to feel like September), so the employees were all sporting Santa hats.

After getting our food, we went up to the second floor, sat down in a high-backed booth, and began eating. All of a sudden, out of nowhere, a Santa-hatted, tan, smiling Vietnamese face literally popped up behind my head and was coupled with a simultaneous (accented ) “Hello!” His crossed arms were resting on the back of the high booth-bench and his chin was resting on top the crossed arms. (Please create a mental picture!) It was the employee who had taken our order. He proceeded to happily start chatting away and watching us eat our entire meal. Gratefully, I wasn’t directly facing him, so I didn’t have to compress my disbelieving-smile-that-this-was-actually-happening as much as Sarah did. He couldn’t understand much of what we said, but was eager to continue the conversation anyway. Example: At one point Sarah asked him if he celebrated Christmas. His answer was, “My birthday is October 7^th.” Conversation ranged from his age (20), to where he learned English, to what he was studying, to why I ordered the part of the chicken that I did (we think – we’re still not exactly sure what he was saying).

And then all of a sudden he wasn’t there. His exit was as abrupt as his entrance, suddenly dashing away.

When the REI board was here a few weeks ago, one of them mentioned that they loved Vietnam because of all its surprises. This experience definitely fell into that category. As we left the restaurant and let loose previously stifled peals of laughter, I felt like the experience was one that came from a movie. I wish I had a video or picture to share with you. But I guess I’ll have to leave it up to your imaginations. We enjoyed our Christmas Elf visit.

Thanksgiving x4

This week I celebrated my first major holiday away from home. And it did, indeed, make me homesick.  I missed the family traditions and the inner feeling of warmth and excitement that comes with this season. But our Thanksgiving here was not ignored. In fact, I celebrated the holiday four times.

Wednesday: We had a number of students over (about 27), and Sarah shared with them the history of the holiday and many of its traditions. Though we didn’t have a meal, the students were introduced to microwave popcorn. They didn’t believe Sarah when she told them this flat, brown paper bag was going to become popcorn when she put it in the microwave. They were mesmerized. Of course, the time couldn’t pass without requests for songs. Eventually, several of them ended up performing a children’s song here about a duck. The results were hilarious.

Thursday: Sarah and I taught until 5:30pm, and then headed to the grocery store. Our “Thanksgiving Dinner” consisted of cheeseburgers and fries from Lotteria (think McDonald’s) before we commenced shopping. Yes, it was anti-climactic and felt nothing like Thanksgiving.

Friday: We invited several of the other teachers living in the guest house, a couple other REI staff, and a couple Vietnamese friends to share the holiday with us. We made sure there were mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, and pumpkin pie, which turned out to be quite the task, running all over Hanoi to find foreign goods stores that carried the ingredients we needed and finding an oven to bake everything in (thanks Ginny!). Then we asked each guest to bring a cultural dish to share. 11 guests total, representing 6 countries (U.S., Philippines, Spain, India, Vietnam, and China). Talk about an international Thanksgiving! So much fun. An extra special treat was that the woman who cleans the guesthouse for us (who we had invited and who had initially declined) ended up joining us for a while. We were also grateful the kitchen transformed so beautifully and that our first pumpkin pie baking experience was a success!

The Group! Minus Sam, the only male represenative.

Our version of a turkey. And the pretty table!

Enjoying pumpkin pie for the first time.

Saturday: We were invited over to another REI staff’s home for a traditional American celebration of the holiday with other ex-pats living in the area. Turkey, potatoes, stuffing, and all the fixings. It was delicious. And much more relaxing than being the host.

Overall, it was an enjoyable holiday. I’m so grateful for the people that have been put in my life here, and for the time I got to spend with them this week celebrating. I also don’t need to eat anything for the next week.

Settling the Score

Just thought it should be known that Sunday night I did, indeed, kill the cockroach. It may or may not have involved a little bit of screaming, standing on a bed, lots of orange scented bug killing spray (which doesn't actually seem to work very well), a broom, and a cheerleader (i.e., Sarah). But the nasty bug is now dead. I'll consider myself very blessed if that's the only time this year I have to deal with these critters.

But it does really make me wonder - why were these things created? And moreover, called good? Same with mosquitos. Did they not used to bite? 6 inch long poisonous centipedes? I was reading the other day about foot-long centipedes that can hang from the ceiling of caves and eat bats. Maybe Tolkien's and Lewis's fantasy words aren't quite so far from reality as I once thought they were. These thoughts tie back to a theme I've been trying to begin to grasp for a while: What do goodness and beauty really look like? I know the Father is the epitomy of these things--or rather, defines them. But what do they look like in life? I think we "cuddle-ify" them in our imaginations far too frequently.