A Visit to the Tam Dao Public School

Today we visited the local public school. Outside the school were signs which said, "clean," "beautiful," and "green." We got a chance to peek into a couple of the class rooms (see the picture above: standard size of all the classrooms). What do you think? Makes our classrooms look rather roomy in comparison. I believe that having my experience in Vietnam will help me appreciate the material blessings I often take for granted back in the United States. Vietnam is a very poor country, and people seem to manage from day to day without the modern conveniences I am used to having.
We sat down with the Vice Principal who poured each of us a cup of very strong green tea and told us all about the school. The school serves first to ninth graders. The elementary school students go to school all day, but the sixth through ninth graders only go to school in the morning. Now before you start thinking that the Tam Dao students have it easy, consider this! The older students don’t go to school in the afternoon because there are not enough teachers. In addition, when they get to tenth grade they have to move to another town and live there while they complete high school and they have to pay for it.
Teachers here don’t have it so easy either! Some of them travel so far that they have to live at the school. They aren’t paid very either. For instance, the music teacher makes the equivalent of $30 per month.
It was a great experience visiting this school and learning about the similarities and differences between Vietnamese and U.S. schools. For example, something they have in common with my students is that they are presently studying for a big "state exam." Good luck on the MCAS, guys!!!

The Dragon and the Fairy

There is a myth in this area of Vietnam that goes a little like this. There once lived a dragon and a fairy who had 100 children. There were fifty sons and fifty daughters. The sons went to the sea and the daughters went to the forest. Each daughter had a temple. The temple I visited today is believed to be one of these daughter temples.
In order to get to the temple we had to climb a large flight of stairs through a bamboo forest. Once we got to the top we were invited into the temple to join in the worship services. There were two temple rooms where many people were sitting cross-legged and praying. In one of the rooms there was a person completely covered in a red blanket. He had some books (probably some form of sacred text) on his head and he was swaying back and forth. I say "he" when actually I could not tell if the person was a "he" or a "she" since he or she was covered from head to toe in a blanket. The worshippers were swaying back and forth with the blanketed figure. A man was reading something out of a book and occasionally the worshippers would chant in response.
I have since learned that he/she is a member of a select group of people who locals believe can "talk to the dead." These select individuals meditate all day and go into a "trance" for two or three days. During the trance these "channelers" can talk to the ancestors and impart great wisdom to the members of the temple.
I felt a little out of place at this worship service, but the worshippers appeared to be very accepting of my presence or at least to tolerate my short visit. Later, I made the mistake of taking a picture of one of the shrines. Immediately after snapping the shot, I heard some women scolding me in Vietnamese. Whoops! I didn’t know one was not supposed to photograph the temple. You live and you learn. I’ll be sure to ask next time.

A Word about Cows

Remember the pet cows I mentioned yesterday? I ate one today. It was really good with rice.

A Word About Mosquitoes

I just saw my first mosquito. In this part of the country mosquitoes can carry diseases such as Dingue fever (related to malaria) and Japanese Encephalitus, which literally makes your brain explode. Lots of bug spray and the proper inoculations greatly reduce the risk of disease and render the little bugs nothing much more than annoying little pests that bite you and make you itch. Check out my bug netting! Keeps the critters out at night.

A Word about the Language

Hello "Xin chao (sin chow)
Goodbye "Tam Biet"
Thank you "Cam on" (kam urn)
I’m sorry "Xin loi" (sin lowey)


Writing Vietnamese using the latin or western alphabet (the letters we use) is a relatively recent practice. The Vietnamese always used Chinese characters to write until a westerner came to Vietnam, translated the language, and wrote out the vocabulary (phonetically) using the latin alphabet. Soon after he accomplished this, the new system was adopted and the Chinese characters were no longer used.

Be careful! Vietnamese is a tonal language. What that means is you must say words at a certain pitch (like musical notes) in order to have the meaning you intend. The same word at different pitches can mean different things.
Vietnamese expressions I like:
Something or someone special is called "noodles." Something you have to do or someone you see everyday is called "rice."

People in Vietnam eat rice every day and eat noodles infrequently or on special occasions. Thus, the expression mentioned above.
For example, school is "rice" and weekends are "noodles."

The Team

We’ve got a great team! There are five volunteers. Bruce and Susan are environmentalist from Colorado who have traveled from Costa Rica to Borneo, Tibet to China, and all over South East Asia. Rachel is a fourth grade teacher from Washington State. Beth is a 7th grade Science Teacher from North Carolina. There are three Vietnamese guides. Lien is a scientist from Hanoi who knows all about butterflies (he’s the one in the picture in the hand out I gave you). Inh (pronounced Ein like in Einstein) is a retired professor from Hanoi. Viet is Lien’s brother. He teaches English in Hanoi. He is my roommate and has acted as my friend and guide since I arrived. I’m really enjoying getting to know everyone. We all enjoy traveling and care deeply about the environment. Even though some of us our teachers, this week we are all students. I am having a great time learning. For the record, I have not once been caught without my pencil and notebook! One cool thing is that there are no detentions. Above is a picture of Viet and Beth in front of the local public school.

Rain, Rain Go Away, The Night the Lights Went out in Tam Dao, and Technical Difficulties

It rained today. Apparently, butterflies don’t like the rain. They hide and sleep which is not good for research purposes. Instead, we are going to visit a temple and local school. I’ll tell you about it in tomorrow’s blog.
The electricity went out last night. This happens frequently around here. There’s a possibility that I may not be able to blog on any given day due to electricity problems. Also, the internet is extremely slow! I will probably not be able to upload videos or extra pictures to the class website. Also, we are looking at live telephone conference for Tuesday and Friday. We just don’t have the bandwidth for a webcast. Oh well.