Things we have learned, 2016 Edition

 

We spent winter break in Austin catching up with friends and family.  It was a wonderfully surreal caesura in the epic poem that is our life in Vietnam and we're so thankful we made the trek.  

 

Unfortunately we did not send out Christmas cards, but boy if we had, this awkward beauty would have been tough to beat.  The crates (that our christmas tree is made out of!) are burnt orange and white.  Christmas is not widely celebrated here.

After just ten very full days, we boarded a plane back to HCMC, and less than 48 hours after arrival, we were back at school gearing up for semester two.  Already this has been an incredibly educational year.  Here are a few of the tidbits we have learned:

1.) Doctors lie to you.  During a class discussion on when is it ok to lie, we learned that doctors routinely mislead terminal patients about the severity of their disease.  The idea behind this, according to my students, is that if you knew how sick you really were, you'd lose motivation to try.  Family members and close friends are the ones privy to your medical diagnosis. At first I thought it was a maybe just one kid's misunderstanding, but when 4 out of 4 classes brought up the same example, we thought it might have some truth to it.  Others who lie to you according to kids: parents, the government and lawyers. 

2.) The cat is a terror. We missed the cat while we were gone.  a lot.  and since we have returned, we've been spending a lot of time loving on it.  In tangible terms this means putting a back scratcher that we received for Christmas to good use by making a zen garden on the cat every chance we get.  It's very soothing.  It has also resulted in the cat demanding attention during all times that she is awake - which luckily is only about 30 minutes a day.  Night time is a different story for this crepuscular creature.  The need for attention has lead to her licking us awake at night, rooting around in drawers to make noise (often by being fat and getting stuck) and mewing incessantly until we pet her.  If our cat were a child it would be a monster.  We cannot have children until we figure this spoiling thing out. 

 

3.) Have you eaten?  This is how you ask how someone is doing.  If you're doing well, you reply yes, if not, no.  According to our Vietnamese teacher this comes from a long history of people in this country not having enough to eat.  It explains why we often get asked by Vietnamese staff about our eating habits. 

Another lesson, this country is one giant white elephant gift.  These were purchased for a Christmas party here in HCMC and the wall decorations that are not only full of glitter but also 3-D.  Perfect for any kitchen.

4.) In Vietnamese everything has its own unit noun.  I cannot begin to describe how frustrating this is.  Fruit gets its own word to denote when you are talking about quantities of it, as do office supplies, people, liquids, and probably a billion other things.  Learning this made two things very clear to us.  One, we will never learn Vietnamese.  Two, we have never once filled out an office supply request form correctly. 

One of the ways in which our school is ridiculous - this playground had been promised since the summer.  This photo was taken the day they plastered over the part of the sign that said October with November.  We took this picture in December.

5.) Our school is a shit show.  This we already knew but it became even more obvious when on our first day back we received confirmation that a teacher who stopped coming into work about two months ago had finally been fired.  As a result, I would take on one new class and Matt would be getting an entirely new schedule!  Effective immediately.   Matt is now the school's psychology teacher.  We split planning for another class, Theory of Knowledge, that is going to be one of the most fascinating and stimulating classes we've ever taught...if we can ever find time to plan for it.  A fun side effect of this switch up is that in addition to living together, traveling together, working in the same office, and planning a class together, Matt is now in my department.  And I am department head.  I see no way for this to go wrong.

This is probably the last happy picture you'll see of the two of us.  Cherish it. 

6.) Turns out we were right, we don't actually live in Vietnam.  As we've mentioned before, we live in a silly place that more often than not does not feel like what we expect from Vietnam.  It's relatively ordered, pretty quiet, full of fancy shops and Korean people. One of the reasons for the Korean population we have learned, is that they control almost all of the major construction projects here - to such a degree that our entire neighborhood is owned by one construction group -the Phu My Hung Corporation.  Among the benefits that the paternalistic (racist?) Phu My Hung Corporation bestows on its inhabitants is that Vietnamese police are not allowed in the neighborhood. At all. The reason - Vietnamese police are too corrupt.  Another fun fact about the Phu My Hung Corp is that they may also have secret warehouses where they keep "suspicious" motorbikes. We wont' tell you how we know that, but we do.

7.) You can have beer delivered.  This one we should have known.  You can have literally anything delivered here - we have had sheets, batteries, groceries, and countless orders of Indian food all delivered straight to our door step.  But this is next level. There is one craft beer store in HCMC and they will come to us?!  We learned this on Friday at a party where everyone who went to the States over the holidays contributed their favorite beer from back home.  It was a great idea for a party, but this new knowledge is going to be a double edged sword.

8.) We need to become rich.  On our flight back to Vietnam we got bumped up to business class for the last leg.  Drinks! Slippers!  Seats that could recline!  Table cloths!  Drinks!  It was incredible.  We are now working towards not retirement, not a house, but continued ability to buy first class tickets on all our traveling adventures. 

9.) There is a word for single and unmarriageable.  It is ế.  Yes, that single letter is a word and if you count diphthongs as syllables, it has at least two.  

10.) Probably we've learned another lesson, but we can't think of it right now.  Lists just shouldn't end in nine.  Here is another picture of the cat.