Deep Breathing

Yesterday I woke up at 7:30 and tutored an adult student over Skype for 45 minutes. I drank a cup of coffee.

I made another cup of coffee and laid down on the bed in my studio apartment. I put a Phish video from their performance last night on the TV and played a video game about farming on my Nintendo Switch.

Dada abruptly unplugged the Phish video because she needed the laptop to work. I finished my coffee, made another cup, and continued gaming. I needed to mine more copper, ferment more beer, and feed the chickens. I put a podcast on (WTF with Marc Maron, interviewing filmmaker Gus Van Sant), to fill the audio-void and make my game-time meaningful. I drank the coffee.

I felt I should be writing some more articles for the website that hired me, but also felt I didn’t want to at the moment. I needed to recharge, I told myself. My head had been spinning all week from “tutoring,” to “writing,” to “teaching,” on an endless carousel of these three topics. The struggle of working from home being that you’re never really “home from work.”

After doing this all morning, I still didn’t feel recharged. My body felt tense. I felt vaguely guilty. I didn’t feel in the mood to read, and my coffee was crashing me. I needed a nap. I rolled over to nap and also focused on my tense body which felt oddly burned out. It’s not an uncommon feeling for me some days.

I drifted in and out of a light sleep, and focused more and more on my breathing. As I did this, my mind started to clear. My body readjusted and the muscles seemed to loosen. I just felt healthier throughout. The inspiration to do this was that I’ve been reading a book by Thich Nhat Hanh this week. As a monk in Vietnam during the war, even in situations where his life or the lives of people he was working to save were threatened with an imminent deadline, he was able to practice mindfulness, and the solution would come to him. “If I can’t be at peace in the midst of a horrifically tense situation, then I can never truly be at peace,” he wrote, or something to that effect. I really buy into this idea of being calm in the midst of tense situations helping to bring the situations, and possible solutions, into perspective. I’m really sensitive to stress, which is why I’ve often run from responsibility.

Anyway, the point is that the breathing worked for me and I felt much better. Though I’ve tried on and off for years, that’s the first time I think I really hacked into a soothing “meditation.” It was cool. And that’s what prompted my previous blog entry and this one. They just came out of that.

Another Entry – Trying To Find an Identity Amidst the Surreal Experience that is Life in Hanoi; Or, A Pilgrim’s Story.

Part of what makes writing a blog difficult for me is the need to make it relatable. I can only explain things through my own skewed perceptions of the world. In the long run I consider this a strength, because most travel blogs out there end up talking about the same things. But if I am writing so stubbornly, there is the question of why publish it at all, inevitably post it to Facebook, and hope other people read it? Writing a blog already seems like such an ego trip in most cases. And third, I tend to be completely honest when I write, which is intimidating to publish publicly. And fourth, I care about writing, which means I’m very afraid of being criticized for it. And fifth, it’s like choosing to do a school assignment. I also don’t want to offend or upset anyone.

But ah well, I will write a new one anyway. I think it’s the right thing to do. If I wasn’t me, and was instead one of my family and friends, I would be interested in reading something from that other side of the world, or from inside of the mind of the somewhat reclusive person that I am.

Vietnam, Vietnam. When I’m living here, what is there really to say about it? The recent trip to Bali, was, quite literally, a breath of fresh air. While I was there I felt healthier, more energized, in love with the landscape of constant and new, surprising beauty.

Why do expats seem to so unanimously “love” Hanoi and Vietnam? I think there is a unique energy here: a vibrant, lustful, intoxicating energy. At the same time there is a gentleness and refinement in the fine curves of the architecture and the locals’ (especially in the older generations, no matter how poor) dignified, careful manners. There’s a free-for-all feeling in the traffic, and I imagine when one rides their motorbike they feel like a modern day cowboy. It may be possible for a person like me to truly dive into this experience, embrace it, become changed by it for better and worse. However, for myriad reasons I have stayed on the outskirts of it all.

It’s natural for me to live in a sort of ebb and flow of embracing experience and then retreating for a while. As an introvert, I need time to process what I’ve perceived, not just on a day to day basis, but on a year to year as well. Before I went to China, I had worked my mind into a keen, open state. My self-confidence was much higher than it had been in a long time, and I felt content and in constant enjoyment of the life around me. I was very open to new things. I had spent the summer feeling more independent, as I actually was able to support myself by working at a job. I was also surprised to find my brain becoming more musically adept- the first time I had witnessed practicing a skill actually having a repercussion and opening new perceptions/abilities to me (though after a few years of not playing those skills have faded once again; it’s funny now to remember that when I first arrived in China people were actually impressed by my singing ability).

The point is, all this lead to me making new, close friends quickly in China, and spending an adventurous year really doing a lot. It was wonderful, but by the end I was so tired and it had become a chore. I was still traveling, but it had lost any interesting magic for me. It was just being done because I felt it had to be. After the year ended, I retreated to the US to figure things out, which ended up taking six months. I read, hung out with a few close friends, doubted myself, got back into a good routine of anti-anxiety medication, which I had stopped using after a few months in China in a peak of overconfidence.

When I went to Vietnam, I was still much in this introspective state, not really knowing who I should be and just hoping to support myself for a while and “figure things out.” And overall I think it has gone quite well. I am feeling more confident, have more presence of mind, more identity. It’s still quite mellifluous but that’s not a bad thing. But to summarize, being in this certain phase is what has kept me out of diving into the typical Hanoi foreigner scene that is beloved by those who seek a high degree of stimulation. Instead, I rented a small room deep in a very local, non-touristy, non-expat saturated area close to my work. I haven’t purchased a motorbike, and have spent most of my time here without a phone. I have done some light traveling, but right now my priorities are reading, meditation, a little studying of the Viet language, sleeping, saving up some money, and “figuring things out.” The other factor that has been added on to this is Dada, my Indonesian girlfriend whom I met in Hanoi. She keeps things from becoming too systematic as each month we have a visit of one to the other and everything, including my worldview, is shaken out of place once again. Then I return to my routine and start to rebuild. Next month she will visit me again for an extended stay in Hanoi before departing for her trip through Europe; and so things will take on yet another layer. Constant change keeps things surreal.

Emily’s Interview

My sister chose to interview me for a college paper. Since I wrote all this stuff out anyway, and it’s a lot of the things that I think people are interested in about teaching abroad, I figured I might as well use it for a blog post. Great questions, Emily!

1.) What steps did you have to take before going to Vietnam? Classes, applications, etc.

After teaching for 10 months in China, I decided to get an ESL teaching certificate before doing that job again. Having a certificate would give me access to better jobs and maybe I would actually have some idea what I was doing. A co-teacher of mine in China told me that the CELTA certificate was the most widely-known, rigorous, prestigious, and expensive of these certs. There are seemingly endless TEFL courses available in the world, some online, some in person, some in foreign countries and some in the US. They range from 3 hours to 190. The cheaper, shorter, easier options aren’t as valuable but can get you a job at lots of less-reputable schools. I decided to go all-out and try to take what, after extensive (excessive) research, I hoped to be the best option available, though opinions vary on whether the CELTA is actually worth it over cheaper choices.

My course lasted four weeks in Chicago. It cost about 2,795 dollars for the course and I also had to pay around 1200 for lodging while I was there. It was a good experience and I feel I became a more confident teacher. However, the course mainly focuses on teaching adults, which I did not end up doing and thus do not use a lot of what I learned. However, in some vague way, I feel it did improve my teaching ability and certainly my confidence, which is a lot of what ESL teaching is.

After the course, I lazily began my job search. The website from my course had a job section that I mainly used. A person can select the country they want to work in and see which jobs are available there, or just look at which jobs were posted most recently. I was originally leaning towards Japan, but I had heard lots of good things about Vietnam, and these positive reports from co-workers and travelers had lodged in my consciousness like slow-blooming seeds. I did a lot of research on different countries to live and work in, and applied for jobs in Poland, Prague, Japan, Indonesia, Columbia, Vietnam, and more. Though I was offered a lot of the jobs I applied for (after sending in my resume, doing a skype interview and sometimes filling out some more application forms), I found the jobs I was offered in Vietnam stood out because of their comparatively low hours and good salary. The salary was about $1800 a month, which is good in the ESL world, where one is generally living in countries that have a very cheap cost-of-living compared to the US and western Europe.

Between two jobs in Vietnam, I chose the one with higher salary and pre-planned lessons. Planning lessons every day with very little guidance or materials from the school had been a big source of stress for me in China. The application process was generally conducted with foreigners, and was very laid-back. I put off accepting for a while as I tried to make a final decision, and by the time I decided I wanted the job it took about two weeks for the company to reply because the main hiring manager was, as I later learned, on a bit of a crazy vacation in Cambodia. However, when he came back he said the job offer was still on the table and I could fly down later that week. After some debating, I did so.

The company helped me get my tourist visa, which lasts a year. They needed to send me a letter of invitation to the country. I “rented” a return flight ticket through a website for $10 in order to circumvent the country’s requirement that any foreigner entering needs a return to get a visa. However, I did not end up needing it.

Now, I am technically working illegally as I wait to receive my work visa/residence permit. I’ve gotten my CELTA and college degrees notarized at the American embassy, I’ve gotten a local health check to ensure I’m not bringing the country any horrendous diseases, I got my new permanent address verified at the local police station (after a month of waiting because the Sergeant was “on vacation;” actually, this is generally because the police are attempting to demand a bribe but the landlord refuses) and now I just need to go get a “local” background check done, which may also require a bribe but hopefully not.

2.) What is the biggest challenge you’ve come across since being there? How have you worked to overcome it?

The biggest challenge for me is the teaching itself. I’m naturally very introverted and it’s hard to entertain a group of fifteen kids for an hour and a half at a time, to keep them interested. However, having the lessons planned has allowed me to focus on developing my classroom personality and the teaching has gotten more bearable, sometimes even fun. I still get nervous before work, and this can be hard as I work in the evenings (generally about 4:30 to 8:45) and so I sometimes feel a sort of nervousness/dread throughout the day as my shift approaches.

However, the low amount of hours, opportunity for adventure and new experience, and ability to live pretty well (living in a poor country as a westerner is like using a cheat-code to instantly become upper-middle class) have made me determined to get the hang of this sort of job. I’ve stuck with it, realizing that as long as you show up for work and are relatively sober and clean, and still fulfill the local image of a “foreigner,” it’s pretty hard to get fired.

Compared with the teaching, other challenges are not so bad. When I first arrived my goal was mainly to eat and survive. Now I’m continually learning new things, places, words, foods, and cultural details that make my life feel like it’s in an on-going, satisfyingly gradual state of improvement.

3.) What skills or personality traits do you have that you believe help you in your job?

I definitely think not being picky, being generally relaxed and flexible, open to new experience and unexpected occurrence, not easily frightened, and kindness/compassion for others have all helped me greatly. I enjoy floating through each day like a leaf on the wind. Foreigners who have strong, specific ideas about things tend to complain all the time and be unhappy. I’m just glad to be alive and to have time to pursue the things I want to. Life becomes more like being in a dream or surreal story.

4.) What is the biggest takeaway or life lesson you’ve learned from being abroad?

That there really are lots of different, valid ways to live life, and “conventional wisdom,” common sense, and some aspects of morality all change from place to place. A person shouldn’t get hung up on the “right way” to live, and shouldn’t be afraid to pursue the life they want and keep learning from it.

Hanoi Life, Taking Shape

It has been a while since the last blog post. I had promised a quick follow-up but the time did not feel right until now. It’s been a couple of months since my arrival and I have moved from my hostel into a little apartment near my place of work. The apartment consists merely of one room that I’m renting in a house owned by a Vietnamese woman. There’s a few other foreigners renting rooms here as well- at least one American and some Indian people.

Teaching children is as strange an experience as ever. It is exhausting to me, actually. It’s gradually becoming more instinctual, which is good. The less I think about it, the better I tend to do. Sometimes I find the children amusing, sometimes endearing, cute, sometimes repulsive and insane. I still feel close to my childhood and remember well how much more I valued my world and that of my friends as opposed to that of the hopelessly “out-of-touch” adults. I see the same things in these kids, the same obsession with their own little fantasy realms and how inaccessible it is to me. The moment I take up something that they joke about and try to turn it into an element of the class is the moment that thing loses its value among them. It’s the equivalent of something “going corporate,” being acquiesced by the uncool element of society. Sometimes I do this just to eliminate their repetitive jokes and comments that I don’t understand or their attempts to be edgy and push the boundaries. I wish they would just behave themselves smoothly and forget about fun! Let me make my money with ease, please.

But its a constant struggle of adjustment. Any time I think I have finally got things down, I have a class that completely throws me and rudely reinforces the knowledge that I have to come to class prepared, focused and flexible every day to deal with whatever may happen. I cannot do it on autopilot, yet, unfortunately. I wonder if it will ever be possible to do so.

Some days I feel like Squidward- I would rather sit in my room and read a book than deign to humor whatever ridiculous fantasy  these annoying and repulsively energetic little creatures are going to try to thrust on me. There’s more than a few days that I actively empathize with and respect the philosophies of Agatha Trunchbull. However, there are growing amounts of times (usually when under the influence of a particularly strong dose of Vietnamese espresso) that I actually enjoy my time in the classroom and we all have a great time.

So that’s teaching; I suppose about 50% of my experience here. With life in Vietnam itself, it’s hard to know where to begin. A lot of it feels routine to me by now. If you’re curious about anything, feel free to leave any questions in the Facebook comments for me and I’ll try to answer in my next post (whenever that may be).  Most days, I wake up around noon, make some tea and a peanut butter jelly sandwich, read for a while (currently usually a Murakami book, Game of Thrones, or a variety of self-help style books), maybe shower, then head to find some food and go to work. I’ll usually have some kind of street food, often pho (a soup of rice noodles and meat, is one way to describe it, but food holds so little interest to me, and especially talking about food, that I really couldn’t give many more details) and then make my way through the maze of narrow alley-ways and frantic hordes of motorbikes to my work building. I’ll stop and pick up a “caphe sua” (espresso coffee with condensed milk) at a nearby coffee shop and then head across to the complex that houses my school, going past the KFC, up the stairs, past the internet gaming dungeon, the “Nuke” fitness center, and into the private English language center. I get the coffee due to the fact that I love being low-energy and existing in low-energy environments, so interacting with children without any artificial stimulant is fairly agonizing. Most days, I teach from 5:30 to 8:45, with 15 minutes between classes at 7:00. After work I enjoy coming home, reading, watching an occasional episode of an anime or old movie, and going to sleep. People like to say “work hard, play hard” to describe their lifestyle, but I’ve come overseas in order to pursue the lifestyle of my personal dreams – “work soft, play soft.”

So that’s a start of an explanation of life in Hanoi. Stay tuned for more posts that may reveal more details, and eventually the traces of a complete picture may (or may not) begin to form. Life is vague and incoherent, after all, so lets not try to make artificial structure from the beautiful ambiguity! This is the post-modern age, folks.

Chicago to Hanoi – The Journey – Long, Somewhat Strange, Trip

It’s the morning of my second full day here in Hanoi. It’s been a mix of emotional extremes, at least for me, a person not generally accustomed to large emotive swings. I’m writing this in the private room I’ve rented for the week in a hostel in Hanoi’s “Old Quarter,” the main backpacker area and a pretty cool little place.

The journey here was quite smooth, apart from being told at the O’Hare check-in counter that I should either cancel my trip or immediately purchase a return ticket, because I wouldn’t be let into Vietnam without one. When I told them that I was going to be living there, teaching, for an indefinite time, they called the Hanoi immigration office, who confirmed that I would indeed need a return ticket but may or may not actually be asked to prove that I have one. The Chinese manager who made the phone call at O’Hare told me in heavily accented broken English that if they asked for one, I could buy one online at the Vietnamese airport, or at least pretend to be doing so… at least I think that’s what he was saying. Anyway, after my flustered, exasperated parents came over to see what was taking me so long at the ticket counter, they handed over my ticket, although not until I signed a waiver saying I would not hold EVA air accountable for anything unpleasant that might occur.

In keeping with my experience of my long flights to and from China, my experience on EVA was great. The food was delicious, the seats were spacious, the entertainment selection was good, I slept a lot, I got a free bottle of water. I had been upgraded to Elite class at the check-in counter, possibly because of the inconvenience of delivering to me some hard news coupled with the expression of pure incredulity on my dad’s face. The airline was Taiwan based, filled with many Taiwanese people going home, and it did a good job of giving me a favorable impression of the country. I watched several episodes of a Taiwanese travel show on the plane, and it did the (perhaps intentional) job of making me make a mental note to visit the country in the future.

During my three-hour layover in Taipei, I was nervous enough about possibly being refused entry to Vietnam that, on the timely and helpful suggestion of a friend currently working in Saigon, I “rented” an outgoing ticket through a website service created just for the type of situation I found myself in. Apparently, it’s common practice for countries to require entering expats to have an outgoing ticket booked when they enter a country, so that the government knows the careless foreigner won’t run out of money within their borders and turn to a life of crime. This website had been created to allow travelers to circumvent this inconvenient stipulation by allowing them to “rent” real airline tickets for a period of 24 hours. One simply enters their (un)intended “departure date” from the desired country, and the company emails them a pdf of a legitimate itinerary for an outgoing flight on that day a few minutes later. The website claims it’s all perfectly legal because they are booking legitimate flights for people. However, after 24 hours the ticket is cancelled, leaving someone like me just long enough to use it if necessary to show to a border guard. This service costs 10 dollars, and I did take advantage of it.

Upon landing in Hanoi, my first impression was of the suffocating smog. Yes, here it was again, the same wondrous grey haze I remembered so fondly from my days in China. The far edges of the airport’s landing area were just barely visible. All beyond was obscured. It confirmed my worst expectations, which I had felt would come true but had still dared to hope may not. I knew the air quality would be quite bad (Vietnam has the 8th worst air quality in the world, mainly in its two major cities), but I had been holding out hope that maybe it wouldn’t be quite so visible. Alas, here it was.

Getting the Visa on Arrival went about as smooth as could be hoped. It took a long while of waiting outside immigration, with a gaggle of other foreigners, screaming babies, and droning, incomprehensible announcements on the loud speakers. Standard airport fare. My somewhat-illicit “return ticket” was not required after all, in the end, and after about an hour of waiting (at least there were chairs) I picked up my Visa (for a solid $135) and walked through immigration with no problems. I picked up my bags, exchanged money self-consciously while being watched hawkishly by men offering vehemently “taxi,” found a slightly more legitimate seeming ride (while still being followed by those other men), and, I hoped, was on my way to the hostel where I would be spending the first week.

This is where I’ll end my tale for now. I feel obliged to give the details of my journey here, maybe for those that are curious or thinking of doing something similar themselves, wondering how it will go. This is my memory of that trip, and I think things got more interesting after the plane flight (as they usually do) but I’ll have to give it a little time before I tell that next tale. I’ve been busy preparing for my training, sleeping, wandering, and trying to get my mind straight, which is why I haven’t gotten around to writing anything here until now. So many ideas and impressions have come, gone, faded. The first night I was in a state of jet-lagged, accepting despair, the next day contained moments of bliss interspersed with nausea and napping, and today possesses a light sheen of nervousness for my first day of job training, which begins in just a few hours. Thanks for reading.

Note on the Header: Apparently I started this blog page in 2014 and never wrote any entries. I used my Twitter handle, “Jesus8877,” as the blog name (I guess my intention with that name was to be meaninglessly absurd). Now I’d like to change it/get rid of it but haven’t yet figured out/devoted the time to doing so. 

Note on the Title: Couldn’t resist including a Grateful Dead reference. 

New Journey Begins

Well, today is the day that I once again leave all these old comforts of home to depart for some exotic, unknown foreign land. Last time I left I didn’t really know what I was leaving. I didn’t realize what it would feel like to be without the nearby support of my friends and family. But the most shocking thing to lose was the comforting, familiar, reliable infrastructure of the USA.

Living in the US, I often feel like a warm, coddled child. Perhaps this is because, as a white, middle class, suburban young guy, I am right where I belong. This country is made to support people like me. Life is the US can be very comfortable and convenient, but there is one caveat: you have to put in the time. It’s not necessarily unreasonable to ask. If you want to enjoy the benefits of this society, you have to contribute to it yourself. To a person in my position, that means you generally have to commit to some kind of 40 hour-plus workweek. There’s certainly nothing wrong with this and I admire anyone who does it. It’s just not something I personally want to commit to at this point in time. I still believe there is more out there for me to experience first.

So, the solution? I will once again be leaving to teach overseas. Of course, this isn’t merely being done to escape a 9-5. It’s done for the adventure, the experience, the knowledge, something to write about; all that good, healthy stuff. It just also happens to be a way to escape the immediate entry into the boring, unrewarding 9-5 that I fear I would find myself stuck in.

There are a couple ways that people tend to perceive this course of action. In one sense, it is a lazy cop-out- I’m escaping the workload mentioned above, instead taking a job where the two main qualifications are things I had in first grade-  being a white, American looking person and speaking English as my native language. Though I have a college degree, an ESL certificate, and good intentions, I still don’t feel like someone who is *meant* to be a teacher; I don’t particularly enjoy teaching or interacting with students. There are fun moments, and I do my best;  but the job is admittedly, mainly a means to an end- an opportunity for adventure. Am I taking unfair advantage of these high-paying students, whose families believe that learning from exorbitantly priced native-English speakers, regardless of teaching qualification, is really the best way to learn English? ? As a student of mine in China once declared, “you are playing us.”

So that’s the cynical, hard-nosed way of looking at it. That’s what the burned-out expats, wanting to look tough, experienced, unafraid to face reality, like to espouse to the optimistic, fresh-faced young teachers who arrive full of excitement and good intentions. But there’s another way to look at it: I’m taking advantage of an opportunity most of the world’s population does not receive. I’m not selling myself out to a  potentially soul-sucking, boring job and mind-numbing existence. I’m daring to do something different and frightening. I’m expanding my cultural horizons. If I pull off actually being a good teacher, I help citizens of foreign countries greatly improve their future prospects.

Being optimistic is scarier than being pessimistic. I wrestle with both sides of this. Am I helping to perpetuate an immoral, profit-minded industry that feeds off naive native families? Or am I having a great adventure and helping the denizens of less-developed nations in the process? It’s so obvious that the truth is a mixture of all of the above/shades of grey that it’s not even worth saying it.