sarasota

Almost a month ago now, I, rather spontaneously, did my first race of the season. I had almost decided it wasn't worth writing a race report at this late date; however, just this morning, I was inspired by the blog of Dan Wilson. This Australian triathlete is now perhaps my favorite triathlete based entirely on the hilarity of his race reports. (See particularly his report re: whether or not to wear socks in a 70.3.)

I doubt that I can make you laugh as many times as Dan made me laugh this morning, but I’ll try to keep it on the short side and minimize the snores.

At the beginning of March I went to Florida to spend Spring Break coaching and training with Marymount’s triathlon team, but was not intending to race at all. However, after having a few weeks of pretty spectacular workouts and coming to life in the Florida sun, I decided to see if I could still sneak my way into the ITU race in Sarasota.

I arrived on the line--or the pontoon, rather--shockingly calm and ready to go, not to mention free of sunburn, having spent the week obsessively drenching myself in sunscreen before every single exposure. I think I was actually paler after that week in the sun, much to my chagrin, and was ready to make the sacrifice worth it in this race.

As it’s my area of least experience, the swim always provides plenty of room for learning. This supposed-to-be-750-meter-but-actually-850-meter swim provided 100 meters more experience than expected. I actually swam okay, but made a couple tactical errors that left me leading a chase pack and exiting the water about 20 seconds behind the second pack.

So I jumped on my bike in chase mode and hammered solo into a decent headwind after the group. Just about when I’d had enough of that, I was joined by my new Canadian friend, and, half-way through the bike leg, we managed to latch onto the second pack.

We entered T2 still about a minute down from the leaders. My bike refused to steer properly so I managed a rather impressive (in my opinion) cyclocross carry through transition and took off on the run, ready to take down as many girls as possible. The run was hot! But I managed to put that from my mind because running people down has to be among the best feelings in the world.

I crossed the line in fifth, happily sun burnt and just in the money, wishing I had 400 or so more meters to run….but pleased.

Unfortunately, I don’t have a single picture to show you for my efforts. Apparently, the only time college students get off their phones and stop instagramming is when they watch their coach race--and as I appreciated their cheer support, I guess I can’t complain too much.

They did capture our happy post-race beach trip, in which all the childhood swimmers sat on the beach while the rest of us frolicked in the glorious waves (and I regretted my sunburn as I was pummeled by sand and salt).

speechless: a photo gallery

During my first week of working at the cholera clinic, I struggled to write about the experience, so I put together a photo gallery instead. Follow this link to view my pictures and captions!

cholera article

A few days ago some reporters from the Associated Press came to the cholera clinic with big cameras and notepads. Here's what they came up with: Cholera rages in rural Haiti, overwhelming clinics
So if you want a perspective other than mine, read away!

crazy/beautiful

I am going to preface this post by saying that I don't think I can really communicate how amazing my parents' visit was, so just imagine this:

You have been in a foreign country for 4 months. It is supposedly Christmastime, but doesn't feel like it. Your parents come for a week and you get to show them all your favorite things about your new life, impress them with your horrible language skills, and travel to a couple places you have been wanting to see. Mostly, you just get to be with them. Also, you don't have to pay for anything...

My parents arrived Monday night. I worked that day, but was nearly useless. I was so distracted that I was halfway home when I realized that I had forgotten to wear my helmet--a blatant violation of MCC policy. Ah, well, I'd like to think it helped me to blend in more to the culture--no one wears a helmet when riding a xe dap (bicycle). Fat chance, right? Sorry, I digress. Point is: I was really excited.

Tuesday: Super-condensed tour of Ha Noi--Calah's-life style. As in, we didn't go anywhere touristy--Ho Chi Minh's Mausoleum or Museum, Museum of Ethnology, Turtle-Sword Pagoda, etc. Instead, we slept in as long as their jet-lag allowed, then walked around Hoan Kiem Lake (ok, I'll admit it--that's touristy) till we got to a little resataurant (at home we would call this a "hole in the wall"; here we call it "street food") that serves my favorite kind of noodle soup, my van than. Its a very Vietnamese breakfast; Mom and Dad's chopstick ability was less Vietnamese, but their efforts were valient. Or they were very hungry.

Then we made a short trip to The Gioi Publishers, then headed to the MCC office for lunch, where they got to try bun cha, a northern-Vietnamese specialty.

That evening, we had supper at my house, and my parents got to experience a very important component of my Vietnamese life: eating excessive amounts of food regardless of whether you're hungry or not.

Wednesday: A van picked us up at our hotel at 8 am and we began the 3-hour drive to Ha Long Bay. This is one of the places that everyone says you must visit in Viet Nam; in fact, it's one of the 28 finalists of the "New 7 Wonders of Nature" project.

We spent 2 days and one night aboard this boat.

Except for when we stopped to visit a fish farm/village, to kayak, and even...

...to swim! (All the other passengers were quite impressed with us, because the water was freezing.)

Thursday: We got back to Ha Noi just in time to rush to Derek and Ana's house for supper, then to West Lake for the Christmas Eve candlelight service, a joint effort by Ha Noi's two international congregations, where I got to introduce my parents to some of my friends from church. I think they were happy to have some faces to put with the names that constantly came up in our conversations. On the way back to our hotel after the service, I was able to disprove with considerable certitude the statement that I had heard so often: Vietnamese don't celebrate Christmas. Maybe they don't get holidays from work or school; maybe they don't have gift exchanges; maybe Vietnamese Santa Clauses sometimes hold giant beer kegs instead of small children; however, they do honor the occasion with traffic jams such as this one:

We were stuck for an hour, then finally got out of our taxi and walked--or rather, waded through the mob of people filling the entire courtyard in front of the Catholic cathedral--to our hotel.

Friday: I had intended for us to have a restful morning before we went to the airport in the afternoon, but when Co Van found out that we didn't have any plans, she offered to take us to breakfast. So, Co Van and Chu Hung picked us up and took us to breakfast at a particularly famous pho (noodle soup, specialty of Ha Noi) shop. Then we went around and saw the essential sights that we had missed on Tuesday--Ho Chi Minh's Museum, Turtle-Sword Pagoda, etc--and took about a million pictures. Each of my two moms kept insisting that the other one get in the pictures with me.

That afternoon we flew to Central Viet Nam and began our (more relaxing) stay in Hoi An, a quaint (touristy) little town well-known for its silk, tailor shops, food, and the nearby beach.

Our stay in Hoi An can be summarized quite briefly--as I'm sure you're glad to hear given the length of this post--as follows:

Eating: Hoi An is in a different part of Viet Nam than Ha Noi, so there were lots of different dishes for me to try, and believe me, I wanted to try them all! This is me eating some kind of sweet, black bean pudding --its name slips my mind--at the market.

Biking to the beach: The beach was about 4 kilometers away, and the bikes were about 4 feet too small for us. But the water was perfect.

Eating: Aside from needing to try all the new dishes, we also had to try all the cool-looking restaurants, a few of which were charity-based--giving us an even better excuse to patronize them. :) This one is called Streets and is like a culinary-arts school for street kids. They are employed, taken care of, educated, and prepared for future jobs in Viet Nam's booming hospitality industry.

Shopping: As I mentioned earlier, Hoi An is known for silk, so my parents did some late Christmas shopping.

Eating: This restaurant was right across from our hotel and was great--delicious and cheap. I think the man who owned it thought all we did was eat. Clearly, he wasn't too far off.

Other than all that, we talked. A lot. More than I thought three introverted people could. In fact, I'm pretty sure we actually talked and laughed more than we ate.

If you want to see more pictures from our trip, check out my parents' three facebook albums:

Ha Noi, Ha Long Bay, Hoi An.

a love poem, or how ideals are...well, idealistic.

The other day I wrote the following poem at work:

Oh why, oh why would you torture me so?
You tease me over and over
confirming the notion that, yes—
Absence by all means makes the heart grow fonder.
I cannot focus for thinking of you
wondering when you will return
and what thrilling gifts may accompany you.
I know in my head that I’m bound to be disappointed
but, as ever, my heart is not so easily persuaded.
I ponder especially the reason for your absence
Explanations abound—
governmental decrees and mean prohibitions—
but one option I refuse to accept:
the possibilty of permanent neglect.
Perhaps your absence is a humbling scheme
to put to the test my ideals
my oft-spoken declaration
that I don’t need you, don’t want you,
that perhaps—I would even be better off without you.
I guess I can’t blame you for belaboring your point
but I get it now:
Without you my days would be endless
boring, expensive, lacking interest.
Other people just don’t do it for me anymore—
so limited in knowledge, so unentertaining, so dreadfully slow.
So come back please!
I understand now I can’t live without you!
Oh internet, internet—
I’m lost without you.

It's terribly cheesy, I know; I guess that was the point. This parody of a love poem, which I titled--very originally--"Ode to the Internet," not only mocks the melodramatic speech of lovers and our society's love of technology, but also myself.

The day I wrote the poem, the internet was down all day. While I enjoyed reading on the porch during my lunch break--a time that I usually spend writing emails and wasting time online--I also found myself going crazy by about 3:30. As I edited my articles, I missed the convenience of dictionary.com and even--gasp!--wikipedia (which, I might add, contains facts far more reliable than those of many of the articles I am given!); furthermore, I discovered--by their lack--how many breaks I must really take throughout my usual workday and how short my attention span has grown as a result. In fact, I was so bored, so unable to focus, that I resorted to writing sappy poetry.

This is where the self-mockery comes in: I have a self-professed loathing of modern technology.

"Technology," I often rant, "is the downfall of modern society. It is supposed to make life more convenient--but often complicates it. While modern technology enables us to communicate at the mere click of a mouse, it cheapens our relationships; furthermore, it takes away precious time from real relationships.....etc.....etc......(only slightly exaggerated)."

Well, I guess we are all hypocrites sometimes (or I would like to hope I am not the only one)--and this fact has provided me with considerable self-reflection during my already more-than-three-month stay in Ha Noi.

Ideals are great--surely the world would be in (even more) trouble if no one had any--but being here has made me realize how necessary it is to re-evaluate ideals, and maybe even change them, based on one's present context...

In other words: are there ever times when it is right to give up one's ideal for the sake of something else--like building a relationship?

Like making a goal to watch TV with my host sisters (instead of reading a book in my room) because it is one of the few things I can think to do with them, even though my general stance towards TV is that it is a useless and even negative device that is rendering our children incapable of creative thought...

Or, similarly, giving up a ticket to see "A Christmas Carol," at the opera house with my Western friends to watch "New Moon" at the Vincom Towers (i.e. the very Westernized Ha Noi version of a shopping mall) with my host sister and four of her 12-year-old friends...

Or going shopping with my host mom even though--aside from the fact that I hate shopping to begin with--I am disturbed by how much Western consumerism has already taken over in the 20 years since Viet Nam has opened its doors, and I try not to advocate it...

Don't get me wrong: I'm not advocating hypocrisy. Or giving up ideals because they are unpopular, old-fashioned, or "unrealistic"--I am a pacifist, after all.

Rather, I suppose I am warning against having ideals for ideal's sake alone. Because sometimes we unknowingly build walls with our ideals, or judge other people based on them, and forget that we are not called to judge others, or even to uphold ideals per se; we are called to love, and if our ideals inhibit that, then maybe they need to be re-considered.

Besides, even technology has its merits: I recently discovered a cool example of technology being used for a good cause (this good cause being more than my amusement when I need a break from poorly translated English): World Next Door.

And without it, you wouldn't be reading this right now (I'll leave it up to you to decide whether this is a benefit or a flaw.. ). :)

facebook album

I just posted an album of pictures on facebook. They are pictures from around Hanoi in my first 2 months. Here is the link:

Facebook Album

I commented on some of them for you all so you might have some idea of what you're looking at.

vietnamese morning exercise

If you walk around any lake in Hanoi between 5 and 7 am any morning, you will witness Vietnamese-style exercise taking place. You will see many people walking and a few people running...and many more interesting things. If you are a morning person, this could be your free entertainment for life. Here is a video clip of Vietnamese people exercising. Watch it for a glimpse into my life. You will not be disappointed!

Vietnamese Morning Exercise Video Clip

mcc salt orientation article

Here is the link to an article that was written about the MCC SALT orientation that I attended in Akron prior to leaving for Viet Nam:

Bridge Building between Cultures Begins at MCC Orientation

It isn't about me at all, but might give you a better understanding about the SALT program and what it's all about.

traffic pictures

You should check out this link to Alicia's latest blog post to look at her collection of Ha Noi traffic pictures. I have been talking a lot in my blog about the craziness of traffic in Ha Noi, and Ali was kind enough make a blog post dedicated to the subject. If I was to write a similar post, all the pictures would be the same anyways...

Hopefully looking at these pictures will give you a glimpse of what my new life actually looks like (something that I have been receiving lots of questions about in emails).

Enjoy!

mcc salt

I realized from some responses to my blog that many of my potential readership did not know that I am going to Viet Nam, or why, or what the MCC is! So maybe a bit more info is in order? I will keep it relatively brief, so as to not bore anyone, and include some links for the extra-enthusiastic researcher.

The MCC is the missions/outreach organization of the Mennonite Church (for my Dutch friends--it's like the Mennonite version of the CRWRC). In line with the Mennonite tradition, the MCC has a particularly strong focus on social justice and peacemaking. The SALT (Serving and Learning Together) program is a branch of the MCC designed specifically for younger people (18-27 years old). It works with MCC branches in various countries to place participants into 11-month service assignments, often partnering with non-MCC organizations.

According to the website,

The program seeks to further:
-International goodwill and understanding through experiencing life outside of one’s cultural, economic and social milieu
-International reconciliation and peace-building by encouraging participants to act as bridge-builders between their home and host communities
-Personal commitment to the world-wide church via participation and sharing in the life of Christian communities around the world
-Participants’ spiritual, personal and professional growth

During my time in Hanoi, I will be working full time as a manuscript editor at the Gioi, Viet Nam's foreign language publishing house. I will live with a Vietnamese host family. I will make my best attempt to learn Vietnamese. I will try new food (I hear they eat dog). I will (hopefully) perfect my badminton skills (apparently tennis and badminton are very popular there). I will learn about Vietnamese history from the Vietnamese perspective. I will form new relationships. I will learn new ways to love and be loved.

I think Gerard Manly Hopkins describes my mission better than I will ever be able to:

I say more: the just man justices;
Keeps grace: that keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is —
Christ. For Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men's faces.

links for more info:
http://www.mcc.org/
http://mcc.org/salt/
http://thegioipublishers.com.vn/en/home/