Keeping the Balls in the Air

When I was in Vietnam recently, I vowed that I would not come home to a stressful, busy life.  Well, I've been home for just over a week, and I'm already swimming.  It's mostly due to my boys going in opposite directions, but I have to say I think it boils down to organization.  For example, had I put it on the calendar, I would have planned for the concert tonight. Both boys play horns in the school bands, and are required to wear white shirts and black pants.  Well, you'd think we had plenty of those lying around, but gosh darn it, these boys are going to be giants with the way they've been growing!  Several weeks ago, I decided to get our clothing at the thrift store, and for the most part totally enjoy that.  But today, I didn't have the time to search rack after rack for the necessary white/black combinations and couldn't come up empty handed.  So off to Target I went.  And what a speedy-gonzales shopping trip that was.  So then we have a fencing (the 3 Muskateers kind, not the pasture kind) tournament this weekend.  I have to basically find every piece of paper that says my younger son is really who he says he is, in addition to every official fencing paper we've ever received, just to fence for the day.  My goodness - I went through less red tape just to get to Vietnam for 2 weeks.  Yikes - the kid's just going to fence!  well, if you've seen my filing system, you'd know I pretty much don't have one.  So surprise, surprise.  It takes me much, much longer than it should to find anything paperwork oriented.  I can feel the balls just dancing over my head - I just hope they won't drop.  As a mother, I hold so much pertinent information way up in my head.  going to Vietnam meant I had to write much of it down to help my husband make heads or tails of the schedule, etc.  I was pretty amazed at how much I - all of us, really - do to make each day happen.  So I'm wondering, what one thing can I do to make tomorrow easier?  I can make lunches tonight.  So that's what I will do.  This will allow me just one more moment to spend with my family - maybe one more cup of decaf will help me celebrate another day.  How about you - what are you doing to make your day a little easier?

Saying Goodbye to Vietnam

My trip to Vietnam is coming to a close.  And I miss my family terribly, but I will miss this country as well.  The friends, the food, the combined pace of crazy traffic versus leisurely living have all burned a place in my mind as things I can learn from.  The picture above says so much to me.  This will be a picture to hang on my wall.  I want to remember these people who do so much with so little.  What we normally spend in one sitting at a middle-of-the-road restaurant back home is a weekly salary for a well-paid teacher.  Yet as much as I want to remember this experience and have it help me make good decisions back home, I also wonder how long will it be before I return to my old ways of living: spending money without considering the real costs, wasting food, and making mindless trips in the car for errands I could have lumped together to save both time and money.  How long before this wonderful experience becomes a faded memory?  How long before I just smile and shake my head at the fact that I bought a gourmet meal for 6 people for under $20?  

Can we really make long-standing changes to our behavior when these habits are old and strong?  How challenging will this be when we live in a culture that moves against the changes we are trying to make, and voluntarily living carefully is against the norm, and living mindfully is not chic or even understood.  It makes no difference to me if people agree with or like the way I want to live.  But it does make a difference to me if society makes it more challenging.  Luckily, I live in a world where I can make the choice of what is most important to me and my family.

Thinking this over, I have decided on the following changes I would like to work on:

• Look at the real reason for stress in my life and decrease it.
• Understand and get to the root of 'what is the real issue?' during difficult situations.
• Understand the 'real cost' of things before I buy them.
• Understand the need for rest, and recognize the difference between being rested and pushing myself too hard.
• Remind myself to be alone for periods of every day, just to be alone.
• Continue to eat dinner for breakfast - I love Pho!
  

So there's my list.  What's yours??

My teaching is finished and now I have a little time to see some of Vietnam before flying to the West Coast to visit family.  I have enjoyed teaching 26 lovely teachers, who are representatives of several schools for blind children.  I witnessed a beautiful concert in our honor this morning that brought me to tears.  20 blind students, all around 14-18 years old, stood in the auditorium to share the most beautiful, traditional Vietnamese music.  Huge drums and stringed instruments accompanied their amazing voices, as I stood in the back and basically wiped my eyes the entire time.  It was not only the music that was so moving for me.  It was the whole experience.  To come from such a privileged place - the US - and not to have thought I was so privileged.  

Of course, I'm not rolling in the dough.  I have a hard time 'making it' just like the next family.  Most months, my paychecks don't stretch far enough.  But here was a group of people who live in extreme poverty, but had the richness in their lives to come together to make incredible music.  And here they were giving their gift of music to us in appreciation for what WE did this week.  I felt both honored and very small at the same time.

Yesterday, I saw people living in the gutters as we drove around in the school van.  I saw men hanging hammocks from the trees along the street at night as their place of rest - just around the corner from my hotel.  When you purchase things, you are expected to haggle.  They jack up the price for foreigners, and it is expected that they will be bargained with.  But every time I do it, I keep thinking - this item is costing me $5.  At home it would be $25.  I should just give them the extra money.  But my colleagues assure me that it would be wrong.  And I suppose I understand.

Somehow, I need to bring this experience home with me as a way to be much more appreciative of my warm bed, car to drive, home and garden, steady job.  I don't have to live on the streets, nor will my children.  I can travel to foreign countries and visit new sights.  I can go to school to advance my education, or I can choose to change my occupation.  I can even change my life structure to include more time off with my family.  I have many choices which my new Vietnamese friends do not have.  And the biggest lesson I have to learn is that even with less, even with 15 people living under one roof, even with crazy traffic in a huge city, even with hardly enough food to feed their family - these folks are happy, social, loving and highly intelligent.  Happier and kinder people I have never met.  Every street corner has someone laughing, smiling or chatting away with someone else.  It has been a truly rich experience.  One that will live with me for a long time.

Taking It All in Stride

The stress level in Vietnam is confusing. As a westerner, I feel considerable stress walking the streets of Ho Chi Minh City. The traffic is horrific - even at 4AM (believe me, I've been awake to check). There are vans, taxis, buses and enough motorbikes to fill your mind of honking for weeks. How they weave in and out of traffic without getting killed is beyond me. To me, the road looks completely blocked with traffic. Dead stop. Then the honking begins (actually never really ceases). And the foreigner in me thinks - "You can honk, but that won't make us move" and amazing as it seems, up comes a motorbike, even a few dozen, and they swish through the crowd of stopped vehicles like a hot knife through butter.

The scary thing is, we have seen very young children on these bikes. They get attached to their adult with a special cloth strap, seated behind, and they go along for the ride. That would make me crazy. No helmet, no fear, no worries. Amazing.

The point of this blog is not to poke at the Vietnamese as doing something different from the western world, and therefore wrong. I am quite amazed at how they are able to live this way and not be completely stressed out. Crossing the street is really a chance to take stock of your life as you never know if you will make it to the other side in one piece. But the Vietnamese take it all in stride. The folks I've met who have made it to the States remark on how QUIET it is - even in the big cities.
Many people here eat on the streets. They literally pull their little stoves, chairs, tables and food out from their homes or storefronts and cook, then eat their meals right on the sidewalk. Each morning at 8, I see a group of women sitting around a little pot of something cooking, stirring, chopping and talking, each with their straw hats over their heads to shield the early sun. They look like they've been there for hours, making everything ready for the day. And they will come out in the evening again. Men cook as well - really you would see people all day, on every street cooking, sitting, drinking, talking. But with no indoor cooking facilities, what do they do in the rainy season? As they move through the morning or evening, people just walk around their cooking apparatus, food, the folks sitting on their chairs. It was described to me as the living room on the sidewalk. I agree. I would be stressed not to have a complete kitchen, and to have to cook on my sidewalk. But this is a way of life for the Vietnamese in this city. And the food they cook smells SO good!

In the Spirit of Mindfulness

After spending an exhausting Saturday walking the streets of Vietnam looking for souvenirs, we spent a quieter Sunday looking at Pagodas.  Buildings I've only seen in pictures, movies, etc., the Vietnamese pagodas are a special, thoughtful place, right in the center of activity.  You could consider them an oasis perhaps, from the hustle of the city.  A chance to step inside for a bit of mindful connection.  These are open to everyone, much like our churches and temples are in the states - and yes, I'm aware we also have pagodas back home, I just haven't seen them.  But I suppose these were special to me since I was able to watch individuals connect with their higher powers openly, and it brought me a bit of peace.  No one seemed to mind us being there or watching the scene, in fact, they seemed to be quite accustomed to it.  We were careful not to take any photos inside the temple or of anyone praying.  I think this actually made the whole experience more sacred to me: I had to remember what I saw and not rely on photos to jog my memory.  And instead of thinking about what might make a good shot, I was more interested in the rituals playing out before me.

Incense plays a very vital role in worship in Vietnam.  The heady fragrance is so powerful, it almost wraps you up and sends you off to the afterlife in it's tendrils of smoke.  It's as if smelling it is an immediate signal to slow down and breathe, reflect, open.  I was moved by the number of young individuals, mostly young women, who came to pray.  They brought young children and walked them up to the statues to first light and then wave their incense sticks to the four corners of the world.  Everyone did this with reverence and peace.

So it makes me think about our life back home.  Do we have enough places of respite in our day?  This does not have to mean going to church or temple, though for many, that is how they fulfill their needs for reflection.  What does turning inward and giving over to a higher power, or even our own psyches do for us?  I'm thinking about how I feel when I have really reflected on an issue at hand for a long time.  Then I find a way to completely let it go, not give up but give the issue over to something bigger than me, and then return to the issue later with a fresher mind.  Most often, I am able to see things in a brighter light or more intense understanding.  

It really is important to find that place that makes you come to a sense of peace within.  Perhaps it is through meditation, massage, or listening to a sermon.  For some it is listening to music that transports them, for others it is complete silence.  

What do you do to transport yourself to an inner sense of peace?

Putting things into perspective

So I had lunch together with my colleagues today in a very fancy, beautiful restaurant in the heart of Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.  The food was really great, and I was nervous by the time the bill came.  I had been warned that food bills could add up pretty quickly, so I was prepared for the worst.  I'm also not very good at the exchange yet.  So the bill came, and it was 560,000 Dong.  That's pretty much around $28 for an amazing lunch for 3 people.  Wow - I thought it was a pretty good deal.

Then we had dinner with a total of 5 people.  The bill came back at 524,000 Dong.  Again, about $23 for a huge dinner that back home would easily be around $150.  So, while I was mulling over the cheapness of it all, we heard that Vietnamese teacher's salaries are around US$50 - 200 per month.  This is so hard to understand and put into perspective.  So our dinner, so cheap at $23, could have been 1/2 someone's monthly salary.  How can people live on that?  That does explain why people here need to use every resource they can to make ends meet.  I am enjoying my exploration of the culture in Vietnam.  I am sure I will bring home more insight into living simply, and more appreciation for the way of life that I have.

I'm in a Foreign Country...!

The sun has come up on my first real day in Vietnam.  The weather last week from home had been forecasted to be rainy this week, but now that the sun is fully up, I think that was a mistake.  Beautiful day to go exploring this busy, busy city.  It seems odd to me to be in this place after focusing so much on simplifying my life.  Of course, this is a work trip, and not the type of place that I would choose to come for rest and relaxation.  I do think, though, that I can learn from the Vietnamese people, in how to do more with less and make more use of what we do have.  

So far, my impression  of this city is one of constant activity - just from sitting in my hotel room, I can hear the constant buzz of life with tooting horns and trucks rolling by.  Definitely a lively place!

My plane ride was long.  Really long.  Desperately loooooooong.  After reaching Chicago, we had a very long ride to Hong Kong - 15 hours, but that jumped to 17 hours after a 2 hour delay for 'engine trouble'.  My colleague is convinced that with all the extra security around, it was not engine trouble at all, but something more terrorist related.  I wasn't too sure I wanted to travel over the Bering Sea with engine trouble - or terrorist trouble.  But we landed safely in Hong Kong and traveled on to Vietnam smoothly.  

If you are wondering what I did for all those long hours, here's a rundown:  I slept for about 2 hours - I listened to Kabul Beauty School on disc, and I watched a bazillion movies.  I listened to my favorite music, and when I was too much of a zombie to do anything, I just sat.  I had twin babies behind me that screamed...that's right...screamed throughout the 15 hours - maybe for half the time on and off again.  This made me treasure my children sooooo much.  Mainly for the fact that I didn't have to keep them entertained while I was in zombie-land, but also because we never had that kind of experience with them on a plane.

So there's my low-down.  More later.