Asia Tidbits

Right now I'm sitting in a cafe with Anna.  We're at a place near our house where I'd like to become a regular.  Today I've ordered "avocado with ice cream."  Sound good?  Anna is sticking closer to the familiar with pineapple juice with honey.

Most places serve a complimentary iced green tea as well.  Sometimes it's delightful, and sometimes pretty bitter.  This one is of the delightful variety, maybe with a hint of coconut? Next time I'm out with a Vietnamese speaker, I'm going to see if I can find out where to buy it. We feel pretty good about drinking the tea that's offered because we know the water boiled in order to make the tea, but it's best not to think about whether the glasses were washed thoroughly or not.... I was enjoying a lunch of chicken and rice at a small shop recently, and the proprietress gestured to the cooler where I could refill my tea if I wanted to.  I opened the lid and couldn't see how the tea was supposed to be dipped out, and the nearby options weren't encouraging.  I opted not to have a refill of the cold stuff and instead poured some hot tea out of a thermos on the table.  I think I made the right choice, because later I saw another customer help himself to the cold tea by simply dipping his own glass into the bucket. Oh well. I'll still go back for the chicken and rice, though, because it was good eating and was followed by the most nourishing-tasting broth I've ever had. By the way, avocado with ice cream is a hit. I'll be back for another one of these!

The proprietress preparing a baggy of broth for a to-go order.

I took the whole family back to my chicken and rice spot, and EVERYONE was happy with the food!

We took a few amusing pictures the first time we went to the large Korean department store here. It's turned out to be our favorite comprehensive shopping place, and we just may send you some of these tasty snacks for Christmas.

Daniel is always pointing out the nonsensical nature of advertisements. He wants to know why a picture of a smiling family is supposed to make someone buy plastic bags, for example. I think he had a good point with this one, though. If this is an advertisement for an eyeglasses company, why is no one wearing glasses?

After about two hours of grueling shopping in the home goods department, we all needed some cheering up with ice cream at Lotteria, a fast food place on the ground floor.  I think I was more cheered by the wall-sized display of random American burger sentiments: 

Every day we see something new, do something a little better than the first time we tried it, and discover a new place to get something we've been looking for.  The joys outweigh the hardships, and we are glad to be here.  It's going to be a life-changing year!

Love,

Janet

Anna Blogging

[Tim]

Our teenager has set up her own blog with its own email subscription here: http://stellaluna33.weebly.com/vietnam-pages

I'm subscribed.

Nice pics, Anna!  I may steal some of your posts to put them on this family blog...

_________________________

Tomorrow I plan to go shopping with a Viet friend.  I don't know the "with whom" part yet, but I'm to the point where I need a translator for two special projects.

First, I need to go to the district of woodworkers. If you've been in Asia you know that the the phenomenon of car-sales lots (the one where the most successful lots congregate in a section of town, so every city has its "auto-row") extends to lots of other industries:  TV-Repair Street, Curtain-Making Avenue, Dentist Circle, etc.  But tomorrow I need to run over to the woodworking shops and negotiate the construction of a bed-table.  We bought foam from the guys who are making our sofa, and it is cut to fit in between the bunk beds and the wall of the kids' room, but now we want to elevate that third bed so that it's at 1.5 height on the bunkbed scale.  Bottom queen-bunk is Anna (the part toward the wall is hers, but the edge is more of a common sitting area, then the 1.5 bunk is a narrow 82cm with a custom foam-mat, and the top bunk is a standard twin.  So I need a Viet speaker to help me explain my need for .82 by 2m platform, made from no specific quality of wood, raised to 1.05m, etc.

I'd like to get off on the right foot with a good carpenter, too, because I'll be going back to this person for other simple projects like a custom table for the garage, etc.  I'm tool-less in Vietnam!

The other task I need a Viet speaker for is going to a tailor.  There is a Tailor Street down in Central, but I'm hoping I can use someone who is just outside of our neighborhood instead.  My immediate needs are to have some slacks made for teaching and we need to add a fabric backing to our bedroom curtains. They're not shear, but there is a streetlight outside of our bedroom window and it's a little amazing how much light is in our room all night long.  The streetlamp goes off at 5am, and this morning I was awake for that event and was shocked at how much darker the room got--I've actually never seen our room that dark before!  Dawn came 20 minutes later, but it was a desirable darkness for those 20 minutes.  So curtain backing, slacks-making, and some mending.  Gotta find someone local to do these things, and it's going to help to have a Viet along for that level of complexity.

Other shopping I can handle with the help of some certain "mime" skills and Google Translate on my phone.  Garage hooks, bedroom shelving, cell phone activations--no problem!  Having the sofa custom-made to western preferences would have been a problem with limited language, but the owner speaks decent English.  A little cheaper than just buying a set from a storefront, too!

Who will help me shop carpenters and tailors?  I'm going to Vision Cafe for English Club tonight, and my intention is to broadcast my need for a shopping-buddy tomorrow morning.  See who takes me up on it.  :)

Embracing the Fishbowl

Some random pics unconnected with Living the Fishbowl Life:

TIM:

Okay, so I know it's a small world and the world is shrinking and all interconnected, but it's still disconcerting when, in the space of a week, two separate people in my life who are not my Facebook friends tell me where I was and who I was with.  

The first was my landlord, who is working with me to plan some concrete construction on the roof of our house.  He mentioned the Vision Cafe, where we volunteer for English Clubs, and said that his wife saw us on Facebook.  It turns out she is FB friends with one of the people who was at Vision Cafe and who took a selfie with us and posted it.  I can only hope that the comments under the pics were complimentary, but I really have no way of knowing what sort of things are being said about us in the pics floating around.  We take lots of posed selfie shots with our new Viet friends, and we know they're going to go out on social media, but it's still disconcerting when my landlord knows where I spend my evenings volunteering.

Then the other was my college foreign affairs office.  That one was eerie, because she said sort of in the same breath: "I see you are spending time with students making dinner in your home--I saw it on Facebook--we have a problem."  Okay, I'm going to be honest: that one freaked me out.  I don't have any idea what connection she has with the students who posted about making dinner with us, but apparently news about the Chases isn't hard to find.  And the problem?  Yikes!  It turns out the problem is entirely unrelated to our making egg-meat-veggie wraps with students.  The "problem" was the office wanted help with translating something from Viet to English, and yes, I'm happy to help.  Whew!

It's surreal, to be a foreign celebrity here.  It's very like when we lived in China in the 90's, but the explosive element of social media really adds an exciting element to the story.  (One anecdote from China, then I'll sign off):  We had learned how to order a certain favorite dish in the campus canteen by asking the waitress to repeat it for us again and again.  Later we discovered that all we'd been saying, in carefully practiced tones, was "cauliflower-with-starch."  Even later--a week later--we were at a market not far from our apartment and a lady that we'd never seen before patted a head of cauliflower and smiled and pointed to us and said "cauliflower with starch" and chuckled.  Yeah, we are cause for much amused conversation, where ever we go.  Today people on the street were pointing and chuckling because I was walking with Janet and I was the one carrying the shopping bags.  We clearly don't have the gender roles well established in my family, they'll tell their friends.  Ah, well.  The price of fame.

~Tim