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.