home and happy

To anyone who may happen to come across this even though I am already home, I wanted to write about my transitioning back home to this wonderful nation, the United States of America.

I'm back. Back in the land of absorbent toilet paper and cold toilet seats. There are other things about this nation that are different, but those really stick out.

I have already eaten at Bojangles and Cosmic Cantina, which has satisfied my hunger for Southern fried chicken and burritos. I have yet to get chips and queso from Armadillo Grill and a burger from Elmo's, but all in good time. I did enjoy my mother's delicious sweet potato biscuits and ham last night as well as a whole lot of chocolate which was never Vietnam's strong suit.

The transition back in the sleep department has been fairly easy. I thought the jet lag was really going to get me, but I've been sleeping pretty normal hours. I get tired every once in the while in the early afternoon, but that could be due to my proficient napping skills.

All in all, I am glad to be home among family and old friends. They ground me and keep me sane.

I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday season. Merry Christmas!

still looking for godzilla...

Maeve and I arrived in Tokyo very early Thursday morning not having slept much at all. Uncle Michael met us at the airport, and immediately took us for sushi at the largest fish market in the world. There was a long wait because this restaurant only has about 12 seats, but it was absolutely worth it. We sat down at this sushi bar to watch the masters at work. We ate four kinds of tuna (varying amounts of fat), the best eel ever to exist, shrimp, and more stuff that I can't even remember. I would have remembered better if I hadn't been so busy with the party in my mouth. I also would have remembered better if I were able to take pictures, but I was not able to do so due to the very large and adamant signs that prohibited cameras.

We walked around the market a bit to survey what was available:

I don't know if Tom Robinson had ever been to this particular market. It seems likely that he had given that he  has been just about everywhere. At the very least, he would have known about it. I like to think that he was with me for the sushi and with me in the market. He would have really enjoyed it all.

After the market, we took in a garden. It's right in the middle of the city, so all the backdrops were skyscrapers. It was a really neat contrast. I missed the colors of fall in NC, but Tokyo was kind enough to oblige.

In the garden, there were public bathrooms. Tokyo has the nicest public bathrooms of anywhere I have ever been. The Warmlet is a toilet with a warmed seat. This Holy Grail of toilets is the best thing that I could have ever come across. It makes all other toilets seem ordinary and uncool. It also has two different bidet functions and can make a flushing noise if you need to hide whatever sounds you are making. Basically, I need there to be one everywhere I go. 

After the garden, we took a boat ride down a small river to look at some of the buildings and sights around Tokyo. We then hopped a number of trains to get home considering that we hadn't slept much at all in the past 24 hours and were in the process of crashing. I fell asleep on every train (read subway) we took, which is not usual for me. We took a short nap and then headed back out to go to an English class that Michael teaches. It had three adult students in it with whom we exchanged stories and thoughts. They knew we were coming, so they brought us all sorts of cookies and rice snacks and other goodies. They were absolutely lovely, and I can't think of a better way to spend an evening. Michael made us these seafood, cabbage and other stuff pancakes for dinner. Amazing.

Yesterday, we went to a Shinto shrine in the morning. One must wash one's hands and mouth before approaching the shrine.

There is a large tree around which people hang these wooden plaques with their prayers and hopes written on them. A quick walk around the tree shows plaques with so many different languages from Japanese to Thai to Portuguese to English and many others. Maeve and I added our prayers.

We spent the afternoon walking around in one of the fun shopping areas. There are so many places to spend money in Tokyo and most of them require that you spend a lot of money. It is a very consumer-friendly place. We only shopped with our eyes, but we were tempted. Then we went for a dinner of "shabu shabu" and "sukiyaki." I didn't spell those correctly, but just go with me on this one. The idea is you get a pot of hot broth in which you cook meat and vegetables. It was so delicious!

Today, we went into one of the nicer shopping areas. Tokyo has these massive department stores that are unlike anything I've ever seen. It's an experience just to walk through one. We peeked into massive electronics stores and expensive clothing places. We went to the top of this extremely high building to catch the sunset. It had a perfect view of Mount Fuji and the city night lights if you stayed long enough.

Dinner tonight was so many wonderful things including sake and different forms of chicken, some of which were raw. There were also these delicious ramen noodles that were unlike the instant noodles we call ramen at home. These noodles were delicious and could have been eaten many times in a row. We wandered about the streets for a little while longer before catching the trains home.

I love Tokyo. I would love to just stay here. That would displease my mother.

Reasons I love Tokyo:

1. It's clean.

2. the Warmlet

3. It's orderly.

4. People respect the line.

5. There's so much space.

There are other reason, but I won't bore you with them here. I am so sad to be leaving Asia tomorrow. So many things that I will struggle to process in the coming weeks. As I journey home, keep me in your thoughts and prayers. Give me grace and space to process, and I will most likely be seeing you soon. 

I have a few more hours in Tokyo, so I promise to keep both eyes open in search of Godzilla. There are so many thoughts going through my head.

and so, here we are

Maeve and I flew into Saigon yesterday around midday. We went out for pho and a walk to see what Saigon feels like when you are awake and not excessively jet-lagged. The truth is, it's much calmer than I remember. I can cross the street easily because there are traffic signals that are mostly obeyed. The sidewalks are less crowded than in Hanoi. It does smell different here than in Hanoi, and it is so much hotter here. It's so funny how different it seems when I am not walking around like an overwhelmed, exhausted zombie.

We went to one of the rooftop bars here last night for drinks and the view. I passed on the drink and got a piece of lemongrass cake instead. It was so tasty! Today, we walked to some of the places we remember from the first trip: the cathedral, post office, one of our favorite lunch cafes. A quick stop by the big market here proved that it was every bit as overwhelming as I remember.

I have not yet processed leaving Hanoi or Vietnam. It hasn't hit me that I will be home in five days. I guess, I'll just process this later. Maeve and I are leaving for Japan tonight. That is so crazy.

ha longin and stuff

Our final weekend in Vietnam was spent in Ha Long Bay. Recently voted one of the 7 Wonders of the World, Ha Long Bay has much to offer in the way of grand views, caves and lovely boating. It was a four-hour or so bus ride to get to the dock from which we took a small motor boat to our cruising vessel. It was a good-sized boat with two floors of rooms and a top, observation floor. The second floor had a dining/hanging out room as well as a few sleeping rooms. There was plenty of space for those of us on the small side, but it was still a cozy fit.

We played at a beach and climbed a mountain, kayaked around a small portion of the bay, explored caves and ate a lot of seafood. The kayaking was so great. There were a few people going on the kayaks who had never kayaked before, so I put my Ontario Pioneer Camp skills to use once again and gave a mini-safety briefing on kayaks and what to do if you unfortunately happen to no longer be in your kayak. I didn't foresee too many problems, but safety is always important. Kayaking made me really miss camp!

The story is that a dragon set down in the bay. That's why there are so many humps sticking out of the water.

Maeve is super duper excited.

My time in Vietnam is coming to a close. Tomorrow, Maeve and I will be flying to Saigon where we will spend a night before flying to Japan to spend a few days in Tokyo with her uncle. The McGarry/Harrison clan has been gracious enough to let me join in on these wonderful plans. I am very excited to see something new but very sad to be leaving my friends and my room here. I'll head for dinner at the fried rice place one last time before leaving. So many goodbyes to say!

visiting uncle ho

This morning, I woke up early. That in and of itself is quite the feat, but the story does not end there. The reason I got up early is because Ho Chi Minh welcomes visitors at his mausoleum in the morning. The body of Ho Chi Minh is, in fact preserved and visitors are marched through the beautiful, marble mausoleum during morning visiting hours. He lays, encased in a glass box, in a room guarded by several guards of the Vietnamese military who correct the posture of visitors to be most respectful to the fallen hero. There is so much pomp and circumstance surrounding a visit to the mausoleum. As we walked out, I turned to a friend of mine and said, "I don't think he would have wanted that." It's not that I knew Ho Chi Minh personally or that I am well-versed in the history of his life, but he lived as a simple man in a house on stilts rather than in the presidential palace where the people wanted him to live. I'll come back to this later, but I have to tell you about the rest of my day first.

The morning was spent watching a documentary about lesbians in Vietnam. This documentary was made by CSAGA, an NGO that I believe I mentioned in a previous post. Their organization works against domestic violence and violence against women in general. It was their (among other groups) circle painting event that I attended a short while ago. This documentary is the first of its kind in Vietnam. Gay men have recently gained more attention due to the HIV epidemic, but lesbians are not talked about much at all.

We went to the The Gioi (pronounced: te zoi) Publishing House to hear a very old (93) Vietnamese historian who gives a one-hour lecture on Vietnamese history. I was a little late due to map complications and being farther away from the place than I thought I was, but I heard a good deal of it. I can now pick up my story from earlier. Among other facts and stories, this historian told us that in Ho Chi Minh's last will and testament, he wished to have half of his ashes scattered in North Vietnam and the other half in South Vietnam in hopes that his country would one day be reunited. I didn't quite understand why he was in his mausoleum when his last wishes were not to be. When I asked for an explanation of this at the end of the lecture, Howie (Dr. Bennett's husband) explained to me that Ho Chi Minh's last will and testament was suppressed until the 1990s, until long after the mausoleum was built and had become a place of great reverence. I want to learn more about Ho Chi Minh in general, so I bought a few books at the publishing house: his final testament and his prison diary (both translated into English).

I am now in my favorite cafe and plan to hunker down to write more of my paper and put my presentation together. I wanted to leave you with a long-awaited video. I promised I would post the video of us doing Thriller for our roommates once it was made available. We've got it going pretty well in the beginning but then lose it towards the end. If you watch long enough, you can see us walk up to our roommates after the dance and their completely blank stares as the majority of them had no idea what we were doing. Also, note how we strategically slipped out from the party and hid ourselves all around the middle courtyard so that we could zombie walk out and surround Burcu who is screaming in the middle.

Enjoy!
Thriller

pangolins and kids

This past weekend, we took a break from the loud crazy of Hanoi to escape to Ninh Binh (about 2 to 3 hours outside of Hanoi) to visit the Cuc Phuong National Park where there is a wildlife preserve. This was the weird monkey sign that we saw when we got there.

Pretty much looks like the original Teen Wolf, if you ask me.

We went to visit the monkeys first. There are five main primate species in Vietnam, and three that are kept at the center. The three at the center are the loris, gibbon and macaque. The lorises are nocturnal, so we didn't get to see them, but if you have never seen the video of Slow Loris, you should click here. Needless to say, I was really hoping that we would play with a loris, but the other monkeys were cool, too. One of them really, really looked like an Ewok

Then we hopped one section over and visited the carnivore and pangolin section. In case you don't know what a pangolin is (because I didn't before Saturday) here is a picture of one that I found on the internet:

It's my new favorite animal. I would want to play with one, but they are super endangered because it's believed that their scales have all these curative powers. They are big game in the international, illegal animal trade. They are pretty much the cutest things in the world. 

We got lunch at a restaurant in the national park and then drove to somewhere else. It's hard for me to remember the names of all these places. We got on boats and were paddled all around these cliffs that supposedly had monkeys on them, but I didn't see one most likely because it was cold outside. I liked to call the cliffs we were paddling around THE CLIFFS OF INSANITY, but that's just me.

It was a lovely day to be out in the world.

Today, we had our last English class with the kids. We sang songs, played hangman, and had a party with hot dogs and salad to finish it out. We gave each of the kids a book (in English) to peruse and swap whenever they wanted. They gave us pictures that they had drawn and Christmas cards to send us on our way. The kids sang a few songs for us in Vietnamese and then performed some of the songs we had taught them over the past few months. We were doing great until the good-byes came around. One of the little boys said to me in passing, "I'm really going to miss you." I assured him that I would miss him as well. He gave a few hugs, but then started pacing in a more empty area of the room. He eventually walked outside, and I knew it was game over. I've done enough camper good-byes to know that this was about to go down. We went out and comforted him, but he was almost inconsolable. I was very proud of us for not breaking down right there on the spot, though I know there were those among us (Maeve McGarry) who were really struggling. It was a sad time, but I have loved working with them so much. I wouldn't have traded our time together for anything.

I now need to buckle down and finish my final paper. It's a big kahuna, but I can do it. It would be so much easier if 1) all my adult friends hadn't decided to have babies and put copious pictures of them up on facebook for me to look at and 2) A Knight's Tale wasn't on TV. The struggles of my life are real.

travel fail

Well, I don't have much to report of the last few days. I was writing a paper for a while, got sick and spent a day in bed, and generally have slept a lot. Excepting the getting sick, all of these things are good. I now have one small assignment and a large paper to conquer in the next week before I leave. AHHHHHHH! Who knew that four months would go by so fast?

I was going to spend this weekend in Singapore, and I got all the way to the airport to find out that because my passport expires in February, it does not last for the full six months Singapore requires. Unfortunately, that meant that Singapore was out of the question. I dejectedly refunded my ticket and rode a taxi back to the school. I am now comfortably snuggled in at a homey cafe full of delicious taco salad. All in all, it could have been worse. This just means that I have even more of a reason to come back to Southeast Asia so that I can see Singapore and some of the other nations around here.

The real story of today is the taxi ride to the airport.
WARNING: If you are my mother, you don't want to read this.

Danielle and I got in the taxi and had a hard time communicating airport, but eventually got it across and we took off. Within minutes, we hit a car, leaving visible damage, but continued on. I must have seen my life flash before my eyes about 13 times throughout the ride. I kept hearing the chug of the car indicating that the driver needed to downshift, but he didn't. When dad was teaching me to drive a standard, I remember struggling for a while, but we didn't leave the neighborhood while I was struggling that much. This guy was on major highways. It was as if he not only didn't know how to operate a standard vehicle, but also lacked the necessary knowledge to operate a car in general. I just about kissed the ground by the time we got out.

The only redeeming thing about the ride was the fact that this guy was driving at around 15 mph the whole way to the airport making a 45 minute ride last for about an an hour and fifteen minutes. Generally, this would have been really awful, and it pretty much was, but it made me hearken back to a childhood memory of mine. Erich, Dad and I were in Pensacola, and I was a wee youngin. We were leaving a museum where Daddy's name was on a plaque and heading to his friend's office, which I understood to be on base. We had spent a long time in the car driving to Pensacola, so I wanted to know how long it would take to get to his friend's office. He responded with something bogus like 8 or 12 hours. Perplexed, I asked why it would take that long if we were already on base. His response: "Because we are going to go this fast." We were moving, but our antiquated honda didn't even register any speed on the speedometer. A we crawled through the parking lot, I laughed and laughed at how silly my dad was! I believe we did eventually make it to our destination, but it was the getting there that I remember.

Also, NEWSFLASH: It's cold in Hanoi today.