Today, I wrote a kind of creative version of what my days here feel like. I did not write it originally with the intention of posting it here, but I thought that you might appreciate it anyway. 

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I've been to the beach before, but I've never lived by the ocean. I like to walk next to it late at night. The waves are powerful and rhythmic, providing a type of stillness through their incessant motion.

 

Each morning, I pass a stretch of rice paddies on my way to school. Because of their novelty to me, rice paddies in the morning seem every bit as fascinating as the ocean at night. I would like to spend a day working in them to feel the sun beating down on my face, the sweat stinging in my eyes, and the mud in between my toes.

 

I envy the paddy workers because they surely go to bed each night with the deep satisfaction known only to those who labor outside. I envy them further because they seem to posses a special intimacy with the earth.

 

In the afternoon, I go to the home for the severely disabled orphans. This place is filled with foul breath, blank stares, and urine collecting in bags.

 

This I expected. What I am surprised by is how quickly I have come to love them, how much it pains me to see their discomfort, and how much joy they can bring me through their laughter.

 

In the evening, I teach English at a night school for street kids. Some of them are astonishingly bright, and I often forget that they spend the day begging and selling cigarettes. Today, however, I did not forget for a minute. Today, we made Christmas cards, and I saw the kids fight over the scissors, glue, and glitter with ferocity and stealth unknown to children that grew up depending an adults.

 

Each night before falling asleep, I read a little bit of many different books. I search my room for bugs that would come to attack me in the darkness after I turn off my light. I lie down on my firm mattress on the floor, and I think about the very different world of Cambridge Massachusetts that I will return to next September. I think about the people that I miss, and I wonder if they will be different when I get back. I know that I am different already. Eventually, I fall asleep.

1. I have finally learned the names of all of the students in my Home of Affection class. This was not as easy it sounds, because half of the time their names sound like grunting to me. haha. But, it definitely has helped me teach them... so I can call on them for answers (otherwise it is just the same smarty-pants putting his hand up all of the time) and also call their name when I see that they are not paying attention.

2. The other volunteers are gone for the weekend! This means that I can practice Vietnamese, go on a bike ride, read, and have the house to myself.

3. I've bonded a lot with one of the boys at the disabled orphanage center. Although he cannot move very much or speak, he smiles and laughs when I sing to him. He is so cute! I wish that I could help him stop clinching his muscles though. His legs are permanently crossed and tight, and his neck is clinched so far back that he cannot lie in a "normal" position. If I give him a massage with baby oil, I can sometimes get him to relax into a different position for a little while, but it never lasts for very long.

4. I have been singing a lot to the kids. At the disabled orphanage center, I sing because I am sure that at least some of the kids have no sight. Although I am not really sure which ones can see and which ones can't (some of them do not move much, so there is no easy way to test... some of them blink if you move your hands close to their eyes - others don't). At the schools, I sing more songs to give the students a controlled break that will keep them learning some English. A lot of the songs are songs that I remember from those old summer days at Deer Valley. : )

1. I taught my last class of the week at the Home of Affection street children night education center. This is the most challening placement because the kids are not as used to normal school behavior as the kids in the other schools, because they only go to school at night, and because they lack parental and adult guidence in general. Additionally, there is a wide range of both age and ability levels in these classes.

The first day was very much a challenege, because when we got there, we realized that although the students had supposedly learned the content up to page 48 in the workbook, they remembered very little of it. While they might recognize some of the vocabulary words, the were certainly not able to use them in a sentence or pronounce them correctly. Last month's volunteers stopped taking notes on their lesson plans for this class very early in the month, so there is no way we could have known this ahead of time.

However, each day marks a marked improvement in the quality of the class, both in terms of student behavior and in my own ability to teach. Today, we reviewed the parts of the body, and left/right, and they all had fun dancing along to the hokey pokey.

2. Tomorrow, I am attending a Home of Affection class as a student. On Monday through Wednesday, I teach English, but on Thursday and Friday, the class covers Vietnamese and English. I have memorized the packet of useful words and phrases that they gave out at the orientation session, and I would like to continue to learn more Vietnamese. Though I am in Vietnam, because I am participating in a program with other English-speaking people, I don't feel that I have picked up the true benefits of language immersion. But I really just want an excuse to spend more time with the street kids, and to get to know them better. I think that they are clearly the population here that have the most need that I am actually able to really help. The kids in the fishing village elementary school are definitely quite poor, but at least they come from good families and they are generally well looked after by adults. I hate to say it, but the disabled orphans at the social support center are generally beyond help - though I am very happy to do some physical therapy to help make them more comfortable and bring them some happiness, there is nothing life-changing that can happen with most of them. Because of their medical conditions, they will be unable to communicate and unable to move independently despite the best of our efforts. So, I really do believe that the street children education center is the best place for me to focus most of my efforts.

3. I am not very happy with how one of the other volunteers in the house has been treating me. She treats me like I am incompetent or stupid, quickly dismisses my own ideas, and presents her own teaching ideas as if they were revolutionary. I don't know what happened, because at the beginning of the month, we were getting along quite well. I don't think that I have done anything to provoke her attitude, but maybe she is mad that I haven't been spending much of my free time with her. When we get back to the house, I usually just go to my room and practice new Vietnamese vocabulary or read one of my books, and that is what I will continue to do. I think that her attitude comes from arrogance. She is going to college to become a teacher, and she feels like she is vastly more qualified than the rest of us for the volunteer position. However, I think that all of us are considerably out of our element in teaching to poor kids in Vietnam, and we all have both things to learn as well as talents to share. She is consistently rude and disrespectful, and unfortunately, she is also staying next month.

Two pictures from last weekend (repeats if you have already seen my facebook pictures):


This is me and my program manager Nguyen at the local market.
This is Nguyen and I at the market again. She is wearing the hat that I bought for my mother (Mom, I will send a package home soon!)

1.) Many of the students at the local high school have decent English listening skills, but they are totally out of practice in terms of dialogue. It is clear that they have been taught only with repetition, and they haven't practiced using the language in context. It seems very silly to learn a language but not be able to speak it. The street children at the Home of Affection seem to be much better at actually using their English skills, even though they have had much less education. I guess kids who grow up on the street don't really have shyness as an option.

2.) Coming to Vietnam has made me realize that I had previously overestimated the importance of physical infrastructure in international development. You get used to differences in the physical infrastructure quickly. Yes, I sleep on a small, hard mattress on the floor, but I have gotten used to it, and I am sleeping better than I did back at Harvard. The kids at the elementary school will tell their teacher that they have to urinate, and then they go outside and pee in the street because their school has no plumbing. When you see it happen, it doesn't seem like as much of a problem as it sounds when you read about from in America. It just seems like one of many cultural differences to adapt to.

haha, don't worry though, my house has plumbing... though it is different than the plumbing I am used to, I won't be peeing on the streets anytime soon

3.) Now that I am done with the book about building schools in Pakistan, I have just started reading the Bhagavad Gita.

From Wikipedia:

"The content of the Gita is the conversation between Krishna and Arjuna taking place on the battlefield before the start of the Kurukshetra war. Responding to Arjuna's confusion and moral dilemma, Krishna explains to Arjuna his duties as a warrior and prince and elaborates on different Yogic and Vedantic philosophies, with examples and analogies. This has led to the Gita often being described as a concise guide to Hindu philosophy and also as a practical, self-contained guide to life. Other noted experts have described it as a lighthouse of eternal wisdom that has the ability to inspire any man or woman to supreme accomplishment and enlightenment.

I was never really that interested in Hinduism. I think I was prejudiced against it because it is polytheistic, like most of the other earliest religions (like the religions of ancient Greece, Rome, and Egypt). I used to think about religion as being the human invented answer to questions that we cannot yet answer. It makes sense that polytheistic religions arose first because many gods and goddesses were needed to explain all of the physical phenomena that we observed.

I guess I am realizing now the Hinduism has many characteristics that the other polytheistic religions did not have, which allows it to have continuing relevance in a world with scientific explanations for the daily occurrences of the world.

Also, I think that the Western world is familiar with some Hindu concepts but mistakenly assumes them to be Buddhist. For example, the concept of Atman, or the oneness of all creation, is a Hindu concept, not a Buddhist one.

Actually, I think there are a lot of misunderstandings about Eastern religions in the West. I think that a very interesting paper could be written about these misperceptions (which were often created by early scholars of Eastern Religion) and what this says about Western society, what we are looking for foreign religions to provide us, what kinds of things we feel to be missing in our own society. If anyone from my high school who took AP English with Mrs. Mather is reading this, think back to our summer reading - Myths to Live By. I wish Joseph Campbell had written about this subject.

Ok, well, I've rambled about eastern religions enough for one blog post, but from now on, I will probably be including a quote from the Bhagavad Gita in my daily blog.

So, I am going to just write 3 short thoughts per day here, and hopefully this will get me to write more regularly.

1. Most of you know that facebook profiles have a "favorite quotes" section. One of the more common quotations to list is:

"Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive and then go do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive."
- Howard Thurman

I agree with this quote on some level, but I feel that in terms of international aid/development, thinking like this leads to social policies and charities that make no sense whatsoever.

I was looking into the One Laptop Per Child project recently. Although it seems like a great idea, I feel like it makes no sense in terms of cost effectiveness. Though their laptops have been specifically designed to be inexpensive, $200 is A LOT of money in the developing world. If the numbers that are given in Three Cups of Tea (the book I just read about a person who started a charity to build schools in rural Pakistan and Afghanistan) are accurate, this is pay a teacher's salary for an entire year in many countries. I feel like it makes no sense in comparison to building/improving schools and libraries (both the physical infrastructure as well as the curriculum) which can educate many children at once, in addition to providing a much needed social support network (having role models/mentors/counselors, etc.) which can meet many other needs of the children.

I think about this in some of my volunteer placements. Although I am generally very happy about the places that I am working, a few concerns do remain in my mind. At the deaf school, the GVN (global volunteer network) volunteers don't seem to be particularly useful. We don't understand either Vietnamese or sign language, so we just do arts and crafts with them. This is something that their regular teachers could certainly do with them (and really, since they translate into sign language for us, they are pretty much leading the class). The only real positive thing that I think we accomplish is that the kids are excited to have visitors, especially visitors from foreign countries, no matter how seemingly useless they are. I am hoping to find a way that I can bring something new and exciting to the program (maybe Happy Hands - as featured in Napoleon Dynamite! haha). But it is not one of our main programs, I only spend 1 hour a week there, so it is not a huge deal either way.

2. Meeting the street children at the Home of Affection (not really a home/orphanage, but an education center for street kids) has been the most rewarding placement for me so far. One kid in particular can read in English quite well... and I can't imagine that I would have become so well educated had I grown up on the streets in Vietnam.

3. I am getting along very well with the other volunteers living in my house, but being with other westerners is reducing the value of being abroad. I am in Vietnam, but I am not really learning Vietnamese by immersion, because I speak English with the other volunteers for most of the day. I have been trying to make up for this by studying Vietnamese very hard in my free time, but it isn't the same as true immersion where I have to learn Vietnamese if I hope to communicate at all. I think that some of the other volunteers are kind of disappointed that I spend so much of my free time studying and not socializing with them. But, I really did not come here to make friends with some Australians and New Zealanders. While they are fantastic people, I know that I would be MUCH more useful as a volunteer if I knew some Vietnamese and that is my number 1 priority. Even now, my very basic Vietnamese skills have helped me a lot in teaching a classes (I can say things like - "Everyone" or "Listen" or "Repeat" or "Again" or "Write it down" or "Stand up").

Talent Show

Wow, Vietnam is INCREDIBLE!

Today, we visited all of the different orphanages/schools/disability centers. I could not be more excited to officially start work tomorrow morning. 

We went to a talent show performance tonight that was a joint project between the local high school and the disabled high school that we work at. There were many deaf children who danced together very skillfully in this performance. One of the teachers from the deaf school was in the front of the audience, moving her hands so that the performers could see where the beat is even though they cannot hear it. The deaf children showed so much confidence... I don't think I have ever seen anything like this in America. Sign language really seemed just like another foreign language, the way that Vietnamese is different from English, and similarly, deafness just seemed like another culture. It is funny - I wrote an essay about this in my freshman writing course on Bioethics last year at Harvard - but seeing it in practice I actually believe it.

Also, there were some INCREDIBLY GOOD break dancers. I cannot believe how much talent there was at this talent show.Everyone was very excited to see the GVN volunteers in the audience. Everyone wanted to get their pictures taken with the white people. I found it hilarious.

I finished reading Three Cups of Tea, the bestselling book about Greg Montenson, this guy who builds schools for poor children, empowers women, and help pretty much anyone who needs help in Afghanistan and Pakistan. I have a lot of thoughts about this book, which I promise to explore in a future blog entry.

I wish that I would improve and extend this blog entry, but I am so tired and I need to wake up early tomorrow morning to teach.

Tam biet.

(Vietnamese for goodbye)