On traffic accidents to avoid / traffic accidents to seek out

Hue is full of cyclos: bicycle taxis with a rider in back, and a big cushy seat for the passenger in front. More than a personal taxi, the cyclo is a taxi for any and every event that life may bring. You'll see just about anything imaginable in a cyclo, defying laws of space, physics, time. Yes, I mean this. If a family moves to a new home, you'll see a parade of cyclos: the first cyclo with their furniture (dining room tables, wardrobes, mattresses, headboards) then their suitcases, then maybe some potted plants (cyclo driver peering out from between palm fronds), then the entire family (of course in one cyclo, pouring out like a clown car).

When I am riding by such cyclos on my little blue bicycle, I can't help but think of my own mortality. How long can any one cyclo driver continue to challenge the laws of nature? Every cyclo driver must have had at least one accident, one situation in which the laws of nature won? This led me to think about cyclo collisions I would definitely want to avoid:

-Cyclos loaded with about 15 cooler-sized blocks of ice...burrrrr...but this one's easy to avoid because you can tell where he's been by following the drips of water on the pavement as the ice melts
-Cyclos loaded with piping for underground sewage pipes. Ow. Yuck.
-Cyclos loaded with three months work of products made by HWH Shop (where I work). Three months worth of work in the hands of one skinny cyclo driver...ahhhhhhh

Clearly, there are cyclos to avoid. However...seeing as how cyclos carry EVERYTHING, there are, in face, some cyclos with with an accident may be kind of fun:

-Cyclos carrying a heap of bedding and pillows. Bouce!
-Cyclos carring heaps of fruit. Like being in the ball pit at a fast food place but with oranges.

THE LIFE.
I got to be the guinea pig for a new tour tubing down the perfume river. I gave it a thumbs up.

I'm a really person! Maybe.

Today I felt like a real person. Why? Because my phone rang hella times. I'm meeting people, making contacts, making friends. Usually I feel like I'm walking into walls...because I am. I don't think that I've really overcome that entirely yet, but after 3 months I'm seeing some growth. Slow, but growth just the same.

...Right now the weather is taking a turn...in a period of a couple minutes, the sky can turn black, the thunder starts clapping and then it DUMPS rain. In 30 minutes the streets can be full up to mid-shin. This kind of reflects my life here. One minute it's sunny and I feel like a real person, then completely unexpectedly, reality comes in a big dramatic dump and I realize I'm still not in my element.

All those snails were in my belly

The Shady Scale to live by

Note to self: there are varying levels of shady-ness in terms of street food.

So far so good in terms of my street food adventures in Vietnam... until yesterday I was taken down by a sweet potato. I quarantined myself to my room, knowing that if I let myself out, I would probably go buy another sweet potato, because I'm dumb like that, and it was delicious. So I've decided to live by a new rule: not all shady street food is created equal. Street food that gets multiple points on the shady scale is not OK. 1-2 points, just fine.

Here's my shady food point system:

-One point if it's cooked on a little grill on the curb (only a few inches from the ground)

-One point if the person who's cooking it is squatting on the ground

-One pont if you eat it squatting on the ground

-One point if there's raw veggies (...so all Pho)

-One point if there's unidentifiable meats or other ingredients

-One point if the food originally came from the ground and is not peeled (ie potatoes, but if you peel it, then it doesn't get a point)

-One point if the vendor originally tells you they don't have something, but the a few moments later, they tell you they do

-One point if the vendor is unphased if the food drops on the ground

So according to this scale, my sweet potato has 4, potentially 5 points. If only I had this reference yesterday.

You heard it here first

Today I bicycled to the Japanese Bridge, where I had my palm read buy a tiny, weathered old woman sitting on the bridge. I decided to have my palm read mostly because this woman was so incredibly interesting to me. The only elderly woman I've met in Vietnam who speaks fluent English, she told me she was married to an American army captain, who died in the war in 1968. They had no children together, and now she spends her days sitting on the bridge telling fortunes. Apparently people come there specifically for her readings. I feel as though she would make for such an interesting character in a novel... her life seems so unexpected and different, and contains so many contradictions... A Vietnamese married to the enemy, widowed by the hands of her own people, now toothless and telling fortunes to tourists in fluent English, or to locals in Vietnamese. So much life in such a little lady.

So, here's the course of my life, according to her:
Next year I'll date an older man, 30, who I will meet through my new job. Then at 25 or 27 (unclear) I'll marry a Japanese. We will live in the US. I'll have two boys around the age of 35, and one girl at 40. I'll be successful in my work, and I'll work very hard.

Lets see....

B52 and other confusions

I am moving into a new apartment, and the address is B52. I choose to think of it in the context of the Love Shack.
So I am moving into the Love Shack. Fabulous.

On another note: an update on daily hilarity.

Today for lunch I ate:
-Banh Nam - described in the menu as " Rice cakes could be eaten more properly for those who are under the weather with a large number of cakes."
-Banh Ram It - described as "crispy like a broken bubble!!!"
-Banh Uot - "Is rolling on and on"

Then I went shopping a bought a shirt and the tag said
EUR: L
USA: 4
MEX: P

So I am simultaneously large, small and petite. Was it because I was under the weather with a large number of cakes?

KARATE

I signed up for Karate classes. And today I paid the $2/month fee so I'm committed. Tomorrow I get my suit and I'll no longer be the only one wearing black sweatpants in a room of people in white karate suits. If only I could stop being blonde too...

So far I've perfected: how to count to 10 in Vietnamese. How to say "up". How to sweat a lot. I have no idea how old the other students are because I am terrible at guessing ages of Vietnamese. I told a friend her brother looked 40. He is 23. I thought someone's sister was 12. She was 16.

Hoping that my Karate skills will improve but also my skills in being more Vietnamese.

Class is at 5am. Which doesn't actually bother me too much - the middle of the day it often reaches about 100 degrees so it's really not possible to do anything at all. So my day happens early in the morning and late at night.

KARATE! Watch out.

One month in

One month in...
It doesn't really feel like it. One month I am still getting lost and ordering butter instead of beef soup...the wrong accent can be disasterous. The project manager's name is Ngoc, which if pronounced wrong means "stupid". Luckily, I can't really pronounce either so I just say my own version of his name which means nothing. Which I think is better.

Although I am somewhat of a confused oburoni, it's comfortable here. Well, not the weather, but life in general. Vietnam is an interesting country in that its growing economically very quickly. At least that's what I've seen from my small corner of Hue. In Hue there are all the aspects of a highly developed country: large hotels, offices, roads, electricity...but then there are also power cuts, street food shacks, and traditional villages a 10 minute bike ride away.

Being an oburoni (foreiger) is also a complicated experience. There are a large amount of tourists, but also an expat community. I'm not sure where I fit in, somewhere in the middle. I'm interested in this expat community from an almost anthropologic approach...they all share a certain traits - individualism, headstrong, maybe cynicism. I don't know what the right adjectives are but I definitely feel that there is something that brings them together - something that they share that makes them want to live as an oburoni forever. I imagine its a strange way of life. Even if you've lived here for 20 years, have a Vietnamese spouse and maybe even children, on your way to the grocery store you undoubtly will hear "Hey you, where are you from"?!

Which brings me to another point. "Hey you!". I feel somewhat accosted when this is yelled at me in English, but I think the aggressiveness of it is mostly because of the way the Vietnamese phrase translates into English. In Vietnamese, there are endless pronouns. Gendered pronouns for people older than you and younger than you, and different pronouns depending on how large the age difference is. I believe there are also different pronouns for your mother's brother, your brother's cousin...on and on, but those I haven't really had to use. Back to "Hey you". Vietnamese is all about the pronouns, and I hear people around me addressing each other with pronouns rather than their names. While in English I'd probably say "hey Emmy", in Vietnamese, I would say be "chi o". Which directly translates to "hey you [girl who is slightly older than me]". AHhh this turned into a grammar lesson. Which should end here.

Tomorrow I'm off to the beach for a festival! Who knows. I hear there will be good food so I'm sold.

Hang Sang

I have named my bike: Hang Sang, meaning first class.

Because it is a first class kinda transportation. Me and Hang Sang cut a fine figure rollin' around Hue.

The joys of living in a country where you don't speak the language

I have found that living in a country where you don't speak the language makes for many surprises.

For example, today I got a BIKE!

Where did it come from? Who? Why?

"Halie, Bike!"

Enough said. I will embrace this surprise and hope that the others are equally fabulous.

...In time I did figure out where it came from, but I prefer to think of it as a gift from the bike gods.

Cruising the streets of Hue on my mysterious new bike gives me the feeling of being so incredibly alive.

HUE

Hue!

Here I am in the city of Hue, Vietnam! Yesterday we went straight to the workshop for the Healing the Wounded Heart Shop, where I'll be working. The artists all came to get us at the airport, and are a beautiful group of people. Many of them are deaf or mute, so most of the communication is done in their own unique version of sign language...which will probably be easier to learn than Vietnamese!

I'm in a hotel for the first week and then moving into my new place...probably a little room above the shop. I have only seen it from outside but I'm enchanted already...Its in a building covered with bougenvelia, on a busy little street corner where vespas zip around and people squat eating pho'.

I've got to get to work! Some documentarists from the LA times are here filming a piece about Agent Orange and incorporating the Healing the Wounded Heart Shop. So filming with them this morning. Got to go get pretty!