Throw a fruit in the basket!

Game with my Superkids class on Saturday morning... Kids have to properly enunciate the target language, and then they race to be the first to get a fruit into their team's basket. Great fun, although a bit out of control at times as the rest of the class get over-excited and some dash up to the front of the class to try to collect all of the thrown fruits!

Ship Ahoy! Zheng He's sailors in Saigon!

Last Tuesday, on just another normal day, I was at the General Post Office taking care of some tasks. I had just been looking through some of the neat cultural books on sale at the central desk, while at the same time eavesdropping on a nearby tour group wherein the guide was explaining some interesting facts about an old worker well beyond retirement-age still working enthusiastically in the post office. The guide pointed out the cheery old man aiding at the writing benches, who then came to have a chat with the tourists. He is in his 80s, and speaks impeccable French and English, and he helps visitors with their mailing and writing translation needs everyday. As I was thinking to myself how this city was so full of incredibly interesting people in random places, I turned around to head out and suddenly got slammed with an astonishing fairytale-like scene. In front of my eyes were a group of happy sailors in crisp white naval uniforms, looking at the souvenirs round the desk and being attended to by two Vietnamese ladies in beautiful pearl-blue traditional ao dai dresses. I was gobsmacked.

I instantly started taking pictures of the sailors as they nonchalantly went about their touristic activities, browsing through goods, mailing letters, and even taking pictures of each other with their cameras hanging round their necks in true tourist style. Bu-! But! Am I seeing things?!! Am I the only one seeing these giant robust sailor men spread out all over the post office doing casual tourist sight-seeing things?!! Curiosity grabbed over the reins of my motor-sensory faculty and led me to a sailor to inquire and even to get some pictures taken with them.

The sailor told me that they were from the Chinese Navy and they were here on a visit. His English was not very good, but the two sailors I took a picture with were very receptive to my curiosity and photo-taking. As I grudgingly dragged myself out of the post office (while trying to take as many non-invasive photos of the jolly sailors as possible) I was left in sheer wonder and delight at the whole random happening. I made my way through downtown and was amused to see more sailors on the street, taking pictures of each other. Later on in the day, I was on a scheduled task at the wharf and happened to take pictures of some grand ships. Only later on when I researched on the internet did I realize that I had snapped a picture of the very Chinese Naval Vessel from which the sailors came. If this day was not a day of sheer coincidence and marvel, I don't know what day is!

The Chinese Navy was in Ho Chi Minh from Monday April 23rd to 26th as part of a global goodwill voyage aimed at deepening Chinese relations with the world, fostering friendship between Chinese navies and international navies, and promoting "harmony at oceans". The Chinese Navy vessel, named Zheng He after a famed Chinese marine explorer who commanded seven epic maiden voyages throughout the world in the 1400s, started its journey on April 16th from the port of Dalian in China's northeastern coast, and sailed to Ho Chi Minh port as the first leg of its five-month round-the-world journey. In total, Zheng He will cover more than 30,000 nautical miles as it will sail and carry out naval exchanges with ports from 11 countries around the world: Vietnam, Malaysia, India, Italy, Spain, Canada, Ecuador, French Polynesia, Tonga, Indonesia, Brunei, Djibouti, Jamaica, and Australia. The vessel is carrying 308 sailors, including 110 students from the Dalian Naval Academy undergoing a vigorous naval internship program, as well as representatives from 13 navy colleges around the world, including 13 females. In Ho Chi Minh City, exchanges included visiting a naval technological academy, playing volleyball and tug-o-war with Vietnamese naval students, inviting Chinese expats and delegates as well as the Vietnamese Navy on board to tour its ship, amongst other cooperative activities.

One Chinese navy student said: "We understand that the Vietnamese volleyball team is well trained. In addition, we also feel that the friendship between China and Vietnam is an all-weather friendship. Ours is a friendship among good friends, good comrades and good partners." As the Chinese training vessel continues its expedition around the globe, following the maritime routes of one of the world's greatest maritime navigators and great source of Chinese pride from which the vessel is named, Wu Shengli, commander of the Chinese Navy, hopes to capture Zheng He's spirit of harbouring respect and understanding between the peoples of the world to create a harmonious maritime environment.

Great Chinese Admiral Zheng He (1371-1433)

Outline of voyage of Chinese Army Training Vessel Zheng He, April 2012-September 2012

Conversations with a former South Vietnamese Army Commander

It is rare to meet a high-ranking person that was directly involved in a war. It is precious to meet a person that is full of life and inspires your soul by his mere character. I was blessed to be able to meet both of these personae in one man. One old, but vibrant man.

Yesterday morning, I was doing some field work by the Ben Nghe Channel, and a jolly old man with pronounced features and a skinny-yet-toned physique approached me. Hello Miss, this road ends here, there is construction there! He thought I was trying to walk up along the river, but I told him I was just taking pictures. Are you Hanoian?, he asked me. I was (pleasantly) surprised that he did not catch my despicably foreign accent in Vietnamese. I chuckled and told him that I came from Canada. He then switched to English and expressed his wonder about me. He had really thought I came from Hanoi, because of my features, and also because of my demeanour. That's strange, no one's ever told me that before, I wondered to myself, while at the same time being marveled by this old man's proficient English.

Our small ice-breaker chit-chat quickly ensued to an explorative full-breadth conversation about who this man really was. His name is Nguyễn H. Khâm, and he was a South Vietnamese Infantry Company Commander during the Vietnam war (known as the American War here). He had commanded 1200 soldiers in his own unit, and he had been very physically (and very psychologically) involved at the forefronts of the war. Our conversation went from an initial stage of confusion and disillusionment of this seemingly innocent old man muttering shambles about himself and showing me neatly organized IDs and documents from a folded-up plastic cover he kept on his body, to a progressively fascinating discovery of a deep man with a moving story and soul-reaching thoughts.

With his initial urging, I abandoned my morning tasks, and sat down with him for street coffee by the sidewalk. We spent the next 2 hours chatting and at the end, he invited me over to his modest home, where I got to meet his wife and his granddaughter.

Over the course of our conversation, I got to know Khâm as an extremely jovial man whose spirit is decades younger than his calendar age of 72. Despite having been imprisoned for 26 years following the fall of Saigon, leaving his native country for America where he gained citizenship, and recently returning to a motherland vastly different than what he'd known, he exudes optimism and a zeal for life that truly inspires. His humour and laughter are infectious. His wisdom radiates from a past that's been cultured by both books and trying experiences.

Some of the memorable moments of our conversation include when we talked about music. I was impressed at the amount of worldly music he sung, both in French and in English, and I asked him what his favourite song during the war was. He said a song along the lines of "Ask God to stop the raining". Oh, I see... I nodded in empathy and in anticipation of a deep, moral answer. He elaborated: Because when we were fighting, we couldn't shoot when it was raining. So all the soldiers wanted it to stop raining so they could see. His unassuming response popped my philosophical bubble, and after a quick 3 seconds of dumbfoundment, I burst out laughing and he joined in. Later on, when I asked him why he came back to Vietnam, if he was fighting on the American side and against the Communists. He responded: Even a thief always loves his own country... Why shouldn't I love my country?


My chance encounter with Khâm was blessful in two ways. On the one hand, I got to befriend a truly incredible man with immeasurable vitality. On the other hand, it was a humbling reminder that every walking person has a story to tell, but that you would never hear it if you went on walking past. Khâm told me that his name meant "respect" in Vietnamese. In my dictionary, "khâm phục" means "to feel deep admiration for, greatly admire, be lost in admiration for." Indeed, khâm phục is how I feel towards this special man I met strolling by the riverside.

 

Here is a video of some parts of our conversation. Please note that during the actual conversation, I did not understand everything that Khâm said. I was only able to reconstruct many of his sentences after viewing the video footage several times. I've included captioning for most of the video. Enjoy!

(Note: About his comment about the Vietnamese population in America, he was right about the population being very high. According to the 2010 census, the Vietnamese population in America is around 1,700,000.  Oops! My estimation was extremely far off!!!)

Seaweed drink to go, please!

Every time I come home from downtown, I always pass by this huge crowd in front of this small shop at the corner of Dinh Tien Hoang and Dien Bien Phu streets. What in the world is this place? I always ask myself as I zoom past the scene while keeping my eyes fixed on the commotion, my head turning around my body. What was intriguing about the whole thing was that all of the customers were still on their bikes on the side of the street, stopping for something quick at the shop, then leaving right away. I finally caught a glimpse one day- they were all drinking quickly from a glass then departing just as fast as they came. I have to try this, I promised myself.

The other day, I honored my curiosity and timidly drove up to the crowd at the corner shop after crossing the huge busy intersection. I looked at all of the riders around me downing their clear orange-tea color drinks and I decided, to heck with it. I motioned for a drink. Although it is a small little shop, there are a throng of workers in their bright yellow uniforms with glasses in their hands ready to serve you as soon as you pull up. I got a glass and drank the ice-cold beverage through the straw, comfortably from my own bike, then I payed the 6,000 dong, then went home. Maybe I was just imagining it, but I think I felt instantly refreshed and cooled down!

I was not wrong. The drink I had is an extremely popular tonic in the city, named "nước sâm". Vietnamese people drink it to cool down their body temperature in the hot scorching heat, and also for other health purposes, such as regulating blood pressure and relieving constipation. There are in fact vendors and street-side shops selling this tonic all over the city, and people regularly stop by for their daily dose of body coolers. Apparently the place that I went to is quite a popular place for this tonic- some people (questionably) praise its superior taste to other places around the city. The place is so popular that it even increased its price several times. Several years ago, it used to sell for 3,000 dong (about 15 cents), and it gradually went up to today's price of 6,000 dong, which is relatively expensive for this street beverage.

Nước sâm is usually divided into 4 different types: rong biển (seaweed), bông cúc (chrysanthemum), mía lau (dwarf sugarcane), and nước đắng (bitter-flavored drink). It can include any of those herbal plants, as well as seeds from đười ươi fruit, winter melon, plantain, la-kwa, artichoke, pennywort... All of the ingredients hold a special medicinal or restorative purpose and traditionally all have been mindfully selected to create this lovely concoction. So next time don't be afraid of this local drink you see served road-side- it is a tasty thirst-quencher that'll revitalize your body, right on the spot!

Connecting Compounds

In my Young Leaders 1 class, we had a brief lesson on compound nouns. The class was split in two teams (boys vs girls, as they always want, even though it's unbalanced with a minority girls group... but it's OK... the girls are always smarter, right? :p ), and they had to race to finish putting all of the words in pairs to form compound nouns. The tricky thing is that they may only swap two items at a time. So there would be a lot of swapping around to be done.

The rules were that only one student could go up at a time, and only once he/she sat down could the next person go up. But of course, when are rules ever followed in an ESL kids class?

The game proved very exciting as the kids scrammed to finish before the other team, and at the same time, students laughed at the funny combination of compound nouns that were created in the midst of swapping all of the pieces to the right places. A lot of teamwork, eliciting answers, reading out loud different combos, and problem-solving involved!

Big Bang in Vietnam!

On Saturday April 14th, Saigon crystallized another step on its path towards becoming more international in scope. The largest live music festival in Vietnam was held at the Phu Tho Racecourse in District 11. The 9-hour long event, named Soundfest and brought to you by Coca-Cola, started with shows from local popular Vietnamese pop and metallica bands, and in the evening lent its way to headlining performances by the much renowned K-Pop group Big Bang (incredibly successful pop group in South Korea), Thai diva Tata Young, American Idol finalist Kimberly Caldwell, and ending with a bang with no other than the international star Taio Cruz himself.

An estimated 40,000 people attended the festival, most of which were Vietnamese teenagers with die-hard obsessions with K-Pop. So much that a few teens had fainted throughout the show from too much frenzy and overanxious excitement.

Before Big Bang came on stage, the show hosts had to systematically instruct the massive audience to take 10 steps backwards over the microphone, to give more space for the much anticipated craze. It took several attempts to get this implemented. As soon as Big Bang finished performing 6 hit songs and left the stage, hoards of audience members started streaming out of the festival, leaving us westerners dazed that they were not going to stay back for Taio Cruz, the leading international artist holding 8 awards and with more than 8 million albums sold worldwide!

A general audience ticket cost about $20, while a VIP ticket in a ring right in front of the stage cost the die-hard fans a hard-earned  2.2 million dong, about $110!

Knockoff Protection

No, we're not Calvin Klein, don't worry... We're Creaciones Kamal!

Knockoff Fail

Mot, Hai, Ba, Vo!!! Huh? In the morning?

This morning the power cut in our house. It was around 9:30am and I went to the washroom and turned on the light, and with a second thought, I went back into my room to grab the tablet (yea yea... you can guess what number I needed to do in the bathroom), and made my way back to the washroom. But the lights had just gone out. Great, I thought to myself. Another blackout. Thankfully, the tablet also functioned as a source of light, which helped me accomplish the final phase of my deed.

I went back to bed. The electricity came back on. Only moments later, I heard the ubiquitous Vietnamese drinking phrase "Mot, hai, ba... Vo!!!" (pronounced "Yo") outside my window, and right away I was flabbergasted. What? My neighbours are already drinking?!? At this time in the morning??? They repeated the phrase several times. They are one heck of party people, I thought to myself. The phrase translates to "One, two, three... In!!!", which is the equivalent of "Cheers!" when you go drinking with friends.

Later on when I went downstairs for breakfast, I looked outside my front door and put all the pieces of the puzzle together. The electrical post just a few feet from my front gate had fallen down, causing the local power outage, and electrical workers were manually raising the heavy concrete post with long rods, and counting together to get the post back into its hole. One, two, three, in!!!


Here are pictures after they managed to get the post back into its spot.

 

 

The post, all fixed up...

Priceless, Overpriced, Worthless

This evening in my Young Leaders 9 class, we capped off the unit on Value and Price of the Solutions Upper-Intermediate book. To help consolidate concepts, we played a little variation of Stop the Bus, a game where each group has to give words for each category, but all starting with the same letter. Our categories were priceless, overpriced, and worthless, all terms that we learned in this unit. So for example, if I say the letter A, each group has to think of an item that is priceless that starts with A, and then an item that is overpriced with A, and so on... And the first team to get all 3 words has to shout Stop the Bus!

This game was perfect for revising and grasping those concepts, as students had to discuss amongst themselves if that item truly fit the category, and also, students contested other groups' answers when they didn't feel they applied. I was really amazed out how succinctly the students conceived each of those 3 notions! The game was really fast-paced and interactive, not to mention hilarious!

Here are the answers given for the first several rounds:

Priceless          Overpriced           Worthless

Parents             Plane                     Poo

Sister                Satellite                 Shit                (Yup, they actually said "shit".... haha)

Mom                 Motorbike              Manure

Brother             Boat                       Bee                (But the other students argued that bees
                                                                                                          could produce honey so they're not worthless;
                                                                                                          so nobody won this round)

Teacher            Train                     Tree Leaf        (which the class discounted as not worthless)

Teacher            Train                     Toilet Paper   (which the class argued that it was not a
                                                                                                           worthless item and that we needed it, but
                                                                                                           then a group member said that we don't
                                                                                                           need it because we just use the hose, so then
                                                                                                           I had a class survey to see who used toilet
                                                                                                           paper and some students mortifyingly put up
                                                                                                           their hands haha... )

Tears                Train                      T-Rex            (which the whole class refuted... so nobody
(...wow, very beautiful!)                                                                   won the T round...)

Cousin               Cat                      Carbon Dioxide  (which I was hesitant to make a judgment
                              (we argued as a class that                                       on, and the whole class refuted by saying
                               some species of cats can                                         plants absorbed the CO2 to create oxygen! Bright
                               be quite expensive!)                                              young ones!)



Good times!!!

Fobbing it out...

I'm becoming more and more local Vietnamese at an alarming rate... Here is the progression of my face mask wear ...

When I first arrived.... September 28th 2010...

A mask given to me by family which I stayed with in the beginning... September 30th, 2010... I clearly didn't know how to wear it... (My nose should be inside... Duh!)

Protecting the eyes... February 16th, 2011...

Protecting the neck... (I was starting to get skin growths on my neck, and my chest was getting a red spot! Ew! Farmer's chest tan!)... February 27th, 2012...

Ninja-style... March 21st, 2012...

Future forecast based on current progression rate: