Fashion Shows

Oh yeah, and fashion shows are HUGE here. Every event calls for a fashion show no matter how trivial. For example: Halloween...fashion show, Tet...fashion show, English department variety show focused on ENGLISH...fashion show, Metro (international whole-sale grocery store, like Costco) customer appreciation day...biggest fashion show ever. If you're ever in Nam and there are more than 40 people in a room at any one time there's probably going to be a fashion show be it planned or impromptu. I've got a little video from the one at Metro which was brilliant actually because you could shop and then go to the clothing/appliance section of the store and watch the fashion show for a while if you get bored, then back to buy some toothpaste.

Vietnam's awesome.

Entertainment

A couple days ago was teaching pronunciation and during class we played a pretty simple game which requires students to remember a series of words and add to the list from player to player. The game was a huge success and even after class was over most of my students hung around and continued to play. Personally I find this fascinating. Particularly because these are all 18-19 year old biotechnology students and I cannot recall a single instance in my educational career where I decided to hang out in class after being dismissed and play a rather silly game with my peers. Maybe it's just me.

But this kind of simple game isn't just popular in class. I've been to a lot of parties with students outside of class (Halloween parties, get togethers, Tet holiday etc.) and every single time there are these really silly and, according to most western people I think, childish games that everybody really loves. One game I played at a Halloween party with a group of Biotechnology grad students. Everyone sat in a circle and the game leader was in the middle. Here's the premise:

1.Game leader either screams "aaaahhhhhh"(in a scary manner), or "ooooohhhhhh" (in a scared manner) to one of the people in the circle.

2.The person being screamed at must provide the opposite response, scared or scary respectively.

3. If the screamee gets it right, the screamer continues maybe four or five times in quick succession to try and trick the person into giving the wrong response.

4. If the screamee gets it wrong they aren't out, it's just funny and the screamer moves on around the circle to another person.

This lasts for about 20 minutes...

I've seen this game, or a variation of the game (guns and shields and other things), a couple times since then and I try to get into it, but I usually find it more fun to screw up on purpose and everybody gets a laugh. I had a video, and you've really got to see it to understand the level of excitement this game produces, but I lost my phone and the video with it. One of the best examples was when we played this game during a Tet holiday party at the Center for Foreign Language and I had a couple mid 30's and early 40 year old students playing this game with reckless abandon. It's something that, outside of playing with their kids, I don't think any age-comparable American would ever consider doing in public.

Which brings me to my point I guess. I sometimes wish I could get into this kind of stuff whole-heartedly, but it's easier said than done. Especially when growing up in a Western culture where we're taught to put childish things aside once we become adults. It's funny because when I first got to Vietnam, this was one of the first things I noticed and immediately distanced myself from. To the point of feeling uncomfortable at times when students would play. As time goes on it's starting to feel more fun and normal save for the tiny little voice in the back of my head which stills says wtf. Best part is the idea of bringing this baby back to the State's and playing a couple rounds at the next kegger I attend hahaha. Maybe it would make a good drinking game...

First Post

Okay. Well this is my first post as you may have noticed from the title, but in case you didn't I figured I'd go ahead and say it twice. It's funny how that works here. Saying things twice to make sure that the people you are talking to actually understand the noises coming out of your mouth is standard practice during the first few weeks of a new term. What happens is I'll usually say something once at full speed (using my native English vocabulary) without thinking about it; then as I'm finishing my statement I'll glance at my students, half of whom are looking at me blankly while the other half have eyes rolled back in their head as they google their brains for the definition of dichotomy, and I'll realize that I've done it again. So as soon as I finish I start again, but this time with fewer syllables and a careful and deliberate crafting of each individual word followed by a slow "okay?" accompanied by a nod of the head. Sometimes they nod even when they don't really understand which is another story altogether.
But that's not really what I was thinking about when I sat down to type this "First Post." I was thinking about one of the most important things I've learned since I arrived here in Vietnam. Patience. What reminded me about this virtue was a spontaneous invitation to lunch by one of my colleagues, Thay Hung.

-Quick aside here, for those of you who don't know or speak Vietnamese, thay is like a pronoun for a teacher who is a man and co pronounced go is for a teacher who is a woman. The reason I find this interesting is because there are 8 ways to address people: em, toi, chi, anh, ba, ong, co, and thay. All of them can mean "me" depending on your situation, but toi is the only official "me" with no other meaning. The rest are conditional on age. So younger men and women (20s-50s)) are anh and chi respectively. Old men and women are Ong and Ba. Anyone younger than you is em. And Thay and Co are specifically for teachers. So inherent in the language here is a special way to refer to someone who is your teacher, regardless of age. In every other encounter, age is a determinant for what you call yourself and what you call the person you are talking to, but in this special relationship the thay is always and forever a thay and the same for co. I'll talk more about this in another post maybe, but back to what I was saying -

So Thay Hung invites Jacque (my post mate here in Can Tho) to lunch because it's been a while since we've all sat down and chatted in a while and he decides we should eat right now (it's 10:00am, but Vietnamese people are crazy and get up at like 4:30 every day so they eat really early). We agree and he says he needs to go lock his office and then we'll all leave together.
Well, he walks about 4 meters towards his office and stops at the guard's post to chat with the guard...for 20 minutes. I really didn't see anything wrong with the situation and then it donned on me that in some former life of mine I would be kind of pissed because we were sitting there not 20 feet from him waiting for him to get his stuff to come eat lunch and he was having an idle conversation with the security guard. Not being phased at all by this though, I couldn't help but laugh a little bit at how much my perceptions of time have changed since being here. In the States everything has to be done 10 minutes ago and if you take 20 extra minutes for a lunch break you had better have twisted your ankle getting out of the car on the way back to work.

Here, all the teacher's finish morning classes at 10:00 and start afternoon classes at 13:30. That's 210 minutes of pure relaxation. I remember at first having a really difficult time adjusting to this whopping black hole in the middle of my day; futilely searching for afternoon entertainment and finding all venues closed for afternoon naps, but now it just seems normal and a quick nap has become a familiar spoke on the hamster wheel. One of the greatest things I've learned since being here is when to let go and wait for certain things to happen. And they will happen. Eventually. Like when the house floods (which happens from time to time), theres nothing you can do about it except accept it and get some waterproof boots. The most important thing is to have a good idea for how long things will take and to plan accordingly, this way you don't have to get impatient when there's only one more week til you leave the country and you still don't have your visa extension...