Sometimes I wonder how I got here. There’s a sixteen year old Casanova sitting at the table directly across from me smoking like a chimney and wearing his shirt completely unbuttoned revealing his hairless, unmuscular torso. See, this would be pretty cute if he were just incidentally unbuttoned, but it’s clearly the case that the unbuttoning is quite intentional which makes this kid lose credibility in my book. I don’t know what it is with Vietnamese guys and exposing their torso. Often they just lift their shirt up to expose their belly and lower back and commence with the belly rubbing. Belly rubbing can last anywhere from 2-30 minutes. Sometimes men like to do this while they walk. So they are both exercising and airing out their belly / belly rubbing at the same time. It’s rather bizarre ritual. Another strange thing that I’ve noticed is that it seems to be the baddest Vietnamese dudes who like to do this which leads me to believe that it’s a sort of status symbol. I’m personally afraid of belly-rubbing. I’m afraid that I might rub my belly in the wrong café and instigate some sort of turf war.

Last night was the mid-autumn festival (aka moon festival) in Vietnam (Tet Trung Thu). I was invited to a celebration at that was organized by an orphanage I’m working with. They invited something like 100 children from around the community to take part in this celebration. It was actually pretty impressive. There was singing and dancing and a pretty ridiculous magic show. The ceremony began with a bunch of really boring speeches by some of the directors of the institution culminating in a rather terrible speech by me. For some reason, somebody thought it would be a good idea to invite me to make a speech, in Vietnamese nonetheless, in front of more than 200 people without giving me any time to prepare. It was pretty pathetic. I think the gist of my speech was as follows:
“Hello everybody! I’m very happy to be here today. I have been to the Can Tho club for homeless children several times over the last year and I am always very happy there because it is a very happy place and the children are all very happy because the place is very good. I’m very happy. Uhh. This is my first mid-autumn festival celebration. It’s very. . .happy. . . Uhhh. Thank you!” I don’t think I’ve ever felt so stupid as I did at that moment. In English I’m pretty capable of speaking in front of crowds without much preparation, and in Vietnamese I relatively capable of expressing myself, but somehow speaking Vietnamese in front of a crowd is more difficult than the sum of its parts.

The thing that really kills me is that somebody actually thought it was a good idea to invite me to speak at this event, and I certainly wouldn’t be given such a prominent position in the audience. Front row, along-side all the community leaders. I’ve actually begun to take it for granted that I will receive special treatment at these sorts of events, and I don’t know that I’m really very comfortable with that. Another thing that makes me uncomfortable is the fact that I get so much more attention than this Vietnamese-American guy named Tho who’s here on a Fullbright doing some really interesting and potentially important research on the Mekong river. Not only does he not get as much attention as me, but he’s not treated with nearly as much respect as I am. . .which is absolutely preposterous. All the same, perhaps there’s a part of my personality that just really enjoys this extra attention . . . and perhaps, after all, the Vietnamese are just more finely in tune with sensing greatness than Americans are.

Tonight I’m going to a moon festival party with some students. Now this may sound like a compromising situation for a teacher to be getting in, but I’ve been to one of these class parties before and . . .boy ohhh boy is it uncompromising. Probably we’ll sing a lot of songs and eat some fruit and moon-cake and play some games akin to patty-cake, because it's the moon festival, we will go down to the river and light some paper lanterns and make some little boats out of sheets of paper. We will put little candles in the boats and send them floating down the river. Everyone will go home by 9:00. All of this will be done stone cold sober. Nobody will drink, nobody will smoke anything, and no fights will break out. There’s something about these parties that I love. They’re simple and they’re actually kind of fun once you get used to how unexciting they are by American standards. Sometimes I wish America weren’t such a damned cynical country, I think we could have a lot more fun.