It's only been nine days. Nine days since I stepped onto the plane at 1:30 AM in San Francisco. Yet for me it has felt like an eternity and a half. Everyday is a journey into a new frontier, challenging mentally and physically (by way the humidity sapping my strength throughout the day). But, hey, I asked for this fellowship, this journey. Up to now a lot has transpired and I still have yet to thoroughly process all of it. The first chapter of this journey has been completed, so it's now time to think about chapter 2 - after resting up at my home village.
This last night I got about three hours of sleep, along with about four hours of stirring around in bed. I got up an hour later than my brothers as I wanted to get a little more sleep after a near sleepless night. Grabbing all my dirty clothes I hung on a hanger near my bed, I went down to the washing room and hand washed my clothes. Noticing that I had forgotten to bring my clothe-hangers down, my brothers called me up to get them. I noticed all the children still tending to their chores here and there, making sure that things were tended to, as their mothers would often shout at them if they did not do their chores. After, I went back to my room and grabbed my camera, deciding that I wanted to take some more photos of the site (which I am currently uploading onto Flickr) and take a video surveying the site. I ate breakfast, which this morning, composing of pasta, sweet milk, and french bread. I grabbed my books and notes and headed off to the library to teach my first class.
The children in this first class were the three children whose grade averages were below average than their peers and thus were placed in this class for extra help with English. One of the classmates currently was studying for the huge university tests going on tomorrow and so I ended up teaching two for this two hour session. I have found that teaching after some of my Vietnamese to English books has been the most effective way of teaching the material, on top of supplementing conversation, pronunciation, and usage of media. A lot of the students really appreciate the work I am doing for them and also joke at my Vietnamese much of time, as I still trying to learn how to correctly speak it, instead of fudging my way through with whatever words I think make sense when put together (which I have been doing my whole life!). I must say that my understanding of Vietnamese has improved probably more than 1,000% after coming here for these nine days, so I am definitely going to make enormous progress with the language by the time I am done. I finished the class and headed back to my room to rest for a bit.
I took to spending some solitary time outside, while many of the students were resting due to the heat. I sat upon a bench nearby the director's office and pulled out my laptop to read my email and such. By then, one of the university students named Bao had walked up the road and joined me to discuss one of her projects and also talk about a bunch of different things. She was a junior at the Hue College of Science and is currently studying what I believe is cultural studies, in the hopes of being able become a professor and teach. She is preparing to take an English test in the fall, so she asked me during my stay at the center to help her with speaking, as that was the area where she needed the most help in. She showed me one of her current projects, which was to translate an article in Vietnamese into English for a magazine. I looked over at her draft of the translation and helped her fixed some grammar and vocabulary errors and we continued to talk about education between our countries. My older then yelled out "Ben, lunch!" and so I said goodbye and ran off into the house to join my brothers.
During lunch the brothers talked about the exams occurring tomorrow, gossiping about this and that, joking, and also asking me bunch of questions. They view me, as they have said, as their very own genuine brother, and as such, treat me with the same level of respect that they treat each other. Nap time! Oh had I been waiting for it this whole day. I slept for about an hour and then got up to work on my lesson plan for the next class, which was for the high school aged children. This class in particular was fun as I spent some time playing music that the children knew, such as songs from the Beatles. We spent a long time on pronunciation and grammar, as many of the students expressed their frustration over the difficulty of English grammar. I too, had many times expressed frustration at not being able to fully translate into Vietnamese why certain rules are the way that they are. In that respect, we are both teaching each other. We finished up and I went back to finish packing my stuff for my trip back to my home village, which I actually thought would be tomorrow but my uncle called in to say that he was coming to pick me up. I waved the children goodbye, promised I would be back Sunday morning, and rode back to the village amidst and active Vietnamese population.
Sunshine, smoke, and life shrouded the way back to the village. The falling sun lighted a beautiful trail amidst the river crossings and the lush green fields spanned in all directions. That smell. The smell of the sea greeted us as we pulled up past the entrance of Hai Nhuan. I was home. Well... I now have two homes here I guess... Either way, it felt relaxing to be back, being bathed by the coolness of the nearby beach. I went over to my grandfathers house, noticing him on the porch and greeted him. A big smile on his face appeared and we talked for a long while. One of my cousins named Hung asked me to come out to the beach with him to talk. So I did, staring off into the sky, which at this time was filled with a yellow moon and stars all about.
Hung had also come back from the city of Hue, just like me. He was working and came back to relax. He told me much about his woes of living in Vietnam, being thirty with no wife, and no way of rising in the social ladder. He told me that he once was able to go to Australia with my aunts and said that he made about $3,000 dollars a month, which is thousands of times more than what he normally makes here. He tells that their just is no feasible way for working class people like him to move up the social ladder as the pay is too low to save enough to even invest in anything. The disparity between the rich and the poor is gargantuan and its continually growing. I saw his brothers pull up a gigantic net from the sea that they placed a while ago and saw a rather small catch - three small baby grabs and two small small fish. "This is typical" Hung said, "you can't live off the beach anymore." After joking around about all the girls that I have apparently been attracting on my way back, I stopped by my aunts house and stayed for a while, catching up on what transpired.
I returned back to my grandfather's house, where I am right now, on the front porch. I ate dinner, spoke about my week, and am getting ready to go to bed. I am looking forward to sleeping outside tonight, as sleeping inside is just unbearable. Its getting late and I need a good night's sleep! Stay tuned for an update on photos and a video.
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