Two Women and a Dog Make a Market

It's often said in Viet Nam that two women and a dog make a market. In other words, if you get two women together they will chat and discuss things so much that it's as noisy as a market. Not really sure why the dog is there, but hey.

Our Vietnamese friends have started saying that living with us is like having two foreigners and a Vietnamese student make a market. Apparently we Robertsons plan, discuss and reflect ad nauseum. We're seeing this perceived disparity especially in our plans for the Green Summer campaign in the Ben Tre province. There we'll build houses, do community service work and teach English. Thus we're arranged in trios of two Americans and a Vietnamese student teaching elementary and middleschoolers basic English.

Even in these pre-teaching preparations, it's apparent that all of us having widely-variant backgrounds and ideas of pedagogy, especially Vietnamese versus Americans. Some of us prefer the kids to remain absolutely silent while lecturing, others want the kids to ask questions throughout. Some of us feel that the alphabet is especially key to learning English, others think that listen, repeat and recognize would better serve the kids' situation. How about the merits of colored pencils versus markers? Should the kids have small chalkboards and chalk or should we destroy the rain forest by distributing reams of paper? Mostly minutiae, you see.

We're going to have a difficult time communicating exactly what we mean to each other, but the result will be a mixture of both cultures. We can't teach English without the Vietnamese to explain it, and the Vietnamese can't convey the meaning of English fully without us. It'll be a market of haggling, language-mongers who'll bargain for the best.








Just for fun, here is a photo of two I took recently at the Binh Tanh market. They sell LIVE frogs and other animals for food, along with various fruits (which I adore) and vegetables.






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For our last few days in Saigon before going to the Ben Tre province to participate in the Green Summer community service program, we are soaking up Ho Chi Minh City.

This past Sunday I woke up nice and early to head to the nearby Nha Tho Duc Ba, or Cathedral of the Holy Father, for the 7:30am service. My first Vietnamese language teacher, a sweet lady named Van, went with me. The Vietnamese service was pretty much incomprehensible to me, but I definitely grasped the liturgy common to every Catholic church. I felt strangely about taking Communion. Sitting there on the hard bench watching rows of reverent fellow Christians, I really wanted to go up and share in the symbolic acceptance of bread and wine as a renewal of one's faith in Christ, but I remembered I was in a Catholic church. Even if I couldn't speak their language and they weren't about to interrogate me as to my particular faith, every Catholic church holds that the table is for church members only. My church promotes all Christians to join, and I have always felt slighted and upset by Catholic communion tables' off-limits status.

My teacher, a good Vietnamese Catholic who has attended since she was younger than ten years old, told me it was good for me to go up. Not only "not a problem," but "good" for me to go up. She said the priest hadn't said anything about only Catholics attending the table, and I believe in the Priesthood of All Believers doctrine put forth by Martin Luther (Speaking of which, I just bought the ripped-off DVD of "Luther," which is fantastic!). Thus I took Communion in a Catholic church for the first time, half a world away from my home. Communion in a nation renowned in American textbooks for being long under the stringent yoke of socialist restriction, and no communion in the land of opportunity and freedom from sea to shining sea.

After church my teacher walked with me to a nearby cafe for breakfast. She ordered the standard Vietnamese dish of pho bo (Vietnamese noodles with lightly cooked beef), and I went after the bun noodle special with crab spring rolls. Deeeeeelicious! We had a wonderful conversation spanning family, weddings (apparently brides usually wear red), the differences between "lease" and "rent" in English, and other random topics. We get along great, and we both hope to stay in touch no matter where in the world we travel.

We stopped by a bookstore to find CDs for her to use in her lesson planning. Van teaches Vietnamese to American students such as myself, and she also teaches English to younger kids. The bookstore was filled with a plethora of books in Chinese, Korean, French and Japanese.

The best part was looking at the cutesy, girly notebooks covered in poor, misunderstood English. I bought a notebook that says "Let is have a funny time with us!" and is covered in strawberries, and I also bought a pink polka-dotted notebook with a small yellow chick proclaiming "Pancakes is my fdourite." Awesome!
















Later that afternoon my friends Phat, Tram and I visited the local Cao Dai temple in HCMC. You'll remember that in an earlier post I documented for you a worship ceremony at the heart of Cao Dai, the Tay Ninh temple. The one pictured here is much smaller but retains the same basic structure, a trifecta of Buddhism, Confucianism and Taoism with sprinkled elements of Catholicism, Hinduism and more. (Don't be alarmed by the multiple swastikas; the Buddhists have been using the symbol for long before Adolf took a shine to it.)




















There was an entry portrait of three especially venerated figures in Cao Dai: Victor Hugo, Nguyen Binh Khiem, and Sun Yat-Sen. All three leaders and writers, uniting in the search for Harmony, a universal God, Peace and that many-splendored thing, Love.


















The shrine to the right is dedicated to the founder of the Cao Dai religion, a man named Ngo Van Chieu. He had a vision, which he ascribed to divinity, of the East and West uniting under one common religion. Thus it follows that the primary figures would be Victor Hugo (representing Europe and the West, and even more so the French influence upon Viet Nam), Sun Yat-Set (representing the East, and especially China and its changes since the revolution), and finally Nguyen Binh Khiem (famous poet laureate of Viet Nam).

Anyhow, things are going well with me, if you're curious for personal details. Had a bad egg sandwich the other day from one of our favorite street vendors, but that's fine now. Happily entertaining questions from concerned strangers (just yesterday a man I've never met asked me "why no hat?" in Vietnamese. He didn't understand why I wasn't vainly preserving my white skin). I'm ready to leave Ho Chi Minh City for a time to see a different part of Viet Nam, but I'm sure glad we're coming back after our 3-week stint in Ben Tre for about 6 days in the city.
















Oh, and the performance for the Green Summer opening ceremony on Friday the 13th? (Good thing I'm not a triskaidekaphobic, or I'd've been nervous to perform in front of 20,000 or something.) Check out this article if you want a really great photo of Tom and myself:

Click this for the article on the Vietnamese Communist youth newspaper Tuoi Tre to see photos of Tom, myself and some real celebrities


Tom and I really did dance and lip-synch to our recorded version of the Backstreet Boys' "I Want It That Way" in front of just under 20,000 folks. Our friends' parents called to say that they all saw the televised program as well. YIKES! Yikes especially 'cause of our grossly baggy lue t-shirts representing the Green Summer campaign. You know I'd have gone for the Britney Spears or X-tina Aguilera look for my pop debut had I the choice. :) Not.

And heck yes, we had a mosh pit! One boy even ran up on-stage to hand me a glowstick.

People have already approached Tom on the street, asking for autographs and hugs. Thankfully I look like a lot of people with my average height, weight and coloring (well, not so much here), so I'm keeping a low profile. :)





Apparently it went well though...our interview beforehand in Vietnamese and English (for which we were told what answers to give, which we somewhat obeyed) was fine. I even used a little bit of Vietnamese slang, which the crowd loved (biet chet lien = I'd die if I knew). Tom was his charming self and told everyone he loved the national noodle dish, pho. They asked us why we chose "I Want It That Way" which, you'll kindly remember, we were commanded to sing. So I answered sweetly that "we thought it was most appropriate to honor your compelling invitation." Something along those lines. :) Thanks for your prayers.

I've now checked off being an Asian pop star from my list of things to do before I die. As for me, I "never want to hear you say, I want it that way." Yeah.




P.S. I know there's a ton in this entry, but there's a possibility I'll be offline for 3 weeks, returning to Saigon on August 5th. Thus, here are some extras:

Annalee and Kevin found an infant kitten in the trash yesterday. His name is Boom and he's coming with us to improve the world, starting with Ben Tre. If infant cat care is your specialty, speak up!









Miss yall!