Huyen's Name

-This post is quite overdue. I've had a couple of emails asking me exactly how you say Huyen's name. Well, who better to tell you than Huyen herself:

6 Months!

(PICTURE: One of my favorite classes and me...)

My Visa expired this week which means one thing -- I've now been in Vietnam for over six months. Lets take a look back at the top five highs and lows:

Top Five Highs:
1. Meeting Huyen. Every day I spend with her is another adventure. Some adventures are big (like taking road trips to the mountains) and some adventures are small (like trying to explain to her that I'm allergic to shellfish and constantly finding her ordering/cooking it for me).
2. Traveling around this amazing country. I've been to the Mekong Delta, Ho Chi Minh City, Mui Ne, Da Lat, Nha Trang, Hoi An, Da Nang, Hue, Halong Bay, Hanoi and a bunch of small places in the country...
3. Living somewhere completely out of my comfort zone. Every time I step out the front door I'm reminded that I've never been anywhere like where I am now.
4. Never being at a loss to find amazing food. I'm about to jinx myself, but I've also only taken two Immodium ADs in 6 months. Yeah, the food here agrees with my system roughly 20X's better (or 78 less Immodium ADs better per six months) than the food in America.
5. Being roughly a foot and a half taller than everyone I meet. I like to think I'm inspiring some future writers to write a new version of Gulliver's Travels.

Top Five Lows:
1. Being away from my family and friends for so long and especially missing the birth of my niece.
2. Being robbed by Ninjas in my sleep.
3. Being evicted and having ten days to move because my girlfriend slept over.
4. Having to work Sundays as of two weeks ago. I hate working on Sunday!
5. Not being able to jump on my bicycle and ride to the beach in two minutes like I have the last couple years in Santa Monica.

Overall it's been a pretty amazing six months and I have no doubt the times ahead of me will only get better and better...

Thanks to everyone for reading the blog these past six months. The blog truly started as something to keep my mom from daily panic attacks and has grown into an international phenomenon. Okay, maybe it's not quite that big but it's really nice to know so many people are taking an interest in my life...so thanks!

Mid Autumn Festival

Despite it being a blatantly appalling spit in the face of the environment, tonight's Mid-Autumn festival was quite beautiful. The festival has something to do with the lunar calendar, but to be honest, I'm really not sure what. Regardless of what the original point of the festival was many centuries ago, today it basically translates too, "Lets fill the sky with burning china ball/tube things and watch them drift away towards some far away place where we don't have to watch the water buffalo choke to death on them."

The ironic thing about basing holidays around the lunar calendar is that the sky here is so polluted that sometimes it's hard to even see the moon. Upon reflection, I think this is why the festival is so popular -- when you can't see stars, you need to create them yourself.

Here's a video I shot of someone launching their china ball/tube thing:

Hayden Update

Good news on Hayden! After lots of ups and downs and very scary moments, Hayden is on the road to recovery -- literally. Hayden was flown back to Brisbane, Australia a couple of days ago where he'll continue his treatment and rehab. 

I've gotten tons of emails asking about Hayden (and according to google analytics, lots of people were reading about him on my site) so thank you all for your good thoughts towards him. 

All the teachers at Language Link signed a t-shirt for Hayden which was delivered to him about a week ago. Hayden said the shirt was, "Beautiful." I like to think that we were all kind of the final push towards getting him better! 

My First Accident

Yesterday I had my first motorbike accident. You never picture your first accident but if I had, it wouldn't have gone down like this. I was on a basically empty street (very unusual for Hanoi) when all of a sudden two high school students cut directly across the street on their bicycles. The two were chatting with each other and didn't bother to look either way before crossing the street...Or in other words, standard operating procedure for Vietnam. I was going about 35KM an hour (21 MPH) when I saw them crossing my path just about twenty feet ahead. My natural instincts took over and I found myself doing three things:

1. Screaming, "WHOAH, WHOAH, WHOAH!!!!"

2. Squeezing both the hand brake and pushing down on the foot brake at the same time....something I believe they tell you never to do in motorcycle school (which I took three years ago in LA).

3. Putting my left foot on the ground in hopes of it being a third brake -- yeah, like in a cartoon.

Despite my fast reaction, I couldn't slow down in time and I nailed the bicycle's back tire. Immediately I started to apologize to the kid, "I'm so sorry...." However, the kid just looked at me, glanced at his tire and then crossed the opposing traffic...without looking.

Thankfully nobody was hurt...

Teacher Of The Year

It's official: My students love me.

A couple weeks ago one of my classes finished and after the last class two of my students bashfully came up to me and presented me with presents. I got a sweet new key chain and a mug that says, "Friend Forever." That's right, I've got a Vietnamese friend forever!!!

(PICTURE: My new favorite mug and key chain)

I really appreciated the gifts but what I liked even better were the cards:

In case you can't read the cards they say:

CARD 1: I wish you have a good life and a succeed job. Thanks to you, my speaking and listening is better. Student, Van <=Cloudy>

CARD 2: The course has just finished. I have a gift for you. And I want to say that during the course, you done very well. I regret to not continue studying there. I am always your friend. Best wishes for you, An.

Now the question arises: Why didn't my other twelve students write me cards/buy me gifts!

My Sister

My sister's job is to deal with the press and well, to get good/bad information about people out there. Hannah's great at doing her job for other people but not so great at doing it for herself. Simply put, Hannah hasn't been mentioned on Ahoy Hanoi in months -- and well, if you want to be anyone on the internet you need your name on Ahoy Hanoi.

All of the good press as of late has gone towards my brother. Having a baby will do that. Well, I think my sister is starting to mount a campaign to get her name back out there.

Last week Hannah was at the Democratic National Convention. Every morning I would wake up to watch the speeches with the hopes of seeing Hannah in the background. When Hannah wasn't too busy bumping elbows with politicians she managed to send me an email or two. On one of the first days I commented to her that I thought Montana's Governor Schweitzer gave a great speech. Well, just a few days later Hannah sent me this email:

conversation*:

Me: Hi, Governor. My brother lives in Vietnam but he saw your speech and raved about it.
Schweitzer: He lives in Vietnam? How did he watch it?
Me: The internet I guess? Anyway, if we took a picture together I think it'd make him really jealous.
Schweitzer: Yeah? Let's do it! For your brother.

*it went something like that. The party was very loud.

Welcome back to Ahoy Hanoi, Hannah. And a big welcome to you Governor. And yes, I'm jealous.