Story Visuals

1. Standing on the front steps of the school looking out on the "basketball court." Last week our basketball team played at the Australian International School - for some of our kids, it was their first time playing on a full court.

They've done a great job separating the school from the road; the trellis looking thing was assembled the day before school started to provide shade (men were walking up on the metal bars with nothing securing them as they tied these branches) and the trees were planted in front of the wall. Nam was watching behind one of those trees, behind the wall.

2. Chaos outside the wall - I turn left at this wall after school to go to the gym (this shot is taken in the morning). The three-minute ride to the gym using this shortcut would take me over an hour if I went right and circled the construction. I know you are thinking there is no room for a motorbike to swim upstream; you are wrong. There is lots and lots of room. Nam was hanging out right behind the post. The guards, dressed in tan and black, stand out here every morning and afternoon to guide motorbikes and taxis in and out of school grounds.

3. I come up this sidewalk each morning. I know you are thinking that there isn't any room for a motorbike to swim upstream; you are wrong. There is lots and lots of room.

4. Our staff parking area, behind the school.

5. Construction view from the second floor. It's hard to tell, but in the middle is a huge road pit. The green part is the trellis.

Hopefully, this will give you a visual of both the story from yesterday and more of an idea about why tremors run through our building all day long~

She's Back, He's Back

Be honest... when your child went off to kindergarten - did you ever drive to her school around the time she was getting out, hide behind the fence and wait on your motorbike for her to come out the door, just so you could get a look at her?

Did you ever do that?

Because today, as I was leaving the school on my motorbike (in my dress with a huge backpack and my friend Linda on the back, turning against traffic on the sidewalk to go to our gym), suddenly I was face to face with my mother.

It was so very shocking. To see this face from my past with my very new independent life surroundings as a backdrop made me stop, put my high heels down on the ground (he was, after all, blocking my sidewalk path) and say, "Nam...what are YOU doing here?"

I'm going to describe his reaction as, uh... both sheepish and shocked. Yes Sheepish-Shocked was his look. He was not expecting me to come around that thick fence (where he could peek in at the door) in the opposite direction on the sidewalk (because, as you may recall, I would not allow him any sidewalk driving). And he was definitely surprised to see that I was carrying a passenger.

He began to look around and mumble. Something like "I, Mari, see you, goodbye, see you again." And then, "I say hi... Mari, goodbye." And then he pointed to Linda, confused. And then he moved his bike to the side and motioned me-and-my-passenger to pass on by.

I wave to Nam often in the mornings as I pass, but what was he doing all the way out here? The possible answers to that question make me more than just a little sad.

In any case, I will be relieved when Jessica comes, and then my family, so that Nam has something to do.

Many of you have written to ask if I am OK...with all of the natural disasters in SE Asia and not getting any blog entries seemed a little fishy to some. The truth is that, actually, life has been more than OK. I got a little lazy about writing and then our internet connection went out at the castle for more than a week (just back on tonight). A few of you asked if the Lack of Nam was the issue. AmyT begged me to put up a picture other than beautiful Vietnamese women eating greasy burgers (which she has now seen every day for the past three weeks). Here are a few things that have been distracting me lately:

Mostly, I've been caught up in the independence of having a motorbike. I traded in my equivalent to a '76 Ford pickup truck (an automatic Avilla) and down-graded in actual bike but upgraded back to coolness. Here is a picture of both Franco's and my Honda 110 Waves - both manuals, four gears...matching bikes at the castle, yep. Rented for $50 per month. To downshift, you use your heel, which is a little tough for tall people. I'm getting used to it.

It is so much fun to zip around this city. I get to take my time in the mornings because I have first period prep, so I kick around in the market trying all the soups and getting rice cakes if the spirit moves me. I also found another market on the way to school and have been picking my way through that, in a drive-up kind of way - meaning that I drive up to the glutinous rice cakes filled with custard stand and the women prepare them for me while I sit on my bike. It's so cool.

And after school, after I drive against the sidewalk traffic to my amazing gym and exercise, swim and sit in the sauna or steam room. Then I head home through one of the best food streets in Saigon. At least two times per week, I pick a new place to try - lately it's been mostly Japanese noodles, sushi and food from the epicenter of Food Vietnam, Hue. Two times per week is not nearly enough... actually, eight days a week would not be enough to try all of the goodness that is the restaurant scene in Saigon. Last year, I was like this country bumpkin, hardly ever eating outside of my neighborhood, but now I'm back to my old self, hyperventilating at times at all of the food choices before me. But then again, there is the need to stay loyal to my street. K and I eat from our Pho lady at least once per week, and my wonton guy still sees me regularly. The squid restaurant was a part of movie night last week, so I still get that one in, too.

Yeah, so it's school (teaching only English, so hardly any prep, first and last period planning, which I have never experienced), gym, eating, then either Bum Bum hair washing, watching pirated DVDs on the roof (just finished Season 3 of 30 Rock), or parties, parties, parties. Last weekend, Tarn met K and me here to go to a costume party and the three of us walked down our street as quite a sight - Tarn as a monk, me as Johnny Cash and K as one of Robert Palmer's back-up singers. I am not so aware of being looked at in our hood anymore, but that night we definitely got looks while walking toward a taxi. Yeah, so parties everywhere, and now kickball at the soccer fields every Sunday night. This is a fun group of teachers. Canadian Thanksgiving party on Saturday, too. And now a dinner club.

Other things:

*Ever since our Swine Flu closure, the guards stand in front of the school in the mornings to give us hand sanitizer and the nurse shoots us with a temperature gun. When we go to lunch the guards give us more hand sanitizer. When I entered a theater for a movie last weekend, same thing. And when I went to watch the American International School basketball games - both boys and girls - play at the Australian International School (both teams were cheering "AIS! AIS"), more guards and more hand sanitizer. Is this happening in America? I kind of doubt it.

*And guess what...remember those two Swine Flu Days Off? Well, we had to make one of them up two weekends ago on a Saturday and the other one will be made up this upcoming Saturday. Yep, working Saturdays, just like Marysville did after that strike... This Saturday, our school is having a Spelling Bee Day, suggested by me. I will let you know how it goes.

*There is an electronics store that opens early in the morning and closes late at night, and I pass it both going to and coming home from school. Every single time I pass, a Michael Jackson song is playing. Today: "Billie Jean" in the morning and "The Way You Make Me Feel" in the evening. Every single time, I want to stop and go in. So I'm guessing it is effective.

*Thuy and Thanh have not called me fat again. We are busy planning things and having them not work out - but the Vietnamese barbecue place is on the agenda for this weekend, if we can fit it in around Canadian Thanksgiving and kick ball. I still see them every morning.

Now I am beginning to hyperventilate about all of the things I have neglected to write about in addition to all of the food I have not tried in Saigon, so I think that means I will sign off for tonight and start fresh with a new day and a new story tomorrow. Thanks to everyone who voiced concern over my lack of blogging. I appreciate it.

Enough Soup Already

What else can you do to ensure that your teeny tiny Vietnamese girlfriends never call you "fat" again - other than lose the weight you gained over the summer (plus more, just to make double, triple sure you never get the 'fat waist hands' again)? Try taking them out for American hamburgers, fries, onion rings and Cokes that equal a week's worth of calories for them and make them gain weight themselves. You go down, they go up.

Actually - although this may be a good plan - I took them to get burgers because Thuy had requested that I take her to eat a "good" American burger at the end of last year. The only one she had ever tasted was at KFC...which surprised me. I didn't think KFC had them on the menu, and most everyone says they don't. Whatever she had, she thought it was terrible. So I heard about a place not far from the castle that had a good reputation, and that reputation was well- deserved. The burgers were great.

When they first laid eyes on the (very tall) bacon cheese burgers, though, four Vietnamese eyes almost popped out of two Vietnamese heads. Thuy said, "Cannot!" and literally gagged when she saw me squish the tall burger into a manageable height and take a bite. But Thanh attacked hers. Thuy could only eat about a third; Thanh ate it all (and in a sisterly competitive tone, proclaimed, "I win!" at Thuy). Thuy got the rest of hers to go, along with the leftover onion rings and fries.

The verdict? Both of them loved the burger and called it "Number One! Delicious!" But, in the very same fashion that followed our Indian food outing last year, they insisted that next weekend, we all go out for Vietnamese barbecue.

As for me, after a month of lots of soup and exercise, the burger tasted good. Really, really good. So I'm going to bed feeling very patriotic (and full).

Two Bowls of Hu Tieu Mi

Remember last year when Nam took me to his village to eat soup? Well every time I eat Hu Tieu Mi now, I can see his lips forming the correct pronunciation: "Hoo- Tee Yoo - Mee." One day we had to practice saying this all the way home from school, and he made me form the "oo" sound by sticking my lips out in a very unnatural way.

(Btw, I just shuddered when I wrote "practice saying this all the way home from school" - it's so nice to be grown up now).

I don't go to Nam's village to eat it anymore, because the last time (when K and I took her mom and dad), too many rats were running around the construction site near there and no matter how good a soup is, rat presence diminishes flavor. But Nam made me aware that my "won ton soup guy" actually made something mainstream, and that there was a whole wide world of these soups both on and right outside my street. So I have added the quest for a new Hu Tieu Mi spot to my Soup Search, and yesterday I made Saturday into kind of a contest, having it for both breakfast and early dinner. I'm doing all of this for my family. Talk about sacrifice.

Here is a breakdown of what Hu Tieu Mi is:

Hu Tieu= rice noodle soup

Mi= egg noodle soup

Hu tieu mi= rice noodle and egg noodle soup

The rice noodles are white and the egg noodles are yellow - both are thin. Go ahead and say it, and stick your lips out in a very unnatural way when you do it.

Hu Tieu Mi can come with many fun additions, as well, like my won ton guy's tasty little wontons and hard crunchy wafers. Shrimp often drops in, as do "pork balls," groud pork, lettuce, bean sprouts and lettuce.

So for breakfast I went outside of the alley and crossed our street (Nguyen Canh Chan) to this little cart. If you look closely above the cart - just to the left of the steam - you can see across the street to the sign that says "pho." Well, that is where K and I get our weekly dose of pho from the most smiley and gracious women, and the thing is that I had to walk past them to get to the Hu Tieu Mi cart. I felt funny doing that, because of course the chicken pho is quite popular in the mornings and they saw me cross. Memories of the Pineapple Lady Scolding came to me, but I crossed anyway, feeling very disloyal but that my soup search required this act.

Here is it: I guess it is only Hu Tieu because no yellow egg noodles made it in, but as you can see, it came with a prawn and ground pork. Oh, and it also came with liver...little slices of liver.

Even just those little slices permeated the soup with liver flavor. I made a note of it for my dad's soup list (since he digs liver), paid $1 and got sideways glances and no wide smiles from my pho women on my journey back to the castle.

I like the market soups much better. The ones without liver and that require no perfidy.

About ten hours later, I was ready for Hu Tieu Mi Round 2 and finally tried this bright yellow spot, which is about a twenty-minute walk from the castle on the main, main street, Tran Hung Dao. It's called Tung Hung - Pork Chop Noodle - and it is always bursting with people day and night. I've been meaning to try it forever. Now look at how beautiful this soup is:

It had everything...the wontons, the shrimp, the pork balls, and both yellow and white noodles. The best part, though, was the "pork chop." The pork came on two bones, and it fell right off of them when touched, and I'm sure it's what made the broth so tasty. The wontons were especially delicious, too, and I got my new favorite juice mixture to go with it, which is carrot/strawberry. I guess that, in general, the rule is that if a place is bursting with people day and night, what they are serving is probably bursting with flavor, too.

The cost of this soup: $2.30. But I will definitely pay the extra money and walk the extra distance for that pork and the broth that comes from it.

Back to Nam - the cowboy who introduced me to high quality Hu Tieu Mi and so much other great food. I see him almost every day when I pass him in his spot on Tran Hung Dao. He is usually reclining back on his seat, relaxing, looking very happy not to be driving me around every morning. But what do I know? Maybe, someday when he is drunk he will bring Minh to the castle and I will find out that he really misses me.

But for now, he usually just looks up out from under his Seattle Firefighter baseball cap and gives me a nod, a smile and a wave as I pass, and then goes back to passing the day comfortably.

What is a Squid's Fly?

Or how about "Fly of Pig's Intestine"?

"Fly of Potato"?

"Fly of pork"?

(From a (way overpriced) little Japanese restaurant on my way home from school, in Little Japan of Saigon (they have teeny tiny portions, too - see all the squid's fly in the picture? I only got four!).)

Slurping Soup All Day Long

When I'm sick back home, I go out and buy a can of Campbell's Chicken Noodle Soup. Usually, I feel worse after eating it.

Here, when I am sick (did I mention I am sick? not Swine Flu Sick, though), I walk about 100 paces from the castle and sit down on a mini-plastic chair at one of the ubiquitous soup carts in our market for the most delicious, nutritious soup on the planet. And when I eat this soup, I feel like Superwoman. Superwoman with a runny nose, however; it's hot and spicy to get a good, healthy sweat going in the humidity. You kind of feel like you are sweating out the Sick.

For some reason, last year I was a bit shy about sitting down at these stands. It's a pretty intimate situation, ovbiously, and often you have to shift your seat when the motorbikes make their way through the crowded alley. But now...now I am seeking the best soups for when my family comes in December. My dad, especially, loves soup, so I just endure the soup makers' and patrons' staring and snickering as they watch me fumble with using the spoon and chopsticks at the same time.

I'm trying to imagine all eight of us sitting down on these tiny chairs in the alley. Maybe I will have to send everyone out in twos and make a schedule to shift them through all of the best carts or something.

Anyway, this woman's soup is my current favorite. Look at all the goodies she puts into it: pork, pork rind fat, huge prawns, thick round rice noodles (you can barely see them peeking through the bottom) and lots of tasty, crunchy greens and lime.

And- I know I have mentioned this before- but most of the really great soups are served for breakfast. Yep, this culture slurps noodles all day long.

Katherine and I are hooked on the pho stand right around the corner at night...I kind of alternate between that one and my Chinese wonton soup cart and end up eating soup about four nights a week. Now I'm eating it in the mornings, too (more to add for my new definition of "normal").

Since I had my camera out, I decided to take pictures of the two women who have a daily morning contest to say "Hell-O" to me first as I walk by. They are set up right across from one another - one sells onions,

whole garlic, minced garlic, shallots and minced shallots, limes

, whole peppers and crushed peppers (so muc

h of the work is done for you here), the other sells men's gym shorts and towels. So when I asked Garlic Lady if I could take her picture, in the same competitive passion that she displays each day, Towel Lady says, "Me, me!" That is why she is laughing so hard in the picture.

Since I had soup so early this morning, I will try for round two at 11, before the market closes for the day. But for now, Superwoman is going to take a nap during her Swine Flu Time, Day II.

"Normal"

I haven't been blogging lately because my definition for "normal" has changed so much... I ride my motorbike to school every morning feeling like an ant among many blaring cows, ride the three final blocks against traffic on the sidewalk - at times in the pouring rain, in a dress - teach in what feels like an earthquake school all day because of the construction outside, reboot my computer often when the powerlines are cut, teach 6th graders English English English all day, then go to the most expensive gym in Saigon when I'm done with work.

No mothers to annoy me, eating soup every night...absolutely nothing to report.

Well, here's something: I do find it entertaining how many people like to hold conversations with me while we are riding next to each other in such heavy traffic. Women laugh, embarrassed, and say "hello, Madame" to me all the time. Children on the back of bikes also snicker and say "hello!" Last night, a guy says, "Miss! Your lights aren't on!" and then, "Where you from?" and then, "Obama!" and then, "Will you be my friend?" all while driving down the busiest street in Saigon.

And I guess I could tell you that the pedicurist at the Bum Bum took a part of my heel off when she was doing the dead skin scraping thing last week and all the Bum Bum Girls gasped at the amount of blood that was pouring out of my heel and then one opened a cigarette to apply tabacco to the open wound (which wouldn't stop bleeding and the tabacco hurt so so so much my eyes watered...) They felt so bad that they didn't even charge me the 60 usual cents.

All of this is now in my definition of "normal."

Oh, and: just received a text...one confirmed case of swine flu at the middle school. School closed Monday and Tuesday.

Yeah, so Swine Flu at the middle school and now a little story about the visit from the castle landlords:

This morning, the Landlord Family came to do a few repairs around the castle. While the landlord, Khanh, and his brother were upstairs repairing my shower, his wife and daughter stayed downstairs with me. The daughter speaks pretty good English, but it is strained. After a bit of polite conversation, I continued to make the babaganouj I had been making when they came. I took the roasted eggplant (that I get in the market for 20 cents), mashed it up, added Tahini, lemon, garlic, salt and olive oil. I was mashing, mashing, mashing when the daughter, Thao, comes into the kitchen and very modestly asks, "Excuse me, what are you making?"

Try to explain "babaganouj" to someone who has never had it. I got the end of the eggplant out of the trash, showed her the Tahini and the lemon. Of course, it has taken us a long time to find lemons and Tahini in this city, so she had never seen either before. I hadn't picked up any naan from the Indian restaurant yet, but wanted her and her mother (who had also crept into the kitchen, fascinated at what I was doing) to taste it. So I got a piece of thick Italian bread out, grilled it in olive oil, cut it up and spread some of the dip onto the pieces.

Both of them thought it was delicious. Thao wanted the recipe, so I began to write it down.

"Maybe I use mayonnaise instead of tahini?" (because I couldn't explain where to buy the tahini) she asks me.

"No," I answer. "It wouldn't be good."

"Oh."

Then I show her the lemon and say, "You must find this, too."

She points to a lime on the table and says, "I can't use this?"

"No," I say, "that wouldn't be good."

I'm trying to imagine what babaganouj would taste like with lime and mayonnaise. I don't think they would have liked that babaganouj.

Next time they come, I plan to have a take-out menu from the Mediterranean restaurant in town with me. I will circle things they should order and see if they try it; seems that many of the foreign restaurants only attract ex-pat crowds...Vietnamese people tend to stay away and eat their own delicious food.

So now I will contemplate what to do with all of my Swine Flu Time for the next few days. Hopefully, it will not be taken up with symptoms of the swine flu, because then my life would not be "normal" (unless compared to the students at Washington State University).