I like to ride my bicycle I like to ride my bike....

So it's about time I got my booty in shape for the AIDS LifeCycle fast approaching in June....
So I found this awesome group called Cycling for the Environment. They meet every Sunday, take a bike ride and go clean up trash! This weekend we cleaned a canal, and also did a survey of the people in the neighborhood to learn about their options for trash collection and their knowledge of Environmental programs in Hue.
Morning well spent!

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....