Eating Disorders

(PICTURE: Huyen preparing a meal at her house.)

I once dated a girl who had an eating disorder. Perhaps I was oblivious or naive but it took a while for me to realize the girl was more or less eating a piece of lettuce for three meals a day. The girl would rarely meet me for meals and would always claim to have "just eaten." Around the time I started to suspect that she had a problem, the two of us went to dinner with my parents to without a doubt one of the most delicious barbecue restaurant in America. The girl, her eyes bigger than her stomach, ordered a BBQ sandwich with a double order of French Fries for her included side dishes. Well, I think she ate one fry and perhaps a bite of the sandwich. My father, being even more clueless about her eating disorder than I was, joked with her about leaving so many delicious fries...which I'm pretty sure the rest of my family divided up and ate.

Anyone who knows me will think it is absolutely ridiculous to think that someone could imagine that I have an eating disorder. I've always been "the garbage disposal" my whole life and have always been willing to give eating anything a try. I mean, I was literally the unofficial taste tester on Fear Factor for a year or so. Well, sometimes when I'm at Huyen's house I feel like her parents think that I have an eating disorder*. Huyen father, like my father, jokes with me all the time about me "not eating." What I'm "not eating" though is fat, bones and other things I find inedible. On top of that they think that I barely eat any food when clearly I'm eating double what everyone else is. The only difference is that while everyone is speaking in Vietnamese, I just eat. I'm also a fast eater so when somebody puts something into my bowl, I eat it. The problem then is that my bowl is empty and everyone starts saying, "You need to eat more!"

I've actually found myself thinking recently that I need to develop some skills to make it appear like I'm eating more. Three that come to mind are:
1) Slow down and chew more.
2) Don't show my bowl. Always keep it in my hand rather than putting it back on the eating mat.
3) Take smaller portions.

I know that when I start thinking like this though it might mean I have a disorder. However, come on, there's no chance I have eating issues...although isn't denial a symptom?

* I'm pretty sure very few people in Vietnam, especially in the countryside, know what eating disorders are. There's no health education and people aren't as image conscious as in the developed world. On top of that, putting food on the table and eating it is very much what people live for in the countryside.

Hope 4 Peyton

I just got an email from my long time reader and frequent commenter Maria. Maria is not only an Ahoy Hanoi fan but she was the first random reader that I ever met in person. Maria came to Hanoi last year and hung out with Huyen and I while she was traveling in Asia.

Maria asked if I could point my readers to another blog that she has been following for some time. The blog was written by a stay-at-home mom in Atlanta who was raising three kids, including one with cancer. Sadly the writer recently had a severe stroke and is currently considered a hemiplegic. The woman's husband has started to write her blog and is hoping for donations to help cover the costs of his wife's rehab. Please check out the site: http://www.hope4peyton.org/

I Can't Dish It But I Can Take It

(PICTURE: The breakfast, lunch and dinner table...or as I like to call it: The place I get laughed at for forty five minutes, three times a day.)

Everyone knows the old saying, "You can dish it but you can't take it." Well, over the last couple of years I've been taking it a ton and barely dishing it at all. This is especially true when I visit Huyen's family. Huyen's family is really sweet and well meaning but man, all they do is make fun of me! Here's five things they mocked me over during my first 24 hours at their house for Tet:

1. Trying to speak Vietnamese: "Oh you tried to say ___ but you said ___. Ha! Ha! Ha!"

2. Trying to help out: "Look how you wash dishes!!! Ha! Ha! Ha!"

3. My weak stomach: "Oh your stomach hurts! My stomach is fine. Ha! Ha! Ha!"

4. My lack of appetite from #3: "Oh you only ate two bowls of rice and a few pieces of chicken? You're so weak! Ha! Ha! Ha!"

Actually, I can only think of these four things. However, they do these things a heck of a lot.

I've learned a lot about myself since leaving America; being able to be laughed at and to laugh along is a skill that I think everyone should have. Personally I'm still working on this skill because after a few days in a row of being laughed at I want to yell, "Lets see how you would do in America!"...and then I remember, Huyen is gonna come to America.

The Sounds of Ha Nam II

I should have waited a night to write that first blog. As I mentioned last year, during Tet I sleep in the same bed with Huyen’s younger brother. On the first night I slept with Su and man, that kid sleeps like an angel. Minus the occasional sharp elbow in my gut, sleeping with Su is like sleeping with a warm, skinny teddy bear.

The sleeping arrangement on the first night was thus:

First floor overhang: Huyen’s parents.

Second floor: Bed 1: Huyen and Hoai. Bed 2: Su and me.

On the second night, things were a lot different. Hoai’s husband took the train up from Hue and Huyen’s other sister Hoang and nephew Viet Hoang joined us in Ha Nam. This totally shuffled how everyone slept:

First floor overhang: Huyen, Hoai, Hoang, Viet Hoang and Huyen’s mom.

Second floor: Bed 1: Huyen’s Dad and Su. Bed 2: Me and Tan, Hoai’s husband.

Tan’s a nice guy and all but Ben August doesn’t usually sleep around with men for a reason. The reason being, guys snore. Holy cow, did I have flashbacks to sharing a hotel room with my snoring family on nearly every family vacation we ever took. Tan, inches from my ear was sawing wood at a pretty high decibel. However, his clearly deviated septum was nothing compared to Huyen’s Dad who’s snoring could be the reason the roosters started crowing at 1:30 AM.

Today I’m going to ask Huyen how to say in Vietnamese, “Roll over!”

The Sounds of Ha Nam

(PICTURE: A loudspeaker that starts at 5AM.)

Vietnam is a place that touches all of your senses. There are beautiful sites, intoxicating smells, wonderful tastes and even new things to touch and feel. However, when you go to the countryside, you realize this is a country of sounds.

I’m an early riser to begin with but when I go to Huyen’s parent’s house in Ha Nam, I take early rising to a new level due to the sounds of the countryside. Last night these are the things are heard:

Midnight: By midnight I’d been asleep for a couple of hours since there isn’t much to do at night in the countryside. However, that doesn’t stop people from riding their motorbikes outside and occasional honking; at who I have no idea.

1:40 AM: The roosters begin crowing. Don’t believe the myth that roosters crow at sunrise. Roosters crow all night long. Sure they crow at sunrise but only because they’ve been at it for five hours.

3:20 AM: A pig starts squealing, its life about to end. If you have never heard this sound you’re lucky. I wrote a blog on this over a year ago. Frankly, there is nothing more horrible than a squealing pig being butchered. Every time I hear it, I wince and promise myself that one day I’ll be a vegetarian. Despite the grotesque sound, I fell back asleep until…

5:00 AM: Vietnam radio begins to blast from the telephone poles. In all the small towns around the country, a radio station begins to play announcements.

5:15 AM: Women do exercise outside. I hear them chanting: “Mot. Hai. Ba. Mot. Hai. Ba” over and over again.

Besides all of this, there is the occasional chatter coming from the streets. People walk by Huyen’s house, talking to one another. All of these sounds, except for the radio station, exist in Hanoi. The difference is that the countryside is nearly empty so all of the sounds are magnified. As you can imagine, I don’t sleep very well when I go to Huyen’s house.

As I’m finishing this blog there is another pig being killed in the distance. Uh.

Honking

I touched upon honking recently but think it really deserves its own post.

Let me start with an anecdote: One day when I was in Koryama, Japan, I was riding my bicycle around the city, enjoying a beautiful autumn day. As I passed through some small alleys I came upon a traffic jam. This traffic jam involved two cars going in opposite directions. You see, some alleys in Koryama are really small and only wide enough for one car to pass. The car opposite of me backed up and pulled into someone's driveway allowing the car going in the same direction as me to pass. As the car passed the other one I heard a loud noise -- a honk.

The honk startled me because it was the first one I heard in months. Literally months. No exaggeration. This honk was a friendly honk to say thank you, but it still gave me PTS-esque flashbacks to Vietnam.

People in Vietnam are honk crazy. Everyone honks all the freaking time making the streets a headache-inducing cacophony of honks and beeps. One time I tried to explain to a class that honking was considered "noise pollution" in some places around the world. This was a hard concept for my students to wrap their head around. Vietnamese are always talking about how they are a developing country and want to be more like the West. One thing they can start with is trying to minimize honking. As I once wrote on here, "people drive with their ears as much as their eyes." Well, what happens when someone goes deaf because a bus honks in their ear to let them know that they are being passed? Huh, what then bus driver?!

Pregnant

People my age are starting to get pregnant and begin their families. Okay, that's a lie; they've been popping out babies for a few years now but I'm still in denial. One big difference between pregnant Americans and pregnant Vietnamese is when they decided to tell people they're expecting. In America, people generally wait a few months to announce to family and friends that they've gotten knocked up. People do this to make sure everything is okay with the baby and often say, that it is now "safe" to tell everyone. In Vietnam it is quite different. The moment people get pregnant they start to spread the word. Once or twice someone has told me that they are pregnant and I've asked, "How many months along are you?" The answer has been, "One."