Vietnam Day 45 (7/22/09)

I somehow got it into my head that having an extra half hour of sleep would make me less tired than usual, but I woke up feeling groggy. The reason we got extra sleep is that we had a meeting with a government representative of Ben Tre and politicians don't get up early. This one however was even worse than usual and kept us waiting for nearly half an hour at a long wooden table in a meeting room presided over by a marble bust of Ho Chi Minh. When he finally arrived, he entered with a stiff smile that never left his face as long as the hoards of cameras surrounded him. He went around the table making all the usual diplomatic moves, shaking our hands, asking our names, and trying to find out what we thought of his realm. I ended up as spokesperson for this last part, so I essentially delivered the same speech I gave our first day here when we met the People's Committee, only I made it a little shorter and more cliche (if that's possible). As we finished our mini-press conference, the official awkwardly handed us two wrapped boxes as a gift - when we opened it later we discovered it contained fixings for sweetsoup, which we've decided to re-gift to the family we're building the house for since I think they'd appreciate it more than we would. The whole process involved so much pomp and circumstance and it was really obnoxious because it took time away from our work and we have deadlines to meet.

Finally we made it to the school, but there wasn't as much to do as I'd hoped. I piled bricks and mixed cement for the contractor, but that only took so much time and after that I had nothing to do but go back around to the front and help paint. I was bent over painting the blue footer on the wall when a member of the government representative's staff grabbed my arm and (somewhat forcefully) pulled me away from my work and outside for a group photo - I guess he didn't get enough campaign shots earlier. When I walked outside, I realized the entire caravan from the "press conference" had followed us.

The Vietnamese government is unfailingly committed to structure and consistency. We had painted the entire exterior of the school yellow, but apparently the pillars are always white on schools in this region. Those high spots had taken Kendra and Wen nearly an entire day’s work to paint and it would take at least twice as long to redo it with out watery white paint (which was unlikely to cover the bright yellow). Even after we politely pointed this out to the People’s Committee, they still wanted it redone – it would have just looked absolutely ridiculous otherwise. Eventually, after trying to lay the white on, even they realized how difficult it would be and gave up.

Once again I found myself nervous to teach the older kids. They have higher expectations than the younger ones and to be honest we didn’t have much of a lesson plan for today. We spent most of the time helping them construct kaleidoscopes and then I stalled the rest of the time, trying to explain molecules and density via the liquid demonstration from yesterday (layering cooking oil, water, and condensed milk). I thought we did pretty well considering our resources, though the second class complained that we didn’t teach them long enough. Never have I met kids so eager to learn – they were actually complaining and shaking their heads in disappointment.

When we got back to the hotel, Molly and I finally made progress with our song. We finally found a song that worked well with both of our voices – we downloaded the karaoke version of “For Good” from the musical Wicked. The whole night ended up being nothing but practice. After Molly and I were done for the night, then everyone gathered to practice the group songs, this time adding in a little dance number to the Vietnamese song. The choreography hasn’t quite come together yet but I’m thrilled with my partner – Phat is so much fun and happens to be as uncoordinated as I am. We’re always wonderfully in sync with each other while at the same time wildly off from other people. It’s alright, I’m sure we’ll get there eventually.