G.R.whhhhhhhaaaaat.

Vestiges of soft unrequited love remain nestled between the cracks of broken cement and dirty brown carpet.  Masked by straight lines and squared lawns, his love for her was reduced to the consistent inaudible drone of Chinese and Vietnamese radio, hum drums delights of celebrity Taiwanese game shows, and the wailing rain of Korean dramas. Outside of this, the clanking of dishes and sizzle of blood-fresh meat and pounded garlic occasionally surfaced. It was hard to believe that love existed in this place.

For their daughter, love was finite and existed at her desk. Her desk was small, made of plastic plywood and had an eclectic variation of shelves. Dents and marks were covered with stickers. Stickers were layered with even more dents and marks. She would methodically place her school papers to the left, her aladdin picture on the back and whatever novelty items she hoarded.

Her dad's peculiar obsession with moving furniture around the house kept her desk moving. Her desk was familiar with many rooms in the house. For a period of time her desk spent time in the dining room/living room. She rather enjoyed this lack of privacy. She saw her dad more this way.

...to be continued

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Dear Arcade Fire,

You are good to me. Thank you for filling my morning with inspirational dance goodness through the harmonious belching of your preachy songs. Thank you for existing and creating.

hugs, kim

I've been in a frenzied state because I have my GRE's in 4 days and continue to score very poorly on practice tests. I realized that most of this has to do with stress and me concentrating on "finishing" rather than answering each one with caution and care.  I'm just going to relax and breath and concentrate on the test. Listen to Arcade Fire. Try to do my best and if I don't do well, it won't be the end of the world.

Afterwards I'm getting a cupcake for myself and my friend Linh and we're going to eat fuckin' crab. Linh will fly to America back to Des Moines, Iowa the very next day so I am sad. However, I am very delighted with the fact that I have friends in the Midwest. This means that I can probably satisfy my dreams of midwestern way of life by being a stupid California tourist who can't tell the difference between Idaho and Iowa in the very near future.

June 23rd will mark the "last stretch" if you will. Here are my travel plans:

July 2nd - July 4th - Hue, Vietnam -  final VIA hooplah! Goodbye to Ellioto.
July 11th - 13th - Phnom Penh, Cambodia for work (maybe Siem Reap?)
August 16th - 21st - Taipei, Taiwan - to do what I don't know but I really want to speak Chinese.
August 21st - Los Angeles, CA, USA (!) - land of people who speak English!
August 28th - Huntington Beach, CA - ADAPT Inspires - Pacific Links Foundation fundraising luncheon - I'm a speaker!

In there I want to fit in another rendezvous in Hong Kong to see some friends and a trip to Hanoi and our shelter for trafficking returnees in Lao Cai province. In addition to all the goodbye Vietnamese dinners I must do before I leave.

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And what is a post without videos? Arcade Fire!

I GUESS WE JUST HAVE TO ADDJUUUUUUUUUUUST!!! My Vietnamese neighbors probably don't know what hit them.

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I really like this blog entry from good girl dinette in Los Angeles, CA - "American diner meets Vietnamese comfort food." I like how she captures her parent's early dates with such color and liveliness.

Because her blog is nestled into her website I am unfortunately am unable to get the link to the exact entry. If you scroll down you can find the entry under the title "date" Here's a snippet:

banh khot
the tiny stall is packed with hungry diners waiting in front of dimpled pans in which a mixture of rice, coconut milk, and scallions is sputtering in oil. when the banh khot with dried shrimp and mung bean come out, they are perfectly blistered and crisp. she eats deliberately. he can see her mind working. she knows the basic recipe, but cannot discern the ingredient or technique that distinguishes these cakes from the others at the market. he laughs as she looks from their empty plates to the coveted batter next to the fire. he lets her take one last look, then takes her hand and they exit onto the street.

che
before too long, a vendor stops in front of them. in today's yoke are mung beans and red beans in coconut milk, neatly poured into plastic bags, each with a straw fastened by rubber bands. they take two bags and resume their saunter.

cine
the marquee advertises charlie chaplin's "modern times." they walk toward their seats, arms carrying beef jerky, coca-colas, and popcorn. the cool and dark of the movie house and her perfume do their magic and he falls asleep halfway into the film. this time it's she who indulges him and lets him sleep. when the movie ends, she nudges him awake and takes his hand to leave the theater.


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I've realized that I'm very good with creativity if I have limitations or guidelines. Like a homework assignment. I love K-12 homework assignments, I'm very good at them. Make this. Make that. Do this using these things. I may entertain the idea of doing a project that gives me guidelines to make this and make that. I also love following rules (like a martinet) and hate not following rules, and I say this with as much veracity as I can. Breaking rules gives me a heart attack.

If I can focus this much time to my GRE's I probably damn could focus it on other things...like learning how to read music, doing art and trying to practice and be good at it, exercise, spend time with family, old friends.

Everybody, everybody wanna fall in love.

After realizing that I never listened to Metric's Fantasies (2009), it's been accompanying me for last week or so as I cope with a few things. My aunt from America just left Vietnam so I'm recovering from the mess it left me in haha. 5lbs later, a very tired and sleepy me, I've realized that I have learned how to be really flexible in Vietnam, routine is anything but achievable and perhaps I will never achieve that while I am here. While people come in and out of this country, as I make new friends, miss old ones, and talk to the best ones, I learn alot about the nuances of people and what makes them who they are. Due to the lack of freeways and my ability to drive, my time is spent talking to people or really just existing with strangers.

I'm okay with that, although I can be achingly shy at times. I work at an all women NGO, so I have little to worry about in the boy department. Anyways, I tend to stay away from that in general, knowing my tendency to be easily smitten. My emotions I can't control, but who I interact with I can. Distance I can do, but closeness is hard for me.

The future is scarily coming around the corner, and before I know it I'll be back in the states trying to make something of myself. I may return to the states in December and I really really look forward to that. One week in the lovely Bay and then two weeks for SoCal although I detest it.

My thoughts awkwardly float around my mind all day long and then at night too. They want to get out and become something but can't, instead I'd rather daze out into imaginary situations and reliving things of the past, it seems easier. I've been sleeping alot or feeling sleepy in general. This past weekend I somehow made it to Tra Vinh to visit my wonderful confidence boosting friends Linh and Thy who tend to smother me with so much love that I don't know what to do with myself if I didn't have a dose of them after two weeks or so. Linh is from Iowa and Thy is from Wisconsin (SO COOL). There is something very curious about the midwest and how individuals grow, interact, and shape their identities that intrigue me in general. Actually anything outside of California makes me curious in general.The landscape in which we develop and shape our minds cultural changes and its different.

Anyways, after a few bus exchanges and nice xe om drivers, my mood lightens. When xe om drivers are nice and trustworthy I conclude the place is nice. The xe om drivers didn't rip me off nor were they creepy so I concluded that Tra Vinh was a very nice place.  I have a general distrust when I first travel anywhere, until I understand what is going to occur, until I know what things are suppose to look like and how things run I  become comfortable and at ease. Tra Vinh is approximately 5 hours away, I had to take the bus from Long Xuyen to Can Tho (1.45 hours) then from Can Tho to Tra Vinh (3.5 hours).

The harsh sun tires his wrinkles. They collapse and try to hide but can't. Instead his skin retreats into dark bitterness.  I stare out in front of me with a religious sticker staring at me. This is the same image of a lady that hung on the rearview window of my dad's truck. It is the same lady that stared at me when I looked at my rear view mirror. I didn't know her significance but I just knew she was a lady. My dad took it off after a while saying that it hit my window too much and obstructed my view, yet, he had originally put it there to protect me. She stares at me and I hope she will protect me.

I stare out the window and see a women with no teeth pester a driver. Her small demeanor is defeated as she runs and  kicks the nose of the van and starts hitting the driver. I notice they're laughing, he throws water on her, unable to physically hit her. She yells in the screeching Vietnamese voice that occurs after too many years of yelling. Or maybe it just comes with the beating sun. The heat gets to me and I sit uncomfortably in my seat waiting for it to be 9:00 am so the bus can get going.   Although I am doing anything but moving, the heat is tiring me and all I want is the breeze from the window to come by. She stares at me. I try to let my thoughts wander as buses grumpily arrive at the bus station xe om drivers and others run to the bus and yell a myriad of things, locations, questions, xe om offers. I don't really get to see Vietnamese people run too often I was entertained. 

Because this was their life, I was interested. The bus station was their life, it was a microcosm for their memories, laughter, and friendships. Bus stations hold a general distrust, with people coming in and out, and the dirt clinging to anything it can.  For some this was all they knew and it pulsed in conjunction with theirs. I looked at our driver. He has a few "wisdom" moles. The driver's eyes are no longer dark brown, as if the bitterness retreated and no longer cared to remain. He lights a cigarette and starts the car while she stares. 


Now I leave you with a link to my friend Donna's new website. I admire her as an artist, awkward lovable friend, for her diligence and I don't know her overall inspirational badass-ness to get her creativity out for the world to see it. Hopefully I can do that too one day.

while

purchasing my 17 cent sugar cane drink in a plastic bag, the sugar cane lady began to ask me a series of questions in Vietnamese:


Where were you these past few days?
Oh, I was in Hue and Da Nang.
Ohhhh okay, when will you go back to America?
In another year or so..
Do you have a husband or kids?
No.
Oh no wonder, that's really good...


Now I suppose I can let a little conversation like this go unnoticed and unmentioned as many other details in my life. But let's dissect this together shall we? Sometimes when my mind wanders as I am biking and the sun is baking, I like to think how strange it would be if I was born here. How the things I see would not be out of the ordinary but rather normal, that this would of been my way of life, and instead of biking to Vietnamese class, I would be biking home to my house to help my mom cook dinner. Or I could be biking to the river to go fishing. Or biking to go to the local noisy market where I can pick and touch raw meat and I would still consider it to be clean and sanitary. But as a turn of events, I don't see it that way. Instead I am an outsider protected by my skin, only when my tongue reveals itself do I get exposed. It is a funny feeling that I cannot really describe too well. My vocabulary and diction cannot began to describe what is feels like to "come back home" as many have put it, but for home to not really be your home anymore, and that the experiences that you've had outside of home have somewhat marred you in a good way. I escape.

Now back to this small conversation on a day the sun decides to beat. She sits outside with her dark aged skin, but rather round opal like face with heavy eyelids that sleep above her eyes. She runs this little sugar cane cart through out the morning, by the late afternoon she disappears and makes me sad. Because only she would press fresh sugar cane would be, the other lady does not, and takes it from a cup in the icebox.

[as I am writing this I lightly say hi to a woman who has taken care of her 4 nieces and nephews with her husband leaving her because he couldn't handle all the kids. that is for another time.]

Now where was I, oh yes the cold icebox. I'm not sure if you understand how an icy chilled fresh squeezed sugar cane drink feels on a sweltering sweaty exposed day where the sun decides to take over. Maybe, perhaps it can be comparable to the time you notice a stolen glance.

No wonder she says. As if to explain why a 22 year old woman like me had dedicated two measly years of my life to Long Xuyen, Vietnam. Because a child and a husband would be the two things holding me back, like it holds back many women in Vietnam. Just reminds me of the sacrifice and dedication women have to their families, unknowingly sacrificing their freedoms because this is all they see in front of them.    There is no sacrifice for the women who have children and husbands. Your life changes when that happens. I've seen it many times in and out of Vietnam.

My mind it wanders again, while I am on a bus sneezing through the molded holes of dusty roads and open living rooms, people in pajamas and kids too small for their bicycles riding it like there is no end. I think about future travels, how beautiful it is that my eyes are witnessing things that they've could of seen. My mind escapes, knowing full well it has the ability to do so.