Week three - Odds and ends

I am now well into my third week here in Vietnam, and I thought I would post a few things under this category. Nothing terribly deep but some things which strike me as interesting.

Bicycling in Can Tho. In past posts, Kris and I have referred to the numerous bicycles here that are used by residents of all ages to get around. It is second only to the motorbike, it seems, as the major means of transportation. As you might imagine, the great majority of these bikes are relatively simple affairs, something like I used to ride growing up on the farm. No angst here about whether a person should buy a trail bike, a mountain bike, or a road bike. And not much worry about which of the zillion models within each of these categories from which to choose.

You might imagine, then, my surprise on Sunday morning, out for my early morning run, when out of the dimness of the early dawn hours emerged what could easily have passed for the Bombay Bicycle Club coming at me, with riders dressed in the typical road gear and riding some impressive road bikes, with turn-downed handlebars and the whole bit. Most have been about 25 - 30 of them in a pack riding together. A neat sight.

The Mobile Businessman. We have also talked about the numerous people here who seem to operate their own small businesses, doing what they can to get by with their small carts cluttering the sidewalks and providing welcome access to their own version of "fast food, ready meals for motorbikers and bicyclists on their way to work or school or wherever.

Last Saturday, I went with Chris Wheeler and some of his colleagues from CTU to visit the Research Station about an hour south of Can Tho, where some of their schools and their kids were selling vegetables grown from their school gardens, and where some adults were selling vegetables and fish to learn to raise through the community development project. On the side of the driveway, I noticed this man with a motorbike and food cart all in one. I thought I had seen a lot of variations of what they motorbike can be and is used for here, but this was a first. If business is not so good on this block, you just motor on down a ways to see if it is any better there!

By the way, in the pic the building in the left background is a new dormitory they intend to use for CTU faculty who come out to the station to teach, etc. It is also used for other purposes, such as on this occasion when it is housing a group of students and faculty from a university in Indiana on a three-week study tour! We met several of them and talked briefly with them while we were there. On the far right is a former community school, made mostly of bamboo, in which kids were attending class. The government has now taken over the school and it is used as part of their primary schooling in the area. Yet, another dimensions of a study of contrasts here.

Reflections on my adjustment here. Before this experience, the idea of "culture shock" and the intercultural adaptation processes reflected in the literature were just concepts or ideas. The first week, while Kris was still here and we were busy planning and implementing the workshop, I felt on a pretty even keel. But after she left I was on my own for several days, and I went through a series of emotions and feelings that surprised even me. At times, I felt that if there would have been an easy way to catch a quick ride home, I would have been on it! It is hard to describe this feeling, a kind of deep longing and feeling quite alone.

As time has passed, however, these feelings have subsided and now I feel reasonably comfortable being here. There are moments, however, like yesterday afternoon, when I still sense these feelings hovering around the edges of consciousness. All of this brings home the work some of us have been doing on emotions and cross-cultural experiences. From a Jungian point of view, we ask, "What are these emotions and feelings asking me to pay attention to in myself? What aspects of myself are they, in their own way, revealing to me?"

But wait, I said this would be nothing too deep, so I will stop there. And no, I am not going to answer those questions here!

Comparisons between cross-cultural experience and the dreamworld

Many of you know my interests in the image as a form or way of knowing. Of course, the penultimate contexts for the kinds of images in which I am interested is the dream, but also the kind of fantasy states and "waking dreams" that fill our days.

I began reflecting on being here in this culture and society as a kind of dream world. Like the dream, there is little of what I see and hear that I make sense of. My environment is a swirl of images, many of them unusual or strange. The language conveys words and sounds which have as much meaning to me as words spoken in a dream. Images juxtaposed on top of one another, demonstrating a cacophony of form only the dream could create.

Like in a dream, there is the occasional familiar image, an English word on a billboard, or infants playing in the sand, or the movement of traffic on the street. But, like in a dream, these familiar images are often in the context of quite unfamiliar and strange images and contexts.

The English word on a billboard might be part of a larger message written in Vietnamese, or the billboard itself springs out of a complex of buildings that, from the outside eye, look like a maize of loosely coupled structures, hanging together by some unseen force.

The child playing in the sand is against a backdrop of a very busy street and sidewalk on which the pile of sand rests, and workers behind the sand pile moving in and out of a darkened entrance to a building, resembling more of an opening to a cave.

The streams of motorbikes, bicycles, trucks, buses, and pedestrians on the street, coming at each other, moving in and out of one another, as if schools of fish swimming towards and through one another in an ether that feels and sounds surreal.

People’s faces carry with them feelings of images within a dream, from the gleeful and laughing faces of young children seemingly with no care in the world to the weathered, worn, and tired visages of an old woman, sitting on the street with the traditional Vietnamese hat turned upside down, hoping to collect a few dong for her next meal. They could be characters in last night’s unconscious and darkened meanderings of the soul.

There is little here, in the language or in the customs, that I understand. Like with the dream world, we try to make these unfamiliar images familiar. We try to bring them into our day world, where rationality and reason prevail, try to make sense of them somehow within the logic of the day. When we do, like with dream images, we often distort the image, using language and forms of the day world to describe things that seem to have and use their own language and forms. We struggle to make familiar the strange, because that is what in the day world we do. But, in our urge to do so, we often miss or leave behind or overlook things about this other world. We bring away meanings from this world that are incomplete, tinged with the well-known understandings and frames of our waking life.

I am learning to try to honor the images that come to me from this other world that I am in. It is hard. Like our dream images, we so desperately want these images and forms to make sense to us, to conform to familiar structures of meaning. And like our dream images, they are so illusive and so easily slip away.

I don’t want to stretch this metaphor of the dream world too far. I know enough and understand enough of my surroundings and context to get by, to order a meal or to get a taxi to take me to and from the university, to buy supplies at the market. But it does seem to help illuminate the different realities I experience while I am here, as if awake within a lucid dream.

It seems like a helpful way to frame our understanding of the Other.

The adult learner on campus - at CTU

Our early impressions of higher education here was that it is the almost exclusive province of the young learner, what we in the United States might call the “traditional student.” My first impressions were that higher education was a kind of zero-sum game, in which, if you didn’t succeed in entering at the traditional age through entrance exams, etc, you were basically excluded from the game and relegated to other, what is perceived by some here as, lesser forms of education, such as technical or vocational schools or community colleges.

This early impression, however, seems not quite accurate and I am gradually learning more about their “system” of higher and adult education. My recent conversations with Tho, a young part-time teacher of English at CTU who is applying to our HALE masters program, revealed another thread in my evolving picture of postsecondary education here.

Tho teaches a class at night which is, she told me, made up of mostly “inservice” students. These are adult learners who are usually working and attend class at night to pursue a degree or even a second degree. They are also referred to as “irregular” students (I think I prefer nontraditional myself). These are students who are enrolled in a degree program, just like the regular students but who have been admitted as inservice students. They may or may not be required to take the same entrance exam as the regular students, depending on the major area of study.

They receive the same degree but their certificate indicates that they are inservice students, to distinguish them from the regular students. Tho said that many employers regard the inservice certificate as somewhat lower quality that the certificate for regular students. I asked her about this but I am not clear why they regard the quality as lower or if there is any empirical evidence to support this perception.

In the U.S., of course, the term inservice means something completely different. While it does imply adult learning (for example, inservice education or staff development for practicing teachers), it is not related to higher education or the pursuit of a degree.

More later on continuing education in Vietnam and their forms of adult education.

Solo in Can Tho

It is Tuesday afternoon. Kris left last Wednesday morning and I have been going solo here since she left. On the day she left, I moved to the Guest House on Campus 1 of CTU but, for various reasons, it quickly became apparent that I would not be able to work the way I needed at the Guest House and so, on Thursday afternoon, I requested to move back to the hotel. Once I got here, I knew that I had made the correct decision. I immediately felt more comfortable, as if I were on more familiar territory. The inner struggle evoked by my brief stay on Campus 1 requires further reflection, but that shall remain for a later time.

So I have been here at my hotel since last Thursday afternoon (where they insisted in moving me, after one night in another room, back to “my” room – 207), and I continue to take delight in noticing little things about the staff and space, little things that bridge the gulf a bit. For breakfast, I am asked by the wait staff, “Same-same?” meaning the usual: omelet with mushrooms, hot coffee, bowl for my cereal, rice milk, and bottled water.

Being so far away from home and alone, there is a kind of comfort in that quaint familiarity. As I walk or jog the streets, I have a sense that people are now beginning to take me for granted, at least the “regulars” that I pass on my almost daily excursions. A couple guys have jogged with me for short distances, either in empathic identification or mockery – it is a little hard to tell. I opt for the former. Is this the emergence of intercultural competence? Is this what it looks like? Probably not. More like finding out what I need to get by. I feel far from something like being “intercultural competent.”

After a weekend of “open-space,” something that, given my solo status seemed harder to cope with that I thought it would, and doing some of my own work, I started in again on Monday with work on the ACE project and helping to write the grant proposal for the program, which I will be doing on and off for the next three weeks.

I have also begun planning for a workshop I will conduct for the CTU staff on curriculum and teaching. This morning, on Tuesday, I met with Ms. Trang, the Director of the Learning Resource Center (LRC), who is also responsible for this workshop on curriculum and teaching. Together with Lap, after a tour of the LRC we talked through the nature of the workshop, to be conducted the last week of January and the first part of the next full week in February. Like the workshop that Kris and I did, it will make use of concurrent translation. Because I don’t have my regular resources and support materials with me, I will be making heavy use of the Internet for some of this material and content. The danger to that, of course, is to avoid being overwhelmed by what is there.

By the way, I learned of another form of translation – “cabin translation,” a process in which a translator, sitting in an enclosed booth, translates what is being presented and participants listen over headphones. Kris and I used “face-to-face” translation, with the translator present in the room as a real voice and presence.

The LRC is a beautiful, new building with much of it state of the art. They have over 400 computers in the building and they limit student work to two hours per day, because they are in such high demand. They also have small “cabins” or cubicles for private work, and they have graciously provided me with one for my work here, along with a computer and access to the Internet.

I spent the morning working in the CTU-MSU Center office. The space here is also fine, but without air conditioning on (they do have it), it gets a little warm. I found, after about three hours of work there, that I felt a little drained from the heat. With all the staff having left for lunch, however, I was faced with trying to find someone to call a taxi to return to my hotel. Luckily, I was able to track someone done who could do this for me. Getting a taxi here is not quite like hailing a yellow cab in Manhattan or downtown Chicago. Mostly, it seems you call for one and not knowing a stitch of Vietnamese makes that somewhat problematic.

Now I am again working out of my hotel room, to the almost constant whir of the air conditioning. Last night I bought two loaves of bread from a street vendor, along with some cheese and water from the market, all small baby steps on this solo flight, but steps, nonetheless. This morning I survived a fall on my early morning run on the darkened “sidewalks” of Can Tho, but a body at this age tends to feel such things for a while afterwards. After the fall, I decided I would take my chances on the darkened city streets, where now hitting or being hit by a bicycle (they have no lights or reflectors) seemed less of a threat to my health than unknown and unseen protrusions from the varying nature of the sidewalks here.

As I wrestle with some of the emotions that have welled up within in the short time I have been here, I think of Dan, the American from Princeton, and the fact that he has been here alone for 18 months. I think of Hiep, our first translator who is doing graduate study at MSU and away from his wife and children and who won’t see them until at least this summer, if then.

It is one thing to be in a different culture and society half-way around the world with a colleague. It is quite another when you are by yourself. But it is a great time for self-reflection and finding out about aspects of yourself you didn’t know about or were only dimly perceived.

The adventure continues.

A study in contrasts

This afternoon, after a lunch of noodle soup, bread, and a glass of incredibly good orange juice, I went for a walk, down an alley Lap told me about yesterday, in search of the island he described (I was surprised to learn of an island so close!). The density of living in this area is so amazing. The main streets themselves seem jammed with humanity coming and going in all sorts of ways and engaged in all sorts of activities. The sidewalks are a constant buzz of making and dismantling, of washing and cooking, of eating, drinking, and cleaning up. Yet, off these incredibly busy avenues are numerous alleys, each of them by themselves extensions of the mass of humanity one glimpses along the major streets.

My afternoon walk took me down one of these alleys. In contrast to the street, where there is semblance of distance between the casual observer and the inhabitants, the alleys brought me up close to the living conditions of those who live and work along these narrow urban corridors. They are right there and one can readily see into their living quarters, the conditions of which vary as much as any in the city proper. My walk took my across a narrow, metal bridge, framed in the immediate distance by a larger, more modern-looking concrete bridge that remained unfinished at both ends, as if that was all that was called for. In contrast to the city street and even the alley, few motorbikes, bicycles, or pedestrians were using the bridge when I crossed. I felt like I was engaged in a quiet, casual stroll into the country. As I crossed over the river onto the island that Lap had described, the quiet continued. “What a study in contrasts,” I thought. “This is actually contemplative back here.”

As I left the bridge, the road took right angles left and right. I looked down the more narrow, concrete path on the right and decided to first explore the broader, more expansive road to the left. Again, the quiet and contemplative mood continued. Things definitely seemed slower back here, more quiet and subdued, almost a vacation-like spa. All around me the feel of the tropics crowded the road in a lush, green display of foliage. As I continued down the road, the quiet punctuated now and again by a passing motorbike or two, another study of contrasts began to emerge. Along the road, down the bank I noticed buildings that resembled hutches barely hanging together, with an assortment of materials assembled together in a patchwork like manner to provide shelter from the sun and rain. In front of some of these, stands were erected for selling a variety of produce and other goods. The entrepreneurial spirit of the Vietnamese people expressing itself. Despite these rather squalid living conditions, this road appeared to be the route to prosperity, because I soon came upon houses erected and being built that might make some of the homes in Spring Lake look modest. These homes were magnificent structures and stunning in their attractiveness and aesthetic appeal. A sign down a gravel road where men were working on a house in progress, a sign that closely resembled one we might find in a housing development around the Lansing area, suggested more such structures to come within the vase array of emptiness that stretched beyond the sign.

What struck me, however, was the location of some of these gorgeous structures, almost directly across the street from structures that resembled shanties more than homes. The street was wide, smooth and modern, and hardly traveled. I could see why folks would want to live here.

After heading down this street for a while, I turned back and headed down the other, more narrow road. To call this a road might be an overstatement. We have bike paths that are wider than this road. Still, it was a route for motorbikes and bicycles, paved and in good shape, although I can’t imagine four-wheel vehicles using it. But along it was where obviously the less fortunate lived. Here there were no splendid structures rising mightily into the air. Here the structures hugged the earth, sometimes receding into it. Outside one of these structures a woman was washing her clothes in the fork that run off from the main tributary of the river, a river that is known to be highly polluted with a variety of toxic and infectious substances.

So many people here seem so poor. As I began my trek back across the old metal bridge framed by the incomplete modern bridge leading nowhere, I reflected on some of this. Then I was passed by two boys on a bicycle, one holding a bamboo pole made into what looked a little like a toy spear. They said and waived “Hello” and I waived back, saying hello to them as well. They were laughing and seeming to have a good time. Part way up the bridge they got off and walked their bike up the slight incline and I passed them. Then, on the downside they passed me, saying “Hello” again, giggling, and waiving as they coasted down the slope of the bridge to the main land, seemingly without a care in the world. Who is really poor, I wondered.

Back Home for Kris

I arrived safely home in Michigan yesterday afternoon and slept 14 hours last night. It'll take a few days to do laundry, unpack, and get ready for school to start (a week behind everyone else). I'm glad to be home, glad to have gone, and eager to continue to make sense of the trip. It feels strange to have left John there - not because he's not a perfectly competent grown up, but because we make a pretty good team there and now he gets to make a go of it solo. I'm looking forward to reading the Further Adventures of John in Vietnam, while also looking forward to getting back into a routine in Michigan - where the Mitten State is about to get serious about winter weather.

Parking Problem? In Can Tho?

Well, not exactly, but it is an interesting aspect of the society on which to reflect. In Can Tho (and I suspect in most other cities in Vietnam), the motorbike and, to a lesser extent, bicycle are the major means of transportation. Where, then, do all these motorbikes park? As indicated by pictures in some of our previous posts, it would seem pretty much anywhere they want, making for navigation of “sidewalks” an iffy proposition.

Turns out, though, there are limits. Parking lots for motorbikes are all over, including campus, and many of these lots are attended. In trips to the market or outside restaurants, our drivers had to park their motorbikes in lots with attendants stationed at the entries and/or exits. From what I can gather, there are a couple reasons for this. Because so many of the motorbikes look alike, you have to have a relatively reliable and quick way to identify your bike. Second, apparently, like many lots in the U.S., some of them charge a fee. So, drivers either have marks written on their handlebars or are given a ticket, which they then use to claim their motorbikes when they leave.

Because there are so many motorbikes, it is not uncommon for space within lots or even on the sidewalks outside of establishments to become a premium. So drivers will frequently get off their motorbikes, move another motorbike or two over or closer together, and then park their bikes. This maneuver always seems to be done with care and respect for the other’s motorbike.

Imagine your next trip to the mall in your car, and some moron in a Hummer 2 has taken up two or perhaps three parking spaces. You patiently stop your car, climb into the Hummer and carefully reposition it so there is room for your car and others. Then you park your vehicle in the space you just created.

So, while parking may not be the problem it often is on the MSU campus (where, as we are so fond of saying, a permit is a license to “hunt” for a space) or downtown Lansing, Detroit, or Grand Rapids, it does sometimes emerge as an interesting aspect of a society so exclusively reliant on the motorbike.

On a more serious note, reliance on the motorbike as a major means of transportation doesn’t make the streets or highways here any safer. In fact, I have been told that over 11,000 deaths a year are attributed to motorbike accidents. In a country with a population of just over 80 million, you must admit that is a pretty high mortality rate. Compare this, for example, to the United States with a population of 300 million, where somewhere between 30,000 – 40,000 deaths occur from motor vehicle accidents each year (not sure of the exact figure here. It has been declining). Do the math – from the back seat of a taxi or the front seat of a car the streets and highways here not only seem dangerous, they are dangerous places. The American from Princeton that I talked with a few days ago said in the 18 months he has been here, he has witnessed over a dozen fatal motorbike accidents.

The World Health Organization has apparently recently issued guidelines to help address the problem. Their suggestion? Mandatory helmets for all drivers. Now, helmets are only required on the highway and not in the city, where speeds are presumably slower (the distinction between highway and city – when a street becomes a highway – is one that Kris and I have yet to figure out. It’s like growing old. You don’t really notice it and all of a sudden you realize you are there).

At any rate, it seems a huge public health problem for which there appears no easy solution, or perhaps no solution at all! Talk about an adult education program! Now there is some potential.

Theory to practice - Is this what they mean by culture shock?

This morning I moved from my hotel room to the campus guest housing on CTU Campus 1 in which I will be staying for the next four weeks. Lap described it as “on the other side of the city.” It is in the opposite direction from Campus 2 but probably no farther from Campus 2 than our hotel was, based on the taxi fare that it took to get me here. But when I arrived on Campus 1 this morning my unit was not ready and so I roamed the nearby neighborhood for six hours, including a pleasant stay in a park, lunch, and an hour of work in an Internet site across the street from the guest housing.

As I roamed the streets this afternoon, I felt more of the “culture shock” syndrome others have described for intercultural experiences. For the entire time I walked up and down the street, I did not see another Westerner until this afternoon when they came to help me move into my unit in the guest house. None of the shops resembled anything at all like we might have in the United States. Even needing to go the bathroom was shaping up as a mini-crisis, until I ran into one of the workshop participants on his bicycle and he invited me for a coffee at a local shop.

We had a great talk, mostly about his educational experiences. He is completing a PhD through a university in Vietnam (I wasn’t able to understand which one) and we talked a lot about what his program was like – apparently much different that what is available in most institutions in the United States. He was also having internet installed this afternoon in his home, something not a lot of people here have. His description reminded me of waiting for the cable guy. Some things are, indeed, universal!

But I was struck by what felt at first so few options for myself. After about three hours, I decided I needed to have lunch, but where to eat proved another challenge. And when I did find a restaurant that seemed like it would have a menu, everything was in Vietnamese, of course, and none of the wait staff spoke English. But they recruited one of their customers, who was apparently also a friend, to help me order and I managed to obtain some delicious shrimp soup and some kind of noodle dish, along with 1½ bottles of Tiger beer.

During my lunch I also decided I was going to brave an Internet café, but found Internet access in the post office just across the street from the guest house. Apparently, I will be able to use these computers to place calls back home. For the fun of it, because it was the middle of the night back home (I had thought about calling my wife but decided that would be mean, at 3:30 in the morning), I placed a call to my office and was pleased to hear my voice on the voice mail system. Gotta love this technology!

My place here in guest housing is pretty spartan, but probably far better than the way most people in the Delta live. I am rooming with a Vietnamese American Fullbright Fellow, whom I have not seen or met. In Unit 6 is a young American who has been here for 18 months already, making my stay seem like a weekend visit. He is on some kind of program from Princeton that provides support for international experiences. He has a bachelors degree and has been teaching English at CTU. From the brief visit I had with him, it sounds like he is planning to apply to med school when he returns to the states. He apparently bought himself a motorbike and gets around on that. He didn’t get a license to drive it but doesn’t seem overly concerned about it.

Stay tuned for the working through phase!

More Brave Than I Thought I'd Be

I'll admit it: I figured there was a 50-50 chance I'd spend the day in my hotel room in Bangkok, reading dissertation drafts. But with encouragement of Ann, Marilyn, Chris Wheeler, and Melissa, I decided to make the most of my day alone on the town. This is what I did, with an image to prove it.

I took a taxi to the Grand Palace, where it was easy to find the place to buy a ticket, but I couldn’t figure out how to round up a tour guide (per Chris Wheeler). So I took a chance and got the 200 Baht (about $8) self-guided audio tour, which comes with a map. It was completely satisfying and had the added advantage of going entirely at my own pace, with no possibility of a tour guide more or less eager than me to linger over certain parts of the grounds and buildings. It might have been to have a guide, but darned if I could figure out how to get myself one, and the audio tour was exactly what I wanted by way of details.

Then I wandered over to Wat Pho – home of the reclining Buddha – ENORMOUS! And then I followed my map to walk down the street into an unlikely looking structure that was, as I’d hoped, the water taxi landing. But I ran into trouble figuring out the system of public boats, private tour boats, etc. I followed a small crowd onto what seemed to be like a bus-on-water – and it was headed the right way. I figured I’d just get a taxi if this boat didn’t actually take me where I thought it would, which was the Central Pier, home of a Skytrain stop. Just like on a train, a guy came around and more or less on the honor system you handed over your Baht (30, a little less than a dollar – a fine price for a tour of the city from the river, and a lovely way to get a cool breeze).

I Skytrained home, which involved an easy change of trains at Siam Station. I am feeling enormously skilled at urban – and marine – navigation. Bangkok is quite easy to get around, even for this "country mouse" who's not used to public transit. I've found people to be incredibly kind, and there are lots and lots of people who speak enough English (I’ve heard Russian, German, and French, too) to really help a tourist get around. The heat is not blinding at this point – in the shade it was downright lovely an account of a breeze – there are plenty of vendors of cold drinks (soft drinks, water, beer) for reasonable prices (50 cents for a pop), and you can duck into air con just when you think you might expire (the Skytrain was lovely for that!).

I'm going to bed early tonight - I leave the hotel at 3 am to begin my journey home. It's been a good trip, and I'm ready to get home to the new semester.

In Transit: Some Delightful Sights

I am posting from Bangkok, where I arrived early Wednesday afternoon, with a few notes about my trip from VN to here. Once the sun came up (6 am, after we’d been on the road 1.5 hours), I was able to pay attention to scenery and culture on the road from Cantho to HoChiMinh. Once at the airport, I had an unusually quick check-in (no line at immigration!), which made the journey even more pleasant. Here are a two highlights.

1. We stopped for breakfast at the Vietnamese version of a highway rest area – a large, open pavilion restaurant with an impossibly huge number of tables and dozens of attentive waitstaff (at 6 am!). The one we stopped at is new – and we were the only customers there. I suspect this restaurant is hoping to attract travelers on the road to/from HoChiMinh, because it has a tasty menu and the cleanest – no, the FANCIEST and cleanest – restrooms I’ve encountered in Vietnam. Actually, they’re way nicer than most restaurant restrooms in the US. And the hand dryers even work – there may be a law against such strong ones in the US, but it was very nice to have dry hands.

While we sat drinking tea (me) and eating breakfast (my companions), I noticed that dozens of young women and men in what seemed like uniforms were passing by on their bicycles. It turns out that they were high school students and they were in uniform. Now, imagine this, those of you who wear women’s clothes: the uniform is a traditional Vietnamese outfit consisting of loose fitting black cotton pants (easy enough to bike in) and the long tunic-like “au doi” that is tight-fitting silk or satin from neck to waist, with long, tight sleeves and high neck, buttoned to top, and then from the waist down, is a split long skirt-like part that goes down between ankles and knees. The side slits are from bottom to waist, so it’s easy enough to walk in one of these, but imagine BIKING in one. The students had hitched the back “flap” of their tunics up under to form a sort of “half flap” that stayed barely out of the rear bike wheel. The front piece they help up out of spokes and pedals with one hand, which was also used to steer. Once you have that picture in mind (tight, long, top; flaps lifted up out of the way), make it 85 degrees and blindingly sunny. Three or four months a year, make it 85-95 degrees and pouring rain. While you’re biking. And did I mention that these uniforms’ tunics were white? Keeping them clean must be an unbelievable chore.

2. Once I got to the airport and figured out where to check in for my flight, I saw that I was in line behind the Vietnamese men’s soccer team, in nifty red track pants and team polo shirts. And let me tell you, these guys are good looking – “hot” is probably the right word. Of course, like any young, athletic celebrities, they know that they are hot – that attitude is apparently some global testosterone code. But if you have to wait in line, well, you might as well enjoy the view.

The advantage, other than aesthetic, of following the team through check in, customs, and immigration is that I could have walked through with contraband, weapons, and the dreaded “liquids and gels” and no one would have noticed me at all. Women giggled and pointed at them. Middle-age men sucked in their tummies and gave the “Hey, man, it’s cool” nod. Kids approached them for pictures and autographs. The immigration officers even broke their usual “Red Army” scowls. I basked in the afterglow, where no one cared that my bag was a few kilos over the weight limit.

Meaning-making and meaning-making in adult learning

The five days of training have gone by incredibly fast. As I write this, Kris is being escorted by the Dean and Associate Dean of the College of Education (in the Rector’s car, no less!) to Ho Chi Minh City to catch a flight to troubled Thailand. I have greatly enjoyed working with her, and I think the group appreciated our slightly different ways of thinking and facilitating the process. Soon, she will be back stateside and able to reconstruct her regular sleeping patterns.

Yesterday, we concluded the 18th day of a three-workshop series. As in the beginning, we held to our goal of both providing a professional development experience for the participants in adult learning and program planning, and facilitating the development of an actual plan for an adult education program. This is a tricky balance that more than once fostered uncertainty and doubt in my minds. Developing ownership for both the learning and the producing of a product represents a major challenge for those of us committed to this form of adult learning and professional development, something to which the students in my problem-based learning class for adult learning would readily attest.

But this tricky balance seems even more challenging when attempted within a culture quite different from one’s own, and when the meaning of facilitation, teaching, and instructional materials are mediated through translators. Experience-based learning is inherently constructivist in nature. Our aim is to assist learners to engage the content within the context of their own experiences in a manner that contributes to their own sense of the material.

As with learners within our own society, a significant aspect of this task involves taking apart ideas in order to put them back together again in a manner that makes conceptual sense to oneself and in a way that seems to help make the concept one’s own. Within the group with which we were working with here at CTU, both Kris and I saw this process unfold repeatedly. While they were undoubtedly familiar with some of the ideas and concepts we explored with them, many of the ideas and concepts were clearly new or at least not well understood.

The language difference seems to make this meaning-making process more explicit and transparent. I have no doubts that similar struggles go on with our own students but here you can actually see the struggle manifest itself in both the translation and attempts by participants to understand what is being said. We enjoyed numerous periods within the group in which a raucous discussion broke out among the participants and, for the most part, we “participated”, as we remarked yesterday “in English” – meaning we really didn’t have a clue what they were talking about.

But I now realize, after three workshops and more than 18 days of working within translated contexts with the Vietnamese, that this “meaning-making” process involved a second component. Not only where the participants seeking to conceptually understand some of our ideas, concepts, and terms. They were also struggling to find the equivalent or similar words in Vietnamese. It is hard to know what proportion of these rowdy and deep discussions reflected this second form of meaning-making, but it was apparent from the summarized translations of the discussions we would occasionally receive that they conceptually understood but struggled to find words in their language for what we were talking about. Earlier we talked about “simple” terms like goals and objectives, gap, and promotion, for which they worked to construct a word or term in Vietnamese that would effectively capture the conceptual meaning conveyed by these terms.

So our formal work concludes for the moment. I will stay on for another four weeks to be of help with continuing the work and process in any way that I can. What that involves, exactly, remains to be worked out. For now, I preoccupy myself with moving from the hotel to the “guest house” of Campus One, and learning about a whole new area of Can Tho.

The adventure continues. Stay tuned to the blog for further developments from the “Home Alone” kid.

Getting Ready to Leave Vietnam (or Not)

I am leaving VN in the morning – leaving the hotel at 4:30 am, in fact. John is staying on, in a guesthouse at the university; what comprises guesthouse living is not clear, as we’ve heard conflicting reports. But he is braver than I, so he will stay on for four more weeks to try new adventures. My contribution to his comfort? A small stash of American foods that I just took over to his room – crackers, peanut butter, and cereal that I didn’t eat while I was here, plus some bug repellent wipes for good measure (in case he has no air con and has to sleep with open windows – there are no screens here). On the reverse side, I met the wife of one of our Cantho colleagues who is now a PhD student at MSU and am taking him some books and some spices for the cooking he is learning to do on his own. I feel a bit like Dolly Madison – filling my suitcase with food to give to other people’s husbands. And I’m glad to do it – in their own ways, they’re each on a big adventure, far from home and family and familiar food.

My sadness at leaving – possibly my last visit to Vietnam – is mediated by excitement and nervousness about my trip home. I scheduled one day in Bangkok to sightsee – who knows when I’ll get back there? And now I need to screw up my courage and not wimp out – I have simple instructions to follow to be able to visit the Grand Palace and maybe some temples, so there’s no reason (other than a possible coup, of course) not to Just Do It. (Can you hear Julie Andrews? Can you see me dancing through the streets of Bangkok: “Besides which you see, I have CONfidence in ME!”?)

But enough musical theater for now.

If I have internet access and can blog from Bangkok, I may try to do it. If not, I’ll be offline for a few days, until I get back to Michigan on Friday afternoon. John will be blogging during his extended stay, assuming he can figure out web access at the university (there’s rumored to be a post office with internet across the road from his guesthouse). So stay tuned for more from Cantho.

Professional development at CTU

This building is where we are conducting the workshop at CTU.

With Kris working away at the computer is Dr. Lap, the Associate Dean of the College of Education, Liem, our main translator, and Lon (I think), one of the participants.

This motorbike scene is ubiquitous here. These belong to the faculty participating in the workshop.

Running in Cantho – A Progression

As Bilbo would say, “It’s an adventure.” In February of last year, when we first started our work with Can Tho University, I tried running on the streets here, but I found it too frustrating and mostly abandoned any kind of a fitness routine for the time we were here. In July, as I reported in earlier blogs, I decided to fit in some kind of exercise and took to walking during our long lunch breaks. These walks provided me with the opportunity to see and experience parts of the city close up.

This visit, however, comes in the midst of a stepped-up fitness routine for myself, and I am determined to keep it going. So I decided to again try running. Those of you who have done both walking and running will appreciate that what you see and experience with these two forms of exercise is quite different. With running, I am no longer a casual observer of the street scene in Can Tho, but one who struggles to make it back without first a) collapsing from exhaustion, b) breaking my leg on a dislodged piece of concrete, curb, or a large stone jutting out of the ground, and c) being hit by one of an infinite number of passing motorbikes, bicycles, trucks, or buses.

I have found running on the streets here to be roughly equivalent to a Pike’s Peak Run in downtown Manhattan, only without the ascent and descent, and with motorbikes and bicycles instead of yellow cabs. The surface changes almost constantly and I am always scanning the ground three to five feet in front of me for impending disasters. For one or two blocks I might have finely tiled sidewalk, gleaming in its almost marble-like appearance. Then it abrubtly ends with a dirt path winding through the overgrowing grass and weeds along the side of the street. The dirt path might then taper off onto a rough patch of concrete that seems like, at one time, it might have been something like a sidewalk but has long since succumbed to the constant shifting and heaving of the earth. Then perhaps more tiled sidewalk and then a drainage ditch, with nowhere to run but the street, where I both gingerly dance around pools of stagnant water mixed with a variety of petroleum products and artfully dodge oncoming motorbikes and bicycles. To an outside observer, it must surely seem like I am auditioning for a dancing part in West Side Story.

In addition to the terrain, I have also overcome my feelings of self-consciousness and being quite conspicuous. Imagine this large white guy, lumbering down the crowded and hectic streets of Can Tho filled with Vietnamese citizens, in the middle of the day, wearing shorts and a t-shirt soaked with sweat. My strategy? Avoid eye contact whenever possible, which is not hard when your primary job is to keep from tripping or falling flat on your butt in the middle of traffic. It is also very hot during the middle of the day, the best time for me to run both in terms of my energy and available time.

But, following Kris’ lead, I have tried running in the early morning, going out about 5:00. Again, not such a noble effort when I have been awake already for at least a couple hours, still trying to adjust to the time change. At first, it seemed great and the perfect solution to almost all the barriers I had experienced – much cooler, far fewer people and vendors on the sidewalks and vehicles on the street, enough darkness so I didn’t have to see people wondering what in the hell I am doing, but enough light from the street lamps to illuminate this crazy patchwork surface. But alas! Paradise lost – the street lights shut off about 30 minutes before it becomes light enough to really see much of anything! Then, paradise has been transformed into a literal struggle for survival. So, the trick, I have decided is to go out early enough to get back before the lights are extinguished. That would mean about 4:30. Hmmm.

I am absolutely amazed, however, at the level of human activity going on in and on the streets at 5:00 in the morning. People of all ages, from the young playing badminton on the sidewalk (another minor “obstacle” to dodge around) to older women walking. People schlepping their wares on trailers behind struggling motorbikes, or on foot pushing carts along the darkened streets. A woman setting up her “shop” on the sidewalk, her wares and station dimly lit by a small, battery-operated lamp sitting on the ground.

Yesterday (Sunday), I had the treat of meeting a herd of lamb grazing on grass and garbage along the side of the street. Perhaps a dozen of them, at first loosely scattered and strung out along the draining ditch but, as I approached, they quickly organized and acted as if I was herding them home, bleating and prancing in front of me for a distance, until they turned off onto a driveway. And yes, you unbelievers! They were confirming to my theory of grazing in herds – all facing in the same direction. Further cross cultural support for an emerging theory.

The other neat thing about running is the gazes I received, from onlookers on the sidewalk to passengers on motorbikes and bicycles who, as they pass, turn their heads to look at this bizarre scene and to often smile and greet me. It is hard not to make eye contact with such an interesting and hospitable group of people.

Well, that is perhaps more than you wanted to know about running in Can Tho. Evidence, though, that we can overcome our inner fears and doubts. Just buck up and do it!

Fitness, Can Tho style.

In East Lansing, I work out at the MAC (Michigan Athletic Club), an “haute bourgeois” health club that is surprisingly down to earth (hey, it’s East Lansing…), yet deliciously appointed (multiple whirlpools, steam rooms, a water slide, and all the clean towels you could possibly need). In Can Tho, I walk down the street to the grounds of a vocational school, which serves as the local athletic meeting point in the early mornings. I take 4-5 laps around the complex, and here are some comparisons between the MAC and the “CTAC.”

1. Apparel at the MAC = the latest multi-absorbent fibers, Big Ten college t-shirts (preponderance of MSU and UM), and $100 running shoes.
Apparel at CTAC = loose cotton pants and shirts, white (only white) baseball hats, tennis shoes resembling Keds.

2. People at the MAC = kids, adults, older adults.
People at the CTAC = kids, adults, older adults.

3. Activities at the MAC = track walkers/joggers, tennis, racquetball, yoga classes, machines (treadmills, etc.), weights, pools, etc.
Activities at the CTAC = walking/jogging around the perimeter, kids playing badminton without a net, groups doing synchronized movement (looks like tai chi to my eyes), stretching.

4. Socializing at the MAC = ladies sitting in the lounge area of the locker room, drinking coffee, and gossiping, while their husbands are at home thinking the ladies are working out.
Socializing at the CTAC = ladies sitting on the benches, watching me walk in circles, and gossiping, while their husbands are at home thinking the ladies are working out.

5. Kris’s interactions with others at the MAC = minimal, abiding by the “nod and wave and move along” code of colleagues who run into one another on the track or in the locker room.
Kris’s interactions with others at the CTAC = a little more than at the MAC: smiling and waving at the ladies on the benches, fending off curious looks, trying not to get run over by motorbikes on my way to the school.

All kidding aside, today I had the most fun interaction. It was sprinkling a bit, and five kids (ages about 7-11) were sitting on a bench on a patio at the school. On my first pass by, they smiled and waved and said, “Hello!” I smiled back, waved back, said “Hello!” On my second pass, they were more forthcoming, “Hello! What is your name?” (giggling) “Kris. What is your name?” (more giggling from kids, Kris points to self then to biggest child) “Kris. Your name?” Then each said her/his name and I repeated it. As I turned the corner, I could hear them laughing and repeating my versions of their names. There’s a good chance that it was the Vietnamese equivalent of hearing someone say “George” and replying back “Fred,” which may be why they were laughing so much – and to be clear, it sounded like glee more than mocking. Still, my ego couldn’t bear one more pass by them, so on the next lap of the building, I headed for the street. But I turned and waved and yelled, “Goodbye!” Giggling and waving, they yelled “Bye, bye!” back at me. This, I assure you, does not happen to me at the MAC.

Reflections on the return

This is a late post because of trouble I have been having with the blog.

As of Thursday, we arrived in Can Tho, Vietnam. As in the past, we were again met at the Ho Chi Minh airport by a representative from CTU, a young student of Lap’s. He graduated from the university just last year.

Walking out onto the plaza just outside the airport provides a snapshot experience of what it is like to be in Vietnam. The place is very, very busy, with cars, motorbikes, pedestrians pushing carts, pulling luggage bags, carrying children. On our drive from Ho Chi Minh City to the airport, it was a visual image that would repeat itself over and over, in different ways with different people and contexts.

As we drove down, I was again struck by how different a society this is from what I am used to; how different even from Thailand or other Asian countries. I wondered about Vietnam as an emerging economy, of the picture of the country that emerges from such development. It was hard for me to imagine that it would like other, more developed economies and countries.

By now, the journey seems familiar. Familiar places to stop on the way from the airport. Familiar buildings and communities. Familiar activities. Yet, beyond this sense of surface familiarity I know very little about this culture and society. The familiarity provides a kind of anchor but also a stark reminder about the power of assumptions.

As we drove down the street from the ferry landing in Can Tho, I scanned the streets for some of the faces that grew to be familiar on my “street walks.” It was hard to tell if any new shops had moved in. There are just so many and so different from one another. I would be hard pressed to remember if something that looked new was merely a shop that I simply didn’t see before.

The staff at the hotel recognized us. They are all still here. There is a kind of coziness to this sense of familiarity. I suspect they know more about us, though, than we do they. After the flights and the brief hotel stay in Bangkok, it felt good to settle in. The room is still the same, even though it is across the hall and a different floor from where we stayed in July. There is familiarity here as well.

In a few hours, we will be heading off to the university and the work of our third visit. In my head, the process plays out. There is a kind of deep pattern to all this, etched firmly within my memory, a deepness of a pattern that touches on only a fraction of the meaning of life here. But perhaps that is where and how meaning of a different culture forms and transforms. Perhaps a metaphor for the understanding of our own lives as well.

Oh. Tanenbaum. (Huh?)

Vietnam is very much not a Christian nation. Yet, there are some signs of the recent holiday around town. A few examples I’ve seen:

- Christmas trees in a few shops, restaurants, hotels, etc. The one in front of the western-style grocery store is 15 feet tall and white, with blue and green lights. It bears a banner noting that it is sponsored by Heineken. Good to know that the most commercialized holiday on the planet can be officially sponsored by a beer company.

- The few churches (remember, VN was colonized by France, well into the 20th century) are very much decorated with colorful flags, banners, lights, etc.

- Faux pine garlands are placed here and there. It reminds me of Florida, or someplace really warm where people try to make it look like it might get cold and snowy. But it won’t. Pine garlands next to palm trees always look a little off.

- Red and yellow lights festooned across one of the People’s Party buildings – but these may be to honor the People (red and yellow are the nation’s flag colors – red background, yellow star) rather than to honor the Christ child.

- A human-sized, white/pink skinned Santa Claus mannequin “playing” a saxophone in a shop window. Swaying back and forth to the “music.” Scary.

Safe and Sound

…and Tired. Very, very tired. We arrived safely in Can Tho, where we are ensconced in a hotel with somewhat Spartan but clean and comfortable furnishings. To our surprise, they’ve redecorated the dining room since we were here in July, and although I might not choose plaid flannel for tablecloths in a place where it’s never below 80 degrees, it works as a look. And it’s a nice touch of home – where flannel is exactly right at this time of year!

John and I met over pho (“fa” – a lovely noodle soup) and went over our workshop materials for tomorrow, the first day of our work here. Or maybe not. We’re not 100% sure about when we’re getting going with the group. So we’ll head over to the university at about 7 am to see whom we can find and ask if we’re starting at our usual 7:30 time.

Our routine here is to get up early (5ish for me), go for a walk (me), eat breakfast, then get a taxi at 7:10 or so to get us to the university (10 minutes away). We work 7:30-10:30, then the group breaks for lunch and napping (a lovely tradition we might consider at MSU!), and we meet again 1:30-4:30. John and I typically come back to the hotel during the mid-day break. John goes for a run in the mid-day heat; I lurk in my room, catch up on email, and do some stretching or pilates. We also use this time to do some planning and check in on what’s been going on in the workshop. At the end of the day, we do more planning, sometimes have business to do at the university, then come back, rest a bit, and eat dinner. More email checking, and then early to bed, because 5 am comes pretty quickly!

Here we go again! We are currently on the first leg (well, second really, if you count Lansing to Detroit) of a multi-leg journey that will take us eventually to Can Tho, via Bangkok, on Thursday. Should arrive late Thursday afternoon their time. Our first workshop is Friday morning, bright and early.

In this, the third of a planned series of three workshops, we will focus on organizational and administrative aspects of the developing adult and continuing education program. The second workshop was more experiential than the first and the third will be even more experiential, with the participants engaging in considerable analysis and decision-making. So, while at one level we are clear about our overall focus and schedule, the process creates considerably more uncertainty. But we are seeking to emulate and model best practice in adult education and uncertainty is certainly a characteristic of this approach!

Beyond the workshop, I hope to begin working with CTU on curriculum development around the specific subjects they have identified to be included in the ACE program. But I also hope to learn lots about their higher and adult education programs within the country, and about working with translators in professional development.

We are mildly nervous about the situation in Thailand and specifically in Bangkok but so far there doesn't seem much to be worried about.

Okay, that is enough for now. Suffice it to say I am not looking forward to the lengthy flight to Tokyo and will be glad when we are once again ensconced within our now comfortable hotel.

How we’ll get There from Here

January 2-3: Detroit to Tokyo
January 3: Tokyo to Bangkok
[overnight in Bangkok]
January 4: Bangkok to Ho Chi Minh City
January 4: 4-5 hour car ride from HCMC to Can Tho

(January 5: begin workshops on adult ed program)

We're in the Detroit airport now, so it's too late to turn back.