Week 2...

Hmmm, my subjects are getting less than creative, I'll have to work on that for next time. The photo on the left is the Perfume River at sunset, with the mountains in the distance.

Alright, when we last left off our handsome protagonist was finishing up his first week in Vietnam, now we're nearly finished with the second week. So where are we? Well with a better sense of the workings of this whole place. My day has been adjusted a good bit from the original expectation. I start work at 7:30ish, I say ish because sometimes its nearly 8 by the time the cab arrives and everyone gets situated. This kind of scheduling really seems to only bother Americans and Europeans, as far as I can tell. The rest of the planet seems to have a comfortable and very relaxed relationship with time. Its taken some getting used to I must admit, but its really not a horrible way to live I suppose. So anyway, 7:30ish-10ish. The original plan was 7:30-10:30 and then 2:30-4:30. So my day has become quite truncated. I almost don't feel as if I'm working sometimes, though I know I'm dumping a lot of info on the people, it definitely doesn't feel like an entire work day. The reasoning for the day changing so much is that frankly, I'm running out of things to teach. Sounds outrageous I know, but in assessing their needs, there is so much development that needs to happen, nationally, culturally, individually, before much of what I learned in college would even have relevance to their lives here.

For example, the IEP, which for the non-teachers in the audience is an Individual Education Plan, a document federally required that requires for the education team of every child with a disability in the USA to have their education team meet no less than once a year to specifically discuss and set goals for that individual child to accomplish, hopefully, within the next year. Well anyway, the IEP is a cornerstone to the belief system we carry in the US, and really my guiding rules for my teaching, doesn't exist here. The foundation of the belief that created the document, the idea that people with disabilities are people too, doesn't exist here. So there goes teaching about that :-) Daily living skills is an area they were all interested in learning about. So last week we jumped into that, and come to find out, daily living skills is probably their strongest area. Daily living skills being those skills required for daily life, brushing teeth, cooking, personal hygiene, etc. In the states its a huge need for people with visual impairments, they often need assistance to accomplish these tasks. Here though, its a sink or swim kind of environment. So the kids learn these things really as a matter of necessity because there isn't someone to do them for them. So, there goes that idea :-)

So I begin by teaching about issues related to blindness, then I take my students and we work on traveling skills, and Bob takes his and works on Braille. I've been teaching O&M in a Buddhist garden, that's been pretty neat, here's a couple pics of that on the left. Then we're done for the day and back to the hotel. I'm finding great people that live in this town. Many of them are "Ex-pats" which is short for ex-patriots or people from other countries living somewhere else and working there. There are about 50 that live in Hue, and they're sort of their own little club. They hang out in certain places and so forth. One guy, is a principal at an "International School" here and his name is Steve. He's an Aussie, and is just one of those people you just love to be around. Very neat person, then there's another guy Arry I think his name is. He's dutch, and is pretty neat as well. Steve is in the red shirt playing the guitar in the pic on the right.

My interpreter who is native to Hue, her husband is an ex-pat and does land mine surveying, because there are still many undetonated explosives lying around from the war. He says nearly every day, or at least multiple times a week someone will stumble across one and maim themselves or get killed. Very sad. So that's how the evenings are usually passed, or playing with the children of the hotel owner. Incidentally, I think they've quit charging me for my food :-) I don't know for sure because its a running tab that will be picked up by Gabby at the end of my stay, but I used to have to sign for my food, and I have not done that in a few days now. She may be pleasantly surprised.

Speaking of free food, I was also picked up by this guy when I was out walking who was very excited that I was American. He took me to lunch. Its kinda strange though, strange like fishy strange. He asked me a lot of questions about me, my family, what I was doing in Vietnam. He then, after lunch, asked me what I thought about the Govt. here. Well I'm not going to say anything bad to someone I don't know, and truthfully, though its quite different from what I'm used to, I wouldn't call it bad, not from my personal experience anyway. So that's essentially what I told him. He then dropped me off at my hotel after convincing me to buy him a bottle of wine for his family, they were having a party that night and he couldn't wait to tell them about this cool American, so we kinda broke even with him buying my meal, and me buying him his wine. He also took down my email address, he said it was so his family in the states could send me a bonsai, they're apparently into Bonsai. But, as the govt is known for monitoring email here, I'm thinking that this could have just been a way for him to monitor my emails perhaps. I don't know, its all very conspiracy theory but its definitely not too "out there". I hadn't put the email thing together until just now, so I'm kinda a little creeped out now. He was likely really just a farmer, whose dad really did work with the Americans during the war. But, farmers with email addresses around here are probably not too common. So anyway, cue the twilight zone music...

Anyway, I spent the afternoon in a karaoke bar, that was Bob's idea to invite the students to this place, Vietnamese love karaoke. Its a phenomenon here, and one I find horrid to be honest. I don't like it at home either, but I went. I told them I didn't want to sing, that it wasn't my thing at all, they bugged me enough about it. So I put in the alphabet song, yes that was an option, as was "Mary had a little lamb" and every Christmas song you could think of. They loved the alphabet song, so the joke was sorta wasted... I'm now here in a neat little coffee shop eating and ice cream sunday and updating my blog. Its a neat little place, owned by twin brothers who are Vietnamese and are internationally known artists apparently. They're quite interesting, facial piercings and tattoos, which is unbelievably progressive for this area, let alone Vietnam in general. They are really neat people though, and I'm working on setting up a thing where they'll teach the students at the school about art. Trying to branch them out from making brooms and doing massage.

Alright, so that's pretty much up to date. I'm flying to Hanoi tomorrow to spend the weekend, and will go to Ha Long Bay which is a national treasure and is considered one of the new "Natural Wonders of the World" I'm going to spend two days on a boat, and will hopefully have loads of pictures for you. So you probably won't get an update until Monday at the earliest, but it should be a picture laden one :-) Oh I forgot, I can call home now, Melissa and I figured out that I can use my home phone service on my laptop, so if I call you, it'll come up as my house phone. So I might be calling a phone near you... Much love from Vietnam.

http://picasaweb.google.com/visionteacher if you want to see pics that didn't make it to the blog.

~Mickey

ps. Many of you have asked about how to leave comments. At the bottom of this post you'll see a little number in gold I think, with the word "comments" written next to it. If you click that number it'll bring you to the comments page, I think you can leave a comment without having to jump through hoops. Hopefully...