Reconciling and Reconnecting

In these past weeks, working and wrestling 6-days-a-week-work-days at Bò Sữa, immersing and interacting with my co-workers, communicating and concentrating through my broken Vietnamese whether with my co-workers or customers, and learning to listen of lessons learned (those small talks, or you can say "gossip of the everyday"), I am very grateful to have an experience like this. I think this may be a sort of boot camp in my search--whatever it may be. I never intended this study abroad to be a vacation here in the first place. Roughing it up a little bit is not a bad thing.

Right now, my body and head aches due to the last night's reveling. My mind is filled with railroads of thoughts. I am at a dilemma at the moment with priorities. On one hand, while I work so much to learn and explore what life in Hanoi is like among young people like me, but on the other, I am neglecting a part of the EAP program. At times, I feel I learn much more being the locals in their day-to-day, often mundane work-life as opposed to being confined to the walls of a classroom. I learn something new everyday.

My attitudes and cognitive associations regarding "Vietnamese-ness" has changed tremendously ever since my embarking on this educational journey here. For instance, for a large part of my life I used to look down on F.O.B.'s (Fresh Off the Boat)--recent Asian immigrants-- because I found myself in opposition to those who look like me, but aren't like me: their mothball permeating odor, their apparent accent that marks their foreignness, their bad sense in fashion, and so on. Being here is helping me get closer to reconciling all these things I had been internalizing in the past. However, I do wonder how my perception will again change upon coming back to the Bay Area.

Last weekend was the weekend of the 1000-year celebration of Hanoi, and the last few days of continual 10-days-filled with festivities. Hồ Hoàn Kiếm was dressed up in extravagant lights; a wide array of colors. At points, these lights reminded me of Christmas in my neighborhood Willow Glen in San Jose. A little bit of home. One of the nights during those 10-days, I sat a cafe and started to reflect again about my family and their early beginnings in the US.

My experiences so far struggling to express myself with the locals here and at times makes me feel ashamed and incredibly disempowered. Sometimes I feel like a little boy whose immaturity is marked by his lack of vocabulary; always mumbling or stuttering; always structural errors in sentences. For a moment, I had been thinking that this is probably what my parents felt when they had arrived to a land they did not know. I can imagine the disconnect between their high-level of life experience, complex minds clashing with their foreign tongue.

Nhiều kinh ngiệm, nhưng nói về kinh ngiềm đó không được.

Although this experience brings me great pain and frustration sometimes, it has helped me appreciate more for what my parents have done and how much they have struggled to get me where I am today. And that is here. From where it all started.

I wish I could speak to you. Depict the dimensions of my world. Sketch the shadows and shades of my mind. Vocalize the music of my mundane. I wish to know you more. You know who you are.

Maybe I am hâm after all.