it just so happened...

I have a handful of stories to tell you that I've been holding onto. The good news is, I have only one more paper to write for the semester and then my oral history project. The work is slowing down which will hopefully mean there will be an upswing in fun and, therefore, more to tell you about.

The first story is one I like to call How Randolph the Rat Met His End (he was most likely a mouse, but there is better alliteration if I call him a rat). We have been chasing him out of our rooms for the better part of the last few months. He left a trail of nibbled food wrappers and muddy prints everywhere he went. On this particular day, he had stationed himself under Alison's wardrobe, and her roommate My went to get the guards to see if we could rid ourselves of the beast once and for all. I was sitting in my room and was only alerted to their presence by the terrifying sound of a loud electrical discharge. My first thought: Somebody is getting tased. My second thought: I need to see what's going on. I ran out of my room and into the hallway in time to see the older guard proudly holding Randolph's lifeless body by the neck as the younger guard discharged a taser at random intervals. I was then told that they shook the wardrobe until Randolph run out and the older guard grabbed him with his bare hands and snapped his little neck. Who knows what the taser was for.

My next story is about a delicious dinner and a really great mom. Two of my mother's friends from the VA Hospital in Durham were in Hanoi for part of this past week working on a collaborative effort to share education and experience internationally. They were able to steal away for a night to get dinner with Maeve and me. We went to the outdoor grill place where we had been before to get the chicken and ribs that were so scrumptious. Graciously, they met us at the school and walked there with us as I don't know if this place actually has a name to which I could have directed them. It was so nice for Maeve and me to see someone from home and be able to discuss some of the information and experiences we've gathered in these past few month (I actually retained a lot of stuff!). Our two guests were lovely enough to bring me Moravian cookies from my mother. Moravian cookies, very thin ginger snaps, are my family's equivalent of Christmas cookies, so it really feels like home when I eat them. So delicious!

On Saturday, I went to the Silk Village with some of my classmates. We walked around appreciating the beautiful colors and soft fabrics. We bargained and disapproved of prices until we were able to get what we wanted. One of our favorites phrases is "Tôi là sinh viên. Không tiền." "I am a student. No Money." It works well and often people are willing to help us out. That day, I picked up a bunch of scarves, and I touched just about everything.

Yesterday, we went to the Hanoi Cinematheque where Dr. Bennett (our program professor) had arranged for us to watch two Vietnamese films and then speak with the filmmaker about his choices and career. We watched When the Tenth Moon Comes and Nostalgia for the Countryside by Dang Nhat Minh. The first was my favorite. It was set in a rural area of Vietnam during a time of war. A young wife learns that her husband has died on the battlefront but doesn't know how to process that or tell her family, so she goes on acting as if her husband is still alive. His depiction of loss and grief was portrayed in such a universal way. The wife's inability to let go of the hope that her husband will return is not unique to Vietnam. It was a wonderful film that I suggest you watch if you can find it. The Q & A with the filmmaker after watching the movies was a really neat experience. We got to ask about his process and thoughts about the films. It made me flash forward to when one of my good friends will undoubtedly be discussing his films with engaging college students. They may ask him about his inspirations and personal experiences, how he got his start and how he goes about bringing the stories to life. Yeah, Will's gonna be famous.

The movies were followed by a pizza dinner across the street. It was some good pizza.

on the road again

Sorry for the blog hiatus. I was away for the weekend in Sapa. Sapa is a beautiful place in the mountains of Northern Vietnam where a large population of ethnic minority people live. It was a magical weekend for which I left my computer in Hanoi and was completely unplugged for several days. The only electronics I had with me: 1) a camera to document my journey and 2) my Nook so that Jane Austen would be with me every step of the way.

I'll let the pictures do most of the talking for this one, but I do have a few things to say. We took an overnight train to get there. It was surprising comfortable because the train beds were more cushy than our beds at school. We trekked 14 km the first day through some mountain trails, stayed overnight at a home-stay, and trekked 5 km the second day. The second day, we stopped at this gorgeous waterfall to enjoy the sight and the sound of the rushing water. The scenery  in general was absolutely amazing. The people in this region grow rice on terraced fields, which gives what would be rolling hills more of a block-ish look. It would seem that you could climb rice field steps until you reached heaven. The third day, we went to a market to buy all sorts of crafty goodies. I would have spent more money if I had more time there. We returned via the overnight train and fell into our school beds around 6 in the morning on Monday to get some rest before class that afternoon. Now, some pictures:

Enjoying the train!

There were so many baby pigs running around. They were all so very cute. If George Clooney can do it, then so can I. I want a pig as a pet.

The terraces rice fields looked more like intricate puzzles in some places.

It was an absolutely lovely weekend of enjoying the cool, clean, mountain air! I got some much needed rest, and recharged for the weeks and papers ahead. 

trick-or-treat

I went back to the UN today. Just kidding! It was another lunchtime seminar. This one was on male sexual networks in Hanoi. If one can draw see networks of sexual partners in a given area, then one can better understand how to disseminate information about HIV prevention and self-protection. It's really amazing that this research is happening.

In the United States in the early 80s when the first cases of AIDS were recognized in gay communities in San Francisco, there was this toxic belief that AIDs was killing "all the right people." At that time, the epidemic was localized to gay men, African-Americans and Haitian immigrants. I remember hearing Cleve Jones (gay rights and AIDS awareness activist) speak at UNC saying that this phrase was even on bumper stickers in San Francisco. Not only are there a host of issues with this statement, not the least of which is the fact that the targeted populations are, in fact, people and deserve to be treated as such, but also the ignorance rears its ugly head in believing that the epidemic was going to stay in those populations. The thing is, injecting drug users also have sex. Men who have sex with men can also have sex with women. People of different races have sex with each other. Do you see the trend here? We've come a long way, but I'm just saying that sometimes we need to get real and be honest about what's happening so that we can dialogue about how to best solve problems.

Because today is actually Halloween, we did some Halloween-related activities with the kids in English class. We explained costumes and trick-or-treating as well as pumpkin carving. Because we didn't have pumpkins to carve, we ended up drawing monsters instead. It's still artsy, but doesn't involve knives. Each person would go up and draw one part of the monster. They were hilarious! The kids would laugh hysterically as each new part of the monster was added. Kim's mother, who visited this past week, had brought candy to Hanoi from the States, so we brought the candy to kids. There were Snickers, Kit Kats, M&Ms, and Reeses Cups. Kim went outside the room, we lined the kids up, and got the kids to knock on the door, say "trick-or-treat," and then do something scary before they could get their candy. They did an amazing job and certainly earned their candy!

The funniest part of this was that none of them like the Reeses Cups, solidifying the fact that these children are not from the States. Not a single one of them liked the peanut butter cups. This boggles my mind. Maeve, Kim and I decided that this was because there isn't actually peanut butter here. For a country with so many peanuts, there is almost no peanut butter, unless it is imported, and what is from here is really oily and not pleasant. It was still a crazy realization that they didn't like the peanut butter cups.

you're paralyzed cuz this is thriller

Yesterday, a number of us took a bus to a residential area of Hanoi to prepare and eat lunch with Huyen's family. Her house had hardwood floors. Is is culturally inappropriate to lay down and caress someone's floor? Too late. We all gathered on the kitchen floor, cutting vegetables and mixing things. We made fried spring rolls, vegetable stir fry, fresh spring rolls and some assorted fresh vegetables. We sat on the floor of her living room and ate to our hearts' content. She has the sweetest family. They took such good care of us and made us feel completely at home. Then I got really sleepy and took a nap upon returning to school.

This morning, I got up early with Kim and Maeve to go to the Hanoi zoo with the kids in our English class. We walked around looking at the different animals, but there wasn't a whole lot of animal diversity. So many of the cages held the same animals whether they were deer, tigers, or macaques. There most definitely were civet cats, though (shout-out to Mom!). We eventually made our way to a gazebo. We sang some of the songs we learned in class and played some games. The big winner was Simon Says. One of the boys was laughing hysterically at every turn  of Simon Says. The Vietnamese people at the zoo that day would stop and watch us at the gazebo. It was our turn to be the animals on display. The zoo was followed by a restaurant for lunch where we got bun cha and nem. Nem is the word for the fried spring rolls, and these ones had seafood in them.

We had a Halloween party for our roommates to celebrate one of our favorite holidays with them the way that they celebrated Mid-Autumn Festival with us. Due to my limited costume resources, I decided that I had jeans and a hoodie and could easily pull off Justin Beiber. I then decided that since we were going to do Thriller, I would be the zombie Justin Beiber. I back-combed all my hair to make it stick out like crazy, put on some heavy eye-liner for the dead effect and got Maeve to draw a scar on my face. It was a successful costume. There were a lot of other really great costumes as well. Unfortunately, I didn't get any pictures, but Maeve did, so they will get disseminated at some point. At the party, we ate ice cream, had a costume contest, drew on pomellos (since we weren't able to carve pumpkins), danced to both Thriller and The Time Warp and watched Bettlejuice to finish it all off.

The funny thing is that we had been learning/practicing Thriller for about a week. We started off hiding in bushes and behind cars around the courtyard. When Burcu ran out screaming, we all zombie walked in to zombie attack her and then got into position to begin the dance. The beginning of the dance was fantastic. We lost it a bit towards the end, but recovered fully. It gets really fast at this one part, and it's hard to keep up. Someone did film our performance, so, if you are lucky, it just might get uploaded at some later date. The only sad part is that I don't think any of our roommates had ever seen or heard Thriller. They all seemed rather confused when we finished dancing.

Regardless, a great time was had by all. We had so much fun learning and performing Thriller, the ice cream was amazing and who can pass up the opportunity for some Halloween movie-watching?

happy diwali!

October 26th, we celebrated Diwali! Diwali is the Indian festival of lights. I don't fully understand the history behind it, but is is a celebration of the triumph of light over darkness. The day began with an Indian film, Jodhaa Akbar. It told the story of the romance between the Mogul emperor and his Hindu bride, a match made in order to unify the empire. It was a fabulous movie! So well-done and with so many rich colors and wonderful music. I suggest you watch it if you can find it!

The movie was followed by dinner at an Indian restaurant in Hanoi. I didn't know that I wanted Indian food so badly until I was eating it. I ate with my fingers to mirror Divya, who sat right across from me. Dinner ended with so many Indian sweets like jilebis and carrot halva. So scrumptious! We got back to school and erupted into a sparkler/dance party. I learned some bangra (a type of Indian dance) moves and just generally broke it down to some great beats. A fantastic time was had by all! I already knew that I would go to India at least once in my lifetime because of how much family history I have there, but I've now decided that I will be in India for at least one Diwali during my life.

Maeve and I spent the morning today walking to the Old Quarter in hopes of going to a museum. It was raining but not very hard, and we were determined to get out for a bit. It keeps happening that the beautiful days are ones when we have oodles of work to do and the gross days are the ones when we actually have free time. By the time we got to a place we wanted to get some lunch, the rain was torrential and we had given up any desire to be outside. We happily caught a taxi, which was warm and dry, back to school.

We got together to watch Inside Job, a documentary about the financial crisis in the States. It was obviously made by someone with very sure intentions, but there are irrefutable facts presented as well that back up almost point made in the movie. It takes a critical look at Wall Street and every Presidential administration back to Reagan. It was fascinating and depressing and a call for change. It's a good watch as well, though I suggest you watch Jodhaa Akbar first.

We went for an end-of-term karaoke party with some of the faculty and staff at the school who have helped us so much. The two classes taught by the Vietnamese professors have finished, so that's why it's end-of-term even though we have 6 or 7 weeks left in the program. It was great fun to sing along to some of our favorites (still no You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling) with some of our favorite people at school!

morning party

There are few things in this life that I like less than getting woken up and being kept from sleep. I always wake us disoriented and uncoordinated. You can ask anyone, I just shouldn't be messed with until I have been awake for at least ten minutes, and it's preferable that I've eaten something. So, here's the story of my morning:

The way the school is set up, there is one courtyard around which all the buildings sit. My dorm room has a window and a door facing that courtyard, neither of which are sealed in any way, shape or form (I've watched a rat run right under the balcony door), and our walls are paper thin and echo-y anyway.

There was some kind of ceremony yesterday that we were told was graduation. Graduation only lasts one day right? That's what I thought, but apparently, that is not the case. This pounding bass began shaking my room at 7:10 am (I didn't have class until 9am). The bass was followed by some impossibly loud announcer, what I can only imagine was a form of karaoke (much wailing involved), and then a song on repeat as the names were read. I had so many fantasies of getting up, becoming Godzilla and just going on a rampage in the courtyard. I had some serious, early-morning rage, which only compounded with my disoriented, uncoordinated wake-up state.

The rest of the day went much better. We spent the afternoon at the offices of FHI 360- Vietnam. I'll be spending more time in this office later in the semester as my interviewee for the oral project is the Country Director for FHI 360 here in Vietnam. We got the chance to see a different side of the HIV epidemic: the NGO response. We heard about their funding, projects, and strategies for the future. It was a fascinating day!

If you want to learn more about FHI 360 and what they do, check out their website:

http://www.fhi.org/en/CountryProfiles/Vietnam/index.htm

weekend at a glance

I haven't written that last few days because my poor fingers were just so tired of clacking away on the keyboard. That's what happens when you are in the midst of writing your fourth paper in a matter of weeks anticipating the fifth the next week. Thankfully, I was able to get away for a short time on Saturday. Where I went is actually still a mystery to me.

A handful of us got up and caught a number of buses out to the Perfume Pagoda. The Perfume Pagoda, as I now know, is not a single pagoda but in fact a complex of pagodas. I'm not sure exactly where it is, but I know that it isn't in Hanoi and that it took us three buses and four hours to get there. The bus rides were so wonderful. It was the first time in a while that I had time to do nothing. I didn't worry about what I was going to come back to, I just sat, enjoying the scenery out the window. So many rice fields. The other thing I noticed was that everyone dries their harvested rice in the streets or in driveways. It all gets laid out and raked over and over until it is fully dried out and is then put into large bags in anticipation of the next step of processing.

On one bus, a group of school kids got on to ride it home. One of them was a major flirt. If I had to guess, I would have said that he was nine. With a little bit of English and a little bit of Vietnamese, we discovered his name and that he is twelve. We continued to flirt and make faces at each other until he got off the bus. 

When we did make it to the right place, we jumped off the bus and found a boat to leisurely row us down the river until we got to a small pagoda. It was absolutely beautiful. The pagoda was surrounded but so much green and so many trees. The backdrop was all mountains. This picture shows only the welcoming structure. It was impossible to get a picture of the full building because of all the trees.

We saw a floor where it looked like various herbs and spices were laid out to dry. These may be used for teas, medicines, cooking or medicine. I actually have no idea what they were specifically for. 

There was a set of stairs that led up the small mountain right behind the pagoda. We climbed them to get a better view of the city and of the mountains around the pagoda. Though the stairs were incredibly steep at times, we managed to get to the top of this little trail, where we met a family. The dad may have been speaking Russian, but I think they were all Vietnamese. Regardless, they were a fun crowd and we chatted in broken Vietnamese all the way back down the stairs. 

We got back to Hanoi by another series of buses, and a good time was had by all.

Yesterday was spent writing a paper on vector control strategies to limit Dengue Fever infections. Glad that's over.