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."

Assholes

One thing I've learned from living abroad is that there are assholes everywhere. There are assholes of every color, every ethnicity and every religion. There are assholes who drive through red lights. There are assholes who cut people in lines. There are assholes who declare wars based on fake WMD evidence. There are assholes who cheat on their wives. There are asshole expats who act like they're imperialists. There are assholes who show up to town hall meetings and write letters to editors and complain about things they have no idea what they're talking about. There are assholes who yell at children. There are even children who we call brats but are really assholes. There are teachers who are assholes and there are cops who are assholes. There are doctors who are assholes and there a religious leaders who are assholes. The point is, there are a ton of assholes in this world. I rarely write negative blog posts but I just can't help myself today as I just had a great first hand experience with assholes from around the world:

At my gym there is a flat screen TV in the weight room. Today I was the ONLY PERSON working out in the weight room and was psyched because "Red Dawn", one of my favorite movies, was on TV. I started to think about a blog post about "Red Dawn" when a Korean guy came into the weight room. The guy started to work out right next to me. In fact, he was so close to me I visibly craned my neck around him a few times to watch the movie between sets. I mean, it could not have been more obvious that I was watching the television...which makes the Korean guy a total asshole for changing the channel AND NOT WATCHING. Yes, he changed the channel to a soccer match (one that had been played days earlier) and didn't even pay attention to it. What I should have done was say, "Dude, I'm watching Red Dawn and Chelsea wins this game 3-1." However, being a non confrontational person (that's my synonym for "wuss") I shook my head and focused back on working out.

After about fifteen minutes the Korean guy left the weight room while almost simultaneously some meathead Eastern European guy entered. I immediately got up, took the remote and turned the channel back to "Red Dawn"...which was now over and rolling credits. I shook my head again and started to think about this "Asshole" blog as I channel surfed. I found another station that peaked my interest and then sat back down on a work-out machine. Not a minute passed before the Eastern European guy approached the TV and changed the channel. The dude saw me change the channel!! Again, I was non confrontation (yes, a wuss) and just shook my head and started to make fun of this guy in my head since he had exponentially more hair on his triceps then on his scalp. This Eastern European guy, who had clearly used a crap load of steroids at some point in his life, then proceeded to NOT WATCH THE TV. I'm sorry for the profanity but that Korean guy and Eastern Europe guy are clearly assholes. Which proves my point -- assholes are everywhere.

Cleaning Lady

The price of our apartment includes a cleaning lady who comes two or three times a week to clean and to do our laundry and ironing. Personally, I prefer doing my own laundry but unfortunately we don't have a washing machine in our apartment. I feel a little spoiled having a cleaning lady but this is something one gets used to pretty fast.

The cleaning lady is really sweet but she's also really hard of hearing. At first I thought she just couldn't understand my terrible Vietnamese but soon came to realize it was a little bit more than that. One day she was wearing headphones and the music could not have been any louder. It sounded like a boom box was strapped to her ears. Then another time she gave me someone else's laundry and I tracked her down in the building and had to yell "XIN LOI!!! (EXCUSE ME!!!)" at nearly the top of my lungs before she turned around. The final hint that she might be slightly deaf though was when my neighbor said to me, "You know the cleaning lady is basically deaf, right?". I looked at him and said, "Yeah, that makes sense."

I don't want to pick on deaf people but having someone with keys to your apartment who can't hear can be a little bit troubling. For example, the Cleaning Lady knocks on the door before she comes in; I think this is a warning rather than asking permission to come in. Today, I was in the shower and heard the knock on the door. I yelled out, "TWO MINUTES!" but sure enough a second later the door opened and I heard footsteps. Luckily, anticipating her lack of hearing me, I closed the bathroom door. Well, apparently she didn't hear me in the shower either because moments later she started to vacuum. I finished showering, wrapped myself in a towel and walked into my bedroom. The Cleaning Lady, presumably embarrassed, quickly scampered out of the apartment. I guess sometimes it would be better to have a blind Cleaning Lady.