Vietnam Day 36 (7/13/09)

We got up at 5:30 for breakfast so we could make it to work on time for our first day. Since I take my daily malaria pill in the morning, I was afraid of upsetting my stomach so I ordered the blandest breakfast available – egg with a baguette, which I went really crazy with by adding strawberry jam. I was a little drowsy but I was doing alright because I was so excited to get started. I was considerably less excited to get back on the bike by myself. I had practiced a little late last night riding around the block – the streets were nearly deserted and yet I managed to almost crash into the only three people out at that hour, not the best track record. I started out again rocky this morning, having trouble finding my balance. I couldn’t ride in a completely straight line but I wasn’t too shaky considering. I had to walk through the market and across the wooden bridges, but I like riding on the road overall – there’s enough room for those behind me to get around and I like the security of knowing I have room to swerve if I need to.

The problem comes when we turn off the road onto the narrow cement path that winds its way to the school. Lush tropical trees and shrubs surround us as we ride, growing over onto the road with palm branches forming arches above our heads. For most of the ride, there is no solid ground on either side of the path, but muddy ditches with pools of water at the bottom. Everyone seems to be a little nervous about the possibility of falling into one, but I think I’m the most likely to actually do it. I’m very unstable on the bike and every time my eyes float to the sides as I gaze fearfully down into the ditches, my handlebars start turning that direction too. I’m trying to keep my eyes straight ahead but it’s difficult because the road is so curvy.

There are other obstacles as well. Motorbikes and other bicycles often come at us going the opposite direction, making for some pretty tricky passing. There’s barely enough room for one bike on the road for one bike on the road, let alone two alongside each other. Everyone else just slows and rolls past oncoming traffic but I can’t ride in a straight line along the edge so I usually stop completely until the other bike has passed me (and even so I’ve still bumped handlebars a couple of times). The animals are an even bigger problem – you never know when a dog or chicken will jump into your path and I’d sooner run myself off the road than hit an animal. Then there’s the wonderfully treacherous stone bridges – there are about half a dozen of them along the way (some of them pretty high) and they’re all really narrow and terrifying so I just walk my bike over. All of my precautions paid off pretty well and I crashed only once into a pile of logs, but I’m just happy it wasn’t into a ditch.

When we got to the school, I went over plans for the toilet with Van Anh and the contractor CET hired. We’re going to start by digging a big pit in the solid so the urine will pass through the soil instead of running directly into the river like it does now. We’re then going to build up a brick structure over that and separate it for boys and girls. Today we just started by demolishing the old toilet and clearing the land so we could build on top of it. With the help of a local man hired to assist us, I learned how to pull up grass and weeds by squatting on the ground angling a shovel almost parallel to the ground and skimming the surface – it’s even more effective than a weedwhacker. We finished pretty quickly so I had extra time to help the school group dust and sand down the rough spots on the walls so we can paint. It was pretty tedious work, but not to hard. We had an extra pair of hands we hadn’t counted on to help us with the cleaning. A number of the school children had come by to watch us and one of the girls, Nhi, picked up a piece of sandpaper and helped us scrub. She’s a really good worker and very eager to speak English with us (though it’s not much).

At noon, we biked over to the moms’ house where they had a wonderful meal prepared for us – honestly that was the largest quantity of vegetables I’ve eaten since coming to Vietnam which was quite refreshing. Part of our daily routine is a break after lunch at a cafe around the corner. It was very relaxing with hammocks and reclining chairs and we sipped (or rather downed) cafe sua das with way too much sua and talked until it was time to leave.

I’m supposed to be teaching science class, but since it’s the first day and only the younger kids are here, we decided to combine the classes so we could introduce ourselves and give them a joint English lesson. They were all too adorable for words, trying to hold our hands and smiling up at us. Cute as they were, I was still intimidated. Everyone else in the group had worked with kids in Saigon as part of their internships, but I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I didn’t know how I was going to teach the kids when we didn’t speak the same language and I was afraid of disappointing all those eager faces. Honestly I’ve never seen a group of kids so eager to learn, especially at such a young age (they were all in elementary school). We were going to play a game with them outside, but they all filed in their seats, took out their notebooks, and said they wanted to learn, not play. There were a few of the “cool kids” who didn’t want to come to class and just played marbles outside the classroom, but the rest of the kids were surprisingly excited to be in school during their summer break. As it turns out, I didn’t have to worry about being a bad teacher just yet, because I didn’t even get a chance to instruct them today. We had way too many teachers for just one English class, so we all spread out and squeezed onto the benches with the kids to give them individual attention and help if they needed. The students I sat with were pretty good at English so I spent most of my time watching the girls write – they all brought their own fountain pens and some of the girls’ handwriting was so good I would call it calligraphy. They certainly put my chickenscratch to shame.

I then endured another stressful bike ride back to the hotel, this time without incident. On the way back, we stopped in the market for a snack. The vendor was just one woman with a small grill-top cooking bananas surrounded by a layer of sticky rice (that had hardened into a pastry-like texture), then wrapped in a banana leaf for cooking. These things are incredible and I’m very seriously thinking about stopping for one every day. Some people dipped the banana in a coconut milk frosting, but I think the bananas are sweet and delicious enough on their own. Just an hour later we had a big dinner at the hotel. It was all very good but I wolfed my meal down way faster than was called for. Maybe I was just stress-eating – my nerves were shot after all that bike riding today.