Hello 2010

For me, 2009 was one of those years that I couldn't wait for. I had singled out this year as a year that would determine so much -- the year I would live in another country, the year I would graduate college, the year we would see a new president in office. I knew it would be a year of transition. But the truth is, you underestimate what that actually means. When you are truly at the end of a journey, you rarely take the time to think about what you went through to get there or how you felt throughout the whole thing. Well, I'm not at the end yet... so it's a good time to take a minute and look at what this year meant to me.

I spent the first half of the year traveling. I won't lie -- studying abroad included studying, but much less studying than I was used to, even though I had specifically chosen to study at a renowned French institution. So I thought of the whole experience like a prolonged vacation. I stopped in New York City on the way to Paris, spent quality time with my boyfriend and friends living in the city, and then said hello to a new country that would be my home for the next 5 months. When you are taken out of your comfort zone -- no matter how willingly you go -- you are forced to learn to deal with a lot on your own. I had to learn to navigate the new school system, make new friends, and become accustomed to French culture and really cold weather... which all came to an abrupt end when I received news that my grandmother had passed away. I flew home for a weekend, which completely threw me off. I also learned my dad might be sick, and was being tested for cancer. I felt that I had taken 3 steps backwards. When I returned to Paris, I was sad, felt guilty for having only gone home for 3 days, and couldn't focus on being in a new city. I missed home.

But a month later, I felt much better and was happy to be in Europe. I looked back on my sadness and couldn't figure out the sudden change that came about that made me feel okay. I think it was a combination of things: the weather improved in Paris, I had a new group of international friends, and the passing of time eased everything. From there came spring break week in Turkey, weekend trips outside of Paris, visits from friends and family, and nights/picnics out on the town. Whenever I get nostalgic for Paris, I miss those warm spring nights when we drank wine, snacked on baguettes & cheese on the banks of the Seine the most.

Then came a slew of schoolwork. Suddenly, I lamented my broken French, and I questioned why I had decided to leave so much schoolwork until the end. I had a stressful few weeks where I hoped the teachers would pity me enough to grant me at least a 10 (out of 20) for my final grades (a 10 is the lowest grade you can get that would still be considered passing). Turns out they did pity my sucky French, and didn't care that I said a grammatical error every three words! Great! But when it was all over, I didn't feel ready to leave. How do you say good-bye to friends who live all around the world, ones you don't know if you'll ever see again?

Then came a month traveling on my own to a slew of random places: Rome, Tunisia (my first time to Africa!), Sweden (where I swing-danced the nights away at the Herrang Dance Camp), Norway, Berlin, and Prague. At the end, I congratulated myself on traveling for 4 weeks alone without any major hiccups. I returned to Paris to pick up my things and pack for home, and I finally felt ready to leave.

I was thrilled to return to California. The first month I was back, I relished the weather, the lax attitude of Northern Californians (people who didn't look twice when I wore flip-flops and gym shorts everywhere), and the comfort of being with my friends and family. I couldn't wait to find a job and move to San Francisco to be with all my friends. Then the reality from the recession set in. As an unemployed recent college grad with no real work experience, I quickly learned how hard it would be to find a job. I felt like I was grasping blindly in the dark, trying to find anything at all. When a few opportunities didn't pan out, I felt discouraged. It was the first time things weren't working out like I had planned. I switched directions, and made the decision to go to Vietnam with my mom, dad, aunts, and uncles to attend a huge family reunion and to spread my grandparents' ashes in the sea. I met more relatives than I will ever meet in my life, and was there to see my grandparents finally put to rest.

I came back from Vietnam with a renewed outlook on my current situation -- that in time, things will come together. In time, this period of uncertainty will pass, and I will look on it with reflection to grow from the experience. I don't see my involuntary unemployment as a blessing, but maybe by the end of 2010, I will see it differently. I'm not going to hide that I have big hopes for 2010, but these hopes come from my realization that even though 2009 wasn't the easiest year for me, I was able to learn a lot about myself and about others around me. After a year like that, how can you not expect a lot from yourself?

So with this, I bid a big farewell to 2009, and say a hopeful hello to 2010!

#2 Feliz Navidad

My mom's favorite Christmas song is Feliz Navidad. She's all smiles and gets downright giddy when she hears the song, dancing in the car (even while driving) and singing along in really bad Spanish. All conversation, station-surfing, and otherwise disruptive activities stop for the 3 minutes that Feliz Navidad plays.

My mom likes the song so much that she has tried to find a recording of the exact version they play on the radio. Since she hasn't yet succeeded, we have many different versions of Feliz Navidad buried in a box somewhere in my house. One of the cassette tapes she bought quickly became one of our favorites, and to this day, I smile when I hear "Mamacita, donde esta Santa Claus?" because it was featured on that tape.

The other day, my mom complained to me that even though she set her car radio to the holiday station as soon as Thanksgiving was over, she hasn't yet heard Feliz Navidad. This is a big deal, because she only plays the station in her car in the hopes that she will hear it every time she gets into the car.

Well, that dry spell changed today when I decided to turn on the radio as we were getting dinner ready. Feliz Navidad was the first song we heard, and I had turned on the radio just in time to hear it in its entirety. At hearing the first beats of the song, my mom gasped, put her hand over her mouth like she was hearing from a long-lost relative for the first time in years, and pointed at the radio with wide eyes and a big smile. She tried to sing along to the parts that didn't include the title words, used exaggerated arm gestures, and moved her hips along to the music in her mismatched sweats.

That's where this picture is from. At one point, she went from moving only her upper body to doing full dancing with my dog. Needless to say, Kodi didn't understand what was going on but found a lot of pleasure from all the excitement. She also picked him up and serenaded him at one point.

What can I say? I have a very merry mom.

Vietnam in Photos, Part 2

My dad rides on the back of his friend's scooter. I like this photo because my dad is so excited to be hanging out with his friends from Vietnam again. It's crazy that he is still good friends with his friends from high school (my mom is the same with her friends).

On the boat out into the ocean to scatter my grandparents' ashes.

The scene right outside my uncle's (my dad's first cousin) house in Cai Be (located in the rural Mekong delta region), which also happens to be the house where my dad was born. My uncle owns a factory (located right next to his house) that makes dried longan, and they get tons of longan shipped into the factory every day.

The artist Thanh Chuong's villa located near Hanoi. It features really cool contemporary and traditional Vietnamese architecture. It's a peaceful place, with a lot of trees and plants.

A busy street in Saigon. Notice the power cables and how they are crazily bunched up.

A pagoda in Northern Vietnam that is renowned for its arches.

The Bui Family Tree located in the Bui family pagoda in Ha Nam, Vietnam. My mom's name is on the last line, along with the names of all her first cousins on her dad's side. She has a LOT of first cousins.

Oily street food in Hanoi. So good!

A street view of Hanoi

Huge Buddha statues in a pagoda we visited in Northern Vietnam.

The landscape in Northern Vietnam, which has beautiful mountain ranges.

A look at Hanoi from the sky. Notice how gray it is... it's not because of rainy weather, but because of the smog and pollution in the city.

A Couple More

I thought of a few more points about Vietnam that I didn't post earlier.

• Vietnamese sofas aren't like the fluffy sofas and couches that you see in American living rooms. What I enjoy about my living room in California is that I can throw myself onto the sofa and sink into the plush pillows. If you did that with a Vietnamese sofa, you would either hurt yourself or cause the sofa frame to collapse. Vietnamese sofas have boxy wood/lacquer frames and feature rectangular cushions that sit loosely on the frame. The cushions aren't connected to the frame (although they may have a string that can help tie it down), so after you've sat on the frame for awhile, your shifting weight might cause on of the cushions to slowly come out from under you. Therefore, to sit on the sofa without drawing attention to yourself, you end up sitting pretty stiffly, trying to balance your weight out equally, and all the while trying to feign comfort.
• Old Vietnamese ladies are TINY. Once they reach middle age, they tend to start getting even smaller. This stands out to me because I realized that these ladies have each carried 6+ children each. This also made me think of the physical labor that comes with carrying so many children, plus the stress and work that comes after the babies are born. One thing is true -- Vietnamese women are very resilient.
• Vietnamese dog owners are protective of their dogs. If their dogs happen to wander away or are kidnapped, the worst is assumed -- that the dogs were taken away to be made into food. It's a harsh reality for dogs.

Observations about Vietnam and the Vietnamese

It's funny going to a place that feels so familiar yet very foreign. In Vietnamese, when I say I am going to Vietnam, it literally translates to "going home to Vietnam" ("di ve Vietnam"). It is a strange way to think of it. Vietnam was never -- and never will be -- my home. However, it is nonetheless a place where I can understand the language, many of the customs, and the ways of thinking.

Therefore, as a Vietnamese-American, my observations of Vietnam are a little biased, because I think many of the things that others would perceive as strange are quite normal to me. But even for me, Vietnamese society can be quite weird. These are some things that struck me:

• Once a Vietnamese person has finished eating, the first thing s/he does is search for a toothpick. Each restaurant and household has a toothpick box readily available, and everyone is very serious about making sure they do not have food stuck between their teeth. One uses the toothpick with his/her right hand and uses the left hand to cover the process. While the tooth-picking happens at the end of a meal, most conversation stops and you mostly hear people picking and cleaning their teeth. I think this practice is important because many Vietnamese people have crooked teeth, which makes it harder to make sure there is no food stuck between them without the aid of a toothpick.
• Someone described traffic in Vietnam as equivalent to having the rules of the jungle -- no one follows written rules, but someone who is used to driving in Vietnam knows the unspoken rules, such as who has the right of way, how to make it around the crazy roundabouts, when you can pass someone, etc. Like I've said before, one of the most fun experiences for me was riding around on a scooter in the city. I was lucky to be the only one my age traveling, which meant my mom's cousin Co Chi could take me around on her scooter to go shopping, to check out cafes, and to meet the others. I have to say though, being from America, where the traffic rules are very black and white, it is pretty scary getting on the back of that scooter, especially when you see all sorts of cars, scooters and bicycles coming towards you.
• In Vietnam, the symbol of your status in the society is your cell phone and how fancy it is. I suppose the equivalent status symbol in the States would be your car... but even that isn't as tell-tale a sign of your stature as the phone is in Vietnam. At my uncle's dried longan factory in Cai Be, located on the Mekong Delta, one of the workers told us that he spends about 2/3 of his salary on his fancy Nokia phone. The phone that my mom borrowed from a friend in Vietnam was sleeker, prettier, and had more functions than any of the phones that my family members own at home. Furthermore, Vietnamese people are willing to pay more money to have a "good" phone number -- one with a pattern or featuring a lot of lucky numbers.
• Vietnamese fashion is funny. Older Vietnamese women wear what look like pajamas -- matching button-up shirts and pants made of the same pattern and material. The pajamas are really comfortable and and made out of cloth thin enough to withstand the warm, humid climate. On the other hand, you see very fashionable, young, and very thin ladies wearing tight clothing and looking very cute as they whizz through the streets on their mopeds. I'm not sure when the young, fashionable ladies switch to wearing the pajama-like pantsuits -- I think it coincides with when they become grandmas.
  
• One thing I will never understand is the obsession with having pretty hand-writing. Growing up, I used to admire my aunts', uncles', and parents' handwriting -- perfectly formed cursive that all looked uniform. I didn't understand why Vietnamese people wrote such pretty letters, compared to my boxy, spiky handwriting. Then I understood why -- they practice like crazy. They even have competitions and awards for best handwriting! In Hanoi, we passed by a school that specializes on helping kids write prettier.
• It's always a funny sight for me to see bicycles riding alongside mainstream traffic. Bikers find themselves in the midst of crazy moped and car traffic, and they brave it out even in the most difficult circumstances. They are both brave and stupid. There are no designated bike lanes, and the bikers must withstand mopeds and cars coming at them with more force than a bike could ever muster. It's scary for me to see these bikers braving the crazy roundabouts.
• In Vietnam, there is a kind of a obsession with looking Western. For example, if you want to compliment someone on looking pretty, you can say they look Western and that will suffice. I noticed from looking at ads (billboards, posters, and inside magazines) that many of the models look hapa. In one particular ad, two Vietnamese parents had a kid that looked American except for its dark hair and dark eyes.
• Saying pronouns in Vietnamese will always confuse me. The cool thing about pronouns for people in your family (i.e. "aunt," "uncle," "sister") is that it shows your relation to them with just one word (i.e. your dad's younger sister, your dad's older sister's husband). It can get confusing with family because the pronoun to which you refer to them depends on your relation to them. For example, I met a cousin who was 3 years older than me, so I called her "chi.", which means "older sister." But then I realized her grandma is my mom's first cousin, so she really should have been calling me "co" ("aunt"). In terms of family relations, age doesn't matter -- only your relation to the person. It becomes more confusing when you meet someone new or want to talk to a stranger. You have to think about if that person is the same generation as you, or if they are in the older generation, if they are older/younger than your parents, etc. Basically, there is a lot of guesswork involved unless you ask outright how old they really are.
• Vietnamese people are thin and small. You often wonder how they do it, because they rarely exercise and their diet mainly consists of rice (carbs). When I go to Vietnam, I feel like a giant -- I am taller, wider, and pudgier than my Vietnamese counterparts. And I am 5'3'', 115 pounds, making me a pretty small girl by American standards. In Vietnam, I wear size L, while in America, I gravitate towards the smaller sizes. My size can be a dead giveaway of being a Viet Kieu (overseas Vietnamese), and any doubts that I might just be a big-boned Vietnamese is erased as soon as I speak, because my American accent is so obvious.

Bac Duong the Model

I'm really grateful to have a person like Bac Duong in my family. He's my mom's older brother (and my dad's good friend from high school), and he's a big jokester and overall fun person to be around. You can always count on him to make a situation lighter, funnier, or more interesting.

Bac Duong jazzed up the Vietnamese landscape for me by offering to model in front of beautiful backgrounds. He would sweep his long bangs from his forehead, think of a creative pose, and stand there as long as needed to get the shot. He often needed reassurance of his beauty after each photo shoot, but then again, you must admit, he's quite pretty. America's Next Top Model material?

A tree in my grandma's hometown, Thanh Hoa

Lake Hoan Kiem

The view from the artist Thanh Chuong's house in Hanoi

With his new water puppet friend

On the boat to spread my grandparents' ashes out at sea (those are also my sunglasses that he borrowed)

At Cai Be, a city in the Mekong Delta region

At Vung Tau beach

What a yummy-looking starfruit, don't you think?

At quite possibly the best duck noodle place ever -- the last shot I got of Bac Duong before we parted ways!

Wow, Bac Duong dep qua!

P.S. You should make note of the shirts he's wearing. The yellow one says "Property of CIA -- Completely Insane Anteaters" (Anteaters are the UC Irvine mascots, and both his kids went to UCI). The red one says "Life's a BEACH!" and lists all the main beaches in California.

Back to California

After a grueling plane ride, we arrived safe and sound in San Francisco at 2:45pm, only "2 hours" after our plane had left Saigon (when, in reality, it was really something like 16 hours later -- the perks of flying back home and buying time!). While boarding the plane, my mom and I ran into a family friend who was taking the same flight. During our layover in Taipei, she took us with her to EVA Air's business lounge. I had never traveled so well! There, we could use computers, shower, have unlimited food & drinks, and relax in comfy chairs.

I spent my first evening at home watching football on TV, eating popcorn, and eating a big salad -- ah, back to the American life. The best thing about coming home: playing with Kodi, my chihuahua! Oh how he was missed.