First Week, in review.

Well, I've survived my first week in Hanoi with hardly any problems to speak of apart from the challenge of finding an ATM I can get get money from.Unfortunately I've been quite busy here and haven't had much time to blog during the week, but there's so much I want to say about this wonderful city.

Let me start with this: I love this place. I love it. I love the people, who have proven themselves to be the nicest and most pragmatic people I've met. I love the little children, who are so astonishingly adorable that even the male Fulbrighters can't help but coo and point. I love all the smells, even the bad ones. I love the flexible combination of French, Soviet, and Vietnamese architecture. I love the statue of Lenin. I love the thrill and the sense of accomplishment I have whenever I cross the street. I love the temples, lakes, street barbers. I love the ca phe sua da. I love the young boy in Day and Night Cafe who asks me in broken English how I am every night when I come in to check my email. I feel at home here, despite the fact that I have no idea what anyone's saying, or even what's going on half the time. I even feel more comfortable here than in Lawrenceburg, Ky. (Sorry, Mom.)

The first week has been impressively fulfilling and challenging, confirming my adoration of this city and this country, and my happiness to be here with Fulbright. On Monday morning we were picked up at the hotel at 7:30 (we have a driver every day) and taken to the US Embassy. The day passed with a series of briefings from various diplomats, security officers, and political analysts, who were all unexpectedly cool and laid back (even throwing in some colorful language). I wanted to spend hours with each person, to try to figure out how, exactly, one can lead such an international life, maintain a family, maintain some sense of identity....

We met Dr. Thao, the director of the Vietnam Fulbright Program and a well-known educator throughout the country. He has organized everything for us. I strongly believe that someone needs to make a movie about this man. He struggled to stay alive during the war. He grew up in Hue, which was destroyed during the war. He struggled to become educated both here and in the US (where he got his PhD from UPenn). He struggled to remain uncorrupted in the education system in Vietam. He struggled to start the Fulbright program back in '92. And, most recently, he's been struggling to start the ETA program (which I'm in) since 2000.

Although Dr. Thao (who I want to be my life coach) is the director, so many other people have struggled and worked very hard to get us here. That fact has become increasingly evident since I've arrived in the country. The layers of bureaucracy are thick here, and everything takes time, patience, paperwork, and a good connection. But everything has run smoothly. We did notice a few men in their Party uniforms following us as we bought cell phones, but that's to be expected for a while. And we are being taken care of quite well, especially by Vietnamese standards. I'm making $1100 USD each month. The average Vietnamese makes around $100 USD, when looking at pure exchange rates. Even with purchasing power parity, the average GDP per capita is only around $3000. And for the amount of money I'm making here, I should be working that much harder than the average Vietnamese person here. I'm not, though. I have a cushy life here, when I can see everyone around me working infinitely harder for about one-tenth of what I'm earning. The people here work hard, and life seems difficult for many of them.

If I have learned nothing else in this first week, I have learned that this country and these people are fighting and working quite hard to move forward. To help the Vietnamese people. To strengthen the nation. Despite what one might think, this place is quite forward-leaning. And after thousands of years of outside domination, there is finally an opportunity to move forward. The country has performed what is perhaps the greatest reduction of poverty ever, reducing the percentage of people living on $2 per day or less from around 85% to 30% or so. And they are anxious to improve education (the state of which everyone is pretty "pissed off" about, apparently), to improve technology, to improve international relations and cooperation. The government, from what I can tell, does legitimately have the best interests of the country and people at heart. This is an exciting and dynamic time for this country. I feel so fortunate to be here in the midst of all of this energy and change, especially the education reform.

We've been meeting some important people, it seems. On Monday during the briefings at the Embassy, the Ambassador just popped in to say hello and meet all of us. Tuesday--our first day of orientation at the Hanoi University of Education--we met the President of the school (a quite powerful position here), who doubles as a member of Congress. Apparently his hospitality (offering up his university as our host) allowed Fulbright to get this program started at virtually the last minute.

Orientation is going quite well, too. Every morning we meet in the lobby of the hotel at 8:15 am, hop in the van and drive a couple miles to Hanoi University of Education. From 8:30 to 12pm, we have culture, history, economics lessons, which are thankfully interrupted by a half-hour break around 10 am. The mornings are a little dry sometimes, but I'm grateful to be getting so much information about the country, the organization of the education system, the cultural traditions and such. It helps me feel oriented and gives me a better sense of context. From 12 until 2 pm we're free for lunch. The two-hour lunch break seems unnecessarily long, but we're not really complaining. This week we ate at the cafeteria, an open-air/street-side "restaurant" , a pho place nestled back into an alley on campus, and the western-style restaurant at the tech institute across the street. Surprisingly, out of all those places, the western restaurant was the one place where I found a bug crawling through my food. Luckily it was kind of cute--looked like a lady bug--so I just calmly asked for a new salad. You've gotta be pretty damn flexible to survive around here.

The afternoons are my favorite part of the day, because that's when we have.....VIETNAMESE LESSONS! The language geek in me emerges, and even though I suck at this language, I still love it. The first couple of days I felt totally overwhelmed, and thought that I might not ever fully grasp the language. At this point, though, I'm still completely lost but it's starting to feel more tangible. Especially now that we're getting into grammar and I'm starting to understand word placement and sentence construction a bit. On Friday we all had to write a paragraph telling our names, ages, where we're from, how long we've been in Viet Nam, what languages we speak. And what a sense of accomplishment I (in fact, all of us) had! Writing an entire paragraph in Vietnamese, regardless of how elementary it was. Next week the last 2 or 3 days are entirely devoted to language lessons, which excites me to no end. (Speaking of language lessons, my little sis Hayley just started high school and started taking Spanish! This warms my heart...)

Although I love orientation, I was very glad when Friday rolled around. I'm not exactly used to being occupied from 8-5 every day--still very spoiled by the college schedule (which I love). Plus, my body was just at its limit. I'm eating as well I can here, but it's challenging as a vegetarian. I'm sleeping pretty well and I'm over jetlag. I feel adjusted, more or less. But being here just takes a lot of energy. The heat and humidity are draining. We walk a lot. The weekend was much needed.

Friday was the opening of the Olympics, so at the encouragement of Meghan (who seems to live for the Olympics :), we all went out to eat, drink, and watch the Olympics. We all searched in our guidebooks for a worthy bar or restaurant with a big TV, but we eventually just asked Dr. Thao for a recommendation. He told us Legends Beer was a good place, and he even called the post office (like calling 411 in the US) to make sure they had a big-screen TV. He also texted Jahmila, a girl in the program, telling us to have a great time and to "drink a gallon" for him. Like I said, he's a great man. We managed to take the bus and find Legends Beer, which turned out to be a German-style beer hall that offered 4 microbrews. The place was huge, and was packed full of Vietnamese people, a small cluster of Chinese folks (who stood and sang the Chinese anthem during the ceremony), and, of course, our table of Americans. I don't drink beer, so I ordered a bottle of wine (ok, more than one bottle) with Meghan and Jahmila... Watching the Olympics in a German beer hall in Hanoi, Vietnam, with 8 wonderful new friends from all over America, was one of the best times in my life. I had chills at times, feeling so overwhelmed by both the circumstance and beautiful opening ceremony. It was one of the innumerable moments I've had since coming here that I've just felt so impossibly fortunate, blessed, privileged and lucky.

Unfortunately, though, I soon felt inebriated on top of all that. All I'd eaten that day was a bowl of pho (not a substantial meal, folks) and a few onion rings. Plus, I haven't really had much wine since the night of graduation back in May. We all had a great time--the boys did, in fact, drink over a gallon combined--and we all got home safely. And that's all that matters, right?

Saturday morning I stayed in bed until Meghan knocked on my door at noon. I felt awful and was actually dreading the sunlight. She asked me "Aren't you coming?" Somehow I missed the memo that Hiep, the 20-year-old son of the hotel owners, was taking us to see some sights in Hanoi. I threw some clothes on, brushed my teeth, and was downstairs in about 5 minutes...Hiep took us to see the Temple of Literature (where he paid for us to get in). The temple is unbelievable. It was actually the first university in the country, founded in 1046 under the Ly dynasty. I think was in use until the 1700s. It's a large compound of ornate buildings, ponds, tree lined court yards, statues. Absolutely unbelievable. Google image it!

After the temple of literature, we went to lunch at KOTO, a charitable organization that takes in street kids and trains them for culinary careers. My meal wasn't impressive, but I was also hung over and craving french fries so I'd be willing to give it a second chance. Hiep refused to let us pay for his lunch, which we wanted to do to thank him for offering to show us around all day. Instead, he then took us to a back-alley joint--basically in someone's living room--where he treated us to what's called "che bobochacha". It's little dish of fresh fruit, jello-ish stuff, coconut milk and fruit juice. Pretty strange looking but it was delicious. And it was a place that none of us would ever have known about--or even have been able to find--without Hiep. This place was seriously authentic Vietnamese and created for me another moment of pure joy and thankfulness.

Hiep then took us to see the oldest temple/pagoda in the city, which sits out on West Lake, which is the largest lake in the city (there are several). West lake, by the way, is where McCain parachuted back in the day. The temple was yet another astonishingly gorgeous, ridiculously old establishment, featuring a tower of sitting Buddhas behind a lotus pond and an impressive bonsai installation. There's also a tree there that was apparently grown from a cutting of the tree under which the Buddha attained enlightenment, something that not all temples can offer.

We got back to the hotel just before a serious storm broke. We managed to order pizza, which was quite an ordeal. And a rather disappointing one at that--the pizza wasn't very good (not like at home!) and was pretty expensive. Oh, well. Everything else here (except for wine) is crazily cheap. And nothing here is like it is at home. Nothing.

Today has been a lazy Sunday. Internet is now working again in the hotel (largely thanks to Hiep), so I've been posting photos, catching up on emails and news, writing this post.... It was raining a lot this morning which seemed to justify staying for four hours at Day and Night Cafe down the street. Eventually Jahmila, Jenette and I made an excursion to a vegetarian restaurant across town. We got a little lost on the bus system but luckily we found a girl that spoke French who could tell me directions. I was so excited to finally break out the French! This is the first time I've heard anyone--besides French tourists--speak French. And the girl was young, which was surprising since generally only older people still speak French around here. Speaking French with a helpful young Vietnamese girl made getting lost worth the while. We ultimately found the restaurant, enjoyed an amazing meal (for about 4.50 USD) and I even felt full at the end, a feeling that I rarely have anymore.

A few general comments: The people are overwhelmingly kind and generous. Truly the nicest people I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting. They put southern hospitality to shame. And as a culture they are extremely pragmatic and dynamic. For example, I felt so much shame and guilt about the war before I came here. But the attitude seems to be this: The Chinese dominated Vietnam for over a thousand years, the French for a hundred and the Americans for a few decades. We are only a blip on their historical screen. Furthermore, I’ve been told, the past is the past and now we have a new page of cooperation between the two countries. Everyone I’ve met has told me to just forget the war and appreciate the good relationship we now share. I’m amazed at this. But apparently such an attitude was bred from such a history of foreign domination, especially by a powerful northern neighbor who wouldn’t have appreciated a long-standing grudge held against it. It is an attitude that allowed this country to survive. It is also an attitude that has created a great sense of cultural flexibility, allowing the Vietnamese to absorb useful things from whatever culture was currently dominating them, without ever assimilating to the foreign power.

This place is truly fascinating. I realize that, in a Word document, this post is around five pages long. But I know that my friends and family who are reading this still have no idea what this place is like. How it feels. Even how it looks, despite photos. It feels so futile to take pictures and to try to describe everything. I continue to do so, though, if only for my own future benefit. I’m sure that there is no other place like this anywhere in the world, and I’m so happy to be here.

Also, a note about my new Fulbright friends. We’re really a great group. We get along superbly, we work well together when we’re out sight-seeing or dining, and we have so much fun together! People are starting to develop individual roles in the group, as well. Keith navigates and taught us how to cross the street and use the bus system. Kevin takes photos, always asks for the check, and writes down names of new foods and places. Jahmila is the good New Yorker who just figures out everything, like buying cell phones and doing laundry. David keeps us all laughing with his intelligent wit. (He also reminds me of my best friend TJ, which provides a false, although appreciated, sense of comfort for me ☺. ) Andrew has a hand-pump water filter in case Hanoi some how runs out of its abundant (read: endless) supply of inexpensive bottled water. He’s also going to be the stand-in Santa when we all get together for Christmas. I’m not sure what my role is, unless it’s entertaining the group by going to sleep and falling off the bed after coming home from Legends Beer hall. That embarrassing moment aside, I’ve loved every minute I’ve spent with my new friends. Being dropped down in a new city on the opposite side of the globe creates some serious bonding potential, which we’re exploiting, and we’re already thinking about how much we’ll miss each other when we leave Hanoi for our respective teaching assignments. I can’t imagine being here with any other group of 9 people.

I'll add photos when the internet is stronger--it has suddenly started cutting out. In the mean time, there are lots of new ones at my picasa, picasaweb.google.com/malloryimlervn...