Thoughts P 2
12/17/2018
Today's Topic: Learning Vietnamese...
The other day I was chatting with a friend from the U.S. Embassy in Hà Nội about learning Vietnamese. Seems prior to embarking for an assignment in a foreign country, the Department of State provides intensive, weeks long, language classes, which makes total sense. During the conversation, I asked if learning Vietnamese was difficult for my friend. His response was, the Department of State has some sort of learning difficulty rating system that places languages into one of three categories: easy, medium hard, and hard. It turns out that Vietnamese falls into the medium hard category. This could be one reason why it is taking me so long to learn to speak Vietnamese. Another reason might be that I don't practice every day like I should. Good thing New Years is coming up soon. I think I have a New Year's resolution in the works...Chào
12/28/2018
Time has certainly flown by this month! Already the 28th! I guess this reflects how busy I have been and how difficult it is to narrow down what to write about. Here is today's decisions:
Today's Topic: Showers and food.
Showers. It's a good thing I'm not the type of person who enjoys taking a long, luxurious, hot shower. I mention this, because without fail, every hot water heater I have seen in any hotel, house, or apartment is no bigger than 4 gallons (most home ones are 2.5 gals.). These are always prominently located near the ceiling in the bathroom, above the shower. In addition, although you could leave these heaters switched on 24 hrs. a day, it's common practice to switch them on 10 minutes before your shower and then turn them off when you leave the bathroom. Depending on how hot you like your shower, you have plenty of time to get the job done, just. I might mention that it took me a few days to figure out that if I wanted to wash my dishes using hot water, I had two choices: boil a pot of water and add it to the sink water, or turn on the water heater in the first floor bathroom. As for doing my laundry? My clothes washer is located on the top floor of my house and it has no hot water heater. Relatedly, I don't think many people have a clothes dryer in their homes. I don't. I, like every other person in my neighborhood, hang my laundry outside to dry. Average time to dry a cotton t-shirt in December = 6 hours. Average drying time for said t-shirt in August = 2 days. Gotta love humidity.
Food. I know, I've talked about food in Việt Nam before, but I'd like to give you my perspective five months into this ongoing adventure. Everything I've said in the past still stands: quality, variety, quantity, presentation, etc. I still love the food and have not satiated on it yet! What I haven't talked about is pacing yourself to make sure you still have an appetite throughout the meal. You would think that after the countless number of times I've eaten at homes and restaurants I'd have the whole pacing thing down to a science. Well you'd think anyway... As I've mentioned before, unlike America, where unless you go to a formal restaurant that serves a salad/soup first, meal second, and desert last, your meal typically arrives as a single WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) event, in Việt Nam, the food comes in waves, and I NEVER know what is coming next!! - even when I've ordered the meal myself! Although I'm sure it is pretty standard, I still haven't figured out the serving sequence because every meal I've eaten has different food combinations. To get to my point, however, just when I think the meal is finished, some new dish arrives at the table and I have to figure out how much to eat each time. Put differently, I never know if the item I just finished eating is that last thing I will eat, or if I need to save room for more things that have yet to arrive! Complicating the matter further are the following: The Vietnamese are pretty laid back about eating. Nobody is in a rush and eating a few bites and then pausing to talk for 2-3 minutes is quite common. Additionally, the main dish into which all food is placed from the serving dish, and from which you eat your portion, is a small four inch diameter, three inch high bowl. Any unconsumed byproducts from your serving (e.g., shrimp shells, chicken bones) are placed on a small plate and this plate is replaced every now and again with a clean one (and sometimes your eating bowl as well). Because food is served in what Americans call "family style", there are identical portioned plates at each end of the table and uneaten contents from one plate can be combined onto the other plate and the empty plate is removed, giving the appearance of an untouched portion. In other words, visual signs (that we westerners rely on) that the course or the meal is at, or nearing, the end can be lacking. The time between course servings can be short (from no time to 5 minutes) or they can be quite long. The other night I sat at dinner with friends thinking the meal was finally over, the last course had been served, and I had paced myself perfectly. It was a well supported belief; that data were in: we had been talking (not eating) for a good 15 minutes, no new food had arrived, and a new bottle of wine had been opened and poured, toasts had been made, and people were slumped back in their chairs. Imagine my surprise when the waitress brought out a hotplate, pluged it in, placed a kettle full of fish on the hotplate, and set up the platter of greens and various seafood. During the next half hour this dish (known as a hotpot) was prepared thusly: once the fish had come to a boil (heads, skin, bones and tails included), various greens and mushrooms were added and boiled down, and then clams, shrimp, and mussels were added. It seems that course number "I wish I had paced myself better" had begun. You would think this would be no problem...if you aren't hungry, just don't eat, right? Well, as the honored guest, my empty bowl, as it had been with each course previously, was taken from me by my host and I was ceremonially served the first portion from the finished dish.
Bonus round.
Question: When it comes to learning a second language, what do a 7-year-old and I have in common?
Answer: Apparently, nothing. The 7-year-old speaks better English than I speak Vietnamese.
Page (1)
PHOTOS (p.1)