co nasty oi!

this is ha anh. i can't really understand a word she says, but when she sings 'doe a deer,' it makes my heart leap!

i had lunch at ha and hien's house this afternoon (9:30 a.m. start time!) with ha's mother and father, some of their friends, and some old colleagues from apollo. ha put on a serious spread - some of the most delicious sour tomato soup i've ever eaten - and i did my best to keep up with the conversation. eventually though, i got the dreaded lecture on polite forms of address: ha's father explained to me (very patiently, i must admit) that if i fancied myself a connoisseur of things vina, then i certainly must cease to make the mistake of calling myself em, or "little sister" to someone i greet as chu, or "uncle, younger than my father." i must refer to myself instead as chao, which as far as i can tell, translates to "youngster." "da vang a," i replied, trying to make up for my breach in personal pronoun politesse and cursing myself for being so dense when it comes to this bloody language.

but what makes this so funny to me is that all afternoon long, ha anh (ha's little girl who mistakenly calls me co, "aunt, younger than my mother." i'm actually two years older than ha and should thus be referred to as bac, or "aunt, older than my mother," but what are you going to do? she's five. ps, do you see what i mean now?? this sh*t is way complicated!)... ok, so all day ha anh keeps trying to get my attention by yelling out "co NASTY oi!" Ls and Ns are super slippery for the vietnamese, and i believe she was actually calling me "nasny" in an attempt to pronounce my name. but all i could hear - as i listened dutifully to the rules of the vietnamese pronoun game - was, "hey! aunt nasty!"

VTV1 nightly news

dong xuan night market

tonight i went with a new friend diu huong to hear some traditional singing at the dong xuan market in the old quarter. never mind that it was lip-sync and uncomfortably warm despite the day's rain - it was a very nice performance. this particular type of singing, called "hat xam," was traditionally a street performance by the blind. it was deemed decadent or "foreign" after 1945 and the performers banned, but that decision was reversed 20-30 years ago. now, the ha noi conservatory is training new performers and offering street shows in the hopes of sparking a larger interest in the art. contemporary performers are not blind, but some of them do wear dark shades - for effect.

a crowd gathers for the show

the highlight of the evening, however, was when the VTV1 gal tapped me on the shoulder for an interview!! i haven't been here for two weeks and i'm already on vina-TV! her question was simple enough, "how do you feel when you hear vietnamese music?" (it seems they like to talk an awful lot about "how do they feel" here), and she convinced me to give my answer in vietnamese. i choked, naturally. i'm not good at this kind of thing - period - but in vietnamese... well, it was hardly a brilliant performance. in front of a live audience of about two dozen and, of course, all the viewers at home, i managed a very moving (read: very awkward), "in my opinion, vietnamese music is very beautiful." jees, i just hope my teachers weren't watching!

i'll include a video link here, to give you a little taste of "hat xam." i can only record 20 seconds on my camera, and unfortunately, i got distracted by the black-toothed, white-haired lady who'd sat down in front of me mid-way through. so just close your eyes and listen:

friday afternoon tra da

it was a hot one yesterday, so i right after i snapped this shot, i sauntered over to the little blue plastic stools across the street for a glass of iced tea. it's terrible stuff - really bitter - but it is refreshing. that said, i reckon anything would be when sweat is dripping down your back and your butt is wet. (seriously, sometimes when i get off my bike or stand up after lunch, there is a sweat stain on my rear. why i haven't found myself any vietnamese suiters by now is beyond me.) anyway, it's also a fine chance to practice my vietnamese. i had just purchased a wooden fan scented with something marvelous, and dare i say, exotic, and my hostess was eager to know how much i'd paid. 25,000 dong ($1.56), i said, and she confirmed that it was 2.5 times what she would have paid. that sounds about right. fortunately, the tea was only 2,000. so in the end, i think i made out alright.

last week i had to post a blog entry about 'ways to stay cool in ha noi' (yes, i'm blogging in vietnamese too!), and if i could add to that list, i'd add 'drinking iced tea on the sidewalk whilst lazily fanning oneself and chatting about shopping' - doesn't sound too different from summers in texas actually. come to think of it, neither does the sweaty butt scenario.

"how are you tomorrow?" or, language gaffes, part un

hien in the toyota van. ha says she still prefers the motorbike.

this, i have little doubt, will be the first of many entries about the joys of learning vietnamese... let it be known that i make mistakes all the time: "let's meet so i can exercise my vietnamese," for example, or "i am believing for my sunglasses." vocab mistakes abound, but so do tonal screw ups, the most most delicate of which often involve sex or body parts. i've already mentioned the "penis juice" incident. and i have a colleague who addressed an audience of vietnamese at the hanoi opera house, which she called the "big singing vulva" meaning the "big singing house." ah yes, everybody's got a story.

a few nights ago i had dinner with my friend ha and her husband hien. i'd worked with both of them at apollo back in the day, and i was thrilled to hang out with them again, to meet their little girl, linger over a hot pot chock full of shrimp, tofu, spinach, squid, two kinds of mushrooms... we were on the roof of another friend's place, overlooking west lake, and because it was dusty, hien decided to take off his socks (why he is wearing socks in june, i do not know). anyway, most of our conversation that night was in english and merely peppered with a bit of vietnamese, but thinking i should practice my clothing vocab, i told hien, "yeah, go ahead, take off your socks!" to which he responded, "haa??!" this struck me as an unusual response to such a simple command, so i looked to ha, who kindly informed me that yes, "tat" does mean "sock" in vietnamese, but it also means "all."

and the she added, "so actually, older sister, you've just told my husband to take off all his clothes."

awesome.

scavenger hunt!

to get us acquainted with our new vietnamese language partners and with the city, our field director organized a scavenger hunt for 2:30 (!!) yesterday afternoon. this was a mere hour and a half after we'd finished the feast with our côs. we were all seriously dazed and wanted nothing more than a long afternoon siesta, but this is kind of like language camp, and yesterday's scavenger hunt was like archery - NOBODY at camp val verde liked archery except for my best pal keri, who was a natural at all things sports (and next to whom i was a very awkward priss), but the camp counselor insisted. so you HAD to go. and for yesterday's camp VASI scavenger hunt, we HAD to go.

we were given a list of things to buy and/or photograph: black sticky rice yogurt, mung bean cakes, a t-shirt with uncle hô's face on it... divided into groups of three, we hit the town running. and two hours later, we were still running! it was insane. unlike archery, which i still hate, the scavenger hunt brought out the competitive side of me (surprise surprise), and i got really into it. so into it that i hardly noticed how disgustingly filthy i'd become until i sank into my plastic chair at the bia hoi at the end of day - exhausted but victorious! that's right friends, we won. the prize was team vietnam jerseys, though i've been told not to wear mine in orange county. bad politics!



disclaimer: i hate my digital camera. i can't figure out how to control the focal points and apparently my hands shake so bad that i can't ever take a clear pic without the flash. so i apologize now for all the slightly blurry pics posted on this blog. one of two things is happening here: either i'm a complete idiot or it's time for a new digital camera.

no qua!

i haven't learned how to say "food coma" yet in vietnamese, so i had to settle for "so full!" yesterday as i dodged the chopsticks loaded with nem, bun, pho cuon... just like a good southern hostesses, vietnamese women really push food on their guests. the hostess often places the choicest morsels in the latters' bowls – whether they want them or not.

"khong no, khong ve," they say.
"you can't leave till you're stuffed!"

(part two of that saying is "khong say, khong ve," which is "you can't leave till you're drunk" and which wouldn't necessarily be a problem except that you sometimes hear it at lunch time... among taxi drivers. hmm...)

anyway, i mentioned a few days ago that vietnamese cuisine was a wondrous thing. it is. i have really gotten into food in the last couple of years. i wouldn't call myself a 'foodie' - i'm not that sophisticated - i just really like to eat. and nowhere am i as giddy about food than in viet nam. it is so fresh, savory, and plentiful... i can't contain my excitement! i thought the baguette and cheese in france was dangerous - i'll be 20 pounds heavier by the time i leave if i continue at this rate!

sidewalk vegetable stall - much nicer than the butcher's stall!

yesterday, our côs had us over for lunch and a cooking lesson. they sent us to the market to practice our bargaining skills (and my hunch is, to get a laugh out of how badly we were taken on the price of chile and watermelon!), then we chopped, sliced, rolled, and fried until we were starving. and then we ate. and ate. and ate... we'd just learned about the relationship between food and the five basic elements, the rules that combine metal (spicy), wood (sour), water (salty), fire (bitter), and earth (sweet) in each dish or in the meal as a whole, and i was thoroughly enjoying the various combinations before me. in fact, i enjoyed them until i thought i was going to explode. then we had desert! my vietnamese hostesses were pleased.

this is minh. she said i was very "enthusiastic" about lunch, an understatement if i've ever heard one.

the final product - and this is only one end of the table! featured in this picture is pho cuon: beef, lettuce, and herbs rolled in a very thick rice paper and served with fish sauce, chiles, and lime. when it feels like a warm bath outside (which it has since we arrived), there is nothing nicer than pho cuon and a glass of cold bia ha noi (hanoi beer).

rain, rain, go away. no seriously, go away.

(photo courtesy of pamela nguyen corey, one of the few students in our program brave enough to bust out her camera in this weather!)

last night we had a big dinner planned with our five côs (female teachers) and the giam doc (director) of the program. this guy is VINA-VIP, a big wig. apparently he worked either as or with an interpreter in the negotiations to normalize relations between the US and VN, and apparently this involved fudging the translations a pinch here and there to make sure that everyone on each side of the table was happy. we were all working toward the same goal, they figured, and they were just making that process a little smoother!

but, i digress (already!). anyway, we students were all a bit stressed as the whole thing was going to be in vietnamese - nothing melts the brain like four glasses of warmish beer and three hours of pretending to understand what's going on around you - and we were expected to introduce ourselves with appropriate deference and, ideally, in a language free of the tonal gaffes that have one asking for "penis juice" when one believes oneself to be asking for "grapefruit juice." i spent the afternoon looking up words and verifying all my tones (i will not make that mistake again) and consequently did not really notice that it was dumping rain outside. it was still raining when we left for the restaurant, which was only 6 or so blocks away, but no taxi would take us. happy and dry in my superfine, kinda-moldy, 20-cent plastic pancho, i was content to walk. but as we turned the corner onto hai ba trung (the infamous two trung sisters street), we realized we were in for more than just frizzy hair and wet sandals.

according to today's paper, it was the "worst flood in 10 years." it was up to our KNEES in some places. there were vietnamese driving on sidewalks, dudes squishing their shoes and socks under their motorbike seats to drive home barefoot, women in sassy sandals driving with their feet tucked under their butts, horns tooting, people swearing, whacky foreigners trekking to dinner with the giam doc of their summer language program... who didn't show cuz it was pissing rain. and flooding.

made sense to me.

hanoi, 4:30 pm

lest you think i was exaggerating about the traffic... this is not quite full rush hour density. i forgot to mention earlier that hanoi has stepped up its public transport in recent years, so now there are also great big korean buses swerving the streets!! apparently one public official has already noted that in five years, this city will be perpetual gridlock.

everyone around me was looking at me like i was totally nuts as i took this picture: "crazy backpackers and their cameras!"

where the streets have six names...

i've been back in ha noi now for 4 days, and so far, when i'm not sleeping or sweating, i can usually be found stuffing my face (more on the wonders of vietnamese cuisine later). as the locals would say, everything in ha noi appears to be "same same, but different." very different, in fact. a lot of progress has been made in the 6 years since i left (no surprise then that one of the few vietnamese phrases i've retained is "economic development"). sky risers, swanky hotels, investment organizations, traffic lights, cross walks... the list goes one. some of my old haunts have disappeared, and some have been discovered and written up in guide books! but that is nothing compared to the number of cars on the road these days.

maybe i'm just waxing nostalgic here, but when i arrived in 2000, i swear i only saw a dozen or so cars a day. now, there are a dozen on each block. it's crazy. not that i'm against being sheltered when it's pissing rain and you're on your way home from work. no, that is a good thing. the problem is that driving patterns haven't changed much to adapt to these cars. aside from the explosion of traffic lights around town, the vietnamese way of driving is still very much an experiment in controlled chaos. (incidentally, i heard a story the other day of a physicist who studied chaos theory and was so fascinated by the traffic patterns that he moved here to research them. so engrossed was he that after about a week or so, he was hit by a motorbike and had to go home.)

this did not deter me from what i really came here to do, however, which is ride a mo-to-bike! i couldn't wait to get back on the streets of ha noi, so yesterday i finally got myself set up with one. though i absolutely loved my shitty russian bike back in the day (RIP bette geen), i've upgraded to a zippier, cleaner honda model – this way i avoid ruining all my trousers and having to carry spare spark plugs in my school bag.

i set out to rediscover ha noi, letting the flow take me where it would. this was partly because i had no set agenda, partly because i had no real choice: i'd unfortunately chosen rush hour for my little joy ride. but i maneuvered those streets like a local: sharing the road with lost flip flops, great big fallen bags of who knows what, vendors and pedestrians crossing whenever and wherever they pleased. the only difference i'd say was the fact that 15 minutes into my jaunt around town, i had no clue where i was. i got seriously lost. off my map lost. thank GOD I can ask for directions lost. oh GOD, how do I say lost lost. it doesn't help that vietnamese streets change names every two blocks or so: independence street, barbecued fish street, the two trung sisters street...

i made it back eventually, but not before i'd nearly left town on some giant dirt road lined with vietnamese truckers (i was quite a sight for them, i'm sure). but, for the first time in almost a week, i slept through the night. maybe i'm on to something.