In the Swing of Things

I apologize for the lull in updates, but this past week has been pretty busy. I now feel like I'm in a steady routine of going to the orphanage in the mornings, the hospital on Wednesday & Friday afternoons, teaching English at the language school every other Thursday, & now I've been going with Traci to the women's shelter to teach English on Tuesday & my off-Thursday afternoons. All the buildings here are built tall, narrow, and deep, so the shelter is actually behind a hair salon. The women there range from 13-22 and are all pregnant. I'm not sure yet if they are there because their families have disowned them or if they are there by choice. They make key chains, put together fake flowers (picture), and bead necklaces as well to earn money and keep them busy. There are four of them that want to learn English, and a couple of them speak it really well. We just go through a unit in the workbook they have each day. They love practicing the dialogues, and their accents are fun to listen to.

Last week, as well as today, I spent most of my time at the orphanage doing the sinus drains I described previously. At first I thought it was hard but cool that I got to actually perform the procedure. However, I've grown to dread the time the main nurse tells me to get one of the kids from upstairs. I have yet to get used to their painful screams, constant stream of tears, and perpetual resistance as the nurse sticks a tube down their throats while I inject water up their noses. I keep reminding myself that I'm actually helping more than I'm hurting, but it's hard when the results are so intangible. Today, instead of just using the syringe and suction machine, the nurse gave each girl a shot of some sort. Additionally, we hooked them up to a nebulizer-type device. I really wish I could speak enough Vietnamese, or the nurse could speak enough English, to learn exactly what everything is and does. Instead, I just have to guess what each device is used for.

None of the kids at the hospital speak English, but I had so much fun with them last week. I got into a poking war with one boy, and just enjoyed coloring with other kids. Even the kids who are losing their hair are gorgeous, and I love watching them escape from their hospital lives when they come in the play room. Moreover, I meet new volunteers who speak English and want to get together outside of the hospital every time I go. Whenever I feel the most foreign, there seems to be someone who I engage in conversation with that makes me feel welcome here.

Vung Tao
Since the fields the Vietnam Ultimate Defense Offense Organization (VUDOO) plays on are undergoing maintenance for a few weeks, the club organized a weekend at the beach town of Vung Tao. Even though she doesn't play, Traci decided to come along as long as a beach was involved. We all met in front of the post office in District 1 before departing on the three-hour bus ride. Traci and I got to the post office at 7pm on the dot, but in classic Vietnamese style, most people hadn't arrived on time. I started talking to an American girl who I didn't remember seeing at the pick-up game that I went to last Sunday. She had a conflict that day, but had traveled with the team to Singapore the week before I arrived in Vietnam. I quickly learned that she's from Wisconsin! She grew up in a small town in Northern Wisconsin, went to UW-Madison, and has been teaching in the Milwaukee Public School District for the past four years. While she was traveling in Thailand over the summer, she was notified that she was being laid off from her school in Milwaukee and wouldn't be able to come back in the same position because of her lack of seniority. Ellen decided to teach abroad, so she applied to various international teaching positions, and was accepted to the American School in Vietnam. She came home from Thailand for a week, packed up her life, then came to Ho Chi Minh City where she's teaching fourth grade for the next two years. What are the chances that the only two Americans that play are from the same region, let alone the same university?! Apparently she only played intramural ultimate at Wisconsin, but she was in the same teaching cohort as a girl who played for Bella Donna before my time (Tiffany). After connecting right off the bat, we had a great time getting to know each other throughout the weekend, talking about travel experiences and life in general. It was nice to have someone to speak English with, too, when everyone else was speaking in Vietnamese a lot of the time. The comedian of the group, Kuong, actually spent a year in Australia, so he speaks excellent English and with an entertaining Aussie accent.

We stopped at a street-side restaurant for some Pho before checking in to the hotel. They didn't have any vegetarian options, and most people think I'm crazy for not eating meat. I may or may not push myself to eat chicken again when I'm with a group because I feel bad, and it's irritating, making special requests when I can't even explain myself in Vietnamese. However, Vu ordered a couple tofu dishes for me at lunch on Saturday, which were amazing. I think it was the best meal I've had here so far. Vietnamese people, and Asians in general I believe, like everything spicy, so the tofu had a great lemongrass-chili salt seasoning on it. Instead of salt and pepper at the table at every meal, there is Heinz hot sauce and chili paste.


Unfortunately, we woke up to rain Saturday morning, so our start time was delayed. After a while, though, the rain subsided, and we headed to the field. I thought we were just playing beach ultimate, so I didn't feel that it was necessary to bring my cleats. However, we ended up playing at the field in the middle of the greyhound racing field all morning. The grass was tall and thick, and the field definitely reflected the morning downpour with it's immense mud and puddle coverage. I started playing in my tennis shoes, but it took me four or five steps just to change directions. I thought that playing in bare feet would be a better alternative until I felt a bizarre stinging on my feet. I looked down, and my feet and ankles were covered in little brown ants. While my feet are still itchy and swollen, the Vietnamese players said I have nothing to worry about. In the end, I decided to play in my socks, and my team, the Yellow Butterflies, emerged victorious. After a bunch of mixed games with our set teams, we separated by gender and played a couple games each to five. We thought we would clog the drains at the hotel with our mud-caked bodies and clothes, so we headed to the South China Sea to do a pre-wash. After our actual showers, we headed to lunch and enjoyed traditional Vietnamese food, including the spicy tofu.

We gave our bellies some time to digest and then headed to the Statue of Jesus. Apparently, it's the second highest in the world, next to the one in Brazil. I didn't really have the spiritual connection that some of the others had, but the 5,000-something step climb almost made me miss Bella stair workouts. Like every place in Vietnam, we had to take our shoes off before entering the actual statue and climbing the last 130-something steps (picture, right) to the arms of the statue.

Finally, we made it to the beach! Vietnamese women are super modest and are afraid of their skin getting dark. As a result, nobody was wearing a bikini or a swimsuit at all. Some of the men were shirtless, but all the women were in their clothes both on the beach and in the water. We ended up playing ultimate until it was dark anyways, so we just ran into the water in our sweaty clothes. While every beach ultimate experience I've had is a little different- spring breaks in Galveston, TX and Pensacola Beach, FL, Camps Bay in Cape Town, South Africa, Chicago Sandblast, and Vung Tao, Vietnam- there isn't a single one I haven't enjoyed!

The best girl, Lien, is from Vung Tao, so her parents brought a bunch of seafood to barbeque at the beach as well as some fresh fruit. Most people had left the beach by sunset, so we just enjoyed hanging out with each other and watching the waves come crashing in. I couldn't believe it was still Saturday after all we had done, but we had even more on the agenda. We went back to the hotel to shower once again before heading back to the field we played at this morning. Only this time, we were going there to watch the greyhounds race on the track around the field. It was so fun watching the dogs and even more fun arguing about which one we thought would win the upcoming round. While humans have to hold in their nerve-triggered bowel movements before races, the dogs would just poop and pee right on the track! We tried to see if there was a correlation between the dogs who pooped immediately before racing and those that won, but there was no statistical significance to our data. After the races, we walked around one of the main streets, and I enjoyed my first avocado smoothie. I've seen it on the menu at a bunch of places I've been, but I was pretty skeptical about how an avocado would taste in smoothie form. I ended up really liking it, will probably get it again, and might even try making it once I get home!


Sunday morning we went to a famous breakfast place in Vung Tao that serves one-of-a kind fried shrimp things. It was a fun place to go, and I enjoyed the vegetables and soup that accompanied the shrimp. Kuong was telling me that there are hundreds of Vietnamese breakfast options, but none are like American breakfast items. While they have milk and yogurt here, most "restaurant" meals consist of vegetables, fish or meat, noodles or rice, and soup, any time of day. Restaurants here, though, are often store front areas with little plastic furniture. You can see the food being cooked and who is cooking it. Every place looks pretty similar, so it was great eating with people who knew the area and could show us the good places.

Next, we headed to the Minh Dam army base where the some of the Viet Cong hid during the "American War," as they call it. We climbed in and out of the natural caves made by previously fallen boulders and saw areas deep in the mountain where men would hide for weeks at a time. It was incredible to see the tight spaces that would sleep 30-40 men, and our tour guide was one of them! After admiring the view from a lookout point and taking some pictures, we headed to an ecological tourism area for lunch. It was so serene and beautiful even though the water and almost everything else was some shade of brown. We tossed around and hung out on the swinging rope for a bit, then boarded the bus one last time to make our return trip back to Saigon.It was my ideal weekend: ultimate, beach ultimate, great conversations, hiking, fun people, and amazing food. I'm exited to do other things with my weekend, but this one set a pretty high standard!