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.