The school hosted a new family tea this morning. We met parents from Japan, Australia, Germany and Paupau New Guinea. Did you know Paupau New Guinea is a country all to itself? There is also a Paupau in New Guinea, which is the other half of the island. I'll have to ask my new friend Lydia how that all works out with the postal system. Wickipedia is a wonderful tool. Anyway, at the open house we toured the new auditorium and gymnasium and learned about the Cambridge Academic Program (lower grades) and the International Baccalaureate Program (upper grades). The IB program is developed using input from teachers, administrators, and curriculum from over 120 countries. Sounds to me like something the whole world could use and agree upon, though nothing could ever be that easy. I met a few women who live a few blocks away from our apartment and made plans to attend the "ILV" - International Ladies of Vietnam" tea with them after Tet. Such a formal name - I feel I should get my hair and nails done beforehand.
The kids are settling in pretty well. They are on target or ahead in their subjects. A little catch up in math and a lot of catch up in Chinese but nothing they can't handle. Silas came home yesterday and casually mentioned that he had dissected a pig heart in science class!
I should have some new pictures to post after the weekend. We are taking a car out to Phan Thiet for the weekend to the Blue Ocean Resort - here is a link if you want to see what it looks like:
http://www.life-resorts.com/index.php?nav1=gallery&gallery_id=3
Hal is relaxed and ready to go - he had a massage at lunchtime at a place recommended to him by one of his writers here. It was so reasonable and made his back feel so good that I believe he should treat himself every week!
Conversion charts come in very handy here: dollars to dong; cups to ml; Farenheit to Celsius. More things I should have retained from grade school! Next time your child asks you why they need to know those things you can tell them it is so they will understand everything better when they grow up and travel out of the country. The oven is coded in Celsius, with symbols indicating three different settings. Oh, and there are no potholders to be found anywhere. I ventured out to a local store called The Metro that we had heard is like a BJs or Costco. I thought for sure they would have them, but no. What an adventure that was too! Turns out you need your passport to get a membership card. I did not have my passport with me, and when I left the store to take a taxi back to our apartment to get it, I couldn't find a taxi! All in all it took me a good two hours to get it all in order and I didn't end up buying a single thing.
Thanks to everyone for their comments on our posts. It's nice to know we're on the right track with the blog.
Friday, January 16, 2009
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Laundry Rules and Other Observations
Laundry rule #1 in gecko land: do not leave the door to the washer or dryer open - and if you do, check for creatures before use. I found most of a cute-but-very-dead gecko in my dried clothes today. A foot and tail were in the lint trap.... my first thought was that I was glad it wasn't something bigger and snakes did come to mind.
I walked to the local market today and one of the streets I take was flooded. I followed a cute little grandma up onto the driveways of local homes to avoid the water. She noticed me at the end of the road, gently took my arm, then pointed to her flip-flops - meaning she had shoes that could get wet and I did not. We walked together for a bit and were joined by three other young women and an adorable baby. We parted ways up the road, and met up again when we had all finished our respective shopping. Local food is very inexpensive - a pound of carrots, a pound of green beans, four cucumbers, and a head of lettuce for about $1.75. It is very frustrating not being able to communicate. My foray today inspired me to start my rosetta stone up again, regardless of how hard the language is to learn. I feel a strong need to be able to exchange at least a few words....
I walked to the local market today and one of the streets I take was flooded. I followed a cute little grandma up onto the driveways of local homes to avoid the water. She noticed me at the end of the road, gently took my arm, then pointed to her flip-flops - meaning she had shoes that could get wet and I did not. We walked together for a bit and were joined by three other young women and an adorable baby. We parted ways up the road, and met up again when we had all finished our respective shopping. Local food is very inexpensive - a pound of carrots, a pound of green beans, four cucumbers, and a head of lettuce for about $1.75. It is very frustrating not being able to communicate. My foray today inspired me to start my rosetta stone up again, regardless of how hard the language is to learn. I feel a strong need to be able to exchange at least a few words....
Free to choose?
The more I travel about, the more I suspect that peoples have a more active hand in the choosing of political systems and philosophies, as opposed to simply having those systems or philosophies foisted upon them. I don’t claim this as any sort of original insight, but it’s been driven home to me these past few months. Yes, of course: No one in North Korea (no one anywhere actually) would choose to live under the thumb of some megalomaniacal totalitarian. And surely the yoke of Communism in, say, post-WWII Poland was just that. But if you spend time in Vietnam, and Sweden, and the United States, as I have in the past four months, you begin to see that certain peoples are drawn to systems that speak to them, or were created by them, for specific, long-standing cultural reasons. Take the Swedes. I think that lingering American Cold War attitudes sort of take for granted that the Swedes were duped or bullied somehow into the socialism that pervades their culture still today. But the Swedes love socialism; it comes naturally to them. And it makes sense that a sparse population living in the freaking tundra is probably obliged to act collectively to stay alive; this became clear to them long ago and this ethic has filtered down to the modern day. In the 20th century, when peoples first had a choice about their systems of government, the Swedes naturally gravitated toward socialism.
Here in Vietnam, where strict Communism has given way to a sort of one-party market socialism, you see that it’s a very short and logical segue from the highly bureaucratic, top-down, authoritarian, Confucian culture that pervaded here for a thousand years to the highly bureaucratic, top-down, authoritarian, Communistic nationalism instituted by Ho Chi Minh — in the north after 1954, and everywhere else after 1975. It was a perfect fit. The Vietnamese love a system where authority is wielded and followed. You may have read Sharon’s blog post re. the clerk in Gloria Jeans — there is very little freelancing here, and they prefer it that way. This hurts them when it comes to entrepreneurial innovation, but it helps when you have to mobilize a population to resist/oust a colonial occupier. I learned last week of a client here that has instituted a LEAN program, whereby individual workers are empowered to make more decisions on their own, thereby making the overall operation more efficient, productive and less wasteful of resources. That’s the theory anyway, and it’s antithetical to the Vietnamese ethos. But the idea that it’s working here (and apparently, it is in this one case) shows there are limitations to the stereotype.
What about the States? Well, let’s see… Americans are, if nothing else, born exceptionalists who hate to be told what to do, whose initial idea of themselves was formed in response to what they saw as an oppressive government and state church, who see the individual accumulation of wealth as more vital to the national ethos than anything the state or we as a people might attempt collectively… Is it any surprise that we’re a bunch of gun-toting evangelicals whose government features the lowest tax burden of any industrialized country, the most meager social safety net and a legislative process completely controlled by corporate interests?
Here in Vietnam, where strict Communism has given way to a sort of one-party market socialism, you see that it’s a very short and logical segue from the highly bureaucratic, top-down, authoritarian, Confucian culture that pervaded here for a thousand years to the highly bureaucratic, top-down, authoritarian, Communistic nationalism instituted by Ho Chi Minh — in the north after 1954, and everywhere else after 1975. It was a perfect fit. The Vietnamese love a system where authority is wielded and followed. You may have read Sharon’s blog post re. the clerk in Gloria Jeans — there is very little freelancing here, and they prefer it that way. This hurts them when it comes to entrepreneurial innovation, but it helps when you have to mobilize a population to resist/oust a colonial occupier. I learned last week of a client here that has instituted a LEAN program, whereby individual workers are empowered to make more decisions on their own, thereby making the overall operation more efficient, productive and less wasteful of resources. That’s the theory anyway, and it’s antithetical to the Vietnamese ethos. But the idea that it’s working here (and apparently, it is in this one case) shows there are limitations to the stereotype.
What about the States? Well, let’s see… Americans are, if nothing else, born exceptionalists who hate to be told what to do, whose initial idea of themselves was formed in response to what they saw as an oppressive government and state church, who see the individual accumulation of wealth as more vital to the national ethos than anything the state or we as a people might attempt collectively… Is it any surprise that we’re a bunch of gun-toting evangelicals whose government features the lowest tax burden of any industrialized country, the most meager social safety net and a legislative process completely controlled by corporate interests?
Monday, January 12, 2009
Jade Emperor Pagoda
On Sunday we visited the Jade Emperor Pagoda. According to our Nat. Geo. travel guide, it was built by the Cantonese in the early 1900s. It is a quiet oasis within the busy, noisy city.
A vendor outside the temple sells fish and turtles that you can set free inside the temple - I think I read somewhere that is a way to honor your ancestors, or maybe it was a way to seek absolution for a wrong? I'll try to find out more.
There were a lot of worshipers bowing toward the various altars with hands full of incense, and papers were being burned in a large outdoor altar. Inside the air was thick with smoke and incense - the ancient wood carvings encased by the smoky trappings of a century of worship.
A vendor outside the temple sells fish and turtles that you can set free inside the temple - I think I read somewhere that is a way to honor your ancestors, or maybe it was a way to seek absolution for a wrong? I'll try to find out more.
There were a lot of worshipers bowing toward the various altars with hands full of incense, and papers were being burned in a large outdoor altar. Inside the air was thick with smoke and incense - the ancient wood carvings encased by the smoky trappings of a century of worship.
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