Blueprints

Pretend that you didn't look at the title of this post. Great, thanks. Now, look at this picture:



What do you think it is?
A) Random children's drawings on a wall

B) Ancient hieroglyphics left on Earth by visiting aliens

C) The blueprints for Huyen's parents' new house

I know you cheated and look at the title of this post so yes, the answer is C.

Ever time I entered Huyen's parents' house I got a slight chuckle looking at the "blueprints" on the neighbor's side wall. The guys who built the house literally drew up the plans on the side of the neighbor's house!!!! Sure, they've probably built dozens of the same style house but at least you'd hope they would use a ruler when making chalk blue prints!

As I said, I would laugh when entering the house. However, when laying in bed on the second floor I would suddenly have a scary epiphany: "This house was built using blueprints on the side of a wall!!!!".

Chicken - Finger

(PICTURE: Hello chickens!)

On the second day of the holiday, Huyen's sister brought three chickens to the house. I was told that these chickens would be our meals that week and that I would be the one killing them. As you can imagine, I was slightly less excited about that second piece of news.

While preparing lunch that day, I moronically cut my left thumb while slicing vegetables. The cut was pretty deep and very bloody. It was by far the deepest cut I've ever had and resulted in me screaming, "OWWWWW" and instinctively tossing the knife into the air. Thank god the knife didn't hit Huyen who was making spring rolls next to me. As much as it sucked to have a large, painful cut on my hand and to be made fun of for a week by neighbors and family members, it did have the added benefit of getting me out of killing chickens. However, instead of being the butcher that week, I became the farmer. It was my job to feed the chickens every morning and to give them water. Naturally this meant I bonded a little bit with the birds...which made it that much harder to watch Huyen and Su kill the chickens. I swear, I shed a tear when I ate those delicious chicken legs.

Preparation

Unlike my two prior Tets in Ha Nam, this year we spent the holiday at the Nguyen's new house (where we had the wedding). Huyen's family doesn't live in this house so it required some preparation on our part. This involved a few things:
1. Getting drinkable water. Su and I went to a neighbor's house and got water from her well and placed it in this large clay pot:


(PICTURE: All of the water we cooked with during the week came from this pot.)

2. We had to clean the house. This involved sweeping, mopping, dusting...and eventually burning the trash and leaves in the front courtyard

(PICTURE: This is the garbage collector in the village.)

3. We had to bring the TV from the house they live in and set it up in this house. It's very important for Su and my father-in-law to watch TV during the New Year. Yup, sounds just like America.

(PICTURE: Su rigged the antenna to that bamboo pole on their roof.)

During the course of the week, we also had to transport the refrigerator from the old house to the new house. Then on the actual New Year, I had to clean everything again. I washed and scrubbed windows and also -- this was my least favorite job -- scrapped the sap off the front steps which had fallen off the sapodilla tree.

Heading out...

(PICTURE: That bag weighs more than Huyen.)

In preparation for our week at Huyen's house, we had a lot to pack. Besides a week's worth of clothing, we had a ton of food and gifts to bring home. In no particle order, we had: wine, liquor, ten grapefruits (I had eaten more than a few the week before), candy and Sri Lankan tea. The total weight of the bag ended up being just about the same as Huyen.

On the morning that we left, about 75% of Hanoi was migrating out of town and back towards their family's hometown -- or as Vietnamese always say, "My countryside." Huyen and I took to the traffic very slowly since our bike was completed weighed down. I had offered to sit on the back with the bag on my shoulders but Huyen preferred being the passenger. However at some point Huyen started to yell at me on the highway. Between my sweater hood, helmet and traffic noise, I couldn't hear her. Finally I got the message (I couldn't ignore her hitting my shoulder) that her shoulder blades were about to break. We pulled off the highway into the shoulder and readjusted the bag. I ended up driving with my knees basically touching my chin so that the bag could rest on the space behind Huyen. The trip home took us about two hours which is nearly double the usual time it takes. But we got there safe and sound -- with the grapefruits in tact -- which is the most important thing.

The Year Of The Cat

(PICTURE: My worst nightmare.)

Happy year of the cat. There's no exclamation mark at the end of that first sentence for a reason -- I hate cats. Anyone who knows me well knows that I do not like cats. I'm sure this anti-feline attitude comes from when I was a teenager and often cat-sat my best friend Brad's cat when his family went off on winter holiday vacations. While his family was in Florida enjoying the sun, I was changing putrid cat litters and gagging at the smell of cat food. I've often made enemies with people after going into anti-cat rants so I'll stop the hating here.

According to the lunar calendar, this is the year of the cat. I'm hoping that despite that this will still be a great year for Huyen and me since we've got a lot of big things on our upcoming calendar. Over the next few days I'll recant some stories from my Tet spent at Huyen's house. Now though you should watch this fantastic youtube video about facts about cats that my sister sent me. Enjoy!

Grapefruits

(PICTURE: We bought grapefruit from this lady a couple of times during the week.)

Huyen has one uncle who lives outside of HCMC. During the week we drove about an hour to go see him and to have lunch with him. On the afternoon before we departed HCMC, he drove into the city to meet us and to give Tet gifts for their family. There were basically two gifts: 1) a few million VND in freshly printed money. This is the traditional gift for elderly family members and little children during Tet. 2) 19kgs of grapefruits. For those who are metric-moronic like me, that's 42lbs. Yes, he gave us 42lbs of grapefruits to fly back to Hanoi with!!!!

Due to the last minute interview warning from the US government, we had to buy tickets that were twice the price of normal tickets. The one advantage of this is that we were allowed to check baggage (on our flight down we couldn't check baggage). We took full advantage of this and checked our 42lbs of grapefruits.

Now you might be saying to yourself, "Don't you have grapefruits in Hanoi?" Well, yes we do. However, the southern grapefruits are unarguably juicier and more delicious. Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining at all about carrying 42lbs of grapefruits because a) I ended up eating about 20lbs of them b) It makes for a no brainer blog entry.

American War Atrocities Museum

(PICTURE: A quote from McNamara.)

While in HCMC, Huyen and I went to the American War Atrocities Museum. This was my second time at the museum. The first time I went I felt deeply ashamed to be an American. After having lived here for three years and being taken in by the graciousness and kindness of the people, that shame has reached new heights; I feel absolute disgust at what our country did in Vietnam.

In school, we don't really learn about the horrific things we did in Vietnam. Why is that? I would say that the vast majority of Americans have complete apathy when it comes to the mass murder and war crimes our country has been responsible for in Vietnam and in other places around the world. Personally, I think that America should build our own war crimes museum in Washington as acknowledgment of the evils we've done and as a reminder to never do them again.

Here's a few exhibits that struck me at the museum:

(PICTURE: Huyen's uncle is part of that three million and part of the 300,000 missing.)


(PICTURE: A good senator who was sadly in the minority.)


(PICTURE: Kerrey WON a bronze star for this massacre.)


(PICTURE: The city by Huyen's house. This is where my family and friends stayed the night before our wedding.)


(PICTURE: Why weren't members of our government charged with war crimes?)


(PICTURE: Does this look familiar? Did we learn any lessons from Vietnam?)