2 Month-Mark: Tet Trung Thu, BugzIIMen, and Other Greens…

To my hungry hungry hippo friends,

Happy Tet Trung Thu!

This past weekend was the Mid-Autumn Festival (aka the Moon Festival or aka Tet Trung Thu, the thing I just called happy about 5 seconds ago.) It’s sort of a festival for kids and well, I’m not really interested in telling you what customs were supposed to happen, I’d rather just tell you what I experienced. So, Hy’s amazing Mid-Autumn Festival of the year 2008 consisted of the following: eating moon cakes until my association of one word was forever linked with the other (and then I unfortunately got an F when I used a swiss cake roll in my solar system project), candy candy candy, drum beats and lion dances everywhere in the city (I imagined a lion dance team popping out of my closet one morning and I’d probably just give a little “Oh, well!” shoulder shrug), variety shows that show a variety of umm, “sway styles” while a group is singing a song, an infinite number of organized dances, more organized dances but this time with props, fog machines that are maybe three times as big as mine at home, assorted colored and strobe lights, and predictable ending celebration songs in English, such as “Heal the World.”

The whole weekend just had incredible liveliness that filled the city with children laughter (okay that sounded a tiny bit creepy) and this was just the first holiday I spent here in Vietnam this year- there’s so many more huge holidays/celebrations to come. It was a fun reminder of how Vietnam really loves to over-do it when throwing a party. Vietnam and Hy are interchangeable nouns apparently.

A few updates/musings/observations for you.

I’ve been gone for two months. Congratulations, thank you, send some cotton and china, do you have a registry at Target, I’ll just wait until you get back. That wasn’t supposed to make any sense, don’t worry.

It’s starting to rain a lot.  Today, I’m going to teach my kids rain songs like the “Rain, rain, go away” song, and hopefully we’ll be able to negotiate on the weather a little bit this year with mother N… you know, since my kids are cute.

Life’s starting to get more organized and scheduled which is relieving, but simultaneously depressing on my anxious-spontaneity-adventure series. My teaching schedule this coming week is hopefully how it’ll be for the whole year: two classes a day (M-F), either the youngest kids or 9^th graders each day, and then afterward a class for older high school/college intermediate level kids. Soon, there should also be some much older businessmen/women who will be paying for classes (the money’s going straight to the shelter), so I’m basically teaching every age under the sun…? Oh Vietnam and your surprises… and your effects on the sun and education.

Hmm… what else… oh, my classes, right- my actual job and reason why I’m here for a year. haha. Classes have had its ups and downs, but it usually ends with “Ya’ll too cute to be mad at for so long.” The youngest kids are actually just radioactively potent energy-drinks that I hallucinate as human beings so they’re not too bad of a threat, but the 9^th grade level class is just at that age where they’d rather do anything than listen to an adult speak- they’d probably be more into an role-playing activity if a shiny rock was in front of the classroom. But, oh well, so it goes.

My oldest kids and I laugh most of class and I made my first successful teacher joke in Vietnamese. We were doing some activity and there were these two girls in front that wouldn’t stop talking, so I called on them to do the next one and you know, they sort of struggled and whispered around to find out where we had left off or what to do… and I asked them in Vietnamese, “You know where we are, right? You know what we’re doing?” Their faces lit up and their excessive smiles/nods came to a dizzying blend. Then, I said… “Oh, so you both know? You can talk the whole class, and know what we’re doing at the same time? That’s amazing.” Their jaws just kind of dropped and they laughed embarrassingly, and everyone started laughing in disbelief- they all did this one specific laugh that was so obviously equivalent to our Western “Ohhhh snap. Oh-no-you-dit-int.”  At the height of the laughter, I told them I was just joking and they said they knew that- so no feelings were hurt or anything. They know that I try to make our class enjoyable and stress-free, so I’m always changing the pace of class to try to keep them alert- which has resulted in several of my students being comfortable enough already to call me “mad” (actually their favorite word to call me.) Anyhoo, I just wanted to tell all of you this story because I think this is a big turning point in my life. I think I’ve realized that my real goal in terms of learning Vietnamese is just to be able to speak in a quick/witty manner, and this was the beginning… I feel like a new man… Or maybe that’s because I just washed my clothes for the first time… yikes.

Last class, the older class also made me sing a song so I sang a Vietnamese song called “Con Ta Voi Nong Nan” and then also sang “Water Runs Dry” by BoyzIIMen. I wish they could have understood my ironic song choice as flood season is nearing, but I decided not to confuse them by trying to explain that.

BuyzIIMen…BugzIIMen… bugs in my bed… okay, smooth transition over to the topic of bugs, insects, and the like. Let’s talk about harmful ones first. So, first off, one night the good ol’ “one mosquito in the net nightmare” happened. I woke up that morning at 5:30 with at least twenty new bites on my body, probably cursing in some sort of morning gibberish… so yes, once again Vietnam has blessed me with beauty skin.

A couple nights ago, I had my first encounter with a thick, fist-sized spider (I’m aware that a spider is not an insect. God.) when I was actually in a middle of a shower. I spent a lot of time spraying it away and realized I could have probably won many water-target carnival games at that time in a different dimension, and it eventually crawled into some crack in the wall, probably just waiting there with its extended family for my next shower to have their barbecue reunion.

There have also been many bug visitors in my room this past week. Aside from my skeeter friends, there’s an abundance of beetles, ladybugs, dragonflies, and several other unidentified little flying monsters. The first insane one that came and visited though was this big, clawed cricket-roach alien that skittered behind me and I actually jumped up in a shiver because it was so strange-looking and close. I was also listening to The Carpenters “Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft” at that same moment, so it was clearly a sign. I’ve never really been afraid of an insect before, but I had to spray this one down and not just let it go because it actually looked harmful. The next night, two more came and surprised planet Earth and so I had a collection of three in the corner of my room for a couple days, you know, just in case people came and visited and wanted to see my bug collection.

Here’s a picture of the three amigos:

Does anyone know what these are?

And here was this beautiful ladybug that came and visited yesterday.

A beauty lady.

You know what eats bugs? Frogs!- frogs that croak so loud where I live and at the most inconvenient times of the night. I swear, these Vietnamese frogs have really taken after their people’s loud screaming technique for talking, and are probably just croaking at an insanely high volume without even knowing it. Once one starts, a whole chorus starts up and I just kind of lay in bed wondering when the next croak-break is (could be anywhere from 5 minutes to a half hour of non-stop croaking) so I can try my hardest to fall asleep in that time slot. It’s kind of like a game show with a beat-the-clock finale. Only, I shamefully lose to a bunch of frogs. Damn.

…You know what else is greennn??? Cucumbers! Wow, I’m not even trying anymore! Isn’t this fun?!  I am usually very picky with my cucumbers. I just never liked how their taste clashed with a lot of Vietnamese food, particularly food that uses fish sauce… so, everything. Well, that’s not my point- I had a sandwich the other day at a French bistro and talked to myself for about 2 minutes until I took a big cucumber bite, because otherwise I would have just mindlessly took out the cucumbers like I do every other time. This is why I remember it enough to tell you, because I remember thinking “wow, this is the first time I’ve been mindful of my cucumber disposition.” Anyway, my first bite of that sandwich was the first time I didn’t mind having cucumber that close to my body. Instead, I thought to myself, “Wow. Cucumbers taste really green. If the color green actually had a taste to it, it would taste really, really umm… cucumbersome.”

So, as my Mid-Autumn Festival gift for you, here are pictures of glorious kids in a variety of poses/group dance moves.

Does anyone know what these are?

A beauty lady.

fixin’ them braids.

sweet falling over moves.

Hanh in natural Vietnamese show light.

Yep. this is a Vietnamese man.

Oh, god that small child is too cute.

His team doesn’t really let him color that much…

Miss Fairy Lady watching over him.

backstage hollas

The girls after their performance in town

Phap after a boxing match. I mean, lion dance.

Who’s behind that old man mask? Oh, Duc.

Chuan centered between boy body poses.

um. creepy skinny fox man in the distance.

fog-it 3000.

Duc likes to do this pose.

a young child’s nightmare.

Join in on the fun

ma boys done a jump series.

my favorite jump.

these are emotions.

Co Nhung, Phuoc and Vien… check out Co Nhung’s awesome platform flip-flops

the lion boys, behind the scenes.

the lion dance costumes that Jenna and I bought the kids.

Nhat (aka Vietnam Idol)

hip-hop dancing in private.

this is a keek.

this is a fee-nale.

God, what a powerful fog machine.

Hanh, Phuoc and Thi!

the moon festival’s moon.

this is a game.

it’s cooler to play games in fog.

Vien crashing the stage to adorn Nhat during his performance.

the shelter’s big party.

Thanh nho in his trung thu star.

The “Puff the Magic Dragon” performance.

this snow does not melt. it burns.

Duc.

Nhi, the youngest girl.

Huong.

finale kid picture.

color distortion finale.

really confusing lion body parts.

I miss you all.

-Hy-

~ by Hy Huynh on September 15, 2008.