A neighbor's father died, so the neighbors set up a tent in the street in front of our house and began three days of mourning. I don't know the ins and outs of the process, but I saw lots of eating and beer drinking, incense being lit, and heard music from some kind of horn instrument and banjo-sounding string instrument. There was singing as well, and all of this continued well into the night. The mourners hung flags in the area with the Buddhist symbol that someone uninformed or ignorant might mistake for a swastika. One guy got pretty drunk and came into our house screaming something in Vietnamese that I obviously didn't understand. Phuong was cool -- she walked up to the guy and basically waved good-bye and sent him on his wobbly way. Death is very public and communal here, and sometimes quite noisy. It's been quite a learning experience for me.
The heat here has been awful .... in the mid-90s every day and brutally humid. I'm in a constant air-conditioning struggle with students, who want the AC either turned off or turned up in the classroom. I often go from site to site to teach, so I arrive a tad late or right on time. This means I'm rushing and I always hurry into the classroom hot and sweaty. I immediately look for the AC remote because I know the students will grab it and adjust the AC. Not acceptable. The White Monkey wants a cool environment to teach. It's one of the few times I'm very emphatic about who's in charge of the classroom, especially the remote.
I got Phuong a blender for her birthday, and it's the best gift I ever got. I use it every day to make smoothies, lemon ice and milkshakes. Phuong rarely touches the thing, so the blender is de facto the White Monkey's toy. Love it.
How important is Facebook to the students here? I asked students to give me the opposite of friend, and 99 percent said ''unfriend". And they were deadly serious.
A challenge here for me is that I rarely teach the same class more than once in a week, so building rapport is extremely difficult. A class that has me once a week will most likely have a Vietnamese English teacher the other two times a week. A lot of Vietnamese is spoken around the school, so sometimes I feel a little inadequate communicating with the students. Whine, whine, whine.
Phuong and I are excited and nervous about her visa interview July 6 at the U.S. embassy in Ho Chi Minh City. This will determine if she gets a U.S. visa and joins me in the U.S. when I have eye work done and visit family and friends. Our fingers are crossed.
Phuong, the most wonderful woman in the world ever, found a new tennis court for us. No more chuckleheads walking, talking or stalking courtside. And this court has a roof (but it's still outdoors) so there are no more excuses about the sun in our eyes.
Our matches have become to-the-death struggles. I won 6-3 on Monday, we tied 5-5 Tuesday and Wednesday, and Phuong won 7-5 Thursday. That sets up Friday's winner-take-all championship for the week. It's great fun and the workout is rather rough -- our shirts are soaked, and I mean soaked, with sweat after our matches.
During my physical to get my work permit renewed, I was diagnosed with cholecystitis. Phuong has me taking some kind of vegetable pill to make it go away. I take 15 a day. I have no symptoms or problems of any kind with whatever it is I have, so I'm not too concerned.
And if I die from whatever it is I have, I want a very quiet ceremony. Phuong has orders to throw my body into the Dong Nai River.
