evening of Day 14...tropical storm has been upgraded to Typhoon Warning

Ok, so maybe I am enjoying this blog a bit too much, or maybe I need to go out and party in the city...but either way, here are a few more pics...the water park in the beginning of the typhoon, traffic on my walk to school, my dinner of grubs, silk village, a yummy drink, and me on a crowded bus!

Here are the before and after of my bed...now I sleep on a ton of pillows - do not touch the 'mattress' at all...

Day 14 - Tropical Storm #1

So today marks the two week mark for my stay in Hanoi. I can't say that I love it yet, but I don't hate it either. I am finding my way and figuring out a life here. Yesterday my three colleagues and I decided to check out the Hanoi water park. Forecast looked good - 94 degrees and sunny. Lisa managed the map and we took a few different buses (3,000VND each - exchange rate is about 19,100VND per $1) and arrived at the water park...around the same time that the tropical storm arrived. Pouring rain, thunder, and lightning met us at the park. We made it to the ticket booth just in time for them to show us that the park was closed. Bummer. It looked pretty cool. Plus, there were pictures of Disney characters all over the place. Today, the rain continues, though there was sun in the early morning.

For the past two weeks, my job has been to explore Hanoi and adapt I suppose, so that when my 14 students arrive, I will be freaking out a bit less than them. 14 American students will arrive in Hanoi this Friday. Some will stay to study for the semester, some for the year. They will live with host families. I am sure that they will be amazing kids - I cannot imagine doing this as a teenager! Plus, my apartment is already acting as my sanctuary, my escape from the craziness of the city.

So much has happened in my first two weeks here, that I cannot even begin to describe each 'cultural experience'. Some have been great and entertaining, while others have been dismal and depressing, but all have been eye-opening. I have found a park to run in (which is empty from about 10am-4pm and ridiculous busy otherwise with people walking, jogging, doing aerobics, resting, cuddling, sleeping, all kinds of things!). I have found a Fivimart very close to my apartment that carries peanut butter, nutella, and granola - which are things that I have not been able to find and have been craving. I am really enjoying my colleagues - John, Ted, and Lisa. We have been exploring together and all seem to get along well.

The traffic and the food are the most jarring things that I noticed when I first arrived in Hanoi. Oh yeah, and the overwhelming humidity. Supposedly it gets quite nice (65 degrees or so) in the winter. Hanoians will wear pants and long sleeve shirts...which they do in the heat as well. I have gotten used to the traffic already. Beeps are constant, and they are not saying, 'what are you doing? Get out of my way' as they would in the States. They are saying 'I am going. I am here. If you do not move, I will hit you.'. Horns are about the person honking them, not about anyone else. They have even customized horns so that one hit will continue in a little horn song so that they don't have to tire themselves out honking it.

The food has been fun too. Unlike other tourists (uhh which there are zero of in Cau Giay where I am living near Vietnam National University), we are not being too careful about what we eat. Obviously, we are not drinking the water - no one does - but we are eating at all kinds of places. Street food has been our go-to. It is about 20,000VND for a huge plate of rice and then any mix of vegetables, meat, egg, tofu, or whatever else they are serving that night. Pho (beef noodle soup) is on every menu. Nem are spring rolls, which I actually have not seen a ton of...regardless, John, Ted, Lisa, and I are not going hungry!

My next post will describe some specific stories of things that have happened so far...but today I will post a few pictures as well.

As I sit on my couch, watching reruns of Cougar Town on a channel called Star World while eating green sticky rice ice cream out of the carton with a child-size spoon that I bought for 2,000VND at Fivimart, I realize that after living for almost two weeks in Hanoi, I am, consciously or not, starting to adapt.

After teaching math at a New England boarding school for five years, moving to Hanoi, Vietnam was a huge change. I say that I spent the past five years 'teaching math', but what that truly entailed was so much more. I filled the proverbial 'triple-threat' model perfectly. I taught a full load of four courses, coached two varsity sports, and lived in the dorm. Yet, even that more detailed explanation does not even begin to describe my life for those five years. Within that time and within that boarding-school-bubble, I had some of my own personal highest highs and lowest lows. This is not to say that I have never felt greater happiness or more intense loss in my life outside of those five years, but it was in that time that I had the most influential internal developments. And change never does come easily. But I guess that is what I get for spending my early-to-mid twenties in the middle of nowhere while living in the dorm with a bunch of teenagers. Somehow I always felt ten years older or ten years younger than I actually was...

And that is why I needed the ultimate change. I could have stayed at boarding school. I could have accepted my spot at Columbia Teacher's College to earn my Master's degree in Educational Psychology. Instead, I chose to live in Hanoi, Vietnam from August 2010 to June 2011. I could not have made a more extreme move.

I have always made the practical, logical choices in life. Moving to Hanoi, especially in light of the Columbia option, was neither practical nor logical. But there was something drawing me there, or here, as we now have it. One thing that I have become aware of in the past few years is the idea of fate and intuition. Without divulging any embarrassing stories (it's only my first post!), I will say that I have learned that my intuition is strong, and that I should listen to it and obey without doubt. Whether it was intuition, fate, God, or complete delusion on my part, something kept pulling me to Vietnam.

After being here for two weeks, I have no idea what that thing was. After a 27+ hour travel day, I arrived in the Hanoi airport around 10pm. I was fetched by the director of my program and dropped off at a supposedly 'fully furnished' apartment located on a street with no name that was filled with the smells of motorbike exhaust and grilled duck (or maybe that was dog?). Apparently, 'fully furnished' does not include a mattress or any kitchen supplies. I spent that first night on the couch, and woke up with a start. The first words out of my mouth were 'wtf. what the hell was I thinking? what am I doing here?'
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To backtrack, I am an all-American girl. I have blond hair, blue eyes, a love for sports, an addiction to sugar, and a religious penchant for US Weekly magazine. I had only just begun to travel and think about the outside world in the summer of 2009. In the past year, I have visited and spent at least two weeks each in South Africa, China, Ecuador, the Galapagos, and now, Vietnam. Maybe I have caught the travel bug? Or maybe I am insatiable...continuing to search for something that I can neither define nor locate. The kicker is that whatever I am looking for is most likely not in another country, but is something I must find within myself. But that is life, isn't it? Everyone is always searching for something. Is contentment ever a reality?

I guess it doesn't really matter. My search has led me to Hanoi, and that is where my blog is supposed to begin. I suppose all of this is just the prologue. And now, I have exhausted myself before I have even begun. Therefore, my first post about me, a single 27 year-old blond girl living in Hanoi, can be summed up in one short and concise statement assuming that my choices are the same as any living thing; to adapt, migrate, or become extinct. So far, I choose to adapt.