Thanksgiving

Last Thursday the foreign Ha Noi MCCers celebrated Thanksgiving Day with a traditional-ish meal (chicken because turkey is quite expensive, tropical fruit salad instead of cranberry sauce and green bean ice cream with the pumpkin pie) and the first carol singing of the season. It was fun to be together and practice some familiar rituals, even far from home.

The group included Hannah and me (the SALT couple); Derek, Ana, Lucas and Chase (CR family); Thadyus, Tra and Quinn (Derek's brother and family who also live in HN); Hiro and Sawako (MCCers from Japan); and Max (SE Asia MCCer extraordinaire). See us in Thanksgiving action below...

Sawako and Lucas prepare the green beans

Hannah and I are domestic goddesses

An di! (Eat up!)

Hannah (with Lucas's help) led us in some post-dinner Christmas song singing

More than just a host-family in VN!

So apparently I have some real family here too! (Though I should say my wonderful host-family is feeling more and more family-like all the time.) I actually knew this before coming but was just recently introduced to these relatives who live in Ha Noi.

The relation goes something like this: my mother's brother, Steve, married Therese, who is a Vietnamese woman born in Ha Noi. They met in France and continue to live there today. Therese's brother, Khang, also born in Ha Noi, now lives in Luxembourg and has a job that involves traveling to Viet Nam quite regularly. So last Friday Khang invited me to have dinner with him and his (and Therese's) cousin, Khoi, and his family. We had a lovely time and I hope to be in touch with them more in the future!

Khang also showed be around the neighbourhood where his family once owned most of the property. There home is long gone (following thier departure from Ha Noi around 1954), but we walked through an alley-way under part a new house that is now there, and he pointed out some still visible tiles where the floor of their kitchen once was! Wild.

Special thanks to Steve and Therese for making this new connection happen for me!

From left: Ly (Khoi's niece), Van Anh (olderst daugter), Khang, Khoi, me, Van (Khoi's wife)

Minh Chau (3rd daughter) and her father switch places behind the camera

JustPeace in Nepal

Between October 23 and 31, I traveled from Ha Noi to Katmandu, Nepal and back in order to attend a workshop put on by the Centre for JustPeace in Asia (http://www.daga.org/justpeace/index.html), a regional civil society organization. The group as basically a loose coalition of NGOs based in about 10 Southeast Asian countries. Representatives of these NGOs gather semi-regularly to share strategy, show solidarity and generally network. The theme of the 2008 workshop was “Our Stories, Our Challenges” and it focused on finding common ground through personal stories, moving from there to identify common challenges, which in turn led to discussion of future collaboration for the common goal of a truly just peace in SE Asia.

Half of my SALT assignment is working as an administrative assistant to Max Ediger, a long-term MCCer who has lived in SE Asia for the past 30 years. (And who incidentally is an old Bethel friend of my dad’s. It’s a small Mennonite world, as usual.) He was one of the main organizers behind the workshop, and so I got to tag along as the official note-taker and future report-writer (which I am now in the midst of) and also had the opportunity to take part in group work and discussion. SALT continues to be full of wonders!

Along with enjoying the beauty of the Katmandu valley as featured below:

The view from the lovey mountainside guesthouse where we stayed and held meetings

Lots of gorgeous Buddhist and Hindu temples everywhere

Me, Max and Co Bay (one of the national MCC staff) at the top of a very foggy mountain

…The workshop participants also spent a lot of time listening, presenting, discussing and, in the case of the photo below, singing in this conference room:


For me, the workshop was all together terribly interesting, rich and challenging. It was such a new and fascinating experience to be interacting with “primary sources” concerning peace and justice work. Not a professor or North American service worker coming home to share about their experience, but people who have actually experienced torture and been refugees and child soldiers, and yet they go on living and have a personal investment in working for peace for their people. The whole week was a quite a jumble of intense learning, which I could not lay out nicely for you even if I tried. So I will offer you some select bits of journaling…

29 October
…Bobby from Mindanao, Philippines talked about this square red, green and yellow scarf that his ethnic group has traditionally used for a variety purposes. It is usually worn around the head and then can be removed to shelter it owner from rain or sun, to use as a rug on which to offer Muslim daily prayers or to bind the wound of a comrade. Bobby was explaining different ways it can be wrapped around the head, but as he was attempting to demonstrate, he had to admit that he did not remember how to do any of the wraps besides the basic one because this tradition has been all but been replaced by the wearing of cowboy-style hats. Point about the loss of traditional cultures well made. So this was making me think about how frustrating it is that even those who desire to preserve “minority” wisdom are often so estranged from it that they cannot follow its teaching even though they want to. It is lost.
And I was thinking about this in context of the conference – how the “workshop style” is based on so many “majority” assumptions: Western intellectual style (critical, linier, systematic thinking), the masculine norm (the assumption that participants are free to leave home and family in order to attend), wealth (money necessary for international travel), citizenship status necessary for international travel (which many indigenous groups do not have), proficiency in English (the common language here, though it is no Asian person’s native language)... and I was thinking about how rotten it is that I can not even think of other ways to go about this kind of event. I was thinking about it especially in the context of the marginalization of the feminine in such a form but how the “alternative” wisdom is just not there, or at least not accessible to me. And so, like Bobby and his scarf, even though I want to use my tradition, it is lost to me. How can we ever recover these things once they slip unpassed though a couple of generations??…

30 October
…My conversation with Lek (see Lek and me in photo) and Saw Mort and the week altogether has been making has been making me think about how important it is not the get stuck in theory… which I get the
feeling (at least for me) might be a tempting thing to do. Like it seems easier to critique and lament the loss of “other” cultures as the West moves in with other Western folks, as opposed to actually talking with the “others” and having to realize the complexity of the issues that comes when one is working with multiple perspectives… especially when you are the majority person attempting to analyze the situation of the minority.
I feel like it’s easy to self-aggrandize, for example, believing that Western culture has the power to destroy Eastern culture. So even as I am being saddened and outraged by this situation of domination, I am also able to feel comfort in the power of my own culture. However, this self-important delusion is destroyed when I interact with people like Saw Mort and Lek who say actually, we like some parts of your culture and want to takes these parts on and work for our own goals; in claiming these, they reject the notion that Western culture is being imposed upon them. Whoo. So even as I’m dis-ing theory, there’s a load of it! Good to have both theory and practice, I suppose…

Plenty of thoughts bouncing around and contradicting each other nicely. I guess that’s what happens when you’re learning a million new things everyday! Seriously, I wish I could just take a break sometimes. So it goes. I feel so privileged to have had the opportunity to attend this workshop, and I hope the new ideas and feelings it stirred up with continue to stew and germinate... who know what will come out in the end… whenever that is!

Things I live for in Viet Nam

1) Eating a breakfast of either sticky rice with dried garlic and dried shredded pork or fresh French bread with a fried egg and sliced cucumbers slipped in the center, both of which Me Lien buys from venders on our street in the morning

2) Squeezing by motor bikes and cars at a stop light on my trusty blue bicycle, which constantly surprises me with its amazing balancing and maneuvering abilities

3) Checking my email in the morning and anticipating messages from home, where it is then bed time, so everyone has just sent their evening emails

4) Having moments of clarity where I (think I) understand clearly what my Vietnamese co-worker wants to communicate and I can fit it into professional sounding English

5) Talking in Vietnamese at lunch time and realizing that I can say more than last week

6) NAP TIME! Always a highlight. Depending on the day, sometimes the highlight.

7) Upon waking, savoring a cup of strong Vietnamese coffee with sweetened condensed milk or of green tea with the leaves floating free in the water

8) Laughing with Hannah, Ana and Co Giang (our Vietnamese teacher) in language class as we struggle to talk in Vietnamese about our lives and the sense of achievement when we’re understood and then again the hilarity of the verbal simplicity we’re forced into for lack of bigger, better words

9) Arriving home from work/school, getting a glass of water, some fruit or a cookie or some home-made yoghurt from the fridge and sitting down at the table with Me Lien to ask about her day and try to tell her about mine

10) Going upstairs to change clothes and then laying on my bed in front of the fan, closing my eyes and taking some deep breaths to decompress from the day and particularly the bike ride home in heavy traffic

11) Sitting at the kitchen table pealing and chopping cucumbers (my latest cooking specialty, though I do also still enjoy the tofu frying) while Me Lien moves about the kitchen performing various other culinary acrobatics

12) Saying “Chao Phuong!” when she (my sister) arrives home from university class around 6pm and always being surprised by her varying daily moods – sometimes singing a song about “Rosie Rosie Rosie!” and doing a little dance of greeting, sometimes lamenting her long and tiring day and bickering with her mother. In any case, I’m always happy to see her!

13) Following dinner, calling up the stairs, “Phuong oi! Rua bat!” (Dear Phuong! Wash dishes!) to the great amusement of my parents. (Phuong usually finishes eating quickly and goes to prepare to go out with her boyfriend for the evening.) And until she comes down to help, pretending to be deathly fatigued as I attempt to wash the dishes without her help. Also very funny to Me Lien and Ba Minh.

14) In the evening, sometimes family members will come over to sit around the kitchen table and talk and laugh and eat fruit. If I’m home, I usually join them for a bit, which always ends of being an entertaining experience for all involved, as I attempt to answer questions about Vietnamese food I think is “ngon lam” (very delicious), my “ban trai My” (American boyfriend), what dress I will wear to the upcoming wedding (it’s looking like it will be the “vay den” – black dress) and everything in between.

15) Doing yoga every night before bed and looking at the moon from our open flat roof

16) Laying down in the quiet, air-conditioned (shh, don’t tell the suffering service worker police!) bedroom I share with Phuong and closing my eyes on the day

The Fam*

Almost one month ago, I moved in with my Vietnamese host-family. Soon after, I started asking myself, how on earth did I get so lucky?? I think I can probably thank MCC’s extensive selection process for that, but I still just end up feeling ridiculously fortunate about getting to live with this ridiculously fabulous family!


My family includes my mom, Lien who I call Me (mother in Vietnamese), my dad, Minh who I call Ba (father), my 22-year-old sister, Phuong, and my 14-year-old brother, Son. Additionally, almost all of Me and Ba’s siblings and their families live on the same street we do, so there is always extended family in and out of the house. All together, it’s a really close family, and I feel so privileged to be invited into that in a small way.

The family owns a small electronic appliance store, which takes up most of the first floor of the house. The set up is something like this: you walk in to the shop from the street, then if you continue back into the house, you enter the kitchen. So we’ll be sitting around the kitchen table eating a meal and someone will give a call from the shop, so Ba or Me will get up and go help them. Between the shop and the kitchen is a spiral stair case that core-samples its all the way up to the fifth floor.


So for quick virtual walking tour of the house: if you start the trek upstairs, you will first reach the second floor, which includes computer room (with internet), bathroom and living room… continuing to the third floor, you will find Phuong's and my room, my parents’ and Son’s room and another bathroom… then on the fourth floor is the family alter room and a storage room, plus a washing machine on the landing… and finally (all out of breath by now) the fifth floor is mostly open flat roof (with a tin roof over that), dived by an indoor landing – clothes lines for laundry on one side and a big open space on the other, which happens to be perfect for yoga. So there’s the house. Certainly different than what I’m used to but quite comfortable overall… not that me being comfortable is always the most important thing in this experience… but I’m not complaining too much.

To illustrate the feel of family life, I will try to narrate a typical evening around the house. I arrive home around 5pm, hot and frazzled after a 30 minute bike ride from work in rush hour traffic. Ba waves and says, “Chao, Rosie!” as he comes out to lock up my bike and waves me inside. Me comes to meet me as I walk into the house, asks me if I’m hot and tired, which I confirm, and maybe says some other things I do not fully understand but try to respond to in a reasonable way. Below is be in my full biking gear. And yes, I am also considering robbing a bank if MCC does not increase my PDA pretty soon!


I go upstairs to change clothes and say hi to Son as I pass by the computer room where he is probably playing World of War Craft. I then return downstairs to help Me and usually Phoung cook dinner. The process always involves preparing several dishes, made up of vegetables and meat sometimes mixed together and sometimes not. Plus rice, or course. In any case, almost always delicious. In the kitchen, I specialize in pointing at food and saying its name repeatedly, as well as chopping vegetables and frying tofu. Following one incident in which there was some lively music playing on the TV and I did a little dance while standing over the tofu, there is now always some “dau phu (doe foo) danzing!” involved when tofu is on the menu.

We usually sit down to eat around 6:30. Phuong graciously translates some parts of the conversation so that her parents and I can communicate in slightly more complex ways than what my Vietnamese skills usually permit. At other times, I just enjoy my food silently and revel in the occasional word or phrase I catch as it flies by. I really feel like an infant a lot of the time – not comprehending much but (hopefully) absorbing all the time. And sometimes, I appreciate not being expected to participate in conversation and tune out all together. The meal is always followed by fresh fruit, which is almost always pealed and eaten in interesting ways that incline its consumers to remain seated and eat slowly and savor the delicate flavor and the good company of other fruit-eaters around the table. Below is me stylishly sporting the peal of a "qua buoi" (pomelo in English - similar to a grapefruit) much to Me Lien's amusment.


Phuong and/or I wash the dishes… which also happens to include dancing on my part, this time “Rua bat (zu-ah bot) danzing!” (dish-washing dancing). The young people then tend to filter off, Phuong to go out with her boyfriend, Son to study or play on the computer or go school (I have not been able to figure the public school schedule yet… it seems to be happening all the time!), me to read or do homework or email. Sometimes around 9:00, Me, Son and I, plus Co (aunt) Tuyet and cousins Hai (16) and Be (13) will go for an evening walk, which is always enjoyable. See them below. I conclude most days with yoga on the roof, which I feel really thankful for. Me will sometimes come up to join in for a bit and to make sure I’m not falling off the balcony.


So there you have it, yet another long and rambling blog post! I hope this answers many of the questions that I have (understandably) been receiving. Thanks you to everyone who has been emailing and (even better!) writing me letters. I really appreciate it. Xin chao (good bye and hello) for now!


*Thank you to my dear friend Rachel Yoder for her creative abbreviating effect on my vocabulary, e.g., the “fam,” of course, stands for the nuclear family unit. I think of you every time I say it.

Coming very soon... really!

Hello friends! So I have seriously been working on this latest blog post for a week now... but due to technical, logistical and free time difficulties, it is yet to be published... and is still not being published. And I realize that no one is expecting me to keep the updates coming at a particular pace, but lots of interesting things have been happening, and I've been getting lots of interested emails, and I just wanted to get it out there that I am doing very well, enjoying family and work and other things for the most part, and I want to tell you all about it... not that that's really possible. BUT there really is more coming soon!!

Vietnamese+biking+glimmerings=???

Today I write from the Mucus Café. That's right, like snot in your nose. Contrary to its name, it is in fact a lovely spot that's just down the ally from Kim Ma House, the MCC house. Today is Hannah and my last day staying there with Derek, Ana, Lucas and Chase before moving in with our host families, and I've been meaning to stop in since we first walked past it almost three weeks ago, and I have not been working all week because of lack of tasks for me to do there plus two days of holiday... that all goes to say that I am here and happily updating all of you on my life in Hanoi over the past two weeks!

So on Monday, August 25, Hannah, Ana and I started Vietnamese classes at Hanoi University. So far we have learned lots of useful things like hello, what is your name, where are you from, what is your job, and just this morning, "I need to go to the bathroom"...and then upon my return, "There is no toilet paper in the bathroom." Deep learning. And plenty of laughing too. It's so interesting to notice how culture is built into a language and a language built into a culture. For example, when saying "hello," the speaker must name herself with an age-relative pronoun, say hi, then name the listener with the corresponding age-relative pronoun. So when I say hello to Ana, I say "Em (naming me as a person who is talking to someone older than me but not as old as my parents) chàu (hi) chi (naming Ana as a woman of that age). You use these different pronouns to indicate age whenever you are talking to or about anyone. Age and the hierarchy is establishes is very important in Vietnamese culture and you're reminded of it every time you open you mouth. Language is such a powerful tool... and it makes me think about ways Anglo culture is built into my mother tongue... hmm. Below is a photo of the three students with our teacher, Giang (pronounced "Zaung" English style) this morning after class.


September 2 is Vietnam's Independence Day, as in when it declared independence in 1945 from colonial France, as well as from the Japanese occupation in effect at the time. This fight for independence and the following American War ("Vietnam War" is you speak American) are just the last two efforts in a long series of fights for independence since Vietnamese civilization first emerged around 2000 BCE. According to Lowell (the outgoing MCC country rep), if you condense Vietnam's history down into 100 years, it has only been an independent nation for 6 of those (I'm pretty sure I'm remembering those numbers correctly... if not, don't blame Lowell.) To me, this kind of puts the US's whole dramatic Vietnam War complex down to size... and really places a lot of historical drama in a much broader context than I'm used to thinking in. When your country is merely 2.25 centuries old, every decade counts. When you've got 40 centuries behind you... not so much. And it also makes all the buzz about "development" and the influx of Western culture around here right now seem maybe not so significant. Vietnam has absorbed foreign influences before and as of today, has still managed to maintain its own distinct culture.

Hannah and I celebrated the big day with a maiden (pardon the sexist, gendered language) bicycle adventure. See the photo in the previous post to remind yourself what Hanoi traffic looks like... then imagine two little white girls entering the fray, sporting shiny bulbous helmets and ill-fitting bikes. And check out the photos below to see me rearin' to go... and then us upon arriving back home, safe but frazzled. Actually the straight forward biking (turning is still a little iffy) was quite comfortable and a fascinating experience. As a biker in North America, even though I have bike lanes and paths and am protected by traffic laws, I am always "in the way," cars are always angry at me for being on "their" road. Here, if bike lanes are present, they are fair game for anyone and everyone, there is no such thing as a smooth path or sidewalk and traffic laws are generally optional; however, because everyone is always in everyone's way, no one bothers getting angry about anything on the road! EVERYONE has a right to be a part of traffic. Quite empowering really.



I've spent most of the past two weeks feeling pretty optimistic about life here... right on track with the culture shock curve, I suppose. Great. I continue to be thankful for reminders to live fully in each moment... but am increasingly finding it helpful to embrace even those moments when I'm not intensely experiencing my environment and personal state (which is most of the time)... and living in those moments as well... because they're still happening in the present. Or something. I was particularly inspired along this vein of thinking while recently reading The River Why by David James Duncan, which was given to me by a dear and wise friend upon my departure. In this point in the story, the main character, Gus, is hiking along a river with neither a reason nor destination he can articulate. But as he listens deep down, he feels drawn to trek onward. He says:

"...the glimmering began again; but when I'd take a stab at the thing that caused it, try to name it or even guess at its nature, then the glimmering abruptly stopped. So I called in Nameless ... still [I] caught nothing I could keep hold of. Just walked, watching as the sun made and melted prisms over the stairs of white water" (234-236).

As I stubble along here in Vietnam (or really anywhere) I feel like each step follows the last one and I continue forward and in that way am led... and when I try to articulate WHY things in my life were or are or will be, I end up confounded, frustrated and scared because in my noisy scramble, I can't hear those glimmerings. So it's nice to think about letting go of the power that articulation gives me and just relaxing a little and enjoying the scenery along the way.

Now that we're all feeling very deep and contemplative, I have one more thing to share... I have finally realized my lifelong dream of maternity and it's a boy!!


Ok that's not true. This is little angel is Chase. Sometimes we like to hang out. Especially when Ana is feeling tired of carrying him around and when I need the ego boost that walking along the sidewalk with a cute baby gives you. So many smiles from everyone you see!

Oriention... Vietnam... Go!

Greetings from Hanoi! As I near the end of my first week here, I figure it is about time I make my first blog post. Entering the blogosphere will be yet another cultural adjustment, so please bare with me as I learn. Here it goes...

Between August 9 and 16, I along with about 100 other SALTers, IVEPers and YAMENers enjoyed MCC orientation in lovely Akron, PA. (quick acronym translation: SALT = Serving and Learning Together, IVEP = International Volunteer Exchange Program, YAMEN = Young Anabaptist Mennonite Exchange Program, MCC = Mennonite Central Committee). IVEP and SALT are opposites, meaning IVEP brings young people from around the world for a year of service in North America, while SALT sends from North America to a variety of global locations. YAMEN is a newer program that does South-to-South exchange, e.g., Africa to Asia. It was wonderful to share knowledge about our home countries with each other, as well our common excitement and anxiety. Here is an excerpt from my journal from August 10 that I think embodies the richness of insight I found could come with honest cross-cultural conversations:

I had a really interesting conversation with Maria (name changed) who is from Jordan about how she is really nervous about interacting with American men/scared about being around them at all. Apparently where she is from, people think that men in the US regularly grab women, stuff them in cars, drive them away and rape them. Unfortunately this very truly does happen... but not to the extent that Maria fears. So with very simple English, though hers is really quite good and she learning SO fast, I tried to explain that she does not need to feel severely scared for her safety while traveling to work or being there during the day. And then I was thinking about the frightening perceptions of the Middle East I have, and I tried to explain this and ask her if she feels scared being there all the time. She said no, and so I tried to make the connection that it's the same here - like I don't feel scared being out by myself and it's more about stereotypes and misperceptions. I don't really feel like I did a great job of explaining all this, but in the end she said thank you a lot and said she felt much calmer.

Noticing how her fears about America seemed so ridiculous to me but so real to her made me wonder how ridiculous my perceptions of other places around the world must be compared to the lived reality. The week was full of countless such learnings from other new MCCers and MCC staff. Along with the education, I felt it was a really valuable transitional space - not home but not my SALT location. There was also time for yoga on the lawn, a Latino dance party, and tons of photos snapped with new friends, including Edder from Colombia who is going to Goshen!



Then on Saturday the 16th, I was off for 33 hours of travel! We stared with a group of about a dozen travelers and at each stop along the way, it was time to say good bye to a few. As cliche as it sounds, it really seemed like we'd all known each other for much more than just one week! My dear fellow Hanoi SALTer, Hannah Forsyth, and I made the trip together all the way, and it was great to have a travel buddy the whole time.

We arrived nicely exhausted but in good spirits and with all our luggage. We were very fortunate to have a very uneventful and smooth journey. Hannah and I even got in a little bit of yoga with some new friends from Japan and the US during our layover in LA!


Since arriving in Hanoi, Hannah and I have been staying at the MCC House, a.k.a, Kim Ma House after the major street it is off of. This is where the country rep, Derek Hosteter, and his family, partner Ana and sons Lucas (4.5 years) and Chase (8 months), live. Paul Strietelmeier is a new three-year MCC who will be teaching university English classes is here for week too. Lowell Jantzi, the outgoing CR, is also here for about two weeks to orient us all. So far, we have all spent a lot of time at the MCC Hanoi office meeting the local staff and learning about MCC's experience in Vietnam over the past 50 years (all very interesting and inspirational stuff), spent a day riding around Hanoi on motor bike (see photo of Hanoi traffic below!) and visiting some important historical spots (the city will celebrate its 1000th birthday in 2010!!), and eating lots and lots of delicious food (with three to five different dishes every lunch and dinner, I have seriously not eaten the same thing twice!).



Altogether, the week has been very full, very disorienting, very orienting, tiring, exciting, meloncoly, happy, scary, and delicious. Sometimes I feel each emotion in turn and sometimes all together. Often I can't really tell how I feel... and then I simply exist and that's ok too. In any case, I am very glad that I am here and I feel sure I will continue to live bathed in a richness of emotions and experiences as long as I am here. As usual, the universe is very good to me.

Wow, I didn't really mean to write this much right off the bat! To conclude, here are some photos from Bat Trang, a village where families have been making ceramics for the past 800 years! We visited it this morning and toured the workshop where 10,000 Villages purchases all its Vietnamese ceramic ware. It was such a crazy feeling to see the finely painted blue and white tea pots and cups I recognize from the store at home... in their original home. The man who runs the workshop is the 18th generation to do so... what a feeling of rootedness to a physical place and to a craft. I can't even imagine. It was a beautiful experience to feel invited into that in a very small way with tea (or course), a personal tour, a free item for each of us, and a warm invitation to visit anytime we are in Bat Trang. I certainly plan on enjoying that invitation before too long.