Asia? So, what is that?

Hey everybody!  I'm a "blogger" now!  An Asian blogger!

So I made it to Vietnam, safe and sound, albeit in a slightly zombie-ish state for the last 4 days.  I really thought I could nail that jet lag situation, but I'm still fighting it.  Perhaps it's because I hit the ground running with work pretty much as soon as I landed in the country.  Or perhaps it's because I had several of the craziest most ridiculously insane weeks of my life right up until the day I left for Vietnam.

I should start from the beginning of this adventure, and include a little detail about the wonderful, magical drama that has unfolded in my life up to this point.  About 3 months ago I got a call from the Association of Hole in the Wall Camps asking what I was doing this summer and how I'd feel about a hot, sticky rice diet in Vietnam and Cambodia for 3 months.  Naturally I said, "sign me up!"  So now I am working as a consultant for the Association setting up camp/education programs for children in orphanages living with HIV.  I am happy to be back in the camp world, since I have missed my days working as Program Director for Double H (the camp in NY).

As I prepared to say goodbye to Chicago and get ready for some hot asian fun in the summertime, I spent my weeks prior to leaving helping my sister plan her wedding (3 days before I departed) and getting 14 different shots and crazy prescriptions for potentially deadly diseases I can't pronounce.  It was a fairly dramatic week before I left, as I was nearly diagnosed with appendicitis and then on my way back from the doctor got into a nasty bike accident that I still haven't healed from yet!  As the Maid of Honor for my sister's wedding I felt slightly bad to be the bruised, swollen bridesmaid on her wedding day, but things worked out and I was feeling good on that day.

My sister is an inspiration to me as a picture of total happiness in a potentially miserably awful wedding day nightmare for a bride - her wedding day was the most perfect, disastrous, miraculous wedding day I've ever experienced.  She is amazing - no other bride would have survived the destruction and reincarnation of their wedding dress one hour before the ceremony like she did.  Picture black, sooty, greasy water spraying out of the hotel sprinkler systems pouring down my sister's wedding dress as it hung on the wall, me running into the black tornado to break the hanger and rip the dress out of the room and run screaming down the hall for help, crying bride and horrified bridesmaids, firefighters trampling through the room flooded with black grease water, the mother of the bride forcing us to put the wedding dress in the shower as black inky water flooded the bathtub....and somehow managing to restore the dress to white again and show up to the ceremony on time and fully in tact, with no one in the church knowing the wiser.  Sure, Ellen had to walk down the aisle in a soaking wet dress and get hair and makeup re-done in 5 minutes, but it was the most beautiful wedding day for the most amazing couple - Ellen and Jesse were as happy as I've ever seen two people to just be together and celebrate their life among all the madness and drama.  It was perfect.

Getting on the plane to Vietnam 3 days later had me excited and ready for a new adventure after having spent months of winding up my life in Chicago, moving things into storage, organizing myself to go abroad and make a plan for when I come back home to move to California in October.  It was a lot to get done, but amazingly I had a pretty good handle on things (though the apparent fake appendicitis and weird anxiety pains from the week before would disagree).

My "adventure" started me off by sitting next to Cologne-y McColognerson on the plane for 15 hours.  I managed to trick myself into thinking that I liked the cologne smell here and there but also kept sniffing my packet of M&M's to avoid it.  First stop on my trip was Korea for 5 hours!  I got off the plane in Seoul feeling like a zombie, but I found a random chair massage place and paid 35000 somethings for it (it was either like $25 or $2000 - I'll never be sure - but either way it was totally worth it).  The best part of Korea were the people saying "Anyong."  It means hello.  And it's also the first name of every Korean person, according to one of the greatest tv shows of all time.  It was hard not to giggle everytime someone said "Anyong" to me....but I still did anyway.

I've hit the ground running with this job, and haven't totally adjusted to the time (12 hours ahead of Chicago) or slept much through the night yet.  I'm in a nice hotel this week, but starting Monday it's "no A/C tent-city" for me.  Luckily it's only a super humid 95 degrees with thunderstorms everyday.  Luckily.

I haven't explored Saigon all that much yet because I've been working, but here are some of my observations so far:

1. Motorized scooters are the main form of transportation - there are thousands of scooters on the road at any given time with 3-4 people on each one.  If you are a car, you have to fight your way to get down the street.  If you are a truck, you're screwed...those scooters are fiesty and won't let you in!  There are very few streetlights so people just seem to drive wherever they want- roads, sidewalks, pedestrians' feet....and that apparently is acceptable.

2. Rice and noodle soup for breakfast, lunch and dinner.  I can handle this and enjoy it, for now, but don't judge me for eating Pizza Hut last night and shedding a single tear of happiness - I'm not even a little bit ashamed.  So get off my back!  I ate a fish with its whole head on tonight and watched 2 live frogs dangle and kick their legs above a restaurant counter to be "ordered" for dinner (which were both subsequently gone by the time I left the restaurant.)  I am getting plenty of cultural immersion and plan to enjoy it all!  (except probably not that live-frog-dinner situation)

3.  Vietnam blocks facebook!  (I have secretly discovered that the facebook mobile website works...for now....but don't tell anyone b/c "the man" is always watching.....)

4.  The people are smiley and happy and some of the friendliest I've ever met.  I love the people I am working with from the WorldWide Orphans Foundation, and everywhere we walk people smile at us.  It's nice.

5.  Their currency is the dong.  Pronounced as it's spelled.  I want to tell you that I am mature and dignified in the way I reference the dong in my new daily life (aka. "How much dong is that going to cost me?"  "Excuse me, where can I get some dong?"  "Good morning, is my dong good here?")....but sadly I just laugh and laugh all day long every time I say it.  Especially when I'm walking around with 1 million dong in my pocket (equivalent to $50) - it's hard not to constantly dance around declaring that I'm a dong-millionaire.

6.  I love my job here.  It is already very challenging and exciting and scary and great.  I am working in both English and with Vietnamese translators, but it is awesome to help train this organization to set up programs that are so dear to my heart - I'm very lucky to get to do this.  Especially b/c I spend most of my days in t-shirts and flip flops with pink and green wigs on dancing around and being loud and making people smile.  But sometimes we have serious work to do, as you'll note in the picture.

I'm not sure how often I'll get to post on this blog, but I'll do my best.  Internet is apparently decent in the places I'll be here in Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City), but I fear that once I get to Cambodia in July internet will be harder to come by.  (As well as clean water...electricity....roach free beds...air conditioning.... but I'm not complaining...yet! :) )

Goodnight!

Ann