2008 Blogs

Rainy day #3

04/02/2009

As I write tonight I hear the steady sound of rain outside my open window as refreshingly cool breezes waft into my room.  Of course, the rain means that it is very damp, and the towel I washed yesterday morning is not yet dry.  I hear many familiar sounds--someone is practicing a flute in a nearby building, a baby is crying in the room below mine, horns are honking in the distance, and there is the dull murmur of voices and occasional laughter from a neighboring dorm.

 

Today I got to ride a motorbike in the rain, which is not my favorite thing to do.  My driver wore a large red poncho over her ao dai, and my yellow plastic poncho made it easy for other drivers to see us.  I kept thinking about how the oil that spills onto roads make them very slick, and how easiliy vehicles can hydroplane.  Fortunately, my driver was not a speed demon.  Traffic was very colorful, with people decked out in rain gear of all sorts, much of which seemed to be advertising products like Pepsi or pharmaceuticals or motor oil.  In the picture above you see motorbikes in the "parking garage" covered with ponchos that people hoped would be dry for their rides home.

I traveled into the city today because I was one of the guest speakers for a workshop on the "Cultural and Grammatical Aspects in Teaching English," held at a nearby teacher's college.  Arriving in a somewhat soaked condition, I was immediately ushered to a seat of honor at the front of a large hall.  About 120 students and 25 teachers listened attentively as the first speaker, a Vietnamese who spent 6 months in the U.S., spoke about his impressions of American culture.  His list of "American" characteristics included:  control, equality, action, time consciousness, change, directness & honest, individualism, informality, materialism, and patriotism.  For example, he said that when he first arrived in the U.S. he sent a very carefully composed and formal email to a colleague at his host institution in the U.S.  Within a couple of minutes he had a short, two-word reply back.  No salutation, no signature.  He was shocked.  Was he being slighted, or what?   In time he came to appreciate the informality of American communication, and the directness.  His example about control also was interesting--it involved health!  He talked about how Americans try to control every aspect of their health with pills, diets, exercise, etc.  For some reason, I had never thought about health care as a form of control.  I was also struck by his account of traveling to sixteen cities in the U.S.  He spoke enthusiastically about many of them, but when he discussed his visit to Oklahoma City he told the audience that it was a place where he had been afraid to walk the streets at night, a circumstance that he attributed to the "lack of poor security there."  As someone who grew up in the rural Midwest, I was saddened that he would have such a negative impression of the nation's heartland.

  

I gave an overview of American culture, emphasizing similarities and differences between the U.S. and Vietnam.  The audience was especially interested in American colleges and universities, asking questions about cost, facilities, and student life.  They also wanted to know things like why the American divorce rate is so high if many people can realize the "American dream" of owning a home.  I concluded my second presentation, which was on American post-secondary education, by showing pictures of the Indiana University and I.U. East campuses.  Students murmured approval when they saw the first slides of Bloomington's lovely wooded campus, and marveled at the open green space of the I.U. East campus.  They also enjoyed the slides of Supplemental Instruction Leader activities that Jerri Libert sent me.  Thanks, Jerri!

At 11:30, we adjourned to the Co Tam restaurant for a delicious vegetarian meal (I loved the clay pot fried rice--it had such a pleasant nutty texture).  After we had eaten our fill and put our chopsticks down, one of the teachers urged us to empty every dish so that nothing would go to waste.  Just like the Depression-era generation I had talked about in the morning, she had been affected by the economic hard times of the 1980s here, and it was neat to see her make that connection between our two worlds.  In the afternoon we listened to several Vietnamese instructors talk about the challenge of motivating students, and an American writing instructor who reminded me a lot of Cooksey. This is just the beginning of the "workshop season" for me, and I think I'm going to enjoy it a lot.  It's always wonderful to meet and talk with new people, especially those who are excited about learning and cultural exchange.

 

On a different note, I have uploaded some short videoclips to a Youtube account, which you can check out at this address:  http://www.youtube.com/user/jepasset .  As you will see, some of them are quite short!  At least they will give you a glimpse of some of the sights and sounds I've been experiencing.