This is the end....

The situation is so crazy. I don't know what's going on, and I don't think I ever will. Sunday one of Lan's friends Husbands came by for a visit. He spoke a little english, and so he started translating a conversation between Lan and I. I was basically concerned that her parents where getting hassled by the neighbors because I was living with them before Lan and I were married. So I was trying to ask Lan if I should move out. At first Lan was laughing and joking around it seemed everything was fine. Then at one point Lan got up to use the bathroom, went in the other room and sat down on the stairs in the kitchen. After a while I noticed she hadn't returned and so I went to see what she was doing, I found her balling and sobbing. I asked her what was wrong, but she wouldn't talk to me. So her friends husband went to talk to her, he came back and in his broken english said something about how Lan loves only me and wants to marry only me. Then I asked him to go find out what was upseting her and then he came back a few minutes later and said Lan didn't love me and didn't want to marry me. I went in the room and tried to talk to her, her parents tried to talk to her, her sister's tried to talk to her, but she wouldn't talk to anyone. I finally decided the best thing for me to do was to go to my room and leave her alone, because being around her was upsetting her so much. I thought if I left her alone then maybe she would calm down and the next day we could talk about it. 

The next day Lan wouldn't look at me, wouldn't talk to me, completely avoided me. Her parents tried to talk to her, and she wouldn't talk to them either. She told her Mom that she didn't love me and wouldn't marry me, and that was all she would say. Her parents are very traditional and in their cultural world view if someone makes a promise to marry a person, that person becomes their son or daughter from that moment on, so her parents had been going around the whole time I've been here introducing me everyone as their son. All their extended family and friends, all their neighbors, everyone knows I'm marrying Lan. So when Lan said she wouldn't marry me, it caused a huge scandal. Her father told Lan that she needed to talk to me, or she would have to move out. Basically she has brought great shame to her family. She refused. She has refused to talk to anyone in her family about it either.  Her parents asked me Monday if I would stay for one month so that they could talk to Lan and get it all straightened out, so I agreed. Well, I just found out that yesterday her Father kicked Lan out of the house, and she is no longer welcome in the house or in any of her sister's homes. But I am still considered their son, and I am welcome to stay here as long as I want. The funny thing is that her whole family has rallied around me and is trying everything they can to get Lan to talk to me. My only hope of this thing working out, at least long enough to get an explanation is if her family can get through to her.

So here I sit waiting to find out what is going on, but unable to talk to anyone about it. I don't think that Lan will ever talk to me again, and I have absolutely no idea why. I have decided that this relationship is over and for whatever unfathomable reason Lan has dumped me. I don't understand, and neither does her family. It's so weird to me that she would rather be banished by her family than marry me. What happened? I just don't know. So that's the sad saga of Lan and I, it has apparently ended in flames and ruin. Her family says that I should wait and that in a week or two Lan will calm down and we can talk and work everything out. I know of an apartment on the other side of town that will be available on April 1, and so I think I will wait for one week to see if anything happens, and if Lan hasn't stepped forward in a week then I'll move in with my teacher buddy. 

I have some theories as to why Lan is doing what she is doing. I think that one, she is having serious commitment phobia, this is the main reason I think that she is doing this, she sees the wedding looming and she is not ready to make a commitment of this magnitude in her life. There are also major language and cultural barriers that Lan is unwilling or unable to transcend. She said something else to her Mom about not being able to talk to me, so I think that her inability to understand me or talk to me has just proved too much for her. I know that the immediate problems  facing us, what led to the meltdown on Sunday could be fixed with an hour long conversation with a translator, which we were supposed to do Tuesday morning. But there are more deep seated problems that aren't so easily fixed. The last theory might be that there is someone else. She has been acting strangely toward me since tet, around the middle of february, and she keeps very strange hours (,On more than one occasion I have seen her leaving after everyone has gone to bed, and she appears to be gone all night because then the next day she slept the entire day--this happened both times I noticed her leaving) she's gone for long periods of time, she hasn't seemed like she really was that interested in my for while. I don't know, there's other things. I doubt I'll ever know why she has decided she doesn't love me and doesn't want to marry me, but I wouldn't be surprised if there is a combination of all these things going on. 

So I am beginning the  heart wrenching process of separating myself from Lan, and I will wait one week to see what happens, but likely by one week from tomorrow I will be living somewhere else starting a new chapter in my life. At least the new apartment my teacher friend has available is super sweet. It's like the nicest place I will have ever lived. It's super modern, swank, full on American party pad, so at least I can drown my sorrows in a beautiful apartment with lots of amenities. I will stay in Vietnam until at least August, no matter what happens. There's no reason to come home to America, when I will have no chance of finding work until after the summer.

My first Birthday in Vietnam

My first birthday in Vietnam was a lot of fun. Lan threw me a big party on the Sunday before my Birthday. We invited all of her family, her parents, and all her sisters, brothers-in-law, and niece and  nephews. Lan has a pretty big family, and so there were about 20 people there. Lan got me a really nice cake with a monkey on it. She and I are both year of the monkey, and we both like monkeys so we she had a monkey put on my cake. then Lan and her family made a huge feast for me, and we all sat around and ate. They don't have a table, so when they have a big meal like that they eat on the floor. It's actually not a bad way to go, there's plenty of room and everyone can sit together and visit.

Afterwards we cut the cake and I opened my presents. I got some nice presents. I got a couple of nice shirts, a tie, and a wallet. Lan bought me a red rose in a nice bouquet. After having cake and opening presents we played games for the rest of the night. Her family likes to play cards, and there are several different card games they like to play. I mostly play Blackjack with them, because the other card games are Vietnamese card games and I don't really understand how to play them.It was a lot of fun, I like Lan's family quite a bit, even though I can't really talk to them very much. We manage to communicate even though we don't speak the same language.

On Thursday my actual birthday I didn't do anything, because I had to work, but the next day Lan and I went out to the movies. We went out to lunch and the movies for my birthday date. We went and saw 'Alice in Wonderland', it was pretty good. I liked it. Lan liked it too. I can actually watch a lot of American movies here, though they don't always get released at the same time as they do in America.

I've included pictures from my birthday party on my blog. 

Things seem to be settling down into a rhythm

I apologize for not writing any blogs for awhile. I'm now working 6 days a week, and I've been spending a lot more time with Lan, so I've been pretty busy. Lan is watching a Vietnamese tv series right now in my room, it's actually Chinese I think, with Vietnamese dubbed in. Many of the shows they like here are from somewhere else, usually China or Thailand, or Singapore. Vietnam doesn't have much of a film industry. Most of the Vietnamese shows that I've seen Lan watching are look llike they are super low budget, and the acting looks horrible. Course I can't speak the language, so I could be totally wrong, but it's pretty easy to tell the difference between one of these Vietnamese shows and an American show like 'Lost', and these show are definitely not Lost.

It's funny, because a lot of these shows that Lan watches shows that look like a porno without the porn, just the first 30 seconds only for 30 minutes (not that I know what a porno would look like, I'm just guessing). Just a lot of people having conversations that look like they could get real interesting real fast and yet end up going no where. I keep trying to see if there is anything that actually happens in the shows, and I can't for the life of me see that anything is happening. Most of the women are rather scantily clad too, at least in this one show that Lan likes, and they always seem to be getting in situations with these guys, but nothing every seems to happen. Not being able to speak the language really changes your perception of tv. I can only imagine how banal and idiotic American tv must be with all the reality shows, of course it's probably less banal and idiotic without understanding what's being said, but when you have no cultural or social context with which to reference what you are seeing, then nothing really makes any sense.

Lan and I are doing well. We're starting to get into a routine, and Lan is spending more time with me. There is still not a lot of scintillating conversation taking place between us, but we are beginning to build an understanding between us. Everyday we learn how to talk to each other a little bit more, and Lan has been doing a good job of studying english with me every day. Lan's nephew, Sumo, has taken it upon himself to teach me Vietnamese, so whenever he's around he'll go around the house pointing to things and repeating them over and over in Vietnamese, and then laughing hysterically when I try to repeat the words as well. He's 4, so language is kind of a new thing for him too. Actually I've picked up a few words having Sumo as a teacher. I don't always know exactly what the word is refering too, but at least I'm starting to gain a little vocabulary. Actually all of Lan's family is pretty good about helping me learn Vietnamese, I think they all want to get to a point where I can at least talk to them a little. I want to look into maybe taking classes somewhere, there has to be Vietnamese classes being taught somewhere in this city. Right now being able to speak to Lan trumps everything else in my life. We have no chance of making this relationship last if we can't figure out a way to talk to each other.

It's getting better slowly, but surely, and my job is really good. I like all the classes I teach. My toughest days are Saturday and Sunday, because I have to get up so early and I'm teaching young kids 8-10 on Saturdays and pre-teens 11-12 on Sunday. I get up at 5:45 am on both days so that I can get to work on time, but the flip side of that is I am finshed teaching by 11:45 am, and I have the rest of the day to relax. The rest of the week, friday is my day off, I teach nights, and it's only for a few hours. I teach adults at night, and they are easy to teach. Teaching Enlish as a foriegn language is actually quite fun. It can also be a little frustrating, especially when your students are beginners. I have to be very patient with Lan right now, because she really doesn't know very much, and I have to repeat many things with her. All my adult students at school are intermediate so they understand most of what I say, and they can converse pretty easily in English. I keep telling myself that Lan will be there someday, and I just have to keep teaching her. I think she will be there by the time we leave to come to America, or at least that is my goal.

I am living in the twilight zone

I ate my first chicken claw/foot/talon yesterday. And yes, it tasted like chicken. I was sitting in my room goofing around on my computer while Lan was watching some horrific tv show, when her sister appeared at the door said something. Lan immediately jumped up and said something, laughing and giggling, grinning ear to ear. She said something to me about chicken, and so I thought there must be some tasty victals awaiting us downstairs. I followed Lan downstairs and there sitting in the middle of the floor (Vietnamese eat on the floor) was a bowl of chicken feet/claws/talons. Lan dived right in. They were all fried up, just like you might see at KFC, if KFC sold chicken feet/claws/talons, and they looked about as appetizing as you might imagine kentucky friend chicken feet/claws/talons looking. 6 weeks ago I wouldn't have touched those things with a 50 ft. pole, but I've eaten so many strange, inexplicable things in the past 4 weeks that I just dug right in. They weren't bad, they just tasted like any other part of the chicken, the main problem was all the gristle. It was like chewing on kentucky friend rubber. I ended up eating half of one and throwing in the towel, and then Lan started giving me a hard time, because I left some gristle on the bone. Apparently your supposed to suck each and every bone, or is this case claw/talon clean. Here in Vietnam they don't waste any of the animal, they just eat it all, and they pick the bones clean. I must appear horribly wasteful to them, but I'm sorry I don't do gristle. I have to draw the line somewhere. I was hoping for round 2 on the spinning chicken head drinking game, but I guess that is only for special occasions. Last night was not special enough I guess.

I have also now twice seen a chicken hanging out in the yard (or what passes for a yard) in the morning, and then oddly enough had the chicken disappear in the afternoon only to have chicken for dinner that night. They like there food fresh here, they don't mess around with preservatives, you buy a living, breathing chicken and end up with dinner 6 hours later. I was at a restaurant the other day, and I went to use their restroom, which was putting it loosely to say the least. It was an outdoor restaurant, and their bathroom was a hole in the ground with a covering on 2 sides facing the restaraunt, basically like peeing on a visqueen wall. Anyway I walked back behind the kitchen, if you want to call it that, it was basically a camp fire with wok over coals, and a flat rock where everything was being sliced and diced, and there was a boy killing chickens, just wringing the necks and ripping the heads off. Not exactly 4 star dining.

I have been getting buffeted by culture shock lately. There are some really weird rules here that make little or no sense. Part of the problem is that Lan can't explain to me anything about the rules, she just tells me I can or can't do this with no explanation, and so it's a little like living in the twilight zone. For instance, men who wear deodarent are apparently considered fruity. Lan told me I was being effeminite today, because I was putting on deoderant. I told her that she better be careful what she asks for, because if I don't wear any deodarent then things get awfully damn unfeminine pretty damn fast, if you catch my meaning. I guess Lan likes her men smelling a little on the ripe side, but I don't think Vietnamese men smell nearly as bad as overweight American men do. Another little bizarre hygiene thing I was doing that apparently grosses Vietnamese, or at least Lan, out is that I was eating food before brushing my teeth. Apparently in Vietnam you are supposed to brush your teeth and then eat, eating without brushing is considered dirty or unclean. I don't get it. It's exactly the opposite of what makes even the smallest amount of sense. Plus food tastes crappy after you brush your teeth. I've taken to brushing my teeth without toothpaste, so that Lan thinks I have clean teeth before I eat.

I've also been dealing with their uber-strange dating customs here. Apparently, again according to Lan, boyfriends and girlfriends are not allowed to hold hands, hug, or especially kiss in public. It's very gross, and really offensive. I can hug Lan, and kiss her as long as it's just the 2 of us in my room, but if any of her family is around then forget it. Now if it's a child or a kid then you can hug, kiss, hold hands, whatever, that's fine. Lan's little nephew Sumo has gotten more action from Lan than I have so far, and Lan's little niece has had her hands all over me, it's creeping the hell out of me. Also friends both men and women can hold hands in public, hug, be very affectionate and it's not wierd at all. I've seen so many girls holding hands and hugging each other here, guys too. Just today, Lan's brother took my hand and held my hand as we were crossing the street, again uber creepy. But Lan and I, forget it. I get to hold her hand and snuggle a little with her at night when she's watching her vietnamese tv shows in my room, and I've insisted on a goodnight kiss, but that's all the action I'm getting. Lan says that it's inappropriate for boyfriends and girlfriends to touch until after their married. How anyone gets married here is beyond my understanding, but I've heard this rule from several people now, not just Lan, so apparently it's true. Lan and her family are also very traditional.

I can kind of see why they have these rules, families here all live together in the same house, and it's not uncommon to have entire families sleeping in the same room. Lan's sister, her husband, and their son all sleep together in one tiny room on the same bed. Lan and her Mother and Father all sleep together in the same room, same bed. In this tiny house that I'm living in right now, there are 10 people, including myself all living in the same house, and often there are more because at any given time Lan's other sister's and family will show up and sleep on the floor in the front room. Most houses I've been to, have many people living in them, it's common. So they have to be fairly strict about boundaries here, because there is so little privacy in this place. So relations between men and women here are very rigid, compartmentalized, because otherwise you would have mayhem. It might just be that Lan and her family are very strict too, but I have noticed that most men and women, unless they are very young, do not hold hands or show affection in public, so it must be the custom here.

There are some other stupefying customs here, but I am tired and my brain is shutting down for the night, so I'll have to save those for my next blog. I didn't even talk about money, their attitude toward money is an entire blog entry all by itself, and something I don't think I'll ever figure out. I think it's safe to say that pretty much everything in Vietnam is exactly opposite from how things are done in America. Or at least that's how it seems to me now, the really scary thing is that in 6 months all these things will seem normal to me and make perfect sense.

Tet Holiday in Vietnam

Tet was a bust. I have no spinning chicken head stories or anything like that to tell. I thought that Lan and I would spend Tet together doing fun things, going to festivals, seeing parades, whatever they do in Vietnam, but that did not happen. Apparently Tet is the time of year when people go to visit friends and relatives that they haven't seen all year. Kind of like Christmas for Americans. I didn't know it, but Lan had a whole list of people that she had to go visit, including some family that lived out of town, so the long and short of it is that I didn't see Lan for about 4 days and I spent most of Tet hanging out in my room watching tv and reading. I am know officially naming the week of Tet...Hell week!!!

It wasn't as bad as I'm making it out to be, though it was by no means as fun as I thought it would be either. I did get to do some things for Tet. Last week Lan, myself, and her 2 nephews and niece went to an amusement park/Zoo and spent the day going on rides and feeding exotic animals, that was a lot of fun. Then the next day I went with Lan and her family to a large Water park and spent the whole day swimming and sliding down water slides, that was also a lot of fun. So I did do some fun things, and then, of course, on Valentines Day Lan and I went out to eat at a nice restaurant.

I'm still amazed at how cheap things are around here. I spent 4 usd to go to the water park and it was a good sized water park, probably 15 slides, 2 kiddy pools, including a wave machine, a zip line (which really hurts by the way, I landed flat on my back) and a little moat/artificial stream which goes around the entire length of the park. It's equal to some of the bigger water parks in America, and where you would pay 40 or 50 usd for one person's ticket. I paid 40 usd for Lan's whole family, plus lunch for everyone. The two things that are really, really cheap in Vietnam are food and entertainment. Some of the things you buy in a store like electronic devices, or appliances cost more or less the same as America, but if you are coming here on vacation then things are cheap, cheap, cheap.

One other thing I discovered this Vacation is that Lan and her family love to play card games. The main card game in Vietnam is called Tan Lien, and it is based largely on points and sequences of cards. The first few times I watched people playing I could make no sense of  the game, but once I found the rules online and read them then I was able to learn the game very quickly. I suck at it, and since it involves a rather complicated system of gambling I have only played it a couple of times. The main game I play with Lan and her family is Blackjack or 21. It is almost the same as the American version, with a few small differences, for instance 2 aces wins all hands, it's the highest card hand you can get, and if an ace is with another card say then it is worth 10 point, so an ace of diamonds and an 8 of spades would be worth 18 points. The whole family including the kids will get in a circle on the floor and play cards for hours at a time, it's the one thing I can do with her family that does not require me to know any english.

I will say one more thing. This experience I'm having so far is much different than I expected. The cultural differences between America and Vietnam are profound. I really did not expect things to be so different, especially relational differences. I am having to court Lan in a completely different way than I have ever done before, and it is very hard. For instance, I am not allowed to show any public display of affection towards Lan, hugging, holding hands, putting my arms around her, and most especially kissing her, in front of her family. That is a big no-no. Lan is not allowed to be alone with me in a room. She can't come into my room alone, ever. It has made kissing her challenging since she is always accompanied by a family member, but I am a sneaky bastard when I want to be, so I am working it out. Then there is the fact that my job as her boyfriend/husband is to give her money, apparently, and her job is to take care of me domestically. Very eighteenth century. It seems very conservative and backwards here by American standards, but it's how things are done. Now once I'm married Lan and I can be alone together all we want, and I can kiss her, hug her whatever in front of anyone I like, but as long as we're not married we have to be very circumspect.

All things considered I am doing well. It is hard, but I love a good challenge, and I am learning things about myself that I never knew existed. I will survive this, of that I am certain. Lan and I will get married, and we will be happy together. Despite all the restrictions right now, I know that Lan loves me, and I know that she wants to marry me and spend the rest of her life with me. I just have to be patient right now. Till next time...

my life in Vietnam so far...

I have now been in Vietnam for 18 days, and in some ways it seems like I have been here for 18 months, and in other ways it seems like I have only been here for a few days. Time has little or no meaning for me here. I am more or less on Lan time, meaning that I am entirely dependent on Lan and here schedule.

One day soon I hope to start gaining a larger degree of independance, but for right now I can go nowhere or do anything without being accompanied by Lan. It's a little annoying at times, I think for both of us, but it's necessary. I do not know Vietnam, meaning I do not speak the language or know any of the customs, and for an American alone it can be a potentially dangerous place. There is a general, shall we say stereotype, associated with Americans here in Vietnam. We are all rich. Every Vietnamese, now I'm generalizing, thinks that Americans have money, lots of money. This is not necessarily true, at least in my case, and it is not necessarily a bad thing, it's nice to be percieved as being wealthy, however it does make it so that I have to be careful, more careful than I would normally be. There are certain things I cannot do in Vietnam, or that I can do but should be very careful doing. Right now I am choosing to not go anywhere unless accompanied by Lan or one of her family. And Lan has actually been pretty adamant about not allowing me to go anywhere by myself. So the downside or flipside of all this is that if Lan is at home cooking or spending time with her family I am at home. I consequently have done far less sight seeing than I had thought I would be doing, it's okay, I have air conditioning, internet, cable tv, and plenty of books to read.

A few other things that I have to be careful about. Lan has to do all the shopping, if you are an American then the price of any item automatically goes up by 4 or 5 times what a Vietnamese person would pay for it. The problem is that it still seems cheap by American standards, but it's expensive by Vietnamese standards. So if I want to buy anything here then Lan has to buy it for me. Which is fine, but again it is something I would like to do for myself, but that I have to now rely on Lan to do for me. I guess I feel a bit helpless here in Vietnam right now. I know that once I've been here a few months and know my way around and understand some of the language then it will be easier for me to get out and do things. I won't need to rely so much on Lan.

Right now Lan is fine with how things are, and I try to give her her space as much as I can, which is to say not that much as she likes spending most of her time with me. Of course it's complicated by the fact that we can't really talk to each other, but we are pretty well versed in the language of love and that's the universal language, as I guess is the language of hate, though I wouldn't know anything about that.

Tet is coming up next week and I will devote my next blog to telling about my first tet experience. It sounds like quite the affair. I have to pay out all this lucky money to all of Lan's family. it's costing me chunk of change, and as far as I can tell I'm getting no lucky money myself. I guess I'm not lucky, or else I don't need luck. I don't know. And again food will feature prominently in the festivities, sounds like there is a whole lot of feasting that happens over the tet holiday. So look for my next post and I'll give you all the gory details.

LIving in Vietnam

I have been here nearly one week and so far things have gone as well as could be expected, I think. I arrived in Vietnam on Tuesday, Jan. 19, after an extremely long flight, and seeing Lan's smiling face made all the long hours aboard the airplane worth it. The first few days have gone by in a blur. I like my apartment, it is basically a large room, but I have air conditioning, internet, and cable tv. I also have several American channels including HBO, Stars, and then some cable tv channels that show only American tv shows like house, 24, American Idol, etc. I also have discovery, national geographic, animal planet and espn (though it's espn asia, so it's all tennis and soccer). So all in all it's not a bad set up. I will post pictures of my room so you can see it.

My job seems really good. I haven't been able to work many hours yet, because they are finishing up there winter term before Tet. After Tet I will have a full schedule. The school is kind of far from where I live, so I may very well move after I'm married. It is not easy for Lan to drive me to and from work everyday, the traffic here is nothing short of gawd awful. It takes a long time to get to work. I noticed that there are many apartments right around my school, so we'll see.

There are lots of American teachers at work, and at least half of them seem to be from Portland. It's funny, I don't know why so many people from Portland would end up working at SEAMEO, but it works for me. There seem to be a decent amount of westerners in this city. It's a big city, so it's not suprising that it would be fairly cosmopolitan. I will have to work on making American friends that I can spend time with, because right now I am only hanging out with Vietnamese, and I can't understand a thing they are saying. It's very frustrating.

I attended my first Vietnamese wedding, it was quite interesting. I spent the two whole days being shuttled around to various restaurants and places, eating copious amounts of food, and not understanding a word that was spoken the whole time. As an American in Vietnam, I'm a bit of a minor celebrity, kind of a sober David Hasselhoff, or an out of shape David Beckham. As such everyone wants to talk to me, to meet me, and to practice their one or two words of english on me. Everywhere I go I have people coming up to me and talking to me. It's kinda cool, I won't lie, it's rather flattering, but it's also very exhausting. After a few hours I'm wiped out. I have said hello, how are you? I am fine...my name is nate, about 10 million times since I've been here, or at least it seems like it. But I'm popular for maybe the first time in my life, I'm the cool kid in the room.

I will say this about the Vietnamese, they are very nice, kind hearted people. I know that is generalizing, i.e stereotyping, but it is true for the most part. I think a lot of the niceness has to do with my Americanness again. The Vietnamese have held no grudges against Americans, or so it would appear, of course I am in the part of Vietnam that fought with the Americans, I might have a different reception in Hanoi. However I have now met at more than one older gentlemen who fought in the Vietnam war, and everyone of them were excited to practice their english with me, and did not care that I was American. If they don't hold grudges against Americans then I have to assume that most people in this country don't. There are also a lot of young people in this country, especially in HCMC, who have grown up after the war, and for them America is the holy Mecca of cool. Everything cool comes from America.

Now I should stipulate that these are only my first impressions. I might change my mind or refine my impressions later after I have been here for a while. It's so hard to know anything about a place when you've only been here for 2 weeks. I can only have the most superficial of opinions at this point, but I will continue to share as time goes on.

I will leave you with one story of my time so far in Vietnam. I played my first drinking game in Vietnam at the wedding. I will describe the wedding in greater detail next blog, though I will say that it involves a lot of really bad Vietnamese Karaoke that is played way to loud, everything in Vietnam is played way to loud. There is only one volume and that is ear shattering. I saw a lot of drunk Vietnamese singing really bad, horribly bad Vietnamese music. It was pretty painful, and it will not be happening at my wedding, or so I say now. We'll see what happens in two months. So the drinking game. A little back ground first, when they serve chicken in this country they serve the whole chicken, and I do mean the whole chicken, including the head. So what they did when they served the whole chicken is they took the head and stuck it on chop stick, they placed the chopstick in a half full beer bottle. They then spun the chicken head and whoever the beak was pointing at had to do a toast, something like ba, da, ca, baaaa....all yelled at top volume, then you had to drink half a bottle of beer, though the amount you drank went up the drunker everyone got, as did the volume of the toast. I participated, and everytime I had to drink then I spun it would land on this one guy, one of Lan's cousins. I chose him every time, and everytime I chose him he would say Number 1 American!!! And give me the thumbs up. It was pretty funny, and suprisingly fun.

So that is my first 2 weeks in Vietnam. I will continue to add to this post and I will attempt to put on some pictures of the wedding, right now I am tired and I have to get up at 5 a.m. to go to work tomorrow, yuck.