Inappropriate conversations

Sorry I’ve been silent for the past two weeks…it feels like things are starting to fall into a routine here, which means that I’m busier and there’s also less to talk about. I found myself starting to get frustrated with little things in Hanoi this week- like how my laundry never actually seems clean- or dry- and how drinking water is never cold, yet shower water is never hot. Of course, balance that with cheap massages, motorbike rides, and bowls of bun cha. Life isn’t really so hard.

The past two weeks have been a bit crazy in the house- we had a new housemate move in and two guests staying with us. It’s fun having a lot of people around and I’ll be sad when our guests leave. One of the girls who’s staying with us has been here for two years and is leaving in a week (her lease was up a bit early). I feel like I’m losing my first friend here- I guess that’s how life goes in the ex-pat world with people constantly leaving and new people arriving. September’s supposed to be a big month for new arrivals, so I’m looking forward to not being the newest kid on the block!

Things are going well at work…they fluctuate between being crazy busy and incredibly slow, mostly depending on whether my boss is in the office. We got a new foreigner though, which is great! She’s a 40-ish year old Danish woman with 4 kids, married to a guy who works at the UN. They’ve lived in Zimbabwe and Mozambique for the past ten years…what a life! It’s nice to have her around to speak English with and to have a co-witness to the bizarre office dynamic. Vietnam is very hierarchical and even the office has its own mini-hierarchy. As a foreigner, you’re somewhat left out, or you’re automatically at the top- even being the youngest.

Here is an example of how the meeting went to introduce Lotte, our new Danish colleague:

Me: Okay everyone, let’s go around and introduce ourselves and describe what we’re working on.

Khuong (only Vietnamese man in the office): I’m Khuong, single, looking for a nice girl to settle down with.

Linda (older woman with grown kids): I’m Linda, I’m married but still looking for a nice man…

Me: Okay, ummm, Hoa why don’t you go next.

Hoa (new girl right out of university): I’m Hoa, Greig’s secretary, and I make lots of mistakes. I am sort of slow and I don’t really get everything. I’m going to try to do better. You just have to be patient.

…And so on. Apparently Hoa had made a mistake earlier working with an older woman and she proceeded to publicly humiliate herself so that the older woman could “save face.”

Along the lines of inappropriate sharing…I taught middle schoolers this week. Enough said. Usually the girls are pretty reserved and the boys are wild, but in this class, there was one girl who was completely out of control. She was talking nonstop and I told her to be quiet and do her work. Of course, she had already finished her work. The exercise was to write five sentences starting with “have you ever.” She only wrote four:

Have you ever had a girlfriend?

Have you ever texted your girlfriend?

Have you ever gone to a hotel with your girlfriend?

Have you ever slept with your girlfriend?

I literally froze in shock and said something she didn’t understand about how her writing was x-rated. Naturally, the boy sitting next to her could tell something was going on so he grabbed her paper and read it out loud for the entire class. Oi. I think I fully earned my $20 an hour that night.

So now I’m enjoying a lazy weekend after a long week and have trips planned for the next two long weekends- first the mountains and then the beach (Sapa and Hoi An). Hoi An is also the main city for tailoring and I’m so excited to get knockoff clothes! Especially since nothing ever seems to quite get clean in the laundry.

~ by bluescoop on August 21, 2010.