Hanoi
August 24th-30th
What a whirlwind. I said goodbye to my parents and grandma and went through security with my big back pack which had two laptops and a large carry on with wheels. I got on the airplane and the captain told us that Chicago had weather delays and they wouldn't allow any incoming flights. We waited on the runway for about 40 minutes. The whole time I wondered if I would be able to make the connecting flights for my international travels. I got off the plane in Chicago and ran to my gate just in time as they were ready to stop boarding. Then I met my teammate Alli and another Vietnam ELI teacher in LAX. The rest of the journey was uneventful and I was able to sleep a little on the 12 hour flight.
When I got to Hanoi, Vietnam I met up with Kristi (my old teammate from China). She teaches in Cambodia but was wrapping up her month long schooling in Hanoi with other ELI teachers from Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos (the same training as I did last year).
I got to meet my new teammates and get to know them the past couple days. We went into town to do an observation of Vietnamese life. It was good to take a break from the training and open our eyes to the people. I took a lot of fun pictures.
Second Firsts
It’s been a year since I was in Hanoi and it was like it was my first time. It has a different look than Dalat. I was reintroduced to Vietnam after being gone for almost three months. I’ve forgotten how the traffic in Hanoi is so different from West Des Moines, Iowa. Here you can cross the street anywhere, in Iowa and Chicago I had to be careful not to J walk or dart out across the street when a car was coming assuming the car would go around me. I forgot about all the “stuff” the Vietnamese people can put on the back of their motor bikes. (Caution graphic description) Last year I saw a motor bike carrying a basket with piles of skinned whole cooked dogs. I don’t think I would see that in America. This year I’ve seen a man driving but engulfed by green leafy vegetables and others carrying stacks upon stacks of eggs over the back and tied so that it hung off both sides almost to the ground.
The Bao Son (4 star) Hotel which I have been staying provides a built in hair dryer, but it looks more like a vacuum, (picture). The hotel has been remodeled since last year. We aren’t able to use the staircase from the ground level and mostly had one elevator in use. I’m not sure what would happen if there was a fire. I guess the fire codes are different here than in America. I remember I had ants and a mouse in my room last year. We ended up switching rooms because it was so bad, but this year was so far so good.
Jet lag was really hard to get over for some reason this year. I was exhausted and would try to wait to go to sleep past 8pm and even took some sleeping pills a couple nights but I would find myself waking up at 2 am and not able to get back to sleep. It was terrible because we would have meetings the whole day.
We went to a Vietnamese museum. It was so educational to see what the economy was like just before I was born and how it has changed to today. The late 70s and early 80s the Vietnamese had to use coupons to buy rations for food much like the US had to do during the depression. The times were hard and they were grateful to have a spoonful of rice for their family and a piece of fabric to make an article of clothing. There were some families who were able to have special material objects but felt so guilty they would pack it away and not use it. One woman had a new bicycle and her son took it out for a ride. He fell and scratched the paint so she got so mad she packaged it up and never used it again. What a sad story that it was so precious that she couldn’t even use it for what was needed. Another family had a motor bike but felt so guilty with the town gossip they stored it in a house in the country but no on was able to properly take care of it so it was ruined when they decided they wanted to use it. I can’t put it into words right now but that is a great analogy of what this is all about. You can’t take it with you so why not use it now and enjoy it if you have it? That’s the same way with relationships - don’t regret not spending time with people or telling them something important.
At the end my friend Tabbie and I went outside. The museum had replicas of minority community houses. We got to go inside and explore them. I felt like I was going to fall right through the floor but it was pretty sturdy. We had to hurry with the last house because we needed to reconnect with our group. There was a college class of about 50 Vietnamese students inside and they all wanted to know about us and where we were from. We chatted with them for a while and had to politely excuse ourselves and then it started raining. We had to go down the slippery ladders to get out of the house. We were both scared we would fall. He was definitely protecting us.
posted by WhereInTheWorldIsKarenEchoGordon? @ 7:23 PM
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