Writing this at the end of the week, it’s already hard to remember what day one of travelling looked like – it feels a lifetime away, a lifetime of growth and of stumbling too. We arrived in Vietnam one week before the program start date and two weeks before entering classrooms. In our first week, I chose to travel with two others in our group to Ho Chi Minh city for an extra week of enjoyment.
I saw incredible sights like Landmark 81 (the tallest building in Vietnam), the Nguyen Hue walking street, the Imperial Palace, and even took tours to the Mekong Delta and the Cu Chi Tunnels. Despite all the beauty and adventure surrounding us, midway through the week I realized I had checked out and could not bring myself to check back in. I felt like a foreigner but not because of the country, the wild pace of the city, the new food, or even the climate; I felt foreign to myself because in this new environment I was behaving in ways that were more subdued, more flexible, more open, and simultaneously more vulnerable. I found myself wishing after the fact that I had known how I would feel – disoriented and detached from myself, or wishing that I had thought through my priorities, commitments, and tendencies before arriving.
But, despite the honesty of those wishes, I learned that I could not have known or prepared myself for anything I felt and the rollercoaster of excitement and everyday struggles. So began the process of establishing new boundaries like taking days off from activities the group wanted to do together, talking less, communicating more, initiating more, and waiting more too (which worked sometimes and didn’t work other times). In this first week, I realize I still have yet to discover who I am as a teacher and person in this new context of being foreigner, roommate, individual, and even, at times, solo adventurer. There is challenge and discomfort in all this but joy too finding new spaces for myself to exist.
I had come on this trip expecting the Mekong Delta with its quiet canals, welcoming people, fresh fruit, and lush greenness, anticipating insects and skincare to be the hardest things to adjust to. I leave this week in a much deeper headspace, grasping more firmly the challenges of identity, community, and relationships in this space that is new to me. I leave this week learning from the Cu Chi tunnels – a profoundly significant tunnel system created by the resilience of Cu Chi resistance fighters during the Vietnam War who did not fight for ideology but fought for their families and homes – a symbol of persistence, of authenticity, and of tenacity in the face of violent change. The tunnels are a site of nuance and humanity, a place where no people group nor person can be condensed into anything less than their own stories.
I think I had come with expectations of myself to be who I was in Calgary, to be continually excited for adventure and new friendships. I think I had come expecting Vietnam to be an easy paradise with food on every street, affordable clothes everywhere, and beautiful warm weather. What I found instead was freeing, graceful nuance at every turn – nuance in myself, in my team, and in the country in which we are now building lives for the next two months. What I hold onto now is a very long rope that I extend to myself (and, I hope, everyone I interact with too) as I extend and find the limits of who I will be.
Protips from the week:
- Be careful of 10,000 vnd and 100,000 vnd bills – they look very similar!
- Download Grab – essential app for rideshare (like uber) and food delivery, it also has English on it. Keep in mind Grab drivers will call you through the app if you are late – be on time!
- Some ATM’s eat foreign credit cards (Be careful to look for signs that it does/doesn’t take foreign cards)
- You can’t open a deposit account at a bank here because the visa is not long enough.
- There is no right way to do TAB – be very cooperative with your group, or be very independent, be whatever you need to be!