For the holidays, you can't be home sweet home

The other Fulbrighters and I have decided where to spend our winter holidays: Christmas in Dalat, and New Years in Ho Chi Minh City. The former should be relaxing. I'm picturing a woodsy cabin with a fire--something like my New Years in the San Juan Islands last year--but I know I'm way off with that image! I am in Vietnam, after all, and while Dalat might have a "cool" climate by local standards, I strongly doubt we'll need to build a fire. If I can't have a cozy winter Christmas, then I'm at least hoping for the singing of lots of Christmas carols and the drinking of lots of Dalat wine and the eating of lots of Dalat strawberries. I'm excited to see what Christmas in Vietnam is like; the other day I asked a fellow teacher and she told me that they all go to the cathedral to "watch the Christians." So, the impression I'm getting is that Christmas in Vietnam is a spectator sport?

Christmas will probably be calm, but New Years in HCMC, I'm guessing, will be pretty crazy. I'm mainly excited to be back with the other Fulbrighters--we're such a great group, and I miss them a lot. There's something about being dropped down together on the exact opposite other side of the globe that makes for some serious bonding! Unfortunately, one Fulbrighter won't be joining us. She went back home due to some personal reasons. I'm sad that she's gone, but I'm happy that she knew what she needed to do to take care of herself. That's the most important thing.

In other news, I started teaching a new class today. It's a pronunciation class for first-year English major students. Two of my classes ended last week so I'm glad to have another course to fill my schedule. In the first meeting of the class today, the other teacher and I both wrote ten key words about ourselves on the board and had students guess how the words related to us and our lives. I wrote these words: vegetarian [I am one], Spanish [studied it at univeristy], 2 months [how long i've been here], American [nationality], International Relations [studied it at uni], 1 year [minimum duration of my stay here], director of high schools [my mother's job], Transylvania University [my uni], Kentucky [where I was born], and Murcia, Spain [where I studied in Spain]. The students guessed the following: That I'm Spanish. That my boyfriend is Spanish. That my husband is the director of high schools. That I am the director of high schools. That I have a one-year-old child. That my mother is a vegetarian. Eventually they came up with most of the correct answers, but the wrong guesses in the meantime where quite amusing!

I'm also excited about my recent increase in female Vietnamese friends--Miss Ha took me to get my bracelet the other day, and Lien, a master's student here, just brought me some fruit from China and tomorrow she's taking me to get my nails painted. Apparently I'll also be having my hair washed? I've never had that service included in a manicure, but she tells me the whole thing will cost about 20,000 dong and I can't complain about that!

And it seems that the rain has started. The foreshadowing of thunder and lightening for the past few evenings was accurate, unless this is just a short storm. But I doubt it. Tonight, on my way home from my and Katherine's Monday night ritual of vegetarian food and bubble tea, I got caught peddling home in a very rainy thunderstorm. I was glad to have bought that poncho with the little green hearts on it! I should have bought some candles, as well--the lights have been flickering and I dont want to be stuck in the dark. In a strange way, though, I'm looking forward to the rainy season. I feel like it could be an important time of reflection and introspection, of calmness and self-discipline and patience. Of course, everything here is feeling important to me. But I think that's because everything is important right now...Already the rain is having a strange effect on me: As I peddled home over the bridge, up hill, in the dark, against the wind, in the rain, with the lightening flashing and thunder growling, I found myself....singing. I was nearly unaware that I was doing it. The song seemed to come out of my mouth of its own volition. There I was, riding along in the middle of a Vietnamese thunder storm singing a Joanna Newsom song about a sprout and a bean. I paused for a moment, shocked at myself--I'm not a singer--but then picked up the melody where I left off and continued peddling. In spite of my past aversion to singing, the whole situation felt rather natural, as if I'd been humming my way through monsoon season my whole life. Maybe this is the new me, the Vietnam me, the Nha Trang me, the monsoon-season me, the me who rides her bike in the rain and sings to herself the whole way home.