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.