A lot Since Da Lat

Hello from Vietnam!  This is Brian, remember me?  It's been a while I know.  I have been busy!

I wrote the "Day One" blog on the day that LeAnn left to go back to the US.  I just didn't know what to write.  I needed to process and to get a grip of how this was going to effect everything over here.

So I found a job.  Well actually two...no wait, three jobs.  I started working two days after LeAnn left.  (If you are wondering we are still together, we just decided to stretch out our love for the fun of it...enough of my gushy love story...)  I work at a language center called Vietnam USA Society English Centers (VUS) on Saturdays, Sundays, and Wednesday nights.  It's a popular school here where any TESOL certificate holder can easily find employment.  It's an after-school school.  Last week I started my second job at a school called Vietnam Australian International School (VAS).  It's a regular Monday-Friday school.  So right now I am working non-stop...ugh.  But I am enjoying it for the time being and don't worry I'm going to adjust my schedule so that I don't keel over.  Which reminds me!!  There is a nap room for teachers at VAS!  HA!  The head teacher asked me if I take naps and I didn't want sound lazy so I said, "Well...sometimes, when I'm really tired."  Then she said, "Well we take naps here."  Ha!  So on my first day I found the men's nap room after lunch and kicked off my shoes and grabbed a mat.  I laid there laughing to myself as I listened to the loud unrestricted snores from around the room.  They were seriously conked out snoring -- so awesome that that is a priority to them!

I started writing about what it is like teaching in Vietnam and then I got bored and erased my sentence and checked facebook.  The only thing I'll say is that teaching here is really not very different from teaching in the US.  My teenage Mexican students were just like the teenage Vietnamese students, some are great students and some should not be forced to be in school -- prison, or a deserted island, but not school.  I'm learning more and more about how to engage these students, they are my biggest challenge but they will be the ones that impact me and shape me the most, I can only hope that it is the same for them.  My little kid classes are fun, it's fun being a clown.  I mentioned that I had a third job, my third job is a one-on-one tutoring session.  That has been a lot of fun.  We have a lot of the same interests.  We meet once a week for 2.5 hours and work on his pronunciation by reading plays working on his public speaking skills (thanks to K-State!), and just talking about things that we are passionate about.  He just recently took me around the city and showed me some local food hot-spots, great fun!

So I started to settle in here.  I had to find a hot air oven for baked potatoes, a high powered blender for fruit drinks, and a moto.  I rented a moto for a few weeks ($50 a month) then ended up buying a Honda Win 100cc from an Australian guy for $225.  I didn't even know how to drive it when I bought it (it just felt right).  It is a manual with a clutch.  But I learned rather quickly.  Getting it worked on is soooo easy and cheap!  There are hundreds of shops and guys on the sidewalks with bowls of tools that can take your whole engine apart and put it back together.  They even know what is wrong with it without you even having to explain it to them (not like I could anyway).  If the shop is busy they will just shake their hand (equivalent to the American 'so-so' or 'kind-of' shake of your hand) which means 'no' here and then they point down the street.  Then you drive down the street and point at your bike and they shake their hand 'no' and point down the street, until you find someone who can help you. (I think I was trying to get them to work during their nap time that day, I got a lot of hand shaking).

Will it blend...oh yeah!

The Beast!

Two dollar wiring job.

On the theatre front, I am meeting with a coffee shop owner who puts on Shakespeare plays in his small coffee shop.  He said that he wants someone to put together a theatre group to perform plays there.  He said that he just recently had a group come in and do a play there and they had a great turn out.

I also have an opportunity to co-direct a play for our teacher's party at VAS on January 4th.  One of the teachers wrote a comedic musical.  I think I am going to be in a short dance scene.  I just responded to an email that was marked "Emergency"...they needed four men to do a wedding dance scene.

Day One

Beautiful Da Lat...Rented a Moto!!!!

Today was really nice.

The owner of the hotel is making it easy for me to enjoy myself.  6 bucks a day to rent a 110cc moto.  Oh yeah!  It was like driving through Chadron State Park or any other beautiful place.  It was just interesting to see tropical trees mixed with pine trees.  The views on the way to the manicured park we visited brought tears to my eyes.  It was so nice to see natural beauty.  The buzz that nature gives you is a completely different buzz than what the fast loud city gives you.

LeAnn felt like she was in a fairy tale.  She warned me that a witch might be setting a trap for me while I was approaching an inviting swing.  

Oh yeah I have to add these...

Oh yeah! This was my first trip by myself.

Oh and I must say, today was the first day my dream came true of riding a moto through the mountains with a beautiful girl on the back.  Agent 99 and I were cruising the countryside! Ha!  Sorry no pics... 

Da Lat Week of Contemplation

LeAnn and I went to Da Lat this week.  She wanted to get out of the city and spend some time thinking about her life.  It was about a 7 hour bus ride here.  We took the lounge bus, it was nice to be able to lay down and nap as we rode through the countryside.  I noticed some seats in the back were open so I jumped up on the upper deck...

and sprawled out.

It was a like a king sized bed up there.  It was nice until the driver slammed on the breaks and I rolled forward into the other bed in front of me.  Ha!

It was a beautiful ride here.  The wide open spaces and the mountainous views were mesmerizing. 

Da Lat is suppose to be a romantic place where most Vietnamese go on their honeymoon.  We haven’t went out and adventured yet.  I brought by backpacking equipment and I am itching to get by a lake and have a campfire. 

My room is nice.  I have a relaxing view of a tree-covered hill with temples and dragon statues scattered throughout the trees.  It’s calming.   I can see why a guy stayed here for two years writing a book, says the hotel manager. 

LeAnn and I are here seeking refuge from the buzzing city and doing some soul searching and praying for an encounter with the living God.  LeAnn is ready to head home.  She wanted to take one last trip to see another part of Vietnam and then…well…leave. 

I’m not ready to go back.  I was offered two part time jobs back in Ho Chi Minh City.  Tutoring a medical student (teaching English) and teaching English to Vietnamese math teachers so they can teach math in English.  I accepted both jobs. 

I’m walking into the unknown.  I’ll update you on how this week of contemplation turns out.

Passed the TESOL training!

Graduation!  Oh yeah!  We are finally finished!  These last two weeks were very busy.  I just finished writing pages of recaps and journals for the class so I don't feel like going into all the boring details, but I passed my Vietnamese test and completed all the student teaching tasks that they required of us.  I am now ready to start applying for jobs.  I'm not all that excited to start that grueling process, but maybe it won't last long.

I will be staying in the hotel that I have been in since we got here in Vietnam.  It's a nice place with great service for about 16 dollars a day.  I've created a couchsurfing account just in case; I also have my tent if all else fails, I saw some really interesting places in the urban utopia of District 7 (no joke, this place looks like it was designed in SecondLife or something).  They say that it is cheap to live there as well because it is a little ways from downtown.  You can get a really nice brand new 2 room apartment for $400 a month in a district that is closer to downtown.  I'm not sure what you can get in one that is further out.

We ate at the Indian restaurant for our graduation dinner, oh yeah!  LeAnn and I had to stake it out the other night to see if it was going to be any good.  It was.  It's so much more appetizing to me than noodles in a bowl of dishwater -- sorry thats what pho has started to look like now, especially when you always see people eating it on the sidewalks and then see the ladies washing the dishes in the street.

I don't feel like partying for my graduation.  I feel like sleeping.  Phew!  What a month!

Sad to see our California friends head home for a few months.  It was nice to have them here.

Finally in Vietnam!

We got here Sunday evening.  It was surprisingly easier and faster coming into Vietnam than leaving when we were going into Cambodia.  The lines were quicker and the system was smoother.

You could really notice the drastic difference in the roads and the trashy streets as we entered into Vietnam.  It is a lot more modern and advanced than Cambodia.  The streets seem to make more sense. There are divided one-way roads, one for cars and larger vehicles and one for motorcycles.  You will still see people driving on the sidewalks but not as much as Cambodia.  I haven't seen too many people driving up the wrong way of the street like they did in Cambodia, but I haven't traveled around the city much yet either.  And no tuk tuks!  That is kind of sad, those things are cool.

I started my student teaching yesterday.  I started with 60 mins with adults (18+) and today I taught small kids for 90 mins.  The kids were a bit chaotic.  I probably should have went with my gut and started class playing my guitar.  They just needed to chill out after a long day of school and then around 5:30PM they go get a free class of English with me.  I work with the group of adults I had on Monday for the rest of this week and the next.  Then I start interviewing and looking for a place to live.

I wish I could start exploring the city a bit more.  I'm just too busy during the day and I'm tired by the time I'm done with the school work.  But we were able to find a place to exchange money at the market close by.  The ladies selling watches were able to give us change in dong ($100 USD = 2,000,000 VND)  Pizza Hut cost me 93,000 VND (less than 5 dollars) for one regular sized pizza and a water mellon drink (it was also half off day so it's usually twice that much.   But we were able to find good places that sell Vietnamese food for around 45,000 VND (a little over two dollars).  But man!  I tried two scoops of ice cream yesterday and it cost me about $3.50 -- I thought that was a bit too much...but now that I look at $3.50 I think, that's about what I'd pay in the states.  It's been interesting to see the value of the dollar go way up here!  It's also been fun to bargain.  I like laughing at seller's initial price and working them down to a more reasonable price.

I think I'm going to have to buy a motorbike.  I'm looking forward to exploring Ho Chi Minh scooter style.

I'll post pics and other misc. details later.

Sihanoukville!

We finished our second week!  We are now at the beach in Sihanoukville.  It was about a 4.5 hour drive from Phnom Phen, so on Sunday it will take that long to get back and then another 6 hours to Vietnam.  Finally!  I've been looking forward to getting to where we are going to be teaching.

We have two more weeks of training but we will be student teaching and doing projects instead of intense 8 hour days of classes.  Were heading to a BBQ, but I thought I'd quickly say what is going on.

Fashionable Disco Flight...?

This neat drinking establishment was unfortunately closed while we were here.

On the Road to Angkor Wat!

First week of training is complete!  We were given quite a bit of information and don’t worry I won’t bore you with my notes (but if you are interested I can send them to you, once I type them up).  We were given models for how to teach English to people without knowing any of their language.  Most of the process is like Rosetta Stone, show them a picture and then given them the word.  That is the most basic, there is dialogue practice, while introducing new vocab.  My theatre background is going to come in handy!  (I actually hope I can find a school to eventually hire me to teach some theatre classes.) 

We were also reminded of all the grammar we were suppose to have learned in high school.  Thankfully I had a refresher 5 years ago when I needed to teach 9^th grade English.

Headed to Angkor Wat this weekend! 

We were advised to eat a tarantula on one of the pit stops.  I stayed away from the body but tried a leg.  It was fried.  Nasty...  I bet raw is better.  

I feel good here.  The experience thus far has got me thinking that I could do a lot more traveling like this. 

I will end with a cathartic poem about a bouncy bus ride.

Bang, boom, boom, ouch!

Hurt, butt, ting, tang

Bing, bang, wrong, rung,

Love, joy, junk, gin,

Hope, read, run, shun

Ton, cun…ing…ring, sing

Free, Lee, Me, He, Tea

400 Mile Trek Through Nepal.

Killing Fields

We made it out! 

 But I still had LeAnn take a picture of me in front of the large building full of human skulls, just in case it was my last goodbye.

This place showed the results of a tyrannical ruler who wanted everyone in Cambodia to blindly follow him (1975).  He had almost 1/4 of the population executed.

It was a bit depressing.  I guess there is a building in the city where they executed mass amount of people as well and they have not cleaned anything up since the killings.  I guess they say that it is very shocking and graphic.  I have other pictures of the Killing Tree and other grave sites but I think I will stop posting them.  

I figured out why most of the people in Phnom Phen are young.  Wiki says that 1.7 to 2.5 million out of a population of around 8 million were killed.

Cambodia 4AM

I should tell one quick story about crossing the road last night.  I was on my way to the shopping center (five minutes from the hotel) and I needed to cross a very busy road in order to get there, but there were no stop lights or cross walks in sight.  So I approached the first person in sight and asked him if he could speak English.  He said, "No.", smiled and laughed.  He looked official.  He had a uniform on with reflector tape and a red light like the people who signal planes at an airport.  He called someone over to help us communicate, but he didn't know what I wanted either.  I would point at myself and then point to the other side of the road.  I explained in perfect English, "How do I safely cross this road?"  Finally this new helper decided that we needed someone else to help us and this man and his wife got it!  The man told the official looking man something and BOOM the light bulb went on.  "Oh yes, yes! You want to cross the road!  Well why didn't you just say so!  That is why I am here standing by the road with this red light saber, duh!"  (This was his internal dialog in his own language).  So he turned on his light and started entering the busy street all the while blowing on his whistle.  I followed him closely, and we were able to make it safely to the other side, ahhh.  As I was crossing I was wondering what a fair tip would be for helping me cross the street.  It may have not been enough but I gave him 1000 Riel (equal to 25 cents).

Tomorrow we will visit the Killing Fields.  Maybe this is where I will die.  ( Before I left I was telling some friends that I couldn't imagine this next phase in my life, so I thought that I would die before I was able to experience it -- it was the same feeling I had when I was a young teenager thinking that I wouldn't make it to 17 because I couldn't envision myself that old.)  So if this is the end of bub-headingwest.com then farewell, goodbye and enjoy!

YES!  The monotone music just quit!  5AM.

Welcome to Cambodia!

We made it to Cambodia!  The last flight from Tokyo to Ho Chi Minh was the hardest part for me.  It was the nicest plane with the best touch screen TV's but I was so tired that I couldn't sleep.  I feel sorry for LeAnn because I was a cranky baby for a couple hours.  But I cried myself to sleep and finished the flight happily playing a cool Brickout video game.

Exiting the airport into Ho Chi Minh was interesting.  We were met with hundreds of people lined up as if they were there to welcome us in.  We quickly found our ride and had a nice night meeting the program coordinator and a few of the students who were celebrating their very recent graduation of the program.  The $20ish hotel was nice enough.  I had to wait to use internet until today because it wasn't working at the hotel...I'm so spoiled.

A lot of what we saw reminded us of Mexico, the shops along the side of the road, the scooters, the foreign language...  

The $13 bus ride from Ho Chi Minh to Phnom Phen was nice.  But once we got here we quickly got into a scam job...welcome to Phnom Phen!  First of all, the stewardess said that they changed the drop off location, so we then needed to let LanguageCorps know that the pickup address needed to be changed. The stewardess let us use her phone to let them know.  But right when I get off the bus I see a man running up to me with a sign that had Brian Shafer and LeAnn Winter spelled out on it.  So, great, they figured out the location change and met us there.  But...we ended up seeing another guy with our names on his sign as well, but his clearly said LanguageCorps, and I couldn't remember if the first guy's sign had said LanguageCorps.  But thinking that they send two drivers by accident we decided to go with the first one...whoops.  He took us in his tuk tuk (a small framed cab hooked to the back of a motorcycle) a couple blocks away and stopped.  He got out and asked us what hotel we needed to go to and then tried to get us to confirm a tour of the city with him tomorrow before he would take us to the hotel.  I told him that I would just pay him to take us to the LanguageCorps hotel, but he said that it was too far.  We were both uncomfortable with the whole situation and we asked him to just take us back to the bus station.  He reluctantly said okay but said that we needed to pay him $5.  I said that I would give him three.  He rolled his eyes and said $4.  He took his time getting back, I'm not sure why or what he was doing, but once we got there the driver with the official LanguageCorps sign was still there, thankfully!  He was able to call some LanguageCorps people and they told me to give the driver who scammed us $2.  He was trying to get his $4 but I told him that he manipulated us and that I didn't what to give him any money, but I did as I was advised and gave him two dollars, yeah thanks for scamming us, here's two dollars!

We are now getting settled into our hotel rooms that we are staying in for the next two weeks. They are nice!  But we don't have the right voltage adapters yet so we can't charge phones or computers.  There's a shopping center close, I might go for a walk later.  We are planning on doing some sight seeing in the morning tomorrow with one of the drivers from LanguageCorps and then we have a welcome dinner with the rest of the teachers, oh yeah!  It's looking up...glad internet works.  

13 Hours Over the Ocean

We left Manhattan KS yesterday morning at 6:20AM.  I stayed up all night last night with a few friends from Manhattan so that I would sleep on the plane and be able to sleep when we get to Ho Chi Minh City at 9PM the following day.  LeAnn and I are sitting in Tokyo as I type waiting for a couple hours for our flight to HCMC.

Everything is going well so far, except for when I spilled my pop and then later LeAnn's plastic fork broke and her chicken and rice blew up all over the place.

I always tend to elaborate and explain my random bits of information within this blog, since that is probably the purpose of a blog.  Such as:  how I now have a girlfriend, and how this whole teaching overseas idea came about, but sometimes I think it's important to leave room for people's imagination.

But just to officially make this a 'real' blog I will give a few details to fill in some gaps.

LeAnn and I met in grad school. We were both public speaking GTA's at K-State.  We both share the desire to travel around the world and we both enjoy each other's company quite a bit.  Okay moving on...

We are both being trained to be TOEFL certified with a company called LanguageCorps.  I heard about them through a colleague.  LanguageCorp has offices all around the world, we choose Vietnam because neither of us have been to Asia, it is very different from our western world, and it will be more profitable for us.  (LeAnn has a small debt to pay off, so going to a place where we could save some money was a high priority.)

It's nice to be looking out a window to a rainy Tokyo.

I'm going to Nam!

Well I graduated college, again!   And now I'm currently packed and ready for my next BIG adventure, teaching English in Vietnam.

    

Now 4 of 4...What next?

Well, my trip to Manhattan has been a great experience so far.  I will try and recap some of the events of last year.

The Boy's Next Door play that I directed for my Adv. Directing class was a success.  It was fun stretching the actors to play characters that were very different than their personalities in real life.  The show is about a group of IDD (Intellectually and Developmentally Disabled) guys that live together in a group home.  The fun story tied to this experience is when we had our one and only performance (besides the class preview) and a bus load of IDD people showed up in our small theatre space about 5 minutes into the performance.  It was very disruptive.  One guy started wondering around on stage looking for a place to sit.  But my actors stayed focused and kept the play going.  I thought that it was beautiful though.  One of my goals for the show was to expose the audience to a world within almost every community that is hidden and often misunderstood.  Once the IDD people came and finally found their seats the other audience members knew that they were there--they made their presence known.  It was neat.

Over the summer I got to work the Harvest of Hope Leadership Academy camp in Lawrence, KS again.  It was a great time!  I got paid to live in the dorms with a group of migrant students.  We went to World of Fun, a Sporting KC Soccer game, a theatre showing of The Odd Couple, build kites, danced, ate pizza, watched movies, (when did the work happen?  What do you mean, that was the work!  My kind of job --building relationships with people and offering them a hope for a better life -- loved it!)

I then got to go on a couple backcountry backpacking trips.  I spent a week in the Great Smoky Mountains with a couple friends and then right when I got back to Manhattan I went to the Grand Teton's with my Dad and younger brother.  Both were great trips.  The one story that I like to tell is what happened on my birthday in the Smoky Mountains.  I'll give you the condensed version.  It was raining.  We were continually stopping to take shelter and rest from the 2 day backcountry hike and into the second day I realized that my fly rod that my Dad gave me for my birthday 10 years ago was not in my hand anymore.  I was about to go back for it but soon we met a guy named Brian that was doing our two day hike in one day and I I asked if he would look for my pole.  When we arrived back at the parking lot we didn't see him or his car and he didn't drop off the pole at the place he said he would if he had found it.  I was bummed.  We went into town to eat and John and Wes told me that they would feel okay with camping next to the entrance of the trail that night so that I could get up early the next day to hike in and try to find the pole.  I got up around 4:30AM because I couldn't sleep and put on a head light and ran into the forest.  I made good time and looked all the way past the place I thought I lost it.  Nothing.  As I was wondering back towards a T in the trail I noticed that the weeds around the trail were freshly cut.  I then decided to hike a mile or two up to the first place we camped because there was a crew of trail maintenance guys setting up camp there.  I showed up at their camp and asked them about my pole.  A rough and tough looking guy nodded when I asked if they found a Cabela's fly rod.  They had it!  But the reel wasn't on the pole when they gave it to me.  I asked about it and they all started looking around for it...finally the guy that nodded at me went to his tent and pulled the reel out of his bag.  I said thanks and happily ran down the trail victoriously!  I then decided to stop and do some fishing.  I was told of a good spot for fishing so I hiked to where I thought it was and I was running the line through the eyelets and as I pulled the line through about a foot of the pole broke off.  WHAT!  I thought...this is not a good way to end this story.  So I thought of the movie True Grit and decided to boldly walk back to the trail maintenance camp to see if they felt like they owed me a new pole.  Long story short I almost got in a fight.  But they did give me an idea about Cabelas' customer service.  Long story short I went to Cabelas and they said that my pole was last on retail in the sale's bin for $14.99.  BUT on the way down the trail I happened to find my UPC tag and after showing it to the Cabelas' customer service they saw how much my Dad paid for it back in 2001.  They then bought it from me for $70.  So I bought a new and better pole for $50 and got $20 of store merchandise.  Long story but at least it ended happily right?

I directed Jake's Women by Neil Simon for my masters thesis project this last semester.  It was a stretching experience but I think that we turned out a fairly decent play.

I'm considering going to Oaxaca Mexico to work and to learn spanish.  Oh did I mention I have a girl friend?  Whaaat!?!?  More on that later...