I ♥ English Pronunciation

This is my host brother Hiếu (pronounced kind of like "Hue").

This is a closeup of the patch sewn onto Hiếu's pants.

This is what Hiếu and I do most weekday nights.

Hint: we are studying English. This is how a typical pronunciation review goes:

"Okay, Hiếu, I want you to read the first word in this list."

"Pro-nun-ci-a-tion."

"No, no, no, that's the title of the list. Read the first word in the list."

"Veter...veterniratiry."

"No, it's veterinarian."

"Ve-te-ri-na-ti-ry."

"Repeat after me: ve"

"ve"

"ter"

"ter"

"in"

"in"

"ar"

"ar"

"ian"

"ian"

"Ve-ter-in-ar-ian."

"Ve-ter-in-ar-ian."

"Great job! Read it again."

"Ver-ti-ni-raian. Trời ơi, khó quá!"

You know you've lived in Hanoi too long if...

I have lived in Hanoi for 1 year, 7 months, and 2 weeks. And though I am far from being "just like a Vietnamese person" as many people attempt to praise me, I nevertheless have reached a degree of assimilation. Here are some of the indications that you've lived in Hanoi long enough for things to sink in:

• You casually say things like "Today I was riding my xe đạp and decided to stop at this one tea stand in my ngõ and got lots of xinh đẹps from the lady there. Then a xe máy almost ran into me." (credit: Calah Schlabach)

• You can cross a shoe checkpoint without even breaking stride.

• An alarming proportion of your personal items are decorated with chubby animals, and/or something monstrous is dangling from your cell phone.

"Fu female"

• 20-degree weather causes you to dress like this (because you know those cement walls and floors were not designed to keep you warm).

• "The Lake" means Hoàn Kiếm Lake.

• When you go out to eat, you look for the smallest plastic chairs possible (because everyone knows the size of the chairs is inversely proportionate to the deliciousness of the food).

 

• Alternately, you choose your restaurant solely based on how funny the name sounds. 

Highschool Restaurant Teeny Pizza actually sells teeny pizzas!!!!

• You find yourself asking things like "How old are you?" "Are you married?" "How much did you pay for that?" of people you only just met.

What do I do all day anyways?

This is a good question for me to ask myself, too. I may live 12 time zones away from my nearest blood relatives, but I still work a nine-to-five, and it helps to remind myself what I actually do with all that time. When I'm not writing blog posts, mostly I am editing articles that have been translated from Vietnamese into English. For example, an artist profile for a book on contemporary Vietnamese art, that starts like this:

Lê Quảng Hà was born in 1963 in Hanoi. 

This is the only sentence in the entire document that I did not change. The rest of the first paragraph goes like this:

His skinny and spare-face showed his strong personality, naughty and activeness with sharp eyes widely opening to stare at everythings as if they were looking for the inside natures, never take his eyes off anything. Keen on drawing since he was young, Ha started his drawing class in children’s club when he was only 7. When grown up, he once tried to shift to Irrigational University but he could not be happy nor could find his position there. There was sometime when he even tried as a worker but it was not all right at all. Ha sat for an entrance exam in University of Fine Arts again. Painting seemed to be his fate that was unavoidable. His first three school years was in Ho Chi Minh city University of Fine Arts (1986- 1989), and the next three years was in Hanoi Industrial Arts University (1989- 1992), and expescially under the instruction of femal painter Kim Bach, to whom he paid so much respect to, Lê Quảng Hà has become mature gained a lot of painting knowledge and experiences.

And this is what I turn it into, with a little luck, a little skill, and a lot of help from my amazingly patient boss, Mr. Long.

His thin face, with its wide eyes that seemed to pierce every object he looked at to their core, revealed a strong personality, both active and mischievous. Fond of drawing since he was young, Ha enrolled in a drawing class at his children’s club when he was only seven. When he was older, he tried to transfer to the Water Resources University but was unhappy and unable to find his place there. There was even a time when he tried his hand at manual labor, but he did not feel right about it. So he sat a second time for the entrance exam to the University of Fine Arts. Painting seemed to be his fate. His first three years of study were passed at the Ho Chi Minh City University of Fine Arts (1986-1989), and the next three years at the Hanoi School of Industrial Art (1989-1992), primarily under the instruction of the painter Kim Bach, to whom he owes great respect for giving him the knowledge and experience that would later help him become a mature painter.

Polished prose. Isn't it a beautiful thing?
Sometimes my job seems so tedious. Sometimes it is downright scary.

But right now, looking at the finished result, I can't help but feel a sense of accomplishment. And I have to admit there are times when my job is highly entertaining. Take these delightful examples from the The Gioi Publishers blooper reel, for instance:

I first knew the strange impressive and unforgettable light fragrance, the smell of straw bended with the good smell of village girl’s hair, which made one on a cloud nine. 

Someone sure knows their American idioms from 20 years ago!

They put the dó plaints in a mortal and smash them by a cylinder hummer until it turns into a platform.

[see below for clarification]

credit: my totally awesome brother, Asa Forsythe

Through the side windows, we can know how many women in the family get married. 

This one actually makes sense in context. One room with a window is added for each daughter that gets married. But you gotta appreciate the Freudian slip!

Cascadeur students act not only simple performances but also very dangerous ones such as jumping off a building, speeding on a motor, falling off an abyss, etc.

Wow! Makes my job seem like a piece of cake.
And the grand finale:

U Minh forest used to be a battlefield and a place to cover top leaders in the Southern Resistance, such a valuable forest of humankind should have been a culturally attractive address for tourism such as biology tourism, history tourism, especially for young generation. It’s so regretful it’s burnt and destroyed. Even the scene is also nothing more than concrete blocks and the forest is overexploited for commercial purposes. The difference between the rich and the poor here is taking place more drastically than ever. This is a hindrance to organising tourism industry structures but still keeping native distinctive cultural features? I dare to think that it’s time to put what’s modern or what’s traditional or what’s natural on the right place so as to keep the natural beauty, abundance and uniqueness... That’s how tourism can attract more tourists. It’s local authorirties’ reponsibilities to distinguish what belongs to distinctive tradition, what’s cuturally unique to maintain for offsprings, both physical and non-physical culture. To the end, the hardest-to-solve problem is human resources. From higher managers to staff, they all need traning very basically and the Government should generate favourable conditions by reasonable policies so that they can live on their jobs. Only by that could the non-smoke industry develop. Last but not less, the waterways gardens tourism will stand firm with a sound bandmaster.

And rightly so, in my opinion!

Peace.

Back to the Old Chopping Block

This summer I have been lucky enough to take not one, but TWO vacations. Check out these albums.



Sầm Sơn beach was the site of my Very Vietnamese Vacation.






Then it was off to the U.S.A. to enjoy some genuine hometown Americana.




Finally, "Optimus Prime goes to America" is the trilingual story of my four-inch friend, the transformer and polyglot Optimus Prime, who tagged along with me.


But the fun is now over, and I have to get back to the old chopping block.

I have been back in Hanoi now for three and a half weeks, and things are pretty much back to normal. By "normal" I mean to say that things are not going as planned. Just to make sure I didn't fall under the erroneous assumption that I really understand how things work in Vietnam, after a week with my new host family I was informed that I had to move out.

According to the police, that particular area--near the train station--is "complicated," and no amount of letters from MCC, from The Gioi Publishers, or even from PACCOM (the governmental branch that deals with NGOs) will convince them to let me stay. And apparently it's not about fishing for bribes, either. Nope. It's just..."complicated."

So I am back at my boss's house, which is not so bad because it means I get to hang out with the new SALTers, Calah, and Alicia, whose blogs, by the way, are also awesome. (Click on their names! Do it!)

This year I will be working half-time with MCC projects and the other half with The Gioi Publishers. For today I'm at The Gioi, and I had forgotten how entertaining it can be sometimes at the old chopping block. At the moment I am hacking away at a French-to-English translation entitled "The Land" (as if there were only one in the world). Here are some delightful tidbits:

• "The Vietnamese traditional town is a vegetal one." (p.2)
• "Resorting to geomancy and the equilibrium of flux, the town does not at all break up with its landscape territory, but rather integrates it in man's dwellings and works in a continual and permanent way." (p.3)
• "Thus, beyond the Western reading of the rupture between town and countryside, here, a first deep identity makes itself found. By doing so, a generating principle of the urban space of the delta gets clear, proceeding through the confined space of the villages." (p.4) [and so on and so forth for 21 pages]

If anyone can tell me what the "equilibrium of flux" is or what exactly it is that supposedly "gets clear," please call me. 0127410128.

In conclusion, as you can see, things are right back to normal. The combined mysteries of Vietnamese police and French academicians have thrust me back into nearly the same state I was in when I first came to Vietnam. Namely, a state made up of equal parts confusion and amusement, combined with a growing awareness that I have a lot to learn. It's not a bad state to be in. It almost feels like home.

Yet another thanks to those who helped me journey back home this July. It was both restful and fun. To those of you whom I was able to see, it was a joy. To those of you whom I wasn't, you are still in my thoughts and prayers.

God bless,
Hannah

"A funny thing happened in Asia the other day..." Vol. 1 Ed. 2

This edition was sent out in a mass e-mail 19 Sept. 2008

The Vietnamese like to use Western characters for decoration, kind of like how we Westerners decorate our dorm rooms or tattoo our bodies with Chinese characters: because they look pretty--not because we know what they mean. As you can imagine, this leads to many semantic accidents. English phrases often pop up in the most surprising places. Here are some of the most whimsical examples I have come across:

-My thermos has a picture of a circus elephant and the words "Happy Time Ability"
-My bathroom trash can depicts a Roman Centurion, complete with chariot and war gear, who decrees: "Happiness to everyone!!!" (or else)
-On the chopsticks bin: "Work is glory!"
-On my host-sister's shirt: "Smoking glue doesn't keep families together."
-On many, many "sporty" t-shirts: ATHLENTIC GREAR
-And my personal favorite, the following t-shirt


Poor guy. And of course, since there are two sides to everything, let me give you a sampling of what I sound like to the Vietnamese: "Hello...Mr...can help me...um...Bach Mai street where?...um...repeat?...mmm (vigorously nodding)...

mmm (confused look)...thank you very much." Repeat again five minutes later. Eventually I find my way.

That's all for now! I hope you have enjoyed edition 2 of "A funny thing happened in Asia the other day..."
much love,
Hannah