Ngay mot (Day One)

It is honestly quite hard to fathom that day one of this crazy, humid, frisbee madness of an adventure is already through. We spent the entirety of the afternoon in the middle school today; an experience worth a thousand words in and of itself. I apologize that my writing isn't up to usual par these days: I'm working with a mini-keyboard, minimal hours of sleep, and a jet lagged brain. Nevertheless, we blog!

As I mentioned, we spent the day today in the middle school assisting with the English classes. I guess going into this I had a mild idea of what to expect, but never in a million years could I have came to understand the intensity of a class of 50-60 middle school aged Vietnamese students all anxiously waiting to participate in our American games and activities. The energy in the room was close to the breaking point of insanity, which was actually quite awesome and terrifying in the same moment. We initially started out playing capture the flag with the first class, but due to the teacher wanting more structure and less chaotic noise, we ended up moving back into the classroom. Pictionary turned out to be a hit, minus the fact no one knew the word "tennis shoes"
but yet thrived on words such as unicorn. It was truly an odd concept, honestly. Additionally, when creating team names, one side of the room requested the name of YOLO... thank you, American television and pop culture. You've successfully made it to Southeast Asia.

The third round of lessons we tried a new attempt at an outdoor activity: frisbee. Apparently there are no frisbees here in Vietnam, so our advisor suggested we bring 10 along to leave with the school. These ended up being our saving grace for lesson activities. After a brief debriefing session on frisbee throwing dos and don'ts, we ran a mini-relay session between small groups. No team was able to successfully make it through the activity without dropping it for a couple of sessions, and frisbees did find their way to every corner of the playground/courtyard. No worries though; no Vietnamese Middle School children were noticeably injured (other than somes' pride) in this activity.

Outside of the classroom, life is good. I've been matched with a Vietnamese family for the next few days so that I am able to experience their culture on a deeper level. My family is quite large; there are four children, a grandma, and the parents who live in this home. The daughters range from 17 to 8 (my "buddy" in the middle coming in at 13), and the son is two (and also out to kill my iPad if he can manage). The hospitality of the Vietnamese culture is amazing and would put my own culture's welcoming nature to shame. My Vietnamese friends at Carroll told me that I would be treated like a queen, and I guess I should have taken them more seriously. I have been fed the best quality of Vietnamese food (spring rolls- and they let me help), been given the room with air conditioning, taken to a cafe, and will be chauffeured around more today. The language barrier hasn't been anything too disastrous, only a bit awkward at moments. I broke out my few sentences of Vietnamese and ended up only confusing them, so A for effort. I wish I could speak the language since it does sound quite beautiful and would make family life even more interesting, but that is just one thing I'll have to jot down as a life experience and move forward. Living in Germany and staying with my host family there seems to oddly easy now, due the lack of language barriers and not-so-incredibly-different cultures. Odd to think about quite honestly. Yep, this is an entirely different world.

As for the rest of the Vietnamese culture observations, I can tell you that Vietnam is not a tourist destination for those who are prudish and do not enjoy the world with a bit of flexibility and open-mindedness. For example, crossing the street is not an organized situation here. One simply is expected to throw themselves out into traffic and just accommodate for the vehicles on the road as you slowly move forward. There are dogs and other animals running freely through the streets, and bartering in shops is a rule of thumb. The streets don't exactly shine and aren't always the most beautiful site to behold, yet have so many more stories to tell than any street in America would hold. While all these things may sound negative to many of you, I assure you, life here may be way different, but it's good. The streets of Hanoi are so ancient and hold so much history, that walking around you just feel somewhat in amazement that this city is literally over one thousand years old. Can you even imagine? As for the bartering, I take it as more of a sense that the people care about one another and making each other happy, instead of sticking to such strict restrictions and laws of pricing. The fact that a culture is so open to the opinion of others is astonishing. Perhaps this really isn't what goes through their minds or the mindset of it all in reality, but I prefer to make this my perception. Now, if only I could go back to Carroll and barter my tuition price.

The most confusing element outside of the classrooms thus far for our group was probably the most simple element: money. The Vietnamese Dong. Oh goodness is their currency mind boggling. One US Dollar is the equivalency of 21,000 Dong. This means, when Steph takes out 300,000 Dong (a nerve racking experience when one goes into this blind without knowing in advance that their currency is in the thousands) she really only took out about 20 bucks. Needless to say, Vietcom bank probably had a good laugh looking at the multiple transactions from a number of us in random amounts. I am now a millionaire in Dong. While this means in reality I have about $150 in my wallet, I'm going to embrace this moment. Until the next one, that is.

Alright so that seems to be a quite decent recap of our first day. Since I am writing on my ipad, uploading photos is basically impossible, and I will not be adding many photos until I return. Sorry for the lack of exciting visuals! And now, although my jet lag disagrees, I am going to try and fall back to sleep before day two begins (I woke up at 4:30 this morning...).

Until tomorrow folks.