The reason

Our official university trip ended on Friday. Since Saturday, I have been staying at the Thắng Nghiêm pagoda, about an hour from the old city Hanoi. It's a Buddhist Temple, which my social work professor calls her spiritual home. 

It's difficult to describe being at the pagoda. Everyone told me that Vietnam was going to be hot. I was, prior to departure, frustrated that no one seemed to want to quantify that. Now I know it's because the heat here defies language. 

When we were staying in an air conditioned hotel and traveling by hatter bus, it was roughly manageable, given plenty of bottled water and rest indoors. The pagoda has no air conditioning. My first full day, this heat without respite (oscillating fans are a joke in this kind of humidity) was all I could think about. 

The second day, the pain in my legs claimed my full attention. I am sleeping on a wood frame bed with a simple straw mat--no mattress. During prayers and meals we sit cross-legged, except when we kneel for prostrations. My American desk-sitting hips are too tight for this posture, so my legs fall asleep quickly, my knees feel wrenched out of place, and most of my weight rests on my ankle bones, which are badly bruised. 

Today, I am thinking of companionship. 

My friend, Nhi (pronounced "knee"), is a brilliant artist that lives at the pagoda with her son, Dim (pronounced "zeem"). She saved me from a dizzy spell this morning with a scalp massage. She has been teaching me prayers in Vietnamese piece by piece. Right now, I am sitting in the courtyard of her 100-year old home, eating peanuts and watermelon, playing with her tiny dog, Bee, watching her husband paint an oil landscape of a Vietnamese village. It's cooler here somehow, surrounded by old stones. But that hardly matters. Now she is asking me to explain when to use the phrase "o'clock" and when "am/pm." 

These moments are the reason I travel. 

Week's Summary

I really had intentioned to write daily, but I don't think anything could have prepared me for how overwhelming the heat would have been this week, how flying to Europe is no preparation for the jet lag you experience in Asia, how I would want to soak in every moment until I was so completely exhausted that typing is torture. So, here is just a brief rundown of things I've seen, much of which I will revisit in my hopefully more frequent posts this week. 

Monday, At Vietnam National University, we discussed the historical and geographical factors that have led to Vietnam's uniquely blended culture. We explored religious expression as one example of that blending.

We also learned about the development of social work as a profession, and the different governmental structure that makes the process of training social workers (from a western point of view) challenging. 

We visited service centers, including a day school for children with autism on Tuesday. Although a hot topic in the states right now, autism is just beginning to be understood in Vietnam, and services are limited. Yet, I was struck by the similarity in educational approaches being practiced here and what I learned in the states as a teacher's aide. 

Wednesday, At the Ministry of Labor, Invalids, and Social Affairs (MOLISA) we got more information about governmental structure and approach to social problems. 

Thursday, we visited Maihung Day Psychiatric Hospital, a community-based agency that serves individuals with mental illness that does not cause them to be considered a threat to their community. The most common diagnoses they see are schizophrenia, emotional disruption caused by stress, and addiction. Vietnam is in the process of moving toward universal health care, but I found it interesting that for now, psychiatric treatment for people with schizophrenia and epilepsy are covered by the government insurance at 100%. 

Friday, we were honored to meet the premier scholar on gender equality and domestic violence, who shared history of gender role development with us, as well as an innovative service model that was adapted from our idea of shelters (which aren't culturally applicable here). We also visited a short-term shelter for women who have left abusive relationships. 

Saturday we visited Ha Long Bay, one of the natural wonders of the world. 

And today we had a rest day before traveling to the Khuc Thuy pagoda for popsicles and, soon, dinner. 

Arriving in Vietnam.

I just got up for my third morning in Vietnam, although it is difficult to distinguish the days at this point, which blur into a single whirlwind, yes still feels I've been here a hundred years. This will be a text-heavy post because I want to orient you back home to my new world, but bear with me and it will get smoother in the future. 

I flew from Atlanta with two members of my MSW cohort--Chelsea and Tori. Our air travel was fairly uneventful, though our luggage was left in Tokyo because there "wasn't enough room" on our non-full flight to accommodate our luggage. 😕 We arrived Friday night (which was Friday afternoon for those of you in the states--but this will be the only time I try to translate time differences, since it's usually not so relevant), and fell quickly into bed. 

We had a free day on Saturday, so after breakfast we explored a bit around our hotel, mostly looking for clothes in case our luggage didn't arrive. We realized we had booked that night in the "sister hotel" if where we would be staying with Dr. Huong Nguyen and the rest of the social work students, so we arranged for a taxi to go to the correct place. 

Once we met up with them, Anne, the student who helped Huong arrange the trip, showed us a less-touristy market where I searched high and low for sunscreen. The weather here is very hot, and the sun is brutal. Although pale skin in prized in Vietnamese culture, the women hear wear long sleeves, hoods, scarves, and hats, rather than sunscreen. I finally found a small bottle, but I paid a premium for it. 

Money is a fun adventure in and of itself. 1usd equates roughly 20,000Vietnamese Dong. I'm getting better at making conversions in my head, but sticker shock is real. Many of he vendors in this part of town speak some English to be able to convey prices, but it's inconsistent whether they tell you in Dong or Dollars, and they sometimes use the word "dollar" when it's not what they mean. For example, the first time I tried to buy a bottle of water, a woman confidently exclaimed "ten dollars!" I know it's hot here, but this shocked me so much I just walked away. Now, I've realized that people usually leave off the "thousand" in a price to save time (nothing, of course, costs less than 1,000VD) and that 10VD (50 cents) is the going rate for bottled water. 

We also went to the cell phone store. I brought with me a cell Chesley and Rachael (our dear US "landlords") have used in China in the past. But the phone has an AT&T logo, and the store here wanted to charge me 300VD to check if it had been rooted for international use. It cost about half what that whole process would have been to buy a new phone. So here I am with my fifth international candybar Nokia. I love this phone. 

We had a lovely dinner as a group across town, Chelsea, Tori and I rode back to the airport to pick up bags, and collapsed in to bed for our 5am departure. 

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Yesterday we went to visit a few temples. The first was the one near Khuc Thuy where I will be staying with Huong after the tour group has ended. We greeted the head monk there, Thich Minh Thanh, who I met back in the fall when he visited USC. 

It was the anniversary of his master's death (Thich Vien Thanh), so we rode into the mountains to the temple at Huong Thich. We got to ride in a boat that reminded me of the lanchas in Guatemala. 

I met a girl, Phuy Duong, who is 24 and a disciple at Khuc Thuy. She told me she was born at the temple in the mountains, and she was traveling with her mother to pay respects. She was cheery and spoke a little English. I hope I get to see her again when I am at the Temple. 

Once there, we greeted the current head monk, and took a hike and a cable car and another hike to a cave further up the mountain, where there is a temple. One of the monks from Khuc Thuy led prayers for us, and offered reflections on generosity and kindness. It was beautiful to be there will so many dedicated followers of the Buddha, at an altar no less elaborate than the churches of Europe. 

I think I figured out why sunscreen is unpopular--it may well be useless. The past few days the temperature has been in the mid 90s, but the heat index approaches 110. By Thursday, the high is 108. I have never sweat so profusely in my life, and the nest three weeks don't promise much relief. 

I bought a hat to keep some sun off me--hopefully Caleb doesn't mind I made a dual-purpose purchase, since this is what he asked me to bring. I know most people will think of the conical Vietnamese hats, but I like that this one is shaped like a lotus leaf I saw floating upside down in the river. 

We had a lovely vegetarian lunch with the monks. Huong is quick to warn us that there won't me meat at many of our meals (Buddhists are vegetarians, as they strive to never cause harm to living things), but I thought it was delightful. I have no idea what anything was beyond the rice and the squash soup, but I loves it all. 

I love shared meals served in this way--with small bowls filled from shrewd platters. It reminds me of generously-poured beer in Germany, of steaming teapots in Tanzania, of tortillas wrapped in an embroidered cloth in Mexico, of yeast rolls at my family's holidays. It reminds me of home.