Newfound celebrity

I think I can say with a degree of confidence that my days of loneliness and isolation are pretty much over.

After teaching for one week (two classes on Tuesday, two classes on Wednesday), I have approximately 150 students who now know me by name and face, and countless other students who have heard about the toubab English teacher, as well as the countless people whose restaurants I have eaten in and practiced my Vietnamese with.

I am certainly not anonymous. Everywhere I go now, I hear "Hello Allison!" or "Hello Teacher!" Granted, I remember a total of maybe 5 names right now, so most of the people who say hello to me, I just respond with "Hello!" and hope that they don't ask me to identify them by name.

Everybody keeps inviting me to their houses for meals, and everybody wants to stop by my room in the guesthouse to speak English.

I would say that I typically keep to myself and to my close social groups back home in the United States, so I am totally taken aback at being in such high social demand here in Vietnam. I know it is only in part due to my thrilling personality and stunning good looks (joking), and mostly just due to the fact that a native English speaker in rural Ha Tinh is such a rare commodity.

However, I have definitely benefited from the confidence boost that all of this attention has given me.

I think I can also say with confidence that I have officially made my first "real" Vietnamese friend. Her name is Hang, and she works in the English department. During orientation, we were warned that a lot of the impending loneliness would be due to cultural norms of communication. Even with people who can speak English quite well, it is a general rule that Vietnamese people keep their daily conversations on a more superficial level, which is frustrating for some westerners who want to connect with people on a "deeper level". For Vietnamese people, their way of connecting with others is simply by physically being present with them. The words and sentiments expressed are only secondary.

However, for me, this was an incredibly disconcerting piece of information since I love deeply communicating with people and hearing their life stories and discussing our mutual emotional experiences. I was scared that the superficial conversation about weather and classes would bore me and make me feel even more isolated than I already did. But with Hang, my new friend, I feel like we have begun to really connect on a level of friendship that is satisfying to me, even by US standards.

I have been looking forward all week to hanging out with her tonight and making dinner at her house together. Today she texted me and said "Would you mind if we went to the beach instead of making dinner?" DO I MIND? Of course not!!!!! I could not be more excited than to FINALLY go to the beach that I have been waiting for almost 2 weeks to go to!

So on tap for this weekend is:

• going with Chi Quyen to shop for a motorbike
• going with Chi Hang to the beach tonight
• leaving from Ha Tinh early tomorrow morning and taking the ~1-hour bus ride to meet Sasha in Vinh, where we will spend the day at the beach, eating seafood, doing yoga, biking around, relaxing, and decompressing from our first week of teaching.
• Then, Sasha and I will take a sleeper train from Vinh to Hanoi and arrive in Hanoi around 3 in the morning, where we will take a taxi to the Rising Dragon and catch up with our favorite hotel staff.
• We will spend Saturday and Sunday in Hanoi, and meet up with other Fulbrighters Taylor, MJ, and Quyen, who are also heading to Hanoi.
• Sunday night, I will return with Sasha to Vinh via sleeper train, and arrive some time Monday morning.

Very excited for my first weekend adventures here in Vietnam! I will update more later!