bun cha!

Today was a fantastic and enlightening day. We had an hour of Public Health History which pertained to Dengue Fever and what Vietnam is doing about it. I always knew that mosquitoes are the vector for Dengue and that Dengue is more prevalent in tropical areas. Today, I learned why that it: A mosquito's life cycle is dependent on the temperature and humidity of the air. The hotter it is, the more rapid the mosquito's life cycle. In tropical areas with high humidity, mosquitoes have a life cycle of about five days, which means that they reproduce much more quickly and more mosquitoes are introduced into the environment on a daily basis making it harder to control their population. Popular methods for controlling the mosquito population are predatory species (mesocyclops-look it up), chemical spraying and genetic modification. The chemical spraying took me back to my New Orleans days. I can remember the trucks rolling down the road emitting huge clouds of chemicals as I was playing outside and booking it inside to avoid whatever it was they were spraying. I also remember our neighbor saying that when he was a kid, they would all get on their bikes as the truck rolled by and try to keep up with the truck.

We toured the National Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology to get a more first-hand look as what's being done about Dengue Fever. We got to tour a lab where mosquitoes were being bread for research. We saw them as eggs, larvae, pupae and adults. The adults were separated by gender (don't ask me how to tell the difference) and kept in netted boxes. For the first time in my life, the mosquitoes were the ones encapsulated in a net and I was on the outside. For every morning at camp when I killed a mosquito bulging with my blood which it had been happily sucking all night, I hope that one of those mosquitoes in the netted box was terrified by my presence and knew how easily I could crush it. The genetically engineered mosquitoes were those of the male population. They produced offspring that would not make it past the pupae stage. I didn't know we could do that to mosquitoes, but TAKE THAT!

Lunch was Bun Cha. I don't know if I spelled that right, but I do know that I've eaten it before and that it's delicious. I think I've written about it before, but, in case you are just tuning in, it is a sweet broth with chunks of papaya, rice noodles, slices of pork, pork meatballs and various greens. It seems that no matter what food we are eating on the streets, it is accompanied by a plate of greens: lettuce, bean sprouts, some grass-looking green, mint, and a purple leaf with a strong flavor.

The afternoon was spent in a class that, while fascinating, did not present much information that I didn't know about HIV/AIDS. One of the coolest parts was getting to brainstorm in groups about how to make antiretrovirals (ARVs) more widely accessible and ensure that patients continued to seek health services and take their medications. Some solutions included social marketing campaigns to eliminate social stigma, a system of referrals and accountability for local clinics to keep track of patients, and a reworking of international policies such as TRIPS (an intellectual property protection law from the WTO which applies to pharmaceutical companies among others) in order to produce more medications in the countries that need them, just to name a few.

I can honestly own the fact that I crave Bubble Tea from the shop across the street and peanuts from the school's canteen on a regular basis.

a cool breeze off the lake

This morning's Vietnamese class gave us a few more simple sentences whose pronunciations were far too complicated to make the sounds. I can now hold a basic conversation with someone if they speak very slowly and follow the script laid out in the book. Any deviation from that script will leave me completely in the dark.

I took a long nap right after class. I've been napping a lot recently. Almost every day, but certainly every other day. This could be diet related or because I have a cold. Either way, it's been a little annoying. I'm going to have to work on staying awake while doing stuff.

This evening, we went to a different street than we normally do in search of pancakes made of rice flour filled with bean sprouts and mini shrimp. Maeve, Allison and I had this same dish when we were in Hoi An. You take some greens and a section of the pancake and wrap it in rice paper and dip it in a sweet broth. It is so delicious! I will definitely be going back there for dinner from time to time. I'll try to take pictures the next time we go so that I can show you  what I'm talking about.

After dinner, a handful of us went to check out a cafe called Cat Cafe. There were a lot of cats in there. People were sitting around drinking coffee and whatnot while petting cats. Unfortunately, the Cat Cafe was too full of people, so we went to another cafe on West Lake, which we followed with a walk around a corner of West Lake enjoying a wonderful breeze coming off the water. That was when the best thing happened to me: I saw a bunch of people playing soccer. I have been really craving some soccer recently, and Kim was able to ask if we were allowed to join them and when they play. They play everyday at seven. I hope that there will be some serious soccer times soon.

best in the world

This morning's Public Health History class was focused on determinates of health. There are so many factors that go into determining the health of individuals: social, environmental, health care, and biological. All of these play into each other, so one has to be aware of many factors when deciding how to approach improving population health. The lecturer had many interesting things to say about determinates of health in Vietnam such as traffic, Agent Orange still lingering in the environment, water sanitation, gender roles and stigmas associated with diseases such as HIV/AIDS.

The afternoon was spent at a research facility called Institute of Social Development Studies (ISDS). We had a round-table discussion with one of the workers there about what the Institute does and some of its recent publications. Before the field trip, we read one of their studies on the stigma associated with those living with HIV/AIDS and their families. The report was fascinating and written in an accessible way so that anyone could read it, which is refreshing in a world of heavily-worded reports. The researcher we talked with was very open with us about their studies on maternal and child health, HIV/AIDS stigma, Vietnamese migrant workers and those Vietnamese living with disabilities, just to name a few. She said that the Institute partners with local NGOs to ensure that their research translates into action. If you are interested in learning more, you can poke around their website (which is accessible in English) www.isds.org.vn or feel free to e-mail me with any questions.

Around eight o'clock, a handful of us walked over to the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum to watch the guard take the flag down.

 A procession of guards marched onto the scene to the national anthem.

It was such a neat moment to witness. I've seen so many US Military marches, parades and drills, so it was great to see how another country does it. Just so you know, it's pretty much the same.

The other thing that was great about being at the Mausoleum is that everyone brought their babies. I worked for a solid fifteen minutes to get this one baby to notice me, but, every time he saw me, he just stared up at me with this look of complete confusion. Eventually, his father placed him down right in front of me. I managed to get him to nearly smile by tickling his foot, but he just kept giving me blank stares. I did decide that Vietnamese babies are the cutest babies in the world. Sorry all other nations.

that lovin' feeling

I promised some pictures of the university:

 

There isn't much more to it than that. The first picture is the view from my balcony, and the second is the front view of the school. The school is a large academic building that sits next to a few dorms and an administrative building. It's a super small campus, which is nice because the dorm to classroom walk is about 3 minutes.

Friday, we had HIV/AIDS class in the morning where we learned about testing, counseling, models for tracking the epidemic and risk behavior surveys. It was a broad overview and left me wondering about more of the specifics of Vietnam. I'm sure we'll get into that more as the semester goes on. One interesting way of tracking a person's medical history is a card with a bar code on it. In theory, this card could be shown at any medical facility and a person's records could be pulled up from a large database. This is only happening in Ho Chi Minh City right now, but, if I had one of those cards, it would mean that I wouldn't have to go to multiple buildings around UNC looking for my medical records because someone decided to move them.

Friday afternoon was spent in a discussion section with Dr. Bennett's husband, Howie, who was a high school history teacher. We talked about the Vietnam war both through his experiences and his knowledge as a history teacher. He made his own opinions clear, but he was also very even-handed in his answers to our questions. The only perspectives I have on this war thus far are those belonging to my father's friends from the Army Aviation Heritage Foundation. The main point that he stressed was that every war has two sides and we needed to be aware of both sides.

Maeve and I went for a run Saturday morning at a different lake than the one we had previously been running at. This new lake is eons better than the other one. It's surrounded by trees and green space, you can run a full circle around it, it doesn't smell like a mix of urine and dead fish, and it is somehow is much more quiet. The loop was a little shorter, but we were so much happier with the overall scene, and it wasn't much farther away. After the run, we cleaned up a bit and got a lunch of beef fried rice and something beef with noodles.

Lunch was followed by some work in the bakery/cafe we found the other day. I got a cup of coffee that was the most delicious cup of coffee I've ever had. It may not have actually been the best cup of coffee ever, but it was what I really wanted. The majority of the coffee here is super strong and has an after-taste that I am not used to. That coffee was exactly what I wanted.

Last night, we went to see a water puppet show. It is a traditional performance art of the Vietnamese people that started long ago during long flood seasons when there was an excess of water. The stage was set up so that the musicians and singers were stage right and the stage was a a square pool of water. The puppets would float in the water as people behind a curtain manipulated their movements. The puppets ranged from people working in rice fields to boys herding cattle to women riding large fish. It was a fantastic display of traditional music of Vietnam as well as the dancing puppets. 

After the show, we went back to our area of Hanoi. We took a bus back from the Old Quarter, which was a lot like the P2P. It was packed full, the radio was on, and the stops were jerky. The only thing that made it not like the P2P was that the bus didn't always come to a complete stop for people to get on and off. When we finally made it back to our area, we went to a karaoke place near the school with our roommates. We sang some crowd favorites like I Want it That Way and Livin' On a Prayer as well as several songs that our roommates knew that we really didn't. The one disappointing thing about karaoke was that the place didn't have You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling. What's even worse is that no one on my program has seen Top Gun. Some people need to get on my level.

learning life

A brief run-down of the courses we are taking here:

-Vietnamese Language

-Vietnamese Culture

-Public Health History (in Vietnam)

-HIV/AIDS (in Vietnam)

-Oral History

So far, I've had Language, PH History, and HIV/AIDS. I won't even try to tell you how the scheduling works because I don't understand it at all myself. The language class is difficult, mostly because I am forcing my mouth and throat to make sounds that they have never made before, which is exhausting. PH History and HIV/AIDS are both set up as seminar courses with guest lecturers and class discussions. This is great because we get to stretch our scholastic minds with inputs from different voices and each other. I'll let you know how those are going as I get deeper into them.

My day-to-day, now that I'm in a routine, is easy to keep up with. I get up and run with Maeve, watch the Vietnamese MTV (which has music from all over the world) while I get ready and eat, got to class, eat, go to class or study, eat, and then entertain myself until it's time to sleep. I've found some really fun music on the music channel including the rediscovery of some of my favorite U.S. artists. My classes, except Language which is an hour and a half, are all 3 hours long. This is a very long time, and I find myself struggling to stay focused for that long. I need a coffee hook-up

Sometimes, to entertain ourselves in the evening, we go for post-dinner dessert adventures. I tried to get us back to a sweet roll shop that I remembered from a previous day, but I evidently didn't remember the way because we ended up being back on our road, but fairly far down from our school. This ended up being a blessing in disguise because we found a wonderful bakery/cafe. I got a pastry with chocolate inside of it and sat down at a delightful table among the brightly colored wall paper. One of the girls who was working behind the counter gave us a huge smile and walked over to talk with us. Thank goodness we had our TA, Kim, with us to translate because the girl talking with us didn't know much English and she got a serious kick out of our attempts at Vietnamese. Lan was so sweet and talkative. She gave us her number and expressed a desire to hang out with us and show us parts of Hanoi. Not only was she so wonderful, but the bakery/cafe is the absolute perfect place to do work. I have been wanting a cafe where I can read and do work comfortably while inhaling minimal cigarette smoke. This is the place. I plan to spend a lot of time there in the coming weeks!

I wanted to share a picture of me and my roommate, Ngan, and me from the Mid-Autumn Festival. We hang out, we have good times, and we mostly understand what each other is saying. In this picture, we are eating choco-pies, which are, essentially, what we at home refer to as moon pies, not to be confused with moon cakes here.

til the dawn

The majority of my day was uneventful. This morning's class was lackluster, but I followed it with some delicious, off-the-street fried rice. Then I went to Feeling Tea, the bubble tea place across the street from school. I got passion fruit milk tea with tapioca bubbles. It was so great! I need to come up with some other ways of saying delicious and refreshing.

This evening was the real show. Our roommates and their friends here at the school put on a party for the Mid Autumn Festival. We met up around 530 to help them with food preparation. We rolled rice paper spring rolls and peeled and cut fruit. They did most of the hard work, but we were able to help with some of the simple tasks. We stuffed the spring rolls with pork or beef, lettuce, rice noodles, egg, and carrot. They were phenomenal. There was also soup, these rice chips, and sweet/vinegar-y cucumber salad. I've never seen such a bounty! In terms of fruit, there was longan, watermelon, pomelo and guava.

They asked us to perform during the festivities. We attempted to sing a little bit of wagon wheel as our TA, Kim, played the guitar. Mostly, we just sang more loudly to make the fact that most of us didn't know all the words to the verse and were not in sync with the guitar. Our second performance was our alma mater/fight song. It's good to be a Tar Heel.

After our performance, our roommates showed us a traditional Vietnamese dance with bamboo sticks. The sticks are on the ground and are moved in and out while people dance through them trying not to get their feet caught. It's like jumping rope with a different rhythm. The picture below is Joey with his game face on conquering the bamboo sticks. We eventually digressed to just a dance party.

Now I'm eating this moon cake. I don't know what's in it, but it sure is tasty.

something found

I didn't really do much of anything today. I slept in super late and then sat around some more. The one thing that I did do today was go to the West Lake and walk around both the lake and the pagoda there. I got a green bean ice cream bar, which was surprisingly delicious and super refreshing for the humid day. We were walking around the lake when we saw a monument on the bank. It caught my eye because the right panel said USAF.

I got one of our roommates to translate the left panel, and this is the jist of what it said: On this day in October 1967, the Vietnamese people and soldiers captured an American Air Force Major. I guess this is a monument commemorating the shooting down and capturing of John McCain.