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Sunday, November 22, 2009

Teachers' Day in Vietnam

I would be remiss if I didn't post something about Teachers' Day, which is celebrated on November 20, in Vietnam.The day began with seeing this beautiful butterfly. Such a symbolic beginning to a day honouring the transformational relationships that can exist between teachers and students.
Flowers are actually far more common than butterflies on Teachers' Day. Flowers are everywhere and students are very gleeful and sincere in wishing all teachers (even strangers in the hall) all the best and Happy Teachers' Day. Even Floor 5's ca phe establishment had a bouquet in honour ... I think I counted 10 kinds of orchids in this arrangement! Gorgeous.So much excitement in the halls! My class festooned our class with balloons and gave me a very thoughtful gift ... a keychain with a little chick on it. They had asked me about my unusual name when we first met last week, and so we had laughed at its uniqueness. Their gift made me laugh out loud. They gave Jeff, their other L6.1 teacher, a keychain with flip flops on it ... they had remembered that he said that most people in Vietnam drop the final consonants when saying his name, and the resulting word is the Vietnamese for sandals! We felt our class had really thought about our gifts and we were pleased that they had paid so much attention in class. In addition to the students' best wishes, our department put on a very nice spread catered by a top restaurant, and the president sent out a lovely message. All in all, it was a very interesting day and the tradition should probably be adopted in Canada. It is clear that euducation of young people is extremely valued here and teachers are very much respected in this culture. You may note that I have a non-Asian student in my class... Beatriz is from Belo Horizonte, Brazil. She is a lawyer and is a wonderful addition to this class. There is also a Taiwanese student, Jui, ... can you spot him?

He's the guy in the hoodie. He drives his motorbike for 2 hours every day to get to school (and class starts at 7:30) and then he has a 2-hour drive home where he puts in a full day of work as a manager of a company. Such dedication! Unfortunately a couple of students were missing that day. OK, have to go and make like a teacher and mark some compare/contrast essays!

Sunday Meandering and Musing

You just never know what a day will bring. Last Sunday I went on a tour of several pagodas in District 5. My nice xe om (motorbike taxi ) driver, Mr Nanh, took me on a tour of 5 pagodas mentioned in one of my guide books and I saw a lot. Today I thought I would visit the Jade Emperor’s Pagoda in District 1. It looked very interesting, and I thought I would go on the city bus, since I had just a single destination. I have mentioned the #34 bus before and sure enough one came by as I was crossing Nguyen Van Linh, the main street bisecting Phu My Hung. The bus driver and I had a conversation in sign language and he waited for me... so nice! I got a window seat in the back row, which was ideal for gawking. This bus is the slow bus and meanders through lots of (somewhat seedy) parts of District 7 and then through District 4 until finishing up near Cho Binh Than Market in District 1. I should say eventually, because the bus broke down once and stalled at least half a dozen times, much to the disgust of the majority of the passengers. So the slow bus was reeeeeaaaaaaly slow today. I knew I had to change to another bus or take a xe om, but I inquired in the office and they told me I could take the #18. I checked with the driver and he agreed that I was on the right bus. I followed along the streets on my map to make sure I knew where I was, but at some point a very nice lady, by the name of Co Sang came and started speaking French to me. When I established that my French was a little rusty (oh, so you don’t come from Quebec), we switched to English and she told me she was a midwife working at FV hospital (the Franco-Viet Hospital – the best hospital in HCMC ... just down the street from my house). She asked me where I was going and when I showed her, she said I was on the wrong bus but then changed her mind. She was very friendly and wanted to give me her card and take mine. She asked me to call her and set up a time to practice her English ... all this is to let you know that I was not fully following on the map and kind of lost my place in the guidebook, which I was tightly holding in my hands. She gave me quite a lecture about all the ways bad people could steal my money and rip my purse off and how and where I should keep my money and just a photocopy of my passport ... leave the original at home. Finally she and the fee collector said I should get off and pointed me to the pagoda and so off I got.
I was a little dazed by the rush of humanity I experienced when I got off the bus. So many people. The sidewalks here are so full of people selling everything from orchids to jeans to gas to wallets to mangoes to masks to cigarettes to motorbike tires. These are folks who have set up in front of shops selling the same things and so much more more more. So, pedestrians are forced to walk on the streets which are full of motorbikes. Millions of them. It can be quite overwhelming at times. But, as in China, I believe the key is to show no fear.
I went down the street and found the entrance to the pagoda. I was instantly in a little oasis of calm and quiet. There were several old people doing stretching or sitting and smoking or reading. A lovely fountain and large shade trees created a lovely respite from the craziness of the streets on all sides of the pagoda.
I was checking my guidebook to kind of orient myself when a very nice older gentleman started speaking to me in French. I replied that I spoke some French but it was a little rusty and when I tried to speak French sentences they started in French and came out Spanish. He laughed, said I must not be from Quebec, and switched to English. Lovely Parisian-accented English. We had a lovely chat for quite a lot of minutes, as my British colleagues would say. He told me about Vietnam prior to WWII and his schooling in French during colonial times, the liberation by the Japanese, and his studies to be a civil engineer in Paris. He talked about working with American contractors on a $6 million USD water project ... in 1960! We estimated with inflation, it would be over $60 million by now. I think I learned more about Vietnamese history in those few minutes than I had ever learned before. He had lots of stories. I also learned that I was not at the Jade Emperor’s Pagoda! I had been let off at the wrong place! The pagoda where we were was a shrine to an important soldier from the ancient history of South Vietnam, and wasn’t in the guidebook. Mr. Bui Huu Lan, as he introduced himself, showed me on my map how to get to the Jade Emperor Pagoda. Before I went to see this shrine and then walk back across the bridge I shouldn’t have crossed, I asked him if I could take his picture. He said he would be honoured. I couldn’t help but think that sometimes being in the wrong place will often present the most interesting encounters. He was a charming man and he told me he was 79. Imagine, being able to speak 3 languages and communicate so clearly at his age. After seeing the pagoda, I walked a few blocks across a bridge and down a street and zigged and zagged and got loster and loster. Finally, I found the Jade Emperor Palace. Well, a xe om driver waiting in front saw me and beckoned to the gate. I should have just followed the cyclos (rickshaws). The Jade Emperor Palace is quite a draw and definitely on the city tour for some groups. I heard guides speaking in English, French, and German. I enjoyed walking around the grounds, and it was very interesting, but it was not as quiet or delightful as my meeting with Mr Bui. It did have a gorgeous ceramic tile roof, which you could get close up to when going to ghe Quan Am (Guangyin) chapel. It also had another interesting chapel. called the women's room which venerates Kim Hoa, Goddess of Mothers. There are several female figures who represent a lunar year juxtaposed with ones that represent vices. Very interesting!Next Sunday should be equally interesting, as my Vietnamese teacher, Thuy, and I are going to the Cao Dai Holy See outside of HCMC. It is about a 1 1/2 or 2 hour bus ride. She has never been there. Cao Dai is a unique Vietnamese religion, although Thuy says it is Buddhism. My guidebook says its three saints are Sun Yat Sen, Victor Hugo and a Vietnamese poet called Nguyen Binh Khiem. I hope we can go there for the 12 o'clock service, which is supposed to be very spectacular.
I hope all of you did something interesting or had an unexpected delight this weekend. I put some pics on flickr of my pagoda tour from last week if you would like to see them. http://www.flickr.com/photos/raven_chick/. Wishing all of you health and happiness. And for some of you, Happy Thanksgiving. I will miss American Thanksgiving for the second year in a row. Good thing I had 30 or more prior to going abroad to recall with the utmost fondness:-)

Saturday, November 14, 2009

A Nice Day

This was a week of getting back into the swing of things. Teaching and meeting one new class ... the other one starts next week. In addition, I have learned how to do some mundane things, like pay my rent and some utility bills. That part hasn't been easy, with cross cultural difficulties arising all over the place. However, it has all worked out, I hope. One of the very nice things that has happened is that I now have a semi-regular xe om (motorbike taxi) driver who takes me to school every morning. Afternoons are somewhat more problematic, as Mr Nanh is a very popular guy. That's ok, because if I don't have anything pressing, I walk home and enjoy doing that. Or I take the bus. But on Friday, I texted Mr Nanh to see if he could take me to Phu My Hung to pay some bills and two minutes later he called to say to come downstairs right away. He said he was waiting at the doors of RMIT for me. I was so surprised that he got there so fast. What I didn't realize was he was about 5 minutes early for taking someone else home and thought he could fit in a quick return trip. When he found out what "pay bills" was, he called his friend who waits at Sky Garden and passed me over to him. The handoff occurred at KFC on the main corner of PMH and the next guy took me to the places I had to pay my bills. I felt a little like a ping pong ball but mission accomplished and it happened to be one of the more successful interactions of the week. Thank goodness for cell phones.
I have started having my Vietnamese lessons on Saturday mornings now, as I am too tired to learn a difficult language after work. I am not a gifted linguist when it comes to Vietnamese on any day of the week, but I seem to have a bit more on the ball on Saturday morning. Thuy, my teacher, and I are getting to know each other a bit better and she is an interesting person. So, today we spent a bit of time on dates and expressions of time. Oy. Not gifted. And I have to admit, I don't put a lot of effort into it, so I can't really expect miracles. Hope, yes. Expect, no !^_^! I would consider it quite the success if even one person understood even one thing I said. So far that hasn't happened.



A couple of days ago, Thi, one of my last semester's students called and said some students wanted to get together. I was a bit surprised, but also happy to have breakfast or lunch with them. We agreed they would come by after my Vietnamese lesson. Seven of them came and they brought huge quantities of fruit with them ... mangoes, mangosteen, green apples, and longan. I had never had mangosteen before. I think I had longan in China ... I seem to recall something about dragon eye. They were both very tasty. We sat around drinking tea and snacking and then it was time for lunch! We went to a local chicken place and had kim bab and a spicy Korean seafood dish and then chicken.It was lovely to see these students and to spend time with them Three of them hadn't passed their level, and so I was very happy to see that it hadn't interfered (I hope) with how they see or feel about me. The others will be starting in Level 6.2 and are appropriately nervous. Their parents have high expectations and RMIT is the most expensive school in the country, so they should do their best. Very cute. I think I should kee the playground shots for when they are CEOs.
Yesterday I had noticed a mother cat and a kitten near the steps of apartment block G (I am in F) and today there were three babies visible. So cute. So I am including pics, because calico kittens are so adorable. Tomorrow Mr. Nanh will take me to District 5 ... unless of course he has a better offer or prior engagement. Hahahaha.

Sunday, November 8, 2009

An evening with Charles, Antonin, and Jane ... but alas, not Barbara or Bronwyn


When I was in Haiphong, I noticed an ad for a performance in Ho Chi Minh City by the Prague Chamber Orchestra. I didn’t think of going, as I had been planning to go out of town, but as I still had a lingering cold, I stayed in HCMC and decided to treat myself to a ticket for the concert.
What a great Plan B that turned out to be! It was a great concert and a wonderful evening.
First of all, 3 others wanted to go to the concert, so I was looking for 4 tickets. When I went to the ticket booth, there was someone picking up tickets. When it was my turn, I walked up to the counter and the vendor picked up his water bottle and walked away ... saying something in Vietnamese, which of course I couldn’t understand. But I got the sense that what he was saying wasn’t good news. However, feeling quite determined, I stayed around for 5 minutes or so and when he came back he waggled his hand, which is to indicate “I don’t want or I don’t have”. Sort of like the Queen’s wave sort of motion. When I held up 4 fingers he really waggled. So I put up 2 and then 1. At any rate, he eventually got out the seating chart and it looked like there were 6 or 7 tickets left in the whole hall ... but he did find two together on the far left side of Row J. So I took them. There were no other tickets together and the tickets were 700,000 VND, which is about $42CDN (aka extremely expensive for HCMC!), so I got tickets for Jane and me, but didn’t get tickets for Barbara or Bronwyn. I really wasn’t sure if they would want to spend hundreds of thousands on poor seats and since I only had 1.5 million VND with me and no MasterCard machine that I could see, I looked after myself and Jane. She had invited me to a concert a few weeks ago, so my loyalty was squarely with her.
At any rate, after a lovely dinner at a French restaurant called le Jardin, which is on the grounds of Institute of Cultural Exchange with France (Idecaf), we hailed a taxi to the Opera House. It is really only a 10 minute walk, but our profiteroles were late coming (oh, no ... not tardy profiteroles!) and we were concerned about time. When we arrived at the Opera House, there were fancy schhmancy cars letting quite elegant people out of their luxury automobiles, cameras videotaping the luminaries in attendance, and people wanting to interview patrons of the arts, such as ourselves. We felt severely underdressed. We needn’t have worried about our timing. The performance was delayed for a few minutes. At 8 pm, the concert hall looked about 25% full. It reminded me of Qatar, where huge blocks of tickets would be bought by companies and then not used, so I was feeling very badly for Barbara and Bronwyn. However, the program eventually started and people continued to be seated throughout the rest of the performance. In the end, there were just a few seats unoccupied, but not many ... certainly enough for Barbara and Bronwyn, however. As I have mentioned before, the Opera House is an architectural jewel ... a beautiful French colonial building nestled near the 5 star hotels, swish restaurants and cafes, and an upscale shopping district. The seats are nice and red and plush, but not too plush. However, the building was designed and constructed before the debut of the motorbike and motorcar, and so the sound-proofing from the street is not great and we could hear the added texture of traffic from time to time. The person who was playing a sports event on his mini TV prior to the performance and during the intermission mercifully turned it off during the concert.
The concert was really wonderful. It was full and quite long, and so interesting. I had consumed a cafe glace at le Jardin in case I got sleepy, but no need. The program included Mozart, Rossini, Donizetti, Beethoven, Bartok, and of course, Dvořák. There were two soprano soloists, a beautiful Vietnamese singer named Nguyen Bich Thuy, and a lovely Czech singer named Marie Fajtová. The conductor was a Canadian, Charles Olivieri-Munroe, who seemed like a very capable, charismatic, and charming man. In fact, the Kymlickas met him when they were in the Czech Republic two years ago, and they concur on his charm. Such a small world, no? I have to say my favourite pieces were the Romanian Folk Dances for Small Orchestra by Bartok and Song to the Moon and the Czech Suite in D major, Op. 39 by Dvořák. I really am a Philistine when it comes to music, but they were wonderfully played and just lovely. The concert proper was followed by three encores ending with a wonderful gypsy-inspired tango, led by the concert master that sent us off into the warm Saigon evening with smiles on our faces and lightness in our steps. A taxi was just waiting at the bottom of the steps to transport us back to Phu My Hung, so it was another lovely evening.