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.

Asking the Why's for Wise

Long Entry:

Currently I am in Đà Nẵng for EAP Vietnam's 10-day extravaganza in the central region or miền Trung. The food here has a lot more depth in terms of flavor and spices. Sometimes I wonder how food reflects different peoples and cultures; how geography and climate affects human survival; how identity is formed out of such circumstantial contexts. During this trip, I have realized the magnitude of Vietnam's diversity.

Before this EAP Vietnam, I had always understood Vietnam as just a region with a bunch of Vietnamese people whose ancestry perhaps have mixed roots. Now I understand how much of a mixed bag it really is. While the phở soup is clear like water in the North, the soup in the South is darker like the skin of many people who work outside in the southern and central region. My parents' stories and regional conceptions based on experience resonates much with this realization. Indeed I see how the impact of a culture of office/inside worker of the north compared to the south/central rural agriculture has an impact on food itself. And also, the history of large Chinese influence in the north compared to south/central's more heteroegenous mix.

The hot sauces here are actually hot! Spicy is actually spicy! I feel a familiarity or filial connection with the food as well as tongue here. In this respect, tongue means taste and language. I am more comfortable speaking Vietnamese here because I hear the accent of my family. More d d d d sound as opposed to gi gi gi or v v v. Here, a little bit of home is hitting me. This home is not the broad, general home I call America, or San Jose, or Willow Glen, or Berkeley, or California; this home is my family, the root or gốc of my existence..

In these past months, I have been thinking and a lot of times contemplating by myself while other EAP'ers are socializing and having a whole lot of fun, just why I ask so many why's. Questions within questions conjure upon the opening of my eyes each morning. I always think to myself... wow I still can't believe I am in across the world away from where I am to figure out who I am.

Here in Vietnam, I walk these streets like a vestige of colliding history of war and politics; identity and love; a strive for independence, but theoretical divides of what human freedom actually is. Manifested violence though many would say it was necessary. Perhaps it was.

There, I often mention this story to somehow form a story of my own that is often left in the Pacific Ocean through which my family trekked. I find my peers at times somehow romanticizing this story to serve political and social ends for their organization--to mobilize the poor, the disenfranchised, the marginalized, the oppressed. You know, those catchy keywords revolutionaries would use for propagandistic reasons.

There, I lead, sometimes I follow, sometimes I follow, sometimes I lead, but in my mind circularity is all I think of. Here, this circularity becomes more apparent. Although this trip in Vietnam could serve as a kind of vacation in which indulgence is prioritized, I always have these thoughts whenever I have a gơod time or đi nhậu.

It feels great to have so much power with the dollar or the đồng, but i truly want to make this experience much more than what I read or hear: a typical Việt Kiều story where ultimately in the end, there is always some sort of realization of what is real and what is fantasy. While you may be searching for meaning, you are confronted with the hyperrealities or utopias accessible to tourists. You are a tourist.

You can buy, use your currency to navigate through your time here. You can be boss and have all these people service you as if you were a king or queen. Live luxuriously and lavishly because you just so happen to come from a "developed" country whose supposed value is higher because of statistical formulations which most of the globe follow. This game where you either race to the top, or you race to the bottom.

You can love and hope for permanence in ink along these temporary pencil-drawn lines of 3 months studying abroad. What makes you different from the next Magellan, Columbus, or conquistador sailing across clouds on modern-day airplanes to learn and broaden your understanding of the world? Sometimes this educational gain may be at the expense of others, especially your subjects of study and that is, the people here, người dân.

I am, but a sojourner moving from one place to another. From region to region though my region may be the south. I however come from the West though my skin may signal East. When I speak, they might laugh or question my who/where I am? Mỹ gốc Việt I'd say. Vietnamese American. Oversees Vietnamese. Vietnamese at the root of it nonetheless. From there, they will have different standards for me. I feel like I am left off a hook and put onto another. This is inescapable though I can leave anytime if I wanted to. No. I have three months left until I am back home where streets are easily remembered; where everything seems to align so easily; where I am able to be myself again. But here for the mean time, I am striving to fit in like a piece on this jigsaw puzzle. So then I can finally see this bigger picture that everyone seems to be raving about. Of course, because I am a part of this, I'd have to step back to see it. Ironically, I'd have to face another puzzle and I'd have to start anew again. Each time will never be the same. EAP Vietnam...

Academic Blog

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