The kids, hip hop dancing, and starting all over again with Vietnamese…

I know I promised I wouldn’t write really long posts anymore, but I’m just too excited to tell you all about my kids. So, umm… sorry.  Click on the “Contact Info” link if you need more information on how to sue me.

Anywho, here goes nothing, I mean everything.
My first post about being at my post. posty post mcposties. woohoo!

After a mostly uneventful train ride (except the part where I woke up early Monday morning to see a Vietnamese Dad lift up his sleeping wife’s shirt for the baby to breastfeed. oh God. Also, what? Let your wife sleep, man.), I got into Hue and was picked up by Nhat, the oldest male at the shelter.  I was brought straight to my room, passing by many a child intensely staring at me as if I had giant active moles on my face.  It’s a very strange feeling when you know that 40 people know who you are and you don’t know a single person.  I now know how my Dad feels when he walks anywhere, only I don’t immediately talk to them and pretend I know who they are haha.

My room is simple, but overly spacious.  There’s beauty red curtains covering several windows (I’ve never lived in a room with so much natural light- maybe a slight vampire buzzkill… (kidding?)) oh! and I figured out that I can make them reds dramatically dance with a push of a button.  Okay, it’s just a ceiling fan.

Red r....oom. fine, I won't say it.

these hooks are my first decoration.

All I need to see in order to get a good night

the view from the balcony outside my room.

the shelter and a nearby school that some of the kids walk to everyday.

After unpacking a few things, I went downstairs and met a few other volunteers, Thanh and Jenna, who were teaching English this past summer.  Thanh has been making up dances for the kids that are very similar to my funk dance class, but simplified and much more backstreet-boyed.  That’s right, I turned a boyband into an adjective.  And then she told me if I knew how to hip hop dance that would be even better, because all the kids are obsessed with hip hop dancing. Obsessed. So… that’s how the first day started.
Moments later, not even joking- first question from a kid- “Anh Hy, can you hip hop dance?”
Result: A day long of dancing with kids.

I did a little dancey to Michael Jackson, and afterwards they kept insisting that I dance solo with pouty eyes/voices, and even worse- they would repeat the song “We Will Rock You” over and over, which is possibly the most awkward song to dance to, I’ve discovered.  It’s not even Queen’s version, it’s some Vietnamese coverband.  I danced solo for them until I got tired and started making up excuses about why i couldn’t dance more”:
“I’m too hungry, I have to eat…”
(their reply or rather, demand: “So, then you’ll dance again after dinner.”)
“Oh… but I’m sure I’ll get a stomach ache… I can feel it already, oh! and then I’ll have to go to sleep.  I’m a psychic, you see.”

So, I spent the first night hanging out with mostly the younger kids who were relearning a dance that Thanh taught, and I hung out in the back doing the worm, handstands, and babyfreezes with some other kids.  They wanted to know when I would teach them a hip hop dance, and I told them to give me some time so that I could remember…
the thing is, I don’t really know any and surely have to make them up (in less than a month I guess).  Haha, what ridiculous homework I have- and on top of that there’s an element of peer pressure to do it from kids half my age.

One night, I literally had a 30 minute conversation with Vien, the 2nd oldest guy here- and the topic? Hip hop dancing.  From what I gathered (I understood about 45% of the conversation because he talks so fast and his accent’s so thick), he used to take a lot of hip hop classes but then stopped because it was getting dangerous, and so we talked about the ethics behind teaching hip hop dance. Naturally.
I told him I wouldn’t teach the kids how to breakdance (since I don’t know how…) but I’ll just teach them hip hop movement to music, so just a tiny step more advanced dancing than what they’re learning now.  None of that spinning on heads and snapping necks/limbs because well, who would of thought, Hy likes it when people are alive.

After I got tired of consistently communicating unsuccessfully, I segued us to the classroom where loud music was playing and we watched some Vietnamese Music on VCD with Chu Phu, the night-guard.  This included some Nhu Quynh clips from everyone’s favorite Vietnamese variety show, Paris By Night- and then some Phi Nhung karaoke with the typical dramatic reenactments of a heartbroken girl walking down a train track, dirtying her white ao dai.

The second day, the kids woke me up and brought me a Vietnamese sandwich for breakfast.  Then, I ventured into the middle of the city with my new bike!  The head-mother, Co Nhung, was so excited to show me my new bike… it was really so sweet.  Again, feeling a little awkward around the kids knowing that I have the newest bike (it has shocks.) on top of a huge room all to myself, but I graciously accepted it and rode it right away to show them that I really appreciated it.  Anyway, I may not get a motorbike just yet, maybe in a few months, mostly because I plan on pimpin’ this ride with tinted rear-view mirrors and blingin’, blinding handlebar tassles.  The kids told me that this was the only way to make people like me.

When I came back from my little joy ride, I ate lunch with the kids.  I plan on eating all my meals here with the kids.  We usually eat a pretty simple 3-4 dish family-style meal (a meat dish, a vegetable dish, dipping sauces (of course fish sauce, the staple of my life?), vegetable soup, and always with a big hunkadunk of rice.  I sit with the boys because they often have a seat saved for me by the time I get there… And then comes 30 challenging minutes of continually stuffing my face so it looks like I’m busy, since I’m having a lot of trouble understanding the Hue accent.  It’s almost as if I don’t know Vietnamese at all.  Seriously.  Thanh, the summer volunteer, was from Hue so she can understand everything… oh, I envy her!
I texted Tyler that night saying “HOW DID YOU SURVIVE THIS ACCENT! SO MUCH HEAD NODDING AND TIMING YOUR LAUGH WHEN THEY LAUGH…” and he replied, “That’s the key!  So many lunches of having no idea wha someone is saying!”- which made me feel much better (brought me up to maybe -2 on the language self-esteem scale.)  Ah and yes, that’s one more thing the kids and I have in common- a strong, unconditional love for Anh Tyler.  We all talk about him as if he was the Easter-Santa-Turkey, or something like that.

A few of the teenage boys who don’t go to school in the morning have been waking me up lately, scolding me for sleeping until 7:30.  So, I made a deal with them that every morning they can wake me up 5 minutes earlier than the previous day.  This turned out to be a terrible decision, because they’ve actually been doing it.  But, they usually rush in, and then ask to go on my computer, and go straight to a website where you can download all the hottest Vietnamese songs!  Sweet.

So, some of the kids don’t have school in the morning and they’re usually working on handi-crafts.  The hope is that soon they’ll find some buyers and make some profit so that the shelter doesn’t have to completely depend on individual donors.  There’s three local artists that have donated their art machinery/tools, supplies and time to teach the kids everyday.  Right now, they’re making beautiful coconut shell necklaces lacquered with egg shell designs and I’ve spent a few hours doing them too.  This is amazingly convenient because before I was planning on learning how to do traditional Vietnamese art this year.  Hmm, funny how that works out.  Oh! They also have an assortment of traditional Vietnamese instruments, including the danh co (a 2 string fiddle)… So, again! I was planning on taking up an instrument this year, and voila! Free lessons at the shelter are shoved in my face.

A few more funny randoms:
Chu Phu came and helped me set up my mosquito net by drilling gigantic holes in the walls, which made giant dustpiles in my room the size of mutant ant-hills (i was thinking at the time, thumb tacs could have worked? oh well.)

It’s a good thing I brought my other digital camera because the kids love to take pictures and give the lens a nice fingerprint massage… and then they take videos of well, nothing.  They can go around recording videos of nothing for hours, and I usually have to go on a search party mission to find out who had my camera last, and then find the camera itself every night  (sometimes the last kid forgets where it is haha.)

The younger girls have been trying to scare me with funny, made-up ghost stories about the building I’m living in.  A few times, the youngest girl ran up to the 2nd floor of the building I was living in (didn’t even try to hide the fact that she was going up there and actually told me to watch) and then would drape her long hair over the edge for about 10 seconds.  That’s it.  Then, she would run back down to me and ask me if I just saw a ghost.  Of course I did.  It must have been one of those weird draping-hair-over-ledges-obsessed ghosts that everyone’s heard of… clearly.
Oh, and I usually tell them that I already know that there’s ghosts and that they’re my ban be, (my close friends), and then they call me dien (crazy.)

The sassiest, loudest girl, Duyen, (who I can maybe understand 10% of the time because she talks at the speed of, i don’t know, olympic gold medalis… I’m quitting this joke.)  taught me some differences in the Hue accent and the Saigon accent- how there’s completely different ways of saying things… and then they giggle x 10,000 whenever I repeat a Hue sentence (even when I say it right).
I think this is a good step though, having them realize that I don’t completely understand the Hue accent yet and that I’m still learning… but, the girls are definitely less helpful than the boys.  With the boys, I’ll tell them I don’t understand something yet, and they’ll try to come up with different ways of saying it until I do.  The little girls just get sassier, scold me more, punch me, and then giggle and giggle until their giggle guts explode.  It’s kind of comically frustrating… nothing I would get really upset about it, but it’s something that requires me to consistently remind myself that I shouldn’t be bothered.  Hmm… let me see if I can explain a little more…  it’s sort of as if you were in a cartoon and every step you took was on something dangerous (you know, a shovel, then a mouse trap, then molten lava, and then red ants, etc., etc.)  and the people from the other side of the screen (America’s viewers!) would laugh hysterically at you and then you’d have a mental breakdown when you realized you weren’t actually going to die ever, you’d just be erased and drawn again- and then the show would end (but you’d cry backstage with all the other abused cartoon friends.)

I have to go now, you know, after typing that.

Red r….oom. fine, I won’t say it.

these hooks are my first decoration.

All I need to see in order to get a good night’s sleep.

the view from the balcony outside my room.

the shelter and a nearby school that some of the kids walk to everyday.

Vien, the hip hop dancer.

a meal with the kids.

Thanh (who looks like a tall Korean model), and Phuoc- who’s the closest to my age (a year younger.)

Minh Thanh.

Quang, Truong, and Vien.

the youngest boy.

Thanh (a summer volunteer) and Ngoan.

Minh Thanh loves the camera.

Quang and Truong downloading their favorite Viet-music for me.

Eating Che (sweet soup) with Phap (which in English is “France”) and Thanh.

Climbing trees with kids.

backstreet-boying.

handstands.

This is what I look like to them.

Thanh (the one with the camera) and Ngoan- the following pictures are ones he took.

several worms.

Duyen and Loan.

the baby.

My team for a Vietnamese jumping/balancing game.

Dinner next to Nhat (which means “Japan”- he’s Phap’s older brother.)

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~ by Hy Huynh on August 29, 2008.