Officially The Biggest Spider Ever

I have seen more than my fair share of big spiders in Southeast Asia. However, this spider officially takes the cake. I was walking down the stairwell in my apartment building when this thing caught my eye. It was huge! The section of the wall that this spider was on is about a foot long; the spider was taking up half of it. On top of that, it's legs were very very very thick. I would say that they were about the width of my pinkies...and if you've ever seen my hands, I've got fat fingers.

I started to irrationally fear for my life and quickly grabbed the nearest Vietnamese person I could find -- a man working downstairs in my building. I showed him the spider and he barely flinched. He methodically grabbed a stick and a broom and went after the thing. This is when I took out my video camera and started to film from about twenty feet away (this is why the spider doesn't look monstrous in the video). Standing behind me was the Vietnamese man's son who happened to be at the building that day. Well, the man climbed up on a stool and went after the spider. By "went after" I mean he pushed it off the wall and on to the floor where it quickly stampeded towards me and the little boy. As you can tell from the video, I was petrified. The boy and I ran down the stairs so fast it was as if a tiger was chasing us. Check out this video:

MY PARENTS ARE OUT OF TOWN!!!!!!

Tonight Huyen is going to Ho Chi Minh City for work which means I have our apartment all to myself. Huyen told me I'm not allowed to have any parties. I think she said this to me because during Tet I asked her, "When parents go out of town in Vietnam, do kids have parties?" Huyen started to beam and said, "Yeah! Yeah! When our parents would go away we would have parties! We would cook whatever we wanted!" This is the kind of innocence that you get in Vietnam that you don't get in America. Can you imagine some teenager in a high school cafeteria yelling out, "My parents are out of town!!! We can cook whatever we want!!!!"

Small Town, Big Price

(PICTURE: Huyen's mom pointing at her brother-in-law's name.)

Just like last year, during Tet, we visited Huyen's Uncle's grave. Huyen's Uncle -- for those of you who are new readers -- was killed by the Americans during the war and his body has never been recovered. He has an empty tomb in the military cemetery located in Huyen's small town. His name is also listed on this table. He's #31:


The tablet has all the names of the townspeople who died fighting the French, the Americans and the Cambodians.

#14-#62 on the tablet are people who died fighting the Americans. That's 48 people. I asked Huyen's sister how many people live in the town that is represented by this military cemetery. She told me maybe 1,000. That means about 4% of the town died fighting the Americans. In my head I naturally thought back to last summer when I marched in the Memorial Day parade with my father. On that day I took a picture of the Vietnam Memorial in my town:

(PICTURE: One of Livingston's war memorials.)

According to the 2000 census of Livingston, the town's population was 27,391 people. If 4% of our town's population died fighting, that would mean 1,095 people would have died. The Vietnam War's first Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara, was a notorious numbers cruncher. I wonder what he would have said to those numbers...

Tombs In The Rice Paddies

When Huyen's great grandmother passed away, I wrote about how people are buried in the rice paddies. Well, over Tet, for the second year in a row, we visited some of Huyen's relative's tombs in the rice paddies:



While walking to her Grandmother's tomb we passed these tombs which I thought were quite picturesque:



There's something really beautiful to me about being buried like this. Cemeteries usually feel really sad to me and I think its because people end up spending eternity on land that they have no attachment to. In Vietnam people are buried where they spent their lives, raised their families and literally where they got their food to survive.

Apex English: Scholarship

One of my goals with my school was to make a more affordable language school for students. The fact is that all language schools in Hanoi are geared towards the middle and upper class. From my research, I'm pretty sure that per class, APEX is the cheapest language school in Hanoi where students learn from a native speaker. On top of that, from what I've been told, my school is only about a dollar more per class than many of the private Vietnamese teachers. That said, my school is still not cheap and unfortunately isn't affordable for poor students. However, I have offered scholarships to students who wish to learn at Apex but can't afford the cost.

When I spoke at all of the universities, I told the students about the scholarship. Everyone seemed really excited but only two people applied. To apply, students merely had to write a short essay about why they wanted to learn English. I accepted both students and gave them scholarships. However, one student's level is higher than the class I'm teaching so she told me she would like to wait for a higher level class.

Eventually I want to set up a program where I get donations from people to sponsor students to learn English. In my head the students could then correspond with their sponsor about their English progress. I'm not exactly sure how to go about doing this but it is something I'll definitely be thinking about and looking into...

International Women's Day!

Flowers, flowers everywhere! It can only mean one thing: International Women's Day!!!!

Vietnam is IWD crazy right now. Seemingly every major street has at least a half dozen people selling flowers. There's also banners all over town reminding men that today is a special day. Luckily if I had somehow missed the posters, Huyen reminded me at least thirty times over the last few days that Monday was a very very very important holiday. I bought Huyen roses and chocolates and in true Vietnamese style, let her cook dinner for me (I wanted to take her for dinner but she cooked while I was teaching a private student).

Don't worry readers in America, Canada, Australia, England and one hundred other countries -- International Women's Day hasn't been designated a holiday in our nations yet. Hopefully one day our glass ceiling can be raised as high as some of the nations who have claimed IWD as a national holiday. According to the International Women's Day Website:

"IWD is now an official holiday in China, Armenia, Russia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bulgaria, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Macedonia, Moldova, Mongolia, Tajikistan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan and Vietnam. The tradition sees men honouring their mothers, wives, girlfriends, colleagues, etc with flowers and small gifts. In some countries IWD has the equivalent status of Mother's Day where children give small presents to their mothers and grandmothers.

The new millennium has witnessed a significant change and attitudinal shift in both women's and society's thoughts about women's equality and emancipation. Many from a younger generation feel that 'all the battles have been won for women' while many feminists from the 1970's know only too well the longevity and ingrained complexity of patriarchy. With more women in the boardroom, greater equality in legislative rights, and an increased critical mass of women's visibility as impressive role models in every aspect of life, one could think that women have gained true equality. The unfortunate fact is that women are still not paid equally to that of their male counterparts, women still are not present in equal numbers in business or politics, and globally women's education, health and the violence against them is worse than that of men.

However, great improvements have been made. We do have female astronauts and prime ministers, school girls are welcomed into university, women can work and have a family, women have real choices. And so the tone and nature of IWD has, for the past few years, moved from being a reminder about the negatives to a celebration of the positives.

Annually on 8 March, thousands of events are held throughout the world to inspire women and celebrate achievements. A global web of rich and diverse local activity connects women from all around the world ranging from political rallies, business conferences, government activities and networking events through to local women's craft markets, theatric performances, fashion parades and more.

Many global corporations have also started to more actively support IWD by running their own internal events and through supporting external ones. For example, on 8 March search engine and media giant Google some years even changes its logo on its global search pages. Year on year IWD is certainly increasing in status. The United States even designates the whole month of March as 'Women's History Month'.

So make a difference, think globally and act locally !! Make everyday International Women's Day. Do your bit to ensure that the future for girls is bright, equal, safe and rewarding.

Apex English: Placement Testing

(PICTURE: Welcome to Apex English! Yes, mom, that's my bike and helmet.)

Before students can be assigned a class at Apex, they must take a placement test. I designed a test that evaluates students grammar, reading comprehension, writing, listening and speaking skills. Out of the seventy university students who expressed interest in our school, about thirty signed up for a placement test. This ratio was actually better than I had originally expected. On top of that, there were about another twenty students who contacted us to take the test.

I conducted the placement tests over a three day period. Out of the fifty students who were supposed to come in for the test, only thirty showed up. Yup, people were dropping like flies. This was okay though because my original goal was to get thirty students.

The skill level for the prospective students was across the board. There were some beginner students all the way up to some who were nearly fluent. This presented a problem in trying to organize a class that had enough students of the same level. On top of that, I had to try and coordinate people's available times to learn. This was not an easy task. With Huyen's help* we determined a class time that would suit the majority of the people of around the same level. After calling more people and telling them the time of their class, even more people dropped out. Right about this time Ben August became Negative Nancy. Luckily Huyen is one of the most positive people I've ever known and she told me that all would be okay. She reminded me that this was a new business and it would take time for word of mouth to spread. Well, we officially booked our first class with eight students (plus two free loaders: Huyen and Linh). After the first class a few more people came to take placement tests and three more have since joined the class. So officially, the first Apex class has 11 students! It's a start...

(PICTURE: These aren't students. They're just the guys who hung the Apex sign.)


* I can't overstate how helpful Huyen has been throughout the process of starting the school. I actually shouldn't even use the word help because she basically does everything except the testing and teaching.