Cookout

Last Saturday night our team had an end-of-the-year cookout for the English department at our school. Melia and Scott delivered about 15-20 invitations, but we weren't sure who was going to come or whether anyone would be bringing guests. We planned for the max; 40 kebobs, 40 pieces of chicken, huge pans of baked beans and potato salad, cookies.... We had lots of leftovers!


Finding a small grill and some charcoal wasn't nearly as difficult as getting damp charcoal lighted with no lighter fluid. Paper didn't work. Twigs off a dead branch weren't much more effective. Then I remembered that a worker had left a few strips of dry wood upstairs. Josh was able to get things going with that and we ended up with a good fire. Like most times I try to barbecue, I should have started about 1/2 hour earlier.

But anyway, everything got cooked and our friends seemed to enjoy the American food. It was nice to be able to get together outside of work.

The Earthquake

You know that feeling you get when you lay down at night after having been out in a canoe all day? That feeling that you're still bobbing around on the water?

About 3 o'clock on Monday afternoon I felt that kind of thing, but like I was bobbing forward and back. "That was weird," I thought. Then I heard about the devastating earthquake in Sichuan Province, China.

Although word at this point is that all of our organization's teachers in China are OK (we didn't have any in the immediate area of the quake), thousands of Chinese aren't so fortunate. Please keep them in your thoughts!

Remember too, the people of Myanmar who are being victimized twice -- once by the cyclone and again by those who are preventing aid from reaching them. Twelve days after more than 62,000 people were killed by the storm, bodies remain unburied and food and drinking water are scarce. Today the EU's humanitarian aid commissioner said that, because the rice stocks in the country's main farming area have been destroyed, there is a risk of famine.

Best Book This Year

I saw the ads for Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller when it first came out about 5 years ago but I had a lot of other books on my reading list back then so I never really tracked it down. This year I finally got around to reading it when I borrowed it from my friend, Melia. She's been the source of a lot of my good reading material this year, including her blog.

To be honest, Miller's writing style is not my favorite, but the value is in the way he presents his beliefs as something that makes sense even in the western postmodern world. In fact, I thought it was kind of like a combination of C. S. Lewis's little apologetic book that came out of his radio broadcasts and Rick Warren's how-to book, all translated into postmodern language.

Miller does seem to have the "love everybody and it'll all turn out OK" mentality that many writers and speakers subscribe to these days. I can't imagine how they can reconcile that with the bulk of ancient writings (old or new parts) that include discipline and expectations as well as love. It's a good push of the pendulum, but it's unbalanced and unworkable by itself.

Still, it's the best book I've read so far this year and it's a good bridge for us old "moderns" into the postmodern scene (or I guess you could say, "pms."). I've not had time to list it on my favorites on this page -- we're in the middle of giving and grading finals -- but you can search Amazon below and find it.

Bao Duong

With the school year wrapping up, I've complied a list of stuff I need to get done by the end of the month. One thing on the list is getting some routine maintenance (bao duong) done on my Honda Super Dream. Since the bike is still pretty new, it's not been through much more than some oil changes and some minor adjustments to the brakes and chain.

Of course, like anywhere else, there's the challenge of finding a good mechanic. A few months ago a place dropped a flier in our gate that made them look like a pretty good choice, and it is a lot closer than the dealer where I bought it. So I rode up to the front door, told the guy what I wanted, and sat and watched for the hour or so that it took a mechanic to almost completely disassemble the motorbike, adjust and lube everything possible, and put it back together again. I was surprised! I mean, he even took apart the shocks.

After he washed it and another guy double-checked everything and took it for a spin, I got the bill. 50,000 VND. But they didn't realize I wanted the oil changed too. That added 40,000. Apparently oil costs a lot more than labor. The whole thing translated to $5.63 USD. I wish I had found a mechanic like that for my motorcycle in the US!

Weekends

Lately there have been so many "little" things going on at the same time that it seems like there's nothing "big" to write about. But, since Easter, there's been something going on every weekend.

First was a trip to Thai Nguyen. It's been a long time since I've been back (and longer for Nancy), so we hopped on the bus Saturday morning to visit a couple of our friends/former students. Aside from the usual "trolling," it was a smooth trip. "Trolling" is what we call it when the bus leaves the station and sloooowly pokes along the road looking for additional passengers to fill the empty seats - and the aisle, and any laps that look like they have room. We trolled almost all the way to the airport, but we had good seats this time so it wasn't bad from where we sat.

We visited with our friends, had lunch at a seafood restaurant, and marveled at the big lobster-like critter in the tank that you could order for $100 US per kilogram. And we were absolutely amazed to see a 4-story shopping center, complete with escalators, standing where the old, open-air central market had been.


Our friend and Nancy have been quite close over the years and she spent most of the day lobbying Nancy to move back up to Thai Nguyen to hang out, practice English, play with her kids, etc. (She has cute kids, but it didn't work.)


In the old days, Nancy taught our friend to bake and she's gotten pretty good at it. But she's been busy with work and family and hasn't had much time for baking. So, after helping her assemble an apple pie and sticking it in the oven, we headed out to catch one of the last buses back to Hanoi.

The following weekend was the big "Miss IIR" contest. IIR is the old name for our school - The Institute for International Relations. (The name was recently changed to The Diplomacy Institute of Vietnam.). The field had been narrowed from the original 25 contestants to 11 and Saturday night was the big competition. It was quite an event, but also quite long. I didn't stick around for all four hours, but I heard that a girl in one of Josh's freshman classes took first place.

It looks like weekends will stay full for a while. On Saturday we're going with the rest of the VTF team to Ha Long Bay to treat our spring fever and the following weekend we're in Beijing for the VTF/CTF team leader summit.