Luke and Birdy Talk About Regrets

Birdy And Thuy

Luke Stays Engaged At The Grand Opening

     I know we make it sound easy, but living in Vietnam is actually difficult. There are endless things that crawl under your skin and irritate you until you feel like you're done for. Not bugs- emotions. Though there are plenty of creative insects as well. Birdy-in-the-mine lets you know something's bothering her fairly quickly. I found that the things that trouble me didn't pop up until they were good and ready. I was good and ready to leave at that point.

     As much as we would like to be out and about getting to know our new country, we're limited. We live in a rather isolated province with very little cultural or preserved historic sites. We go everywhere by motorbike, so we have to stay fairly close to home. Our little bike is not the road-trip worthy hogs of the wild west. It certainly wouldn't protect us from the free-for-all on Vietnam's main highways.

School Chairman Speaking
At The Grand Opening

     The language barrier continues to be one of the largest opponents to our freedom. People here to have some English, but it's extremely basic and dwindles exponentially the further you get from town. Vietnam is a very safe country (with the exception of theft), but I feel inadequate when I try to order food or ask for directions or say hello. The complex social age and gender hierarchy doesn't make it any easier.

Our Pretty Birds- Slaty Headed Parrots
(they bring some life into our house)

     What this means is that we spend most of our time at home or at work. Our social life revolves around work, and work is stressful and confusing on the best of days, overwhelming and ridiculous the rest of the time. There doesn't seem to be any discernible reason for why things are done a specific way. Why are things never done on time? Why don't teachers apply the new methodologies they've been told to? Why does someone keep taking things from my room and moving stuff around?!?!

All Dressed Up For Work

     Of course, things here are done very purposefully. The problem is that their methods and approaches are so different from everything we're used to, it seems as if nothing is happening half of the time. It's been a month since school started and we still don't have a clear definition of who is in charge of the school. Is it the principal? Is it the board? Is it the chairman? Is it my mom? And when will we have a behavior plan set up so we can deal with kids spitting in other students faces and throwing cushions out the windows?

     So, yea, I had a manly sort of breakdown. I took on an impossible task and realized it was actually impossible and I should be somewhere making money and eating tacos. (They don't have tacos in Vietnam. Fancy that.) Yet, the truth is that this project is not impossible. It's just way more challenging than anything I've been faced with before, and that's good for me. I need to be challenged, to face the unknown, to try to navigate my way through unfamiliar ground.

     Birdy misses burgers and her family. I miss sushi and libraries. We're both struggling to see this place as home, temporary though it may be. We're learning a lot about ourselves (especially how much of a control-freak Birdy secretly is), and I think it's making us stronger. You know what they say: "What doesn't cause you to kill your spouse, isn't that big of a deal." Seeing as we're both still here, I think we're going to be just fine.

Ribbon Cutting Ceremony
(the ribbon was absurdly long and was cut by six men
and my mother... she was thrilled)

I just wish people would leave my classroom alone!

The Aviary
(built by me and Armando)

Birdy Learns the Woes of Teaching

Foreign Staff Teaching Students
To Make A Line

     I remember when my mom and I flew down to visit Tuy Hoa last December. The project seemed daunting, promising, and challenging. These days we receive an embarrassing amount of praise and there's a lot of excitement over the direction things are going. Down the ground, however, we spend quite a bit of time swimming through the murkier aspects of starting up a school.

My Hallway (my room is the room at the far end)

     Most schools have an overly explicit student handbook, a staff manual, a heavy-worded vision and mission. We don't. We don't have a handbook or a staff manual or a vision or a mission. We have intentions, an abundance of clueless but well-intended quasi-administrators, and a serious need for a behavior plan. Yea, we need one of those, too.

     It seems to me that a lot about being a teacher is navigating campus politics. Usually these are pretty light and unimportant (like the length of a man's hair) and give little cause for anything more than sighs or grumbles. The trouble with our particular project here is that none of those politics are visible or open for discussion. Nor are they written down anywhere. For the foreign staff this is particularly frustrating, because we don't know what's expected of us or our colleagues. Yay for ambiguity!

Our New Building
(so shiny!)

Birdy Teaching
(she's not normally that crooked,
she's just bending over)

    What drew me to the project was the opportunity to train teachers. It seems weird for a second-year teacher to be out and about telling other teachers what to do, but I came into it for some very specific reasons. First of all, there is nothing in Vietnam like the type of multi-sensory, multiple-intelligence oriented teaching approach that I was trained in. Secondly, they have coconuts here. Third (thirdly?), this is exactly the sort of work I want to be doing when I grow up. Finally, most importantly, I know how much teaching something helps the teacher learn. If I teach about geology, I learn about geology. If I teach about history, I learn about history. Teaching something forces us to evaluate what we know and how we're approaching our subject. Why not teach about teaching to learn about teaching? It's working. I already learned I like purple and use the word 'taco' a lot.

     Birdy has been volunteering as a teacher at the school, teaching 1st grade ESL. She loves kids, has a lot of experience with day care, and recently told me, "Yea, I definitely don't want to be a teacher." Teaching is hard work, and consists of a lot of failure and frustration. She doesn't believe me when I tell her how proud I am of her, how impressed I am by the amount of effort she's putting into teaching and by how successful she's been. She can't see her success. I think that must be the thing that drives people out of teaching more than anything else: the inability to acknowledge success amidst so much error and frustration. It's not easy. It's the little victories that count. It's the ability to pretend the kid who just pranced around the room without permission is a genius deep, deep, deep down inside. It's also about getting kids to do ridiculous things for your amusement, and tying it in to the lesson.

Ahhh... I love teaching!

Luke Shows You the Sights

     Life goes on as usual-like as it can be. In the interest of satisfying your visual curiosities, here's a visual update on the sights and colors of Tuy Hoa and our little adventures in Vietnam. Enjoy!

Christina And My Mom
(look at the beautiful sky!)

Hallway at Duy Tan School

View From School Hallway

Duy Tan Primary/Secondary School
(summer 2012)

Yep, They Fish From These
(and manage fishing lines and reach their boats)

Diana Is Excited To Get Out Of The Sun

At The Market

Flower Stall

Deeper In The Market

Fresh Fowl At The Market

It's Curtains For Me!

Everywhere We Go, We Go On Two Wheels

The Beach

The Beach After Work

Having Dinner
(rats charged us underfoot,
Angela was unimpressed)

Tuy Hoa

The Mountain Was Happy
To See Us

Leaving Phu Yen Province
(going to Da Lat)

Our Tour Bus

A House

Waterfall Near Da Lat

Unfinished, Canceled Project
(Vietnam is filled with these)

Cable Car Ride to Vinpearl Land

Bizarre Boat Building (it's stone and cement)

Sam At The Beach North of Tuy Hoa

Near The Waterfall
(Da Lat)

Off To Ha Long Bay (from my visit, December 2011)

Birdy and Luke Get Sick

Luke And Birdy In Da Lat

Oh, the joys of getting sick! Our bodies are definitely still adjusting to the drastic change in climate, food and culture. Some days it is difficult to tell what's causing us to feel so poorly. It's a good guess that it's a mixture of any of the above, if not all three.

Happy Baby
(our Vietnamese roommates have moved
back to Hanoi, and Birdy no longer has access to cute baby therapy)

Birdy has been sick more times than she can count. She can count pretty high, too, so don't let her abhorrence of math fool you. Symptoms of living in Vietnam seem to include:

• Headaches
• Stomach aches
• Constipation
• Diarrhea
• Migraines
• Swollen lymph nodes
• Sore muscles
• Sore jaw
• Swelling
• Profuse sweating
• Irritated eyes
• Difficulty sleeping
• Weight loss
• Sun burn

... among other things.

You're Never Far From Your Food Source
(or the limitless pathogens and pesticides it's doused in)

Looking Good In Orange
(snorkeling trip in Nha Trang)

     Going to the doctor is an interesting experience here. We've been a few different times, but we visit the private clinic. The public hospital is cheap... and unreliable. Our fellow English teachers visited the hospital when they first arrived. They drew blood from one of them, with a used syringe. The clinic, on the other hand, is about two minutes from our house and equally inexpensive. When Birdy's stomach was revolting against her authority, she paid $3 US for the visit, $7 for an ultrasound, $4 for blood work, and roughly $7 for a plethora of antibiotics.

A Bay Along the Coast
(between Tuy Hoa and Nha Trang)

 
     And that's how it's done here: with tons of drugs. Are you sick? Here are seven different pills. Why? Because the doctor says so. They don't really tell you what's wrong with you specifically ("your stomach is confused," "you have bacteria") and are amused by the amount of questions we would ask when diagnosed and assigned enough drugs to kill an ivy-league college dorm.

     It's a good thing this country is so beautiful, or we might well go crazy. We don't feel crazy already. Not at all.