Fish Pancakes, Vietnamese language and Sneezing

 Klaus loving the Pho

 Chili Peppers Drying 

 CHICKENS!!!!

 Street Food!

 Sugar Cane Juice - made on just about every street corner (price ~ $0.35)

 Bike Parking Lot at my School

 School of the Environment where I study 

 Inside the School it is Open Air 

 My Program Center =)

 Campus

 Flying Skarky the Kite on Campus - March is the Month of Kite Flying 

Banana Stand at the Market

 

 Can you guess what those are? 

 Seafood at Market 

The Streets 

WHAT UP!???! So its been awhile and I thought it was time for an update. I’m currently sitting at an internet café on the street corner with motorbikes zooming past. Interesting aside almost all the businesses here are out of people’s homes. In the back of the café the owners have their living area.

So I thought I’d begin with a few updates and conclude with a few comments on what I’ve learned about Vietnam so far. Also, in case you wondered I couldn’t finish the Bird’s Nest.

Food Update: Funny story – I went to the restaurant with other students. We cannot read the menu but we know that Ga is chicken. So in the Ga section we pick the dish with the longest name. To our surprise out comes a whole big plate of chicken feet. We knaw on those and order another dish – fish intestine. This time the owner makes waves his hands, shakes his head and points to his stomach. Next dish – squid….pretty good. Sadly, the inevitable happened the following day. I finally got sick!! Out for a couple of days and it put a damper on the food adventures for a bit. The day I was starting to feel better we had a dinner with our homestay parents. The menu: boiled pigs ears. On a weak stomach that one was a little rough ha ha. In the event that you care to know…ear cartilage does not chew no matter how long you chew for. Everything else has been pretty casual since that – coconut jelly, pho, various fish and rice dishes (the speciality of the Mekong Delta region), a fish pancake made of minnows, soup, etc.

School Update: Classes started and haven’t stopped. Very interesting learning style here. Four hours of language lecture in the am with notes on a chalkboard. I had a mid-term today. Vietnamese is fairly difficult with 6 tones. In addition the words are made up of various combos of 2-4 letter words. The same 2 letter word can mean two different things when combined with two different other four letter words. Therefore, recognizing words in a sentence proves difficult. It has been a lot of fun to learn a new language though and try it out on the street! So far I ordered ice at the hotel and got a towel/blanket. Then, I ordered butter at a café and got bread…there is room for improvement still =).

Afternoon class is 3-4 hours of various lectures from the college on history, culture or environmental science. These are anything from musicians playing to 3 hours of straight overheads about history to soil sampling. My favorite was a geomorphology lecture because we all know….geology rocks =p.

Life Update: I moved out of the hotel on Sunday and into my homestay. I am living with an older couple. Both at professors at Can Tho university in animal husbandry. I live in a four story house in the city. The area per floor is about the size of a typical living room in the US. On the bottom is the main living area with door solid glass doors opening to the street. The bikes are stored in this room and it also serves as an eating area. Adjacent to this is the kitchen. The next level is my parents living space. I live on the third floor. I have a bedroom, bathroom and living room with a table to study as well as a small balcony.

Schedule Update: So far I have had class every day for about 8 hours including on the weekends. Tomorrow is my first excursion into the countryside to observe an integrated farm system (the farm raises pigs, grows fruit, raises fish, etc). Many farms here produce several products which are related to each other. For example the pigs might fertilize the field and the fish pond, the rice stalks feed the pigs, etc. I am excited to see this model in person!

Now for a few observations: I am first of all amazed at the kindness and generosity of the Vietnamese people. Everyone is very friendly and helpful. I have enjoyed getting to know some students at the university and they LOVE practicing their English. One girl stopped me while I was biking and straight up asked if we could be friends because she has been looking for American friends. It is interesting too to see how much American culture is idolized here. I was surprised to see all the models in the clothing store and product ads were mostly of European descent. My favorite is in the wedding dress stores that have store models with blonde wigs.  

Well that’s it for now =).

Klaus says he is getting tan!

PS People here believe that you sneeze because someone mentioned your name somewhere else.

 

Birds's Nest in Can Tho

I am out on my balcony overlooking the Mekong River and sitting down to a nice cold “Birds Nest.” Yup that’s a drink made from fungus grown on birds nest. No big deal. Also on the topic of food: today I added chicken butt, chicken foot, goose throat, fish fin and fish eye. Also, in case you are wondering my stomach somehow is still fine and that scares me because after eating goose throat your stomach really should not feel fine.

There is a lot to cover from the past few days so I am sure I will leave stuff out. I moved to Can Tho finally two days ago and love it so much. It was a two hour bus ride from Ho Chi Minh to Can Tho. This whole lower region is basically a swamp, a huge delta swamp with 8 main river channels feeding out into the ocean. Much of the region is flooded 100% of the years with several sections flooding solely during the rainy season. This, coupled with a warm, humid climate, results in fairly tropical conditions. Much of the city has big palms, banana trees, etc.

….and Bird’s Nest is chunky….very interesting. I guess that is the fungus bird spit nest floating around. Verdict: TBD.

The city itself is surprising. I’m staying at a guest house basically surrounded by a giant market. Every morning I go out to buckets of flopping fish, frogs hopping out of baskets, whole pigs beings cut up right there on the street and overflowing baskets of every kind of fruit imaginable. Off the back fishermen dock up and deliver the days catch right there. So crazy. You go to a market and you buy your food for the day fresh…really fresh. That brings me to bike shopping. To get around I bought a bike. Where did I go? The bike stand and they built me a bike there on the spot. Nice fixed gear, basket, light that rubs against the wheel for power and a bike lock: $65. Every stand does one thing. There is no Wal-Mart or Target. To wash my laundry it is a trip to the laundry stand (I have not tried this yet because I am not to confident in my language ability to get my clothes back just yet). Interesting fact: no washers here and the washing services do not do underwear a very critical part of clean clothes. Guess the practice washing underwear in the bathtub at school so my laundry would last until free laundry at home over a break is paying off. I managed to find laundry detergent today: 17,000 dong ($0.85). I almost got fabric softner because I couldn’t read the label =p.

Bird’s Nest is getting warm…warm chunkies not good…

            I would like to address the biking situation and traffic in general. Ok Meg got a bike yay. Helmet: check. Ok now it’s a go. Suddenly I am riding with 1000s of motorbikes carrying people, chickens, boxes, etc. Things are zooming past, feathers are flying cars are honking, buses are moving. Things are crazy, really crazy. I’m just pedaling and looking forward. That is key. Always look forward. You are only responsible for what is in front of you. Never look back. To move over you do it and trust people behind you move around you. Ok, this is working. Get to an intersection and campus is a left hand turn away. This is not like any left turn I have every made. All directions of traffic go at once. That is hundreds of motorbikes from all sides and here I am on my bicycle. Eyes ahead, eyes ahead. You move. You just do it. You move into oncoming traffic and it is terrifying. Don’t stop, never stop. You have to keep the same pace and it works. It is beautiful. You get back covered in exhaust, sweaty, pull off a couple of feathers and it is good. Never ceases to amaze me!

            That is about enough for now. As an update had my first language class = SOOOOO hard. The tones are killing me. Today I went to a floating market and bought a pineapple. Also took a boat to a fruit orchard and had lunch with Vietnamese student volunteers. Here they grew pineapple, limes, dragon fruit, milk apples, jackfruit, mangos, papaya and maybe something I am forgetting. Gorgeous.

            Klaus says hi!! Oh, and Bird’s Nest is ½ gone. This is going to be tough. =)

                                           Bike Shop

                              View from the Hotel

                           
                                  Klaus on the balcony

                                 Life on the River

                              House along the Mekong

                                Floating Market

                                      Floating Market

                                      Klaus and I made a friend!!

                               Floating Market

                          Klaus and a Jackfruit =)

  

Chào

After 40+ hours of travel Klaus and I finally reached Ho Chi Minh City =). The plus side of getting in exhausted at 2am local time is the jet lag and time adjustment went quite smoothly. 

I’ve pretty much eaten my way through the past few days of orientation. Basically it is breakfast of noodle soup (I’m not quite use to a salty broth in the AM yet), a smoothie at the cafe and then lunch. Lunch is an interesting culinary venture with stops including wild boar, flower buds, rice in clay pots that get tossed in the air, smashed on the ceiling and the contents spun through the air then miraculously landing on plates, as well as interactive grill it yourself tables. After lunch its time to beat the heat with another café trip. Since you are famished from the daily activities naturally dinner is in order. Dinner is slightly less crazy - whole fish, squid, various forms of chicken, rice noodles, etc. Oh, also I failed to mention the eating style – all dishes are communal and shared at the center of the table = so much more fun!!

Thrown in the day are also some trips to the local market, walks around town, visits with the US consulate and a health briefing about all the wonderful ways to die (mostly via mosquitoes). Also, I’ve begun to master the all-important skill of crossing a street with no cross walks, traffic lights or apparent street rules. The trick is just start walking and hope the motorbikes all zoom around you. So far no collisions yet.

Tomorrow I leave Ho Chi Minh City for Can Tho. I am excited to get out of the city and for a chance to start running again to counteract the excessive food consumption =p.

PS I promise to get some photos of Klaus soon.

                                Pho - Breakfast

                                          Market Purchase #1

                                          Giant Fish Dinner

                                         Motorbikes zooming past our outdoor dinner on the street

                               View from my "hotel"

Happy Valentine’s Day from Seoul, Korea

 

Klaus and I have managed to make it here surprisingly without too much trouble.

I met a kind couple on my Cleveland to Chicago flight who noticed my capris and T-shirt were no match for Korean or Chicago weather and insisted I take a black scarf from them. Upon explaining that my lack of warm clothing was an intentional preparation for the hot weather of Vietnam the lady mentioned she could not stand to think of me sitting in an airport freezing cold. Mothers… Therefore, I have now acquired a winter scarf that served quite well as a makeshift towel upon arriving to Korea.

The flight over was smooth with little to note besides a dazzling display of dancing green northern lights at 35,000 ft as I crossed north of Alaska. I kept wondering when the sun would come up only to realize this northern region was under 24 hours of darkness a day =p.

Upon arriving to Korea I contemplated a tour of Seoul in my 13 hours layover until I remembered my scarf friends’ warning about the cold temperatures and noted a nice layer of snow on the ground. Looks like I won’t be leaving the airport anytime soon. I did however promptly run into another student studying in my same program and have enjoyed getting to know her over eating octopus and a visit to the cultural appreciation stand for a photograph in traditional Korean attire. The young lady put the dance dress on me and stifled a small laugh upon noting it touched mid-shin on me when it was supposed to reach the ground. After much adjustment we fixed the situation. I feel like a giant already =). Oh, and octopus is very chewy in case you ever wondered that and no, it does not really taste like much of anything and, if eaten, I recommend sticking to the smaller tentacles. 

                                                 The Finished Product After Much Adjusting 

                                 Octopus Lunch at 9am

                                 Klaus and I chilling at the Airport in Korea

Meet Klaus =)

Welcome to My Blog

Hello friends and family. As promised I am keeping a blog to track my various adventures, mishaps and musings while abroad. I am told internet should be common and hope to keep this pretty up to date.

At this point I should introduce to you Klaus. He is a small orange creature that came to me via a German chocolate mystery egg (thanks Kathrin =D). We hit it off well and I thought he might make a good side kick for my travels.

 More to come later...