V is Very, Very Extraordinary

Alright, so I took the title of this post from a song again. But it was on purpose! The fact is 1) we do a heck of a lot of singing in this place, and 2) we do a heck of a lot of cheesy English songs in this place, and 3) most of the time our work here requires us to be resourceful, not to reinvent the wheel.

It's our third full day in Mo Cay, a small town in the rural Ben Tre province. Every day we wake up about 5:30 and groggily get our stuff for the day together, then eat a varied breakfast at 6am. Usually the fare is something along the lines of Vinamilk yoghurt (quite fond of it now--thinner than American yoghurt), bread&egg sandwiches, pho, strong instant coffee or Lipton milk tea, and chom choms (rambutans).

We ride our rickety bicycles over rough roads and 2 decaying bridges for about 20-25 minutes to reach our worksites by 7am. The palm and banana trees lining the road are just glorious, and the morning sun is pretty gentle.

To reach the house building site, we take a left off the road straight into the jungle. We go over bridges about 4-5 feet wide, splash up mud through giant puddles, veer around snarling dogs and around ladies carrying the morning basket of chom choms for the family. (Chom choms are kinda ubiquitous.)

The past few days we've just been moving supplies to the house assembly-line style. The first day we moved a ton of gravel, the next day sand and more gravel. Bricks are coming soon, and I'm not particularly eager. Today we made reinforced concrete columns to support the family's new home, and to take a break we taught the little kids the macarena. They lapped it up. The kids don't really understand that we don't speak Vietnamese, they just think we're stupid. They chatter away at us and giggle like mad. The grandmother of the family is one of the smallest elderly women I've ever seen--her feet can't be much bigger than the head of my hammer. She has one good eye, and she chews this stuff called betel juice (fruit and nut mixture that is addictive) all day, spitting out red sputum. It's nasty. She's fond of us, though, and encourages me frequently to wear bug spray. Which I do, though only some of us have had a problem with the bugs.

We finish up morning work at about 11am, then mount our bikes for a 20-minute ride further away from our hotel. I typically almost collapse at the table heaped with bowls of rice, tofu and green beans, beef and noodles, pineapple, sometimes fish and, you got it--chom choms. We try to drown ourselves in water and tra da (iced tea).

After eating and washing the dishes ourselves, we bike a short ways to an outdoor coffee shop, which has hammocks! Chilling there and ordering the delicious and hardly nutritious ca phe sua da (coffee with milk and ice), we take a nap/lesson plan.

At 2ish we divide into middle school and elementary school groups. Tom, Hieu and I are having a MARVELOUS time with our precious and precocious primary little people. We've thus far taught them "Hello my name is ____", "I am ____ years old", their colors and their numbers. Plus some extras like "hop," "clap", and "beautiful." I'm sure we'll be on to Chaucer and the nuances of politics by next week. :)

The 17+ kids, ranging in age from 3 to 11, are all black-haired, brown-skinned and snaggle-toothed, but they are so incredibly different! Little Danh (a boy) has the widest smile and answers really fast, even if he doesn't know the answer (he usually does). Little Yen (a girl) enthuasiastically watches out of big eyes and talks A LOT. One of my favorites, Dat (a boy), pretty much has no idea what's going on but always jumps up and down and say CO OI!!! (Lady Teacher look!!!). Some are brother and sister. We haven't had any criers yet, either (*crosses fingers and knocks on wood*).

Hieu, Tom and I have some different pedagogical approaches, but so far we're learning more and more what our strong points are and how to delegate teaching most effectively. Synergy, baby. We're all about it. For instance, Tom is excellent with drawing and teaching songs, Hieu kinda speaks Vietnamese and so explains virtually everything as well as inventing some terrific games, and I'm kinda the boss/word pronouncer/compliment giver/materials hander-outer/hugger and high-fiver. It works well. :)

The classroom is an austere little number with 11 benches (practiced that in our counting activities) and some dried chom choms on the floor. We've got a blackboard, but we bring all our own materials (chalk/scissors/paper/markers/crayons/tape/rules, etc.).

Tom, Hieu and I have it lucky. My friend Tram teaches a middle school class in which the children's grandmothers come in and chatter. They ask her all sorts of questions and then gossip about her right while she's teaching!!

"My, what a big butt she has. Wonder what she eats? Does she have a boyfriend with that?"

AWFUL. At least I can't speak Vietnamese...and the grandmothers don't attend my primary school class. Tram's a trooper.

I have had some awkward encounters with motorbike passersby on the bike ride home. This old dude, maybe 50-60, kept time just to my left and stared me up and down, before driving off wordlessly. I was just about to give him the classic "How DARE you!" before he tootled off. Some people.

Afterwards we bike 30+ minutes home (remember we biked away from the hotel after the worksite), jump in the shower, get a shake from the market, go the Internet cafe, and snag supper together at 6pm. Afterwards we lesson plan or do karaoke or watch movies in our laptops. Yeah. Not much going on. There's also a toad who hops around our hotel at night named Marco. You get the picture.

I miss you all TERRIBLY. It's a tiring lifestyle compounded by intense Vietnamese heat and the biking distances we've got to cover. I'm under the impression that this is really a Robertson get-fit-fast program. :) Not really, but it's a nice by-product of making a difference and learning a tremendous amount of Asian culture. Viet Nam is turning out to have so many benefits I never could've dreamed--eating tasty fruit, playing with adorable kids, teaching my favorite language, learning a new one, studying religion and the media when restricted by the government, getting a tan, getting called DEP QUA! (beautiful!!!!) even when I'm dusty and disheveled, etc. Still coming up with a succinct answer to the original "why did you come to 'Nam" question.

I will get photos to yall eventually!!

Miss you, miss you, miss you.