Revival

I'm bringing back my blog. The title will probably have to change, but it's still going to be about the same country!

If I haven't talked you about it yet, here's the quick update: I'm planning to go back to Vietnam! I'm working on putting together a research project in Sapa - one of the regions I visited during my last trip - for my summer internship that's coming up.

I've laid the groundwork. I've talked to a couple of professors, found a contact person in the area, and written a first version of my grant proposal. Things I still need to figure out include 1) the appropriate approvals from local authorities (as well as the Yale IRB folks), 2) translation services (there is no way I can learn H'mong in 4 months), and 3) where I'll stay. The third point is not one I'm concerned about at all. I know the area a little, and I can get a room at a hotel, if nothing else, for $10 a day. Gotta love Vietnam.

I got really interested in the area during my visit last summer. It's absolutely GORgeous and there's a lot of interesting culture from the local ethnic minorities. During that trip, you may recall, I spent 2 days/1 night on a hike out to a local village where I stayed the night in the house of our guide, a 29 year old H'mong woman, and her family. I was struck by their meager means. Dirt floors, one large room, animals wandering in and out, no running water, no toilet facilities. I made a logical assumption, especially after hearing about how her husband was having some trouble with illness and hearing him cough, that the healthcare situation probably wasn't very good in the area.

Shu and her daughter, my inspiration. (I have this image as my desktop background to serve as a constant reminder of my goal)

After that weekend trip, I started reading a book given to me by a former coworker, Mountains Beyond Mountains, which is a quintessential book for healthcare professionals, about Paul Farmer, who with the help of some friends, started Partners in Health. They started in Haiti and have since expanded to several locations around the globe, but with one essential goal: treat people who need treatment and won't get it otherwise. It's a very inspiring book that sadly took me months to finish (mostly because I started in August and haven't had time for it again until now), but it started giving me ideas while I was reading the first chapter.

So with ideas from that book buzzing around inside of my head and my heart back in Sapa, I started thinking about my summer internship requirement. I thought at first that I wanted to go to South America somewhere, but that quickly changed. During the first week of school I met a professor here named Robert Heimer, who has been working with a group in Hanoi on an evaluation of the efficacy of a risk-reduction program for injection drug users (IDUs) in the capital city. I thought I might join in on some aspect of that project, but it quickly became clear that a) that wasn't really what I was interested in and b) most of that work would be over before the summer. So I started designing my own research proposal.

I've kind of done this before, but on a much smaller scale. In college I took a psychology research class in which I designed and carried out a research proposal with another student, finding survey measures, going through IRB approval, and doing all of the analysis after... but I had so much more help, it was happening locally, and I had a partner to do the whole project with. MUCH simpler.

So now I'm trying to dig up everything I learned in that class and apply it to a very different project, and largely on my own. BUT IT'S HAPPENING. Every little milestone that I hit makes me do a happy dance. It's sometimes very discouraging. For example, this past week as I've been trying to prepare my first complete draft of my Downs proposal (one of the funding sources I'm trying to get), neither my Yale advisor nor my Vietnamese preceptor were available to field any questions. So I spent A LOT of time thinking about exactly which questions I should ask them when they are available, and I have a huge list.

But I think it will work out. I'm a little worried about the translation services aspect, but I've read enough papers about other work done by US students visiting Vietnam that I'm convinced it's possible. I just have to keep looking. And the real icing on the cake for all of this is that the exact project I want to do was suggested as a "future considerations" research point in a report published by the UNODC about that area and specifically about the H'mong population. So as long as I get all the details figured out, I think I'm set :)

I'm planning to use this blog over the course of the semester to document the challenges of designing my own research project, and after I get there, to write about the very different cultural experience I expect to have there and how the research process itself goes along. Next up... "Consultations with Downs Committee members"... stay tuned!

Tam biet!

Heading Home

Wowza, I'm behind. This is what happens when I don't have my own computer to use. These entries take too long to write - I feel guilty monopolizing the use of my friends' computers. I'm currently in the Saigon airport waiting for flight number 1 to Singapore. Because of how I changed my flights I have to go outside of security and pick up my luggage in Singapore, probably pay a lot for a few hours of sleep in an airport hotel (especially compared to the Vietnamese prices I'm used to), and then wake up early to check in again. Oi troi oi, toi se chet.

Anyway, travelling has been amazing the last two weeks. Maybe when I get home, or maybe if I get bored on the upcoming cruise, I'll manage to fill in the missing bits from the last few weeks. A lot has happened and I've made reminder notes for myself so I can tell the whole story. All of the stories. I think I'll look into one of those publish-your-own-photo-book dealies, hopefully one that allows text, too, and pick my best photos and put it all neatly together. Scrapbooking meets the modern age sort of thing.

Speaking of photos... I have about a billion to post. Ok, that may be an exaggeration, but I do have literally thousands to sort through. My goal for the past week and a half was to fill my second memory card completely, and despite taking over 800 photos, I only made it about 80% of the way. Maybe I'll just have to extensively document the amazingness of the Singapore airport.

Checking out for now... time to remind myself of the last few days and make my final notes.

Tam biet, Viet Nam!

I am barrieredly by language. Uh huh, I am.

On Tuesday, July 12 I went back to work. During the strange lunch (described previously, when I was meant to learn how to cook), I was informed that the father of one of the guys at the office had died, and that "we" would be going to pray for him that afternoon. I was not sure that I would be included in that "we", and I assumed that if I was, everyone else would be as well. Turns out, I was included, but not everyone went along… So, about 30 minutes after lunch, with limited information about what was happening, I was ushered into a van with a few others from the office… and I believe only one of them spoke English, and relatively poorly.

We started driving away from the office and drove through the streets of Hanoi for a while, eventually picking up another person. (Maybe he was also associated with ISMS? I'm not entirely sure.) We also picked up bread, apparently to be a snack for the road, and a large funeral flower arrangement. We continued to drive, out of city limits, and I started to get really confused. No one explained to me where we were going or how long it would take, and everyone was speaking Vietnamese around me. Soon, the man in the front seat was coughing rather violently, and the girl next to me was getting carsick, and in my baffled state I sent a message to one of my friends here that read "I think I've been kidnapped by my coworkers on the pretense of honoring someone's dead father. The guy in the front seat is hacking up a lung, the girl next to me is puking, we've been driving for more than an hour and I have no idea where I am and everyone's speaking Vietnamese."

Eventually we arrived at the final destination, after winding through narrow alleyways in a township outside of Hanoi. We spilled out of the van, my coworkers set up the flower thing, and then we walked to where the funeral was being held. We walked into a courtyard where the family members of the deceased were wearing white headbands, and we were ushered to seats where we were served green tea. But we did not sit for long, after a few minutes, my English-speaking coworker told me to stand up, and with the rest of the people from work, we presented the flowers to the family altar, in front of everyone else present. After the flowers were placed, the older gentleman that we picked up later spoke some words in Viet and this was followed several times by ritual prayer movements that I awkwardly tried to follow along. It happened three or four times, then we stepped back and sat down again, where we were served more tea. However, we again only sat for a couple of minutes, and then we stood up and left. I'm still very confused about what happened, and it was incredibly uncomfortable and awkward. I have not felt more out of place during my time in Vietnam.

The rest of the week passed without incident, and I spent the weekend in the city again with my friends. We did very little because we are lazy and never manage to coordinate ourselves. We tried to go to the Ho Chi Minh mausoleum but we arrived too late, right as they were shutting the gate, which was actually okay with me, after I saw the line we would have to stand in. So, alas, I saw no dead bodies.

On Monday I had another adventure with a coworker, and again, I was told about it at lunch! This time, a coworker who spoke about 20 words of English decided she wanted to buy me a going away present. She did not know what to buy for me, however, so I went with her. We left the office at 3pm, and I thought we would make it a quick trip and then come back before normal leaving time, which is about 5:30. However, we started by going to a government building, where she was renewing some document for one of the directors at ISMS. After that, she took me around the old quarter for a while and kept pointing at various things that really would not work… such as a giant woven basket, a large vietnamese conical hat (neither of which I could reasonably fit in my bag) or a porcelain piggy bank that I managed to explain I was concerned would break (by using my dictionary… thanks again, Alex!).

Finally, somewhat frustrated, I think, she suggested we get a drink. So I finally got to drink coconut milk out of a coconut. We decided while having our drinks that we would go find a shirt for me, and I managed to teach her English! It's rare to find someone where I know Vietnamese for a word they don't know in English. So we went to a nearby department store and walked around it in circles before I finally accepted that I would have to get something with English writing on it, and after trying on a XXL (Vietnamese people are tiny!) I got a shirt that fit. But that wasn't enough! She wanted to find pants to go with it (but none were big enough) and then tried for another shirt, but we ran out of time before we found something else. Finally at about 6:30pm we returned to the office, where only my bike remained, and before I left she gave me the two additional coconuts she had picked up when we stopped for drinks. So I carted them around for two days before drinking half of one and giving away the other.

That night, I stayed at Ashley's with Ric and another of Ashley's friends, a girl named Marie from Quebec and we had a sleepover, complete with food, silliness, and terrible movies. I woke up the following morning to an amazing breakfast made by Ashley and the others… I would have been happy to help, but I was simply not conscious until the food was ready. I owe Ashley big time for all of the amazing food she provided at various times. Hopefully I have an opportunity to return the favor after we both return to North America.

On Wednesday evening, Ric and I departed from Hanoi for Hue! The bus ride was rather long and miserable, but we were some of the first people on the bus, so we managed to not only find storage for our bags (or I did at least), but also to get the best beds, which were longer than most. I felt a little guilty taking the long seats away from those taller than me, but my comfort was more important to me.

Today we arrived in Hue and wandered around, but I will describe that more in the next post, when I describe the rest of Hue as well!

I am so far behind on my posts. Quick summary now, details and pictures to follow.

-Sarah has been back in the US, leaving me the only American at my work. It's a different sort of place when you don't have someone you can speak to in English whenever you want to...

-Alice went back to England. She was the "mother hen" of the house, because she'd been there the longest (5 months!) so it was very sad to see her go.

-I went to Sapa with Polly, Tessa, Lydia, and Mike. We trekked through the mountainous area and had a genuine homestay at the house (hut/shack/room) of a minority woman and her family (Black H'mong). The "toilet" was the bamboo forest just past the house. I also bought lots of souvenirs because they're such damn pushy salespeople. Also the stuff is really cool.

-Polly and Lydia are taking off to travel the rest of Vietnam. I'm also sad to see them go. I need to get out of here before more of my favorite people leave me.

-Lunch time is always an adventure here. One day I ate while the cook and one other girl watched/napped/chatted in Vietnamese because everyone else was out in the field or had gone out to lunch without me. Another lunch involved everyone in the office sitting around captivated while a ghost story was told that caused at least three of the women in the office to scream at was was presumably the key line of the story. Today I was supposed to be learning how to cook, because again lots of people are out, but it was a very simple meal of just boiling tofu, pork, and vegetables. Not so difficult. Not much to really learn. And then eating the meal with the other 4 women who were here while they chatted in Vietnamese. Also there was another lunch where we went out for one of the directors' birthday.

-I'm picking up Vietnamese faster now, beginning to understand sentence structure and building on vocabulary. But I still can't listen to a conversation and understand any of it.

-I might cut my placement short by about a week and travel down to the south of Vietnam with Ric from the house. I have to figure out if I can afford it, though, and if it's okay to leave, etc. It would be an amazing journey, though.

Hopefully I can get around to posting pictures (to Facebook, most likely) and a full blog entry before the end of the week. Stay posted.

Tạm biệt!

Jen

Nom Nom Nam

I told Alex I'd eventually title one of my posts this way. This week has been all about eating, so I think it's appropriate.

After my last post, there was a question about eating dog. When I first arrived, I was certain that I wanted to try it before I left. Then I heard about how the dogs are killed and treated in general, and I changed my mind. But, on Friday, John wanted to go and get some for lunch. I went along, not sure I would actually eat any, but wanting to see the event anyway. Anne, Julie, Polly, and Amy came along as well. When we got there we didn't really have a choice of things to order and dishes were just brought out to us, and there was way more food than John was going to be able to manage by himself, so I decided to have a taste (most of the others sampled as well). After the first dish my concerns were broken, so I sampled all of them. Overall, very chewy. There was one dish I liked which appeared to have been braised. But I don't think I'll go for dog meat again.

I rented a motorbike starting on Friday from the office manager of VPV. It's kind of crappy and has issues starting sometimes, but I'm getting its quirks worked out. I'm paying 1,000,000 dong for the 5 weeks I'm renting it, which comes out to just under $50. Pretty good deal. And because I'm both not going very far and motorbikes are fairly gas efficient, I don't have to spend too much on gas, either.

I had a few mishaps with it over the weekend that I won't go into detail about because I don't want to worry anyone, but I've got the hang of it now and I'm confident I can handle nearly any situation. But don't worry, I won't go looking for trouble. Bottom line - no one is hurt, and everything is resolved.

I spent the weekend in the city with several of my housemates, over half of whom left by the time the weekend was over. I hate goodbyes. Lavinia is off to the south and then Cambodia, but she'll be back in Hanoi for a bit before she leaves for good. Everyone else is gone for good from Hanoi... but I'm going to try to see Julie, also from San Francisco area, when I come back. And maybe John will make it up to the Northeast? But the others - Anne, Valentine, and Amy - I don't know if I'll get to see them again. It's very sad and I'm going to move on to happier thoughts now...

We spent the weekend mostly on a food tour of the city. On Friday night we went to a place that's got nearly every Vietnamese dish imaginable. I picked something random off of the menu that sounded good and was quite pleased with the result. It was some sort of egg cake, shredded pig skin (that ended up tasting a bit like noodles with finely grated parmesan cheese), and BBQ pork with rice. We went out to a few bars and clubs after, and had fun dancing and drinking and singing.

On Saturday morning I ate at Joma, ham and cheese quiche and a latte. Mmmm. It's nice to get a break from Vietnamese food. I love it, but not all the time. At home I eat such a variety of foods that the hardest thing for me here is not that it's different from my usual but that it's the same thing over and over again. I need a different flavor profile! After breakfast I went with John to the War (Army? I don't remember) museum. Some parts of it were interesting, some were silly ("this is the rope used for a bridge in... ") and some were just entirely in Vietnamese. I think it would have been interesting to be able to read the propaganda posters, but I only recognize a few words of Vietnamese here and there, which is not enough to decipher things.

For lunch, Julie, Lavinia, John, and I went and got bun bo, which uses the same noodles as bun cha but is prepared differently - less soupy. I think it's my favorite Vietnamese dish so far. We found Alice on the street after and then went for coffee - Alice was trying to get a dish she calls rice 'n' ice which I think has some sort of sticky sweet rice and ice cream together, but the place didn't actually have it. Most of us got ca phe sua da - iced coffee with condensed milk - while Alice got iced tea with condensed milk (tra sua da) and Lavinia got egg coffee (don't know the Vietnamese for this, but it's amaaaaazing. It's kind of like a latte, but instead of whipped milk, it incorporates whipped egg white. Like a cross between meringue and ca phe sua). I stopped and picked up a dress on the way home, which I bargained down from $30 to $12. I love it. I need to get more so that I don't just wear my one dress all the time.

We had dinner at an Indian restaurant, and it was a bit different than the Indian food I'm used to at home. I have no idea what's more authentic, as I haven't been to India (yet?), but it was delicious nonetheless. Lavinia left us after that :( and then we went to a place called Hanoi Rock City, which is a bar/concert venue that caters to foreigners and puts on small shows. The acts that night were ok - the first group, called "Toothbrush" was rather uninspiring... they had some talent, but hadn't really practiced, so they were literally making it all up as they went along. The next group was Vietnamese, but had better melodies and at least had real songs. The final group was another English speaking group that covered several songs I recognized and maybe played some of their own? They were good, but the crowd didn't get into it enough for it to really be a great show.

A few of the people in our group left the venue earlier than the other two that I stayed with and went to get coffee. It was Anne's second time drinking coffee in her life, and she went kinda nuts (see Facebook). The antics lasted until about 3 am, and then we all finally went to sleep.

On Sunday, we again had Joma breakfast. I got a tuna melt which was HUGE and lasted me all the way through dinner. It was delicious, though, and has inspired us to make tuna melts at our house for breakfast during the week, because the standard breakfast of bread with maybe some peanut butter or jam and some fruit is so uninspiring.

Several people went to the spa, but I opted not to, not feeling either the need for spa treatments or a desire to be stared at naked by the Vietnamese ladies that run it (which I hear happens, according to the others who have gone) or a desire to spend money, even if it is quite cheap. So instead I (finally) picked up postcards, and wrote them... but they have not yet been sent. Soon. Very soon. It was just a generally lazy and relaxing day.

We went out for coffee when everyone got back from the spa and sat at a little cafe that had a seating area overlooking Hoan Kiem lake. We then went for smoothies that are served as chunks of fruit mixed with condensed milk and coconut milk, that you then mash together. Delicious. We went back to our room at the hostel for a bit while a few people got foot massages, and then we were off to dinner! We tried to find a place to get another bun dish, this time with spring rolls (bun nem?) but after failing for about 15 minutes we decided to go to a Thai place called Thai Express. It had more of a Western restaurant feel, but the food was delicious and I was not disappointed.

After dinner we went back to the hostel and then had to say goodbye to John... and again, it was very sad. We sat around at the hostel for the rest of the evening, drinking a bit from the bar downstairs, eating popcorn and some sort of onion flavored puffed rice type snack and singing songs from Ric's very girly list of music. A few of the girls and Ric put together their own versions of Vietnamese pajamas, and then after a photo shoot in the room, went downstairs to show the people who run the hostel (who know us quite well now, since we show up most weekends). We didn't stay up quite as late as the previous night, which is good, because I had work in the morning.

Monday morning I got up by myself and went to Joma again for breakfast, this time for a small chive and cheese scone. I picked up my motorbike from the lot, this time without incident, but they remembered me from the day before (again, details intentionally omitted). Everything went smoothly, though, until I realized that I'd managed to get myself lost again on the way to work. I still haven't quite properly worked out how to get out of the old quarter. Getting in I've got figured out, but getting out is trickier. I figure I can only get lost so many times, though, before I have the whole city figured out. And I've seen quite a bit of it at this point. And I also always carry a map at this point, so even if I am lost, I can figure out where I am and how to get back. Anyway, because I got lost, I didn't go back for lunch with everyone as I had planned but stayed at work and met up with everyone for dinner at a place called Little Hanoi that was back in the old quarter. I shared veggie spring rolls, a delicious garlic and eggplant dish, and fried garlic noodles with vegetables. I find the vegetarian dishes here in general to be much more appealing than the ones with meat, and so, while I won't eliminate entirely the option of eating meat, I think in general I'm just going to choose vegetarian when given the chance.

After dinner we went back to the hostel one last time and said our goodbyes to Amy, Julie, and Anne. So sad to see everyone go! We took lots of pictures together before they left, though. Sara, Ric, Alice, and I then had to make our way back to our house, and Ric and I both have motorbikes, so Alice and Sara hopped on as our passengers. It started raining as we were leaving, and what started out small quickly turned into downpour. Extreme downpour. We were all soaked head to toe by the time we got back home, so given that we were already drenched (and it never actually gets cold here even when it's raining at night), Ric and I went for a walk around the area by our house in the rain. We explored a side road off of our main road and then went around to the back side of the technical college that's nearby, splashing each other with muddy puddles as we went. We found a cafe/bar that looks nice that we want to visit sometime with a big group from the house.

I woke up with a bit of a cold the next morning, but I had already begun to feel it on Monday morning when I arrived at work, so I don't think it had anything to do with the rain. I stayed in, though, and rested, and I feel better today. Not 100% yet, but better.

One last food thing to report is that we made bruschetta for breakfast this morning to spice up the usual bread that is provided for us. For $1, I got enough tomato and spring onion for the bruschetta and tomorrow's tuna melts. Some things are so marvelously cheap here.

And now I should do some actual work.

Tam biet!

Mini update for Wednesday, June 22.

First, a few things I forgot in the previous update, which you should read as well:

-I saw an elephant on my way to work one day. It was riding around in the back of a truck, which was blasting some sort of message (presumably about the elephant) over a loud speaker. It was a bit odd, but I guess elephants just sometimes get rides in the back of trucks here.

-I went kayaking in Halong Bay also, and it was awesome. Lavinia and I shared a kayak and coordinated well (but I was the one in the back, so I take all the credit). We explored a small section of the bay and went in search of mini-caves that we could kayak into. We found a few, but I have no pictures from that part because I was afraid of getting my camera wet.

-I had a motorbike lesson! (Don't freak out.) It's actually not too hard, and I'm going to continue to practice this week and then I think next week I'm going to rent one for the remainder of my time so that I can more easily explore the areas around Hanoi.

Now, about today:

When I got to work, the internet was down and I didn't really know what I could do without internet access, so I decided I would go exploring on my bicycle, with the vague idea that I would try to find the old quarter and maybe do some shopping. I wasn't quite sure how to get there, though, as I had no chance to check out Google maps and I didn't have a map of the city with me. So I made a few random turns but thought I had an idea of what direction I was going and after about an hour and a half I concluded that I was fully lost. Half an hour after that I called Sarah at work and tried to explain where I was so that someone could give me directions or come find me, but the internet was still down, and my phone died in the middle of the call. So I started riding back in the direction I had come, thinking it looked like it was getting too rural in front of me, and continued to try to go toward larger buildings. I stopped once for water and then again at a cafe that said it had free wifi thinking that perhaps it would have a computer that I could use as well. Alas, they did not. So I asked the servers if anyone spoke English. Again, a disappointing no. So I drew a crude map and managed to indicate that I wanted to know where I was, and that I wanted to know how to get to Big C (because I can get to work from there). It turned out I had ended up fairly close to work when I was at the Cafe and it only took a few minutes for me to get back after I got my basic directions figured out, and finally, after 3 hours of wandering the city on my bicycle, I arrived back at work, dehydrated and sunburned, but not too exhausted.

And now the internet is back AND I have work I can do! Basic statistics and learning SPSS, whee!

I really need to learn more Vietnamese.

Hanoi, Halong Bay and the snake vilage

Oy, I'm behind. Fortunately I've kept up with my journal, so I can hopefully make this fairly complete. First, to address some questions:

-What am I eating?

Many, many delicious things, and a few not so delicious things. I think I eat more vegetables here than I did at home, because they are omnipresent and the meat is not so good. Common vegetable dishes include: boiled cucumbers, stir-fried (?) spinach-ish thing with garlic (I'm not a huge fan of this one), cabbage with carrots and bell peppers, and a bean sprout dish that is usually prepared with slices of congealed pigs blood mixed in. I actually really like the sprout one, even with the pig blood. I liked it better before I really knew what it was, though, and could just think of it as mystery meat. Other things that I eat are the very obvious rice (~2 cups of cooked white rice/day on average, I would say), pho (Vietnamese brothy noodle soup), lots of delicious fruits. My favorite fruit is lychee, although mangosteen and rambutan are pretty amazing, too. Watermelon is the most common fruit that I get with my meals, along with pineapple and pomello. I tried longan but so far only in tea - but it was a delicious tea that tasted like baked apples. I also drink Vietnamese coffee - cafe sua da - far too often, but little cafes are everywhere, and the coffee is only ~$1, sometimes significantly less. I get it iced with condensed milk, as the Vietnamese drink it. I've had a couple of other soups as well, one called, simply, chao, which is like Korean congee, and bun cha, which is another noodle soup, but bun is a spaghetti-like noodle and pho is flatter, and cha means pork while pho is usually served as pho ba (beef) or pho ga (chicken). Bun cha also is delightfully seasoned. I also really like a coconut and pork dish that I get at work sometimes - slices of coconut and pork in a savory light sauce. I need to learn how to cook that one before I leave.

Enough about food. Question 2:

-What am I buying?

So far the only things I've bought are necessity items - I found some cheap sneakers at Big C, which is roughly equivalent to Target or Wal-mart. I also bought a second towel, a pillow, a basket for my shower items, some wet napkins to wipe off the mud after my ride to work, some ballpoint pens, etc. I really want to buy dresses, and at some point I want to go to Hoi An, which is supposed to be the best for getting clothes tailor made.

Question 3:

-Who am I meeting?

Well, I've talked a bit about the American ex-pat that I work with. She seems pretty cool, but I find it difficult to really get to know her the way I would get to know someone that I don't work with... I just tend to get a mental block about fully opening up to people that I work with. I've also mentioned Steve-O, who has managed to get horribly sick, likely due to pre-existing ulcers and deciding to drink the tap water the first week, but it hasn't been determined conclusively what's wrong with him yet. I was spending a lot of time with Matt, previously mentioned, but he has gone back to Canada now. I was also spending time with Kayci, another American, but she left this week :(. I'll mention others as I go through the rest of this entry.

So now, picking up where the last post left off:

On Saturday the 11th, Mat and I had our official VPV city tour which was mildly disappointing... we only saw the museum of ethnology (pictures on Facebook), and did a mini food tour. That was when I tried bun cha, the delicious tea, and a fruit smoothie type thing that comes with a bunch of fresh fruit mixed together in a glass with condensed milk, and the customer stirs it around to mash the fruit, adding ice if desired. I've ignored most of the recommendations in guide books about passing on street food and ice and taking most of my cues from fellow travelers/foreigners, and I've been fine. I had some mild intestinal distress (sorry for the TMI) the first week or so, but it has since passed (pun sorta intended). I attribute it to other things, though, including just a general adjustment to the food, especially the greatly increased amount of fiber from all of the vegetables.

After our tour, Matt and I met up with several others from the house - Alice, Kayci, Brittanie, Maggie (who we all actually just refer to as "Poland", where she's from). We had dinner at a place catering to foreigners, and I had a delicious chicken pesto pasta. We had free drinks from our hostel and then moved on to a bar where there was live music by several groups, kinda like some of the shows I've seen in the US. I chatted a bit with a couple of people from one of the bands because they were from California, and I ran into Ben and Lynnette who I had met at the trivia night. Apparently Sarah was there as well, but I didn't see her.

On Sunday, we started the day with Joma, a little slice of western cafe heaven - I had a bagel with cream cheese and smoked salmon and a latte. We wandered around the shops a bit, but I didn't find anything I liked for what I thought was an acceptable price. We ate lunch at a place that served every Vietnamese dish you could dream of, and I ordered banh mi... but I had to put it together myself and there wasn't much filling, so I was kinda disappointed. After we tried to go to the Ho Chi Minh Trail Museum - not to be confused with the Ho Chi Minh Museum or the the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum - but we couldn't find a taxi driver who understood the distinction we were trying to make, so we ended up just coming back early and hanging out at the house, having dinner at the same pho place down the street that we went to the previous weekend.

I'm going to try to condense the next week a bit more because otherwise this is going to get REALLY long.

At work, I got to do something other than document editing - I have a couple of research projects that I'll be participating in the data analysis of, so I was making dummy tables for that. I also summarized a few project reports for the website, but I was missing several of the pieces for each of them, so I'm not sure how helpful that is/when they might actually show up online. I'm also getting into the swing of English lessons a bit better now - I have a bunch of ideas about how to approach them now, but I haven't tried any of them out properly, yet. Turns out, lesson planning, even informal lessons, can be very difficult.

Matt left on Wednesday, and Kayci left on Saturday. I really don't like all of this leaving that people are doing, and there's more coming up this weekend. I think the hardest part is going to be perpetually changing who my friend group is, saying goodbye to people I've come to like quite a bit and going through all of the same conversations about how long I'm here, why I'm here, etc. every two weeks or so.

We've been doing a semi-regular pancake night with Ashley, a former volunteer who is now living and teaching English (and getting paid to do so) in Hanoi. She comes over and cooks for us to give us all a taste of home. I've actually found my appetite in general is significantly diminished here, and I'm pretty certain I've lost weight, just based on how my pants fit.

On Thursday we went to Pizza hut for the birthday of one of my roommates, Ellie, a (now) 21-yr old from France. She is here with a friend of hers from university - they hadn't originally planned to end up at the same place, but Charlene's program turned out to be not so good, so she switched over and joined us. We recently got another girl from the same university, although she didn't know Ellie or Charlene before arriving, and two more are expected by mid-July, so the French will be running the house at that point.

On Friday night we said sad goodbyes to Kayci, who I've already decided I need to visit. She's going to school in St. Louis, Missouri, so I'm hoping to make a trip out there and combine it with a visit to Anna and Kyle and baby Beckett. I then went into Hanoi with Alice, Lavinia, and John, and we met up with a few others from our house at the same backpackers as the previous week. We went to a Jazz club playing live music, but it was hideously expensive, so we quickly moved on. We headed toward the place where the rest of our housemates were hanging out for the evening and stopped for "smothies" along the way. Translations into English are often terribly misspelled here, but the drinks are delicious anyway. We met up with the others and hung out at the other bar, which was playing reggae music, for a while, then moved on to a dance bar called the Dragonfly. I think walking into it and taking one breath was immediately the equivalent of smoking a pack of cigarettes. I would like it, though, if it wasn't so smoky. I was also really tired, so after hanging out for a bit, I was ready to leave, and so was John, so we meandered our way back to the hostel.

Early Saturday morning, Lavinia (from Austria, although one of the Australian guys in our group likes to jokingly call her Australia and say that he's from Austria... not sure how that started), Alice (from England, and has been here for nearly 5 months), and I left with a tour group for Halong Bay, which is a World Heritage site and thus pretty much the ultimate tourist stop in Northern Vietnam. Pictures hopefully will be posted on Facebook in the not-too-distant future.

Our first day was primarily spent getting to Halong Bay - we took a bus to the coast, which took about 4 hours, got on a boat where we ate lunch and spent the night, and checked our the most touristy cave I've ever seen. It's called "surprise cave" because it has a formation in the third chamber that catches many unknowing visitors by surprise because of its resemblance to a certain male body part. We also went swimming in the bay and I joined several of the more daring members of our tour group and jumped off the top of the boat, which was probably about 20 feet above the water. We had dinner on the boat and then just hung out and chatted with the other people on the cruise for the rest of the evening.

On Saturday we ate breakfast on the boat and then took the boat to Cat Ba island. After departing the boat we bussed from the port to the entrance to the park, where we split up and I went with the group that trekked to the top of the tallest mountain on the island. It was difficult and muddy and I slipped a bit and I was worried about my ankle for a bit, but all is fine. The views from the top were spectacular, though. The rest of the group went cycling to hospital cave, which was used during the war...

After Cat Ba National Park, we bussed to another port area of the island, where we caught another boat to monkey island. We had lunch on the island and then had free time for swimming! After splashing about a bit and tossing a ball around with the others, I decided I had to go check out the second beach, which was around a large rock that came out from the island. When I got near to the rock, I decided I needed to climb it. I quickly realized that the rock and the barnacles covering it were very sharp, but I decided to keep climbing up it anyway. I found a place on the top of the rock that was suitable for sitting, waved and called to the rest of the group, and then just chilled for a bit. I soon saw several others swimming out toward me, and despite my warning about the sharp rocks, they decided to climb up as well. They had the benefit of knowing of safe places to jump back in, though, which I didn't, so I think my hands and feet got cut up the worst. When I got back into the water I decided to continue my swim around to the beach but realized shortly after going around the corner that there was a strong current in toward shore... which I had to fight to get back (because I decided the other beach was too far). Fortunately I can still swim well enough to manage that, but no one else followed me that way. I finally made it back to the beach and then lounged about for a while, drinking fruity cocktails and smoothies and then took a brief shower.

At 5pm I joined about 6 others from our tour (some opted to stay on the beach) for a trek to the other side of the island, where we were supposed to see monkeys. It was a difficult walk, as the "path" was made of more of the sharp rocks I mentioned earlier, and when we got there, there weren't actually any monkeys around... so one of the guys, Evan, from Australia, obliged and imitated a monkey for us. Our guide then pointed out a real monkey which he proceeded to feed peanuts - first tossing them, then allowing the monkey to pluck them from his hand. Several of the others on the tour also participated in the feeding, but I held back, after my previous encounter with monkeys, and took pictures and videos.

We went back to the other side of the island after we ran out of peanuts and lazed around for a bit more before dinner. We got a free drink before our meal, which was appropriately called a "Funky Monkey". It wasn't very good, though, and I think everyone ended up ordering more drinks. I did a side by side taste test of the two most ubiquitous beers in the area and concluded that Tiger beer is milder in flavor and higher in alcohol than Ha Noi Beer for the same price - and got everyone else drinking it as well. Some people played pool for a while, I got some karaoke going and sang one song on my own and two duets with a girl named Carrie, who is from Colorado.

We hung out for a while and eventually ended up lounging on the beach again, in the dark this time. I bonded a bit with Evan over our mutual disinterest in Red Hot Chili Peppers, and I told him about a ban, fun., that I'm very fond of. I didn't have my iPod at the time to allow him to listen to it, but when I did share the next day, he really liked them. He's the second person I've introduced to fun. since I've been in Vietnam, so if they end up blowing up worldwide in the next year or so, I'm claiming partial credit :).

It started raining while we were down on the beach, but it felt so nice that I decided to dance around in it for a bit. Before long I was soaked and decided to join my friends for a brief chat under the cover of an awning before deciding I was already halfway asleep and going to bed.

The following morning I woke up before the wake-up call so I took a stroll around the resort and called my parents to wish them a happy anniversary and Father's day (because it was still Sunday in California). The water at the beach, which had been very murky the day before, was crystal clear and beautiful in the morning.

We had pho for breakfast (along with other options, but I chose pho) and then boarded a smal boat to go back to Cat Ba, where we boarded a bus again and went back to the other pier, waited for a bit because the tide was too low (although I swear it was higher than it had been when we arrived the previous day), and finally returned to the first boat to head back to the mainland. After the boat we got onto another bus and headed back to Hanoi. It was a lot of sitting and not doing anything, but most of us were quite tired from the exertion of the previous day or the drinking of the previous night, so I don't think anyone minded sitting so much. I got in a couple of brief naps, did a bit of reading, listened to some music, and played half of a game of monopoly deal with Alice and Lavinia.

After we got back into Hanoi, Alice, Lavinia, and I met two other volunteers - Ric (Australian, teaching English) and John (American, from Florida, working at Friendship Village) as well as Ashley (mentioned earlier) and went via their motorbikes to the snake village to the northeast of Hanoi and had snake for dinner.We arrived and told them we wanted grass snake, which they proceeded to kill and bleed in front of us. John ate the still-beating heart, and Ric, Alice, Lavinia, and I drank a bit of the blood mixed with some sort of vodka (which John and Ashley didn't try because they don't drink). Ashley sat out the whole meal and was just there to watch us and the spectacle of it, but the rest of us ate a variety of snake dishes - there were a couple of types of spring roll type items, the bones ground and seasoned, fried skin, and little meat patties. At one point, John reconstructed the snake by putting the various items on top of the skin and ate it all together. Ashley, despite refusing to eat any of the snake, was cooperative and let us put our (used) chopsticks all through her hair at the end of the meal (yes, we are very mature). I have lots of videos and pictures of all of it. When we got back, I finally had a chance to shower and soon after I passed out, exhausted from a busy weekend.

I woke up this morning and found out during the course of my Vietnamese lesson, which started late because my tutor was drunk the night before, that there really wasn't anyone in the office and I probably didn't need to go into work. I had no assignments carried over from the week before, so I spent the rest of the morning contemplating the best way to do my English lessons with the staff. I ended up not needing to go in all day, so after lunch I went with the volunteers who work at Friendship Village and met the kids there. Not sure if I've said this before, but Friendship Village is a school/care center for children affected by agent orange. I sat in on a math class and helped with some basic arithmetic for a little while, then moved to a classroom where they were singing and playing and doing origami. I also briefly saw their embroidery class and their flower making class, both amazing. It was nice to have an opportunity to see the project that so many of my peers are involved in.

And now I'm all caught up to the present. If you've made it this far, congratulations and thank you.

This has been my first full week in the country. I'm getting fairly well settled in now, making it my home. I'm getting to know the other people in my house better and this weekend I'm going to stay at a hostel in the city center with several of them. I'll post another picture update after that.

At work I've been doing a LOT of document editing. It quickly went from being exciting to help to "crap, another document to wade through". Vietnamese, as it turns out, is structured very differently from English. Question words (e.g. who, what, where) often go at the end of a sentence, and there don't seem to be any conjunctions. (My dictionary tells me there is an equivalent for "and" but it also means "with" and isn't really used in the same way we would use "and".) Instead, they just list things separated by commas, which makes other uses of commas very confusing. When I don't have to wade through someone else's poor translation into English from Vietnamese, I have been spending my time (slowly, word by word) translating a questionnaire that was given to female sex workers to evaluate their needs for career change. This is not something I have to do, but it helps me understand the structure of Vietnamese and some of the words I may run into during the rest of my time. I'm supposed to do some data analysis of collected results of the questionnaires, maybe sometime next week.

My trip to work is much nicer than it was as of my last post - I'm borrowing a bike from my house, and it's about a 30 minute ride each way. Everyone tells me it's a nice bike, but it's not like what I'm used to seeing around the bay area. It has one speed, which is ok but sometimes I want to go faster than that allows. It's mostly flat, though, so it's an easy ride. The most physically challenging is the bridge over the main road that I go over on my way to work in the morning (I don't have to do it on the way home; the path is slightly different). The most mentally challenging is the first major intersection along the main road at "Big C" (the supermarket) which is a big circle intersection where the traffic is sometimes regulated, but not always, and there is a lot of semi-terrifying cross traffic (if you're on a bicycle like me). But the general rules are 1) try not to suddenly move in front of a car and 2) go slow, and both apply to being a pedestrian in this city, as well. The one good thing about the lack of enforced road rules is that no one cares if you, as an obvious outsider, break them... they just go around you, because that's what happens all the time, anyway. The road between my house and the main road is approximately 60-80% dirt (it is technically paved, but the dirt from the side of the road covers most of it, and there are large dips and ruts all over the place), so I feel like I'm getting a lot of off-roading practice. Traffic on that road only gets a little scary when there are large trucks going in both directions - because bicycles only have priority over pedestrians, so there is little space for bicycles at that point.

I picked up some things from Big C the other day that are going to make the rest of my stay much more comfortable than it has up to this point - namely, a pillow. For whatever reason, the house only issues one tiny, flat pillow to each person. So I splurged (I think it's approximately $4.50-$5) and bought my own pillow. It has some silly nonsensical saying along the lines of "wishing happiness to my friends today and today" and makes me so much happier when I sleep. I also bought a plastic basket to put my shower items in and a new towel and washcloth so that I can wash one towel and still have one to use... or potentially in the future use one on the beach and one for the shower. It's good to have two. I also got a PHONE. If you want to Skype call me on it, drop me a note and I'll give you the number.

I ate pho on Sunday night with some of the others from my house (after they came back from being in the city center; I had all of Sunday to myself in the house...). It was pretty tasty, but I think I like the stuff I get in San Mateo better... but, at 15,000 VND (<$1), it's a pretty awesome value. I've had a lot of other tasty Vietnamese dishes, but I don't know what they're called. Most of the flavor, though, comes from the use of fish sauce with chili slices in it and salt with lime juice. Morsels from a communal dish get dipped in these sauces before they are eaten. It's still an awkward way for me to eat, but I'm starting to get used to it.

On Tuesday I went with Matt, a Canadian in my house that I think is only here for another week, to a pub quiz/trivia night that was co-hosted by the husband (Mitchell) of the other American (Sarah) at ISMS, and we met Sarah there and joined her team for the evening. Unfortunately, we were the big losers. Oh well, it was fun anyway. It happens every Tuesday night, apparently, so I want to get a big group from the house to go sometime.

I'm excited to actually see the sights of Hanoi this weekend, and hopefully do some clothes shopping. I need to get sneakers because I forgot about shoes until the end of my packing and didn't have room for them... I also want to pick up some nicer "business casual" clothes for work, and maybe some long-sleeved cotton or linen shirts (NOT nylon/lycra/spandex which is all I had at home. Too hot for that. Long sleeves are good, though, as long as the material is breathable.) And I actually think I like wearing jeans more than wearing shorts. I find them much more comfortable in hot weather like this, because then the sweat just gets absorbed and I don't feel it.

I'm also going to send postcards! Final call for addresses for the first round. If you've already emailed me your address (or Facebook messaged), I have it and I will send you one. If you haven't, I make no promises. Also don't hold your breath... it may not get to you until after I get back to the states. It's apparently REALLY slow.

Let me know if you have questions about anything! I'm so much more connected here (to the internet, modernization, etc) than I thought I would be, but I'm certainly not complaining. It makes it easy to answer questions and easy to get lazy about updating because I feel like I can talk to people whenever. So help me stay engaged and give me things to talk about!

Missing everyone!

Jen

In addition to the pictures here, I have posted several more pictures on facebook. Enjoy!

Xin chào!

(This means "hello" in Vietnamese)

Warning, this is a long one.

As I talk about places in this post, you can look them up on my handy map!

First of all, I wanted to assure everyone that I do have mosquito netting. It was wrapped up in my blanket for my bed, so I didn't find it right away.

I had my orientation on Thursday, which included an overview of Volunteers for Peace Vietnam (VPV), which is the main organization in charge of all of the volunteers in my house. They communicate directly with the organizations that everyone works for, including mine, the Institute for Social and Medical Studies (ISMS). It didn't cover any of the details of my project, though, so I didn't learn what I would actually be working on until later in the day, when I met with one of the staff members one-on-one. She was clearly not very familiar with the organization and going entirely by some information sheet that was handed to me.

But I'm getting a little ahead of myself. After the introduction to VPV, I went for a walk to the nearest village, Tây Mỗ, with the other volunteer that was in my orientation group. He's from all over, sort of - half Canadian, grew up outside of London, and now lives in Cardiff, Wales. He's a super hippie who calls himself "Steve-O". He also talks A LOT. Nice guy but will probably drive me crazy if I spend too much time with him. We came back and ate lunch - and I'm glad that was my last lunch at the house, because the food at my house is rather uninspiring. I get fed at work, now, so my midday meal is much better than breakfast or dinner.

After lunch I got the aforementioned very brief overview of ISMS, and a little after that, Steve-o and I got our intro to Vietnamese lesson. I learned, among other things, the greeting at the top, how to introduce myself and ask someone else's name, how to say my age, to say "nice to meet you", to count to ten, and to say "too expensive!" I got the last one the fastest - and I think, given that bargaining is expected, it will be the one I use most often. I still feel woefully inadequate at speaking, though. Correctly pronouncing the words is tough. During my lesson there was one point when I was mispronouncing the word for "hungry" - which is "đói", correctly pronounced like "boy" but with a D, I think, but the subtlety of the pronunciation is difficult - the ó sound is, according to my Vietnamese-English dictionary (thanks, Alex!) pronounced like the "a" in "law" - and I kept saying it as "die"(more or less, it's actually kind of elongated from that, with the "i" as a distinct sound) - which my teacher kept giggling at and telling me that I was saying the word for the toilet or WC. According to what I've looked up in my dictionary I think I may have actually been saying something more vulgar, but she was too polite to tell me what I was really saying. So, I want to take more lessons before I really try to communicate in Vietnamese, so I don't say something horribly inappropriate.

I was feeling really dehydrated after my walk to Tây Mỗ, so I stayed in and napped while most others in the house went into Hà Nội to see a water puppet show or get a taste of the local nightlife. Steve-o and one of the other volunteers (Sebastian, I think?) started out drinking at a bar and apparently got invited by the owner to join him and his family for dinner and came back with a great story that I'm sad I missed. I hung out with Steve-o and Sebastian when they got back and chatted with them a bit and then called it a night.

I woke up super early the next day at about 5:45am, as I had the day before, partially due to jet lag, partially due to heat, and partially due to going to sleep early. But that allowed me to enjoy a nice relaxing morning before heading into work for the first time. It was originally intended as just a trip to show me how to get there and meet with the organization for the first time, but the organization had a retreat planned to Ba Vi National Park and they invited me to join. I'm not going to turn down any invitation extended by the Vietnamese during this trip, so I quickly packed a bag when I found out, and then headed out with Mai (from VPV) to find my way to ISMS. The trip involves a walk to the main road, about half a mile, and then two bus rides. It's very confusing and I now have a sheet of paper with the correct words to ask the driver/ticket man to make sure I get off at the right place. I think I may just get a bicycle, though, and ride into town. The trip will be shorter and easier. A little scarier, especially when I get to the large intersection in the middle of Hà Nội, but it appears to sometimes be directed by government workers and I can always just follow someone else.

When I arrived at ISMS, I met a few people and then was ushered into a meeting room where I met Linh, my project director, Sarah, an ex-pat originally from Texas who is on the staff, and one of the directors (whose name I can't remember). We discussed several things that I might work on - some data analysis, report writing/editing, and possibly English lessons for the staff. I have a desk on the second floor (the building has 5, I think) next to Sarah in the "Research Department". Fortunately, unlike my house, my work is air conditioned. If nothing else, that should motivate me to go to work every day. Sarah sent me some documents about projects they've been working on, and until lunch I was reading through those. I then had lunch on the job during which I was repeatedly asked if I needed a fork or spoon. No, I can use chopsticks like you. I'm not quite as good, but I can get the job done without making a fool of myself. And how would I learn if I didn't try to use them, anyhow? After lunch I actually started to do something useful, checking the English on a summary for the website of a project they launched recently for educating young and pregnant women about HIV testing during pregnancy. In my first pass-through I found many areas where article usage was incorrect, and I want to read the report the summary is based on to check on a few of the concepts they are trying to convey in other parts. Although I hope that the majority of my work is not editing documents, it was nice to do that and feel useful on my first day, especially since it introduced me to some of the HIV-related work they've done.

An hour after lunch we were told it was time to go! Sarah and I both used the bathroom and turned off our computers and went downstairs... where we waited in the heat for about 30 minutes before we actually left. I'm going to have to get used to this Vietnamese time scale - I'm typically a very punctual person, and I usually expect others to be the same and then get frustrated when they aren't... so I'm going to have to adjust my expectations here. 1pm usually means 1:15 or later, or wait til 1pm to get ready to do whatever it is that's supposed to happen at that time. Or be ready on time and just plan to wait around for a bit. I'll be carrying a book everywhere I go from now on, I think.

So, we finally got on the bus. Despite having just eaten lunch, we had many snacks, including my first new fruit!

This is a mangosteen, or in Vietnamese, Măng cụt.

After about an hour and a half, we arrived at Đầm Long, which means "dragon lake". Sarah and I shared a room at the hotel, which had air conditioning, a TV, and a refrigerator! Such luxury! It was the first night I slept with a blanket, and probably the only for a while.

I loved the view of the resort out our window:

We rested and ate dinner, during which I had a bottomless glass of Bia Ha Noi, a local lager. Dinner was followed by more drinking and karaoke and I got to try another new fruit. I forget the Vietnamese name for it, but it's known in the English speaking world as rambutan. It has a crazy red skin and green spiky hairs. I think I'm gonna like my job.

The next morning we went for a walk through the forest, and I got to see monkeys outside of a zoo for the first time! I also saw lots of deer and some very crazy looking bugs. I took a lot of pictures of them, but these are my favorites:

These monkeys were uncharacteristically cooperative for this photo.

The monkeys were exciting to see at first, but they had no fear of us... and started growling at us when we were encroaching on their territory. Two other people from the group reported getting attacked - one was a little girl who was just over 3 years old, and the other was an adult, who was bitten and got her dress torn. So, I'm less excited about monkeys now.

These were the least skiddish deer I've ever seen. I assume they're used to getting food from people and are thus not really afraid of us.

And what's better than a monkey or a deer? How about both! Monkey ON a deer! The deer did not tolerate this behavior for very long, and when another monkey tried to also hitch a ride, it was quickly ejected by the deer kicking its butt into the air.

We continued on down along the path and got to the Swan Boats on the lake. Sarah and I shared a boat and paddled around for a while, taking pictures of the others in our group and lounging out on the water. We returned to the hotel, took a nap, ate lunch, and then we were off to the next stop!

We visited an edge of the Ba Vi National Park and our driver dropped us off near the top of a mountain, which presented a gorgeous view.

I also found many of this really cool fuzzy caterpillar in both places. It's about 2 inches long and the hairs stick out about half an inch from its body.

This is a really cool website with many insects found in Vietnam; I was able to identify a butterfly that I found, Cyrestis thyodamas, or Bướm cánh bản đồ in Vitenamese, but I couldn't find my caterpillar (they don't have caterpillar pictures) or this weird spindly-legged and barely visible insect that spanned about 3 inches (length and width).

Our group moved to a slightly different location on the mountain where we played in a waterfall for a little while.

Looking up:

Looking out:

And then we headed back into Hà Nội! I got a ride home from the same director that was in my meeting (I really should figure out his name) to find my normally packed house apparently completely deserted. It was a little lonely, but it did give me lots of time to do this blog update and upload a few photos (which takes an absurdly long time with this computer).

I'm not sure what I'll do today, but I'd like to get some groceries, some better shoes for the shower (I've been using my cloth flip flops), a bicycle and helmet, some other clothes for work (now that I know what the standard is for the Vietnamese staff members), a book to help me learn Vietnamese, perhaps some shelves to put my clothes on, and possibly some more cash. I also need to get some change, as my smallest denomination right now is 20,000 VND (roughly 1 USD, but that's too large for many things that expect exact change). I think I saw one of the other volunteers leaving the house a few minutes ago, so I may not be alone after all.

Love,

Jen

Safe and Sound

After 36 hours of travel, 20 of it spent in the air, I've made it to Hanoi. The house I'm in is more of a hostel setup, and the bathroom accommodations are definitely not what I'm used to. Also it is blazing hot. I felt much better after a shower, but now that my hair is dry and I've moved at all I'm starting to feel a bit overheated again. Hopefully I get used to this and don't die. My room is currently shared with two other girls - and as I suspected, we come from a variety of international volunteer organizations. In fact, I'm the only UBELONG volunteer at my house. The people here are from all over the world - some for just a few weeks, others for two or more months, like me. Some people who have or will be here for a while have their own rooms. I guess that would be nice, but I have no issues with a communal room. My only complaint is that I have a top bunk on the top floor of the building. which of course doesn't have a/c. And everyone else has mosquito nets... so I should probably get one. I wish that had been on the list of things I would want/need... I could probably have found something at a sports store back home.

My orientation starts tomorrow, so I still don't know much about my work. All I've seen so far is the airport, my house, and the road in between. It's a different world. The drivers are crazy - there are lines painted on the roads but they seem to be at best loosely adhered to. And stoplights are apparently only strictly adhered to in the presence of a police officer. Turn signals are, of course, completely optional, and there is absolutely no right of way law, or at least none that matters in the slightest. If you want to turn across traffic, you just go for it. Stick your nose out and push your way across until you're so much in everyone's way that they have to yield to you.

The timezone here is 14 hrs ahead of CA, so I really am on the opposite side of the world. The foliage is beautiful, but there is clearly a lot of poverty. Even the humblest of houses in the US would be a major luxury here. I'm eager to get out and experience the city itself but I'm not comfortable leaving the house until I know where I am, so I'm just going to stay around here for tonight. Maybe if some of the others in the house want to go out tonight and it's not far, I'll join them. I want to get to know the people I'll be living with.

I'll post pictures when I have them.

Love,

Jen

This is it!

(I tried to post this before I left, but my internet cut out. I'm in Singapore! The airport here is amazing. My internet access right now is totally free. And on the way back I'm planning to take the free tour of the city that they offer. I'll probably go take another nap, maybe in the transit hotel cause I have about 7 hours til boarding. I'll update more when I get to Hanoi.)

I'm leaving to get on the plane. Right now. My next post will most definitely be from a different country. Vietnam has a block on Facebook, so I have to say goodbye to that for the next two months. A forced vacation from my favorite form of social media.

I found my camera so I will be taking tons of pictures and trying to record what they all are (two notebooks for whatever, including keeping track of pictures!). And I have two 4GB memory cards, one 128 MB memory card (I'm so amused by this... it's about 3 years older than the other two memory cards), and 3 1GB flash drives. Presumably, even if I can't find a way to upload photos, that should be enough storage space for everything. But hopefully there will be photos coming throughout my time, and not just at the end. Not having my own computer with me will make that more difficult.

Ok, that's it! Hope you are all having a wonderful Memorial Day! I find it interesting that I'm leaving this country for one we had a war with on Memorial Day. It certainly makes me thoughtful about the actions our country has taken globally.

Love,

Jen

Preview Pictures!

I give up on predicting and planning when I'll post.

UBELONG cofounder Raul Roman was over in Southeast Asia recently and took a bunch of pictures in Hanoi! So I thought I'd share the link. I found the pictures very helpful for me in easing some of the stress I was feeling about the trip.

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.129183970463655.18652.127245993990786

Addresses

I lied. I have one more quick update. I'm asking for addresses of anyone who wants me to try to send them a postcard from Vietnam. The best way is to email them to me at jennifer.du.mond@gmail.com. If you don't email me an address, even if I know what your address is, I most likely won't try to send a card. It's the best way to remind me and let me know that you want something.

That being said, I hear the postal service is pitifully inconsistent. So I will try but I can make no promises.

Love,

Jen

Pre-departure update

(Tuesday, May 24)

It's update time. It's currently 2:20am east coast time and I'm so excited for everything that has and will happen that I can't sleep. It's kind of frustrating. Anyway I got my visa after much holmesing - 2 trips to San Francisco, 2 stops at the same ups store, 1 totally useless stop at a post office, forgotten passport, stop at kinkos to scan the then collected passport, and got to the consulate so that by the time I left it was only 5 mins 'til they would close the window. Also realized after the first time I started to walk away that I had probably just requested a 1-month visa, which wasn't gonna cut it. But, after 4 hours of driving up and down the peninsula, I got it all done. And it even made it back to me earlier than expected and is ready for me at home.

I also had some shopping I needed to do - my dress code is "business casual" but since I've been working in a lab (and before that, a toy store) my wardrobe wasn't really up to snuff. But, I'm trying to save money for the many unemployed months ahead, so I did some thrift shopping, and it was amazingly successful! I also anticipate that I'll pick up some more things in Vietnam, but for now I know I have at least a week's worth of suitable outfits.

I also picked out my travel insurance and took care of the remaining health things and now I just need to pack! I still am kind of in shock at how soon this is all happening. In just over a week I'll be in Vietnam. Why didn't I spend more time with that expensive Rosetta stone software? I don't even know how to say hello... But I'll learn. I like languages and I tend to pick them up well, and I plan to take lessons while I'm there.

I'm slightly terrified because I feel like there are still a lot of unknowns, but I like adventure and I'm mostly really excited to get there and settle in.

And speaking of settling in, this has nothing to do with my trip to Vietnam, but I found a place to live in New Haven and I'm super stoked to settle in there and have a place to call my own (with roommates) and decorate and have dinner parties and all that jazz.

My future is too exciting. My head is buzzing imagining all the fun times in my future and I can't sleep. But I will try again now...

(continued, May 26)

The next big step is packing. I have photo copies for myself and my parents of all of my important documents. I have a (hopefully complete) list of all the things I still need to get, like stuff for my first aid kit and a watch (why don't I have one already??) and a new hard-case suitcase that I can feel secure about locking and leaving unattended.

I had a brief freak-out today when I saw a sign for the Winchester mystery house. I've been meaning to go but I haven't gotten around to it. And now I'm leaving California and I probably won't have a chance to go for quite a long time. Maybe ever. And there are a bunch of other things like that that I'm sad I'm going to miss. But I guess I can't experience *everything* life has to offer, I do have to make some choices. And right now I'm choosing Vietnam. And then Yale.

My going away party is on Saturday. Not everyone I wanted to attend can make it, and I'll be very sad to not get to say goodbye. But, given that everything and everyone is online now, it's not like anyone is totally out of touch. And I know there will be lots of great new people in my future, too.

But ultimately, I'm excited. It's going to be great. Hot and humid as hell (literally?) but great anyway. I think I'm not actually capable of imagining what this experience is going to be like, so I'll just have to let you know after I get there! And I will try to post lots of pictures, too.

Signing off until I get to Hanoi!

Love,

Jen

Am I ready?

I'm beginning to live up to my name.

It's been modified from its original version (and formatted to fit this screen) but the closest English meaning my name has at this point is "of the world". This summer, starting in just over a month, I will begin my journey to truly explore and appreciate the world.

I've traveled before, but never for more than three weeks at a time. I've never spent more than 10 days in any given place that wasn't my home. I've seen and experienced a good chunk of the world, but I haven't gotten to know it yet.

Starting May 31, I'll be leaving behind the glamorous life I have in the San Francisco Bay Area and travelling to Hanoi, Vietnam, where I will spend two months learning and helping in any way I can with a local public health agency.

I'm a little scared.

I've been meaning to participate in something like this for a very long time. I first thought about going into the Peace Corps back in high school, where one of the teachers was an alum of Harvey Mudd, my dream college, and had gone from there into the Peace Corps. I never told him so explicitly, but he was absolutely a role model for me.

In college it repeatedly came back to mind, but it wasn't until my senior year that I really revisited the idea. I applied (but was not selected) for a trip to Uganda that would follow a semester long course on HIV-AIDS. The Uganda trip would have been the first taste of volunteer life abroad, and the Peace Corps would have been a logical next step. When I didn't get selected for the Uganda trip I re-evaluated and decided that I could go straight into the Peace Corps after graduating and began the long application process. I got into the HIV class without the travel component by sheer luck and I think it's the luckiest I've ever been in my life. Maybe I would have ended up where I am now without that class, but the discussions we had and everything that I learned pushed me hard in the direction of public health.

I never finished my Peace Corps application, though. I got cold feet and wasn't ready to commit to 2+ years in a foreign country, away from everyone that I know and love. I looked into other volunteer programs and repeatedly revisited the idea, thinking that perhaps I would enroll in one of several "Masters International" programs - universities partner with the Peace Corps in a variety of disciplines, but for me it would definitely be a Masters in Public Health. I almost applied to those programs in the Fall of 2009. But I was a little behind on getting all of my stuff together and decided to wait another year.

By the fall of 2010, I was less convinced that I needed to have the Peace Corps component as part of my MPH. It was still a possibility, but I was still afraid of the time commitment. I was certain I wanted to apply to MPH programs, though, and I finally got everything together and got the applications in by mid-January.

In the meantime, I received my first message from Raul Roman, co-founder of UBELONG. I had not actively researched volunteer organizations in over a year, but apparently my Facebook profile still reflected my interests, because that is how Raul found me. I was taken aback at first, wary of this stranger soliciting my money for a volunteer organization that I had never heard of - but I did the research, and everything checked out. Despite the somewhat dubious introduction, I quickly became convinced that UBELONG was the answer to my time commitment and financial concerns about international volunteering. I selected a health project in Vietnam focusing on HIV and chose June and July - although the hottest time of the year in Vietnam - as the perfect time to go.

So now I'm in the midst of working out the final details for my trip. This morning I had my safety breifing with my project mentor and UBELONG co-founder, Raul, and in the next couple days I will be sending off my VISA application and picking a travel health insurance company and policy. I've gotten most of my vaccinations (just need to get another Hep B vaccination right before I leave), got my flights worked out, and my passport is ready.

Am I ready?

I'm excited and well prepared but kinda scared. This is a big step for me. I learned today that there WILL actually be other people in Hanoi at the same time, and there will actually be another public health volunteer for 6 weeks. I'm not sure if all of her 6 weeks are during my 8, but it will be nice to have someone else around who's doing similar things, even if it's only for part of the time that I'm there.

I can't wait to eat the food and drink the beer. Is it bad that I'm most excited about the things I will consume? I'm eager to meet the people and hopefully actually make a difference and be helpful, but I think the food and drink are the most reliable, and that's probably why I'm most excited for those.

I think that's probably enough for today. I'll probably post one more update before I leave, hopefully one shortly after I arrive, and I'll try to update weekly while I'm there.

Let me know if you have any questions, and I'll do my best to answer them.

Thanks for reading!

Love,

Jen