Yesterday, two friends of friends from America happened to be passing through Hanoi (people do that these days!) and gave me the opportunity to play tour guide. First of all: you should know I love being a tour guide--any kind of tour guide. New York City Tour Guide. Amish Country Tour Guide. Vietnam Tour Guide.
So, of course, being their pseudo-guide was great. Its kind of empowering to be a single white female walking around the streets of the Old Quarter in Hanoi and realize that you sort of know where you’re going. Two months ago, “fresh off the boat” you might say, I didn’t think that was possible. As I talked with my two visitors, I realized that there’s a lot that has happened over the past two months that I didn’t think was possible. Its funny: until given the chance to say out loud what you’ve been doing, and the people you’ve been meeting, and the things you’ve been eating, you cannot really process what you’ve been going through. Sure, I try to reflect, but sometimes my own instincts for survival get in the way of my reflection and I just need to troll facebook, watch MAD MEN, or read the TIMES and think about how my problems are cake compared to Obama’s.
The thing that the conversation with my visitors kept coming back to was this real love for my students which is growing everyday. In each of my classes of 40 students, there is only 1 boy--somewhat ironic in a developing country where the role of women could use some progress. Not to discount the boys in the class--they are great, and my joke the first day about them being the lucky ones actually landed.
But the girls-oh the girls!-are just some of the sweetest, most inspiring, most lovely and graceful creatures I’ve ever had the privilege to know. I’ve been able to spend time with some of them outside of our classes, and despite our strong language barrier, the female connection pulls a strong current.
What do we talk about? Well. Obviously. Boys. We talk about boys a lot.
And clothes. And hair. And my new manicure. And GOSSIP GIRL. (“You lived in New York? Did you live on the Upper East Side?!”)
And what is expected of them. And what their families think about them being in college. And what they want to do with their lives. And how they miss their boyfriends, a number of whom are in the army. And how they are scared to go to mandatory military training and learn to shoot guns, but they too would defend their country if asked.
And so many other little things that come out of their mouths that just blow my mind. Some of the girls are goofy, some of them are girly, some of them are shy, but all of them have this graceful way about them which my heavy-handed American mannerisms envy. After 10 months in Vietnam, is it too much to hope that some of their loveliness will rub off onto me?
The other thing that I realized as I was playing tour guide is that, ironically enough, living in Vietnam has fueled a patriotism and American pride within myself that I wouldn’t necessarily know I had if I hadn’t ever left.
Things that happened here in Vietnam during the war were awful--for everyone on all sides. That’s what war is, or as much of it as I, in my sheltered naivety, am able to understand. Still, I’m living in North Vietnam, 34 years after my fellow countrymen caught the last helicopter off a rooftop in Saigon, and I’m proud to be an American. I’m proud when people ask me about my President, and I can say he is an intelligent, self-made man who is challenging America and Americans to be better than maybe some of us believe we can be. I’m proud when I talk about New York, and I see the looks on my students’ faces when I explain that if they walked down the street in Manhattan, people wouldn’t know if they were American or Vietnamese, because everyone looks different. I’m proud that I’m from a country whose government wants me to be here; that wants me to teach, wants me learn, and wants me to come back to America and talk about it.
I’m not completely naive on this. Every morning I read the online edition of the New York Times: Joe Wilson’s disgusting display in Congress. Kanye West’s loathsome hubris. The riots on health care at Town Hall Meetings. I get it; there are reasons to not be proud of America right now. There were reasons to not be proud of America in 1975. That being said, I’m living across the world and I see that my life is one giant opportunity waiting to be had because I’m an American. Somewhere along the line, some people did some things right, and they did so with my future and my dreams in mind.
That’s an incredible thing to realize. And I'm less than 2 months into this thing.
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