Dogs on Scooters and Badminton

I remember reading the Dr. Seuss classic Go Dog, Go! countless times and thinking that all those dogs on bikes or in cars or on scooters were just silly. However, a few days into our Hanoi stay has begun to reveal a subtle change in the relationship between the populace and the canine sort. Yes, dog meat, here proclaimed as a specialty of the house, is still commonly purveyed, although I haven't had the courage to ask any of the local butcher's how they source their thit cho.

                             No hiding what's on the menu here-- the Bold Red Letters Tell you to expect Dog Meat!

But dogs are making their way into the hearts of more middle class families as pets and domestic companions, no longer just a meal still on the paw. This is epitomized by the accomodations that the species is developing for the modern transport mechanisms of this society, predominantly the motorscooter, and the bicycle (more and more of which are now electric versions, still classified as such although some have evolved to the point of losing their pedals.) Their US cousins who have trained limo drivers to open the window a bit so their heads and tongues can hang out in the breeze may be more sophisticated and well endowed financially, but their Hanoi cousins are moving up.

Nevertheless, dogs that stand up with their front paws on the steering mechanism are just a tail flick away from being able to self-propel at the pace of Hanoi traffic since paw-tip starters and shifters are standard. And who needs brakes? Voice recognition will take care of that soon enough.

      

The humans of Hanoi are a fairly active people, given their urban lives and ever-present motorbikes that careen through every alley and along every ditch-bank that connects them to the major veins and arteries of national life. But they also sensibly enjoy the pleasures of physical activity in the shoulder periods of the day, when the temperatures moderate a touch and their schedules are less hectic. We regularly walk around a small park between our home and the church, which is crowded at these times with people engaged in a variety of pursuits.

       

There are the Relief Society sisters stretching and toning to an aerobic beat, with occasional notes of music mixed in, and a few off in a corner doing contemplative yoga and tai chi. The adolescent students join us in jogging or walking around the perimeter streets, though rarely at a pace beyond 12 minutes to the mile. A few foursomes use the two tennis courts, mostly men, but there are lots of badminton players, at all levels. For many it is a simple back and forth between a father and son, or husband and wife (that would be us) but there are also some serious talents who engage in rather high level doubles play, both mixed and same sex. (Mind you, all this activity in the parks is going on at 5:30 and 6 in the morning!) These advanced players are fun to watch as they take this sport to a really fun level that challenges reflexes as well as mental strategy, if not also strength and endurance.

       

In fact, one can scarcely walk down any broader sidewalk in the town without finding a set of lines painted to accommodate those who want to play within them and keep score. We'll let you know when we invest in a net, but for now we're duffers in the land of the lotus-eating, badminton-playing, Moto-riders, and enjoying it.

                                  

The lotus is the national flower of Vietnam, turning stagnant pools into fields of beautiful blossoms like this, and making a healthy fruit in its seed-pod, one enjoyed as a dessert, or added to savor the rice. One of our students brought us a bunch of them as cut flowers this evening, a token of love and respect, and perhaps that we are beoming part of the culture. It is perhaps significant that they were still in the bud stage, ready to burst forth with beauty, but not quite there yet, much as we are in what we are trying to do here. I guess as we soak up the light and the moisture we too can blossom more fully and leave behind us here a legacy of seed-pods to add savor to another generation of pioneers.

The Young Prince and The Dragon

I look at your images, the artifacts created as electrons or magentic fields passed by you, the colors of pink and blue that my tools can create when applied to your flesh, and also to your bone. Although the story now is black and white, its clarity assured, I do not know you. Your face, your laugh, I've never seen, never heard. Your childhood triumphs I never cheered, your adolescent trials never moaned. But this one is unlike any other, a pain you felt deep in your bone.

       

I can see now how that pain began as the periosteum stretched taut, resisted, and aroused your brain to complain that something was not right! You voiced your concern, but a first attempt to treat a bruise to which all boys who are boys, rough or tumble, might be subject, did not surmount the pressure from within. As cells and swelling increased the mass kept pushing outward without respect.

I do not know the agony that your parents felt, when with you in tow they again sought medical advice, and first saw the beast revealed. Called by name by a brave radiologist who sent you to the best that he knew, to confirm and then to treat. The anxious hours of your next journey I did not endure, nor the pain of having the needle bore through skin and bone to sample inside. And yet twas not enough! The answer did but skim the scales of the beast who'd wrapped himself in guise, trying to hide until he'd be too large to slay, until he'd taken form to reproduce himself and set his daughters sailing off to homes in far flung lungs or other bones.

Another sample you endured, but still no firm conclusion, Ugh, the frustration now was lingering on the lip of anger or rebellion, intensifying pain you felt, and bringing tears at night to she who'd weaned you not so long ago, and yet would ne'r forget. What mother wouldn't cry to watch a child hamstrung by pain, and yet not find an explanation, nor a path to cure?

And so a third time opened they the leg which hid the beast, reached deeper in to his dark cave and pulled his brittle flesh apart. It was not much, but just enough to convince the doctor then, that this was true osteosarcoma, enmeshed below his covering of rocks, and likely to cost you your life if left alone to grow. "But no!" said some, and willing hope that justice would not let it so be that your life should end, or you so innocent and good be victim of this beast-- a doubt that cut off plans to treat, while search for other answers sought to bring more hope for cure.

       

I do not know you, yet I know so much I cannot tell. I know why long ago I loved the study of these cells, and know how much I learned from dear old Walter, and from his side-kick Al. A gift from God it was to me, and now my gift to you, with hope that knowing finally, the path to cure may crack it's gate for you. I'm grateful that I was sent to be here at this time for you, with knowledge of my own, an endowment from above, and too, support from others wise and true, in their compassion felt for you. I do not know you, but I feel His love, and love you too.

July 19

Lewis continues his courageous and diligent expansion of vocabulary as he seeks to be able to relay concepts in the Family Relations class, learning words he'd never had to use in his mission or medical work here up to this point. So if you ever need to know them, he knows, as of this week, a bunch of words relating to childhood emotional and social development. I'm impressed.

I continue my valiant battle with the language as well, with much less spectacular results, but I'm still making headway.  Today I was able to communicate to a sister in the branch that we would not be home on Saturday, but that Thursday would work.  And afterwards, of course, I became aware of all the prepositions and possessives I'd left out.  But hey!  I attempted. She understood. That's progress.  And earlier this week I took an item of clothing to a very nice seamstress to have a zipper replaced.  I memorized two sentences and made it through about one and a half before my mind went blank.  But I am optimistically counting it a small victory that she understood enough that she directed her answer to me (which I could not understand any of) instead of immediately turning to L to communicate.  :-D

And, speaking of language learning, this week in English class we tackled the "r" sound.

That squiggle that looks like a leaning 2 is the phonetic symbol for r.

I am learning all kinds of things.

And if you want to watch a fun lesson on how to say that sound try THIS youtube video

One interesting enjoyable thing this week was meeting with a young Vietnamese-Czech Republic woman in her early 20s who is here for a few months visiting her grandmother and teaching English.  She speaks English and Czech and can understand, but is not confident in her ability to speak, Vietnamese.   She found the young elders phone number and requested to meet with someone who could have some new member discussions with her in English.  Three of the 4 young elders and sister here speak English as a second language, some not yet confident at it, so they asked us to meet with her.  She's pleasant and forthright and we enjoy her.

Jeffrey Holland will be here for meetings in mid-August including one with the members here.  Our small branch has started putting together a small choir for the occasion.

And here are a few photographs taken as we were out and about running an errand this week.

A wake in the night-- It's Finnegan!

My apologies to James Joyce for playing with the title in this post.

Half way round the world we are, and yet the arrival of a small six pound boy has made much more than a ripple in our river this week. We feel the joy with the arrival of grandchild the fifth almost as much as that reflected in the eyes of his older sister Acadia, so well captured in the image MB posted of Acadia. So interconnected we are! This must no doubt lead to a poem somewhere, though I'm not quite sure where. But here we are exactly 12 time zones away sleeping soundly when the clock struck 11:47 on Thursday July 9th and this Finn-egan entered the history books officially, and it couldn't have been more meaningful and real than if we were hanging from the delivery room light fixtures. We have little doubt too that our being here brought an extra measure of divine assistance to ensure the outcome and process worked as smoothly as possible for both mother, babe and father. We've lost track in counting such blessings already!

The other big event of this week was the official launch of Happy Family Class!

note from MB: No, the cards were not in English.  This was just a first mock-up.

This is none other than the "Strengthening Family" and "Strengthening Marriage" classes content so nicely put together by LDS Family Services and taught elsewhere by either professional counselors, or able stake-based volunteers. While we were just beginning to approach the challenges of our children, such a class was a great help in developing a sensible and effective approach to our parenting. Though perhaps most importantly, it facilitated discussion between us that also unified our approach and prevented many problems. Mary Bliss quickly recognized the need for such help when one of the members of the congregation, living with his wife and two year old daughter under the same roof as his parents, as is common here, broached the topic of contrasting styles of teaching and instructing their daughter being applied during the day (by grandma) or the evenings (by him or his wife.) The class got a reasonable turnout for a first event of this type in a congregation with relatively few families, and our invitation to community members also brought in a few new people as well.

The class has me scrambling to develop the vocabulary to deal with a host of new situations that I don't usually talk about, though that is good for my language development-- urgency, need, and application all together. It also opened the opportunity for our friend Sister Huong to assist with two way translation for Mary Bliss' major contributions to the class. Truth be told, her stories were much more effective in translation than my 4th grade description of parenting styles and family governance. So sometimes I just wrote on the white board while she entertained the class with another "tale from the WInterport woods" or even further back, a legendary story from her growing up in Woodside.

We are enthusiastically eager for this class to continue and suspect it will be a great way to bless the lives of generations to come, particularly as so many of the participants are young, even a few who are still single.

July 12, 2015

It's been a week full of teaching: English classes, Pathology lectures and the commencement of a Strengthening Families class, the latter made possible by a good dose of grace in the form of H. and V. who translated for me and helped us with the AV set up respectively, and some hard studying of vocabulary words on the part of Lewis.

I'm late in posting this blog and Lewis plans to post tomorrow, so I'll leave the Strengthening Families class stuff for him to talk about and then add the photos we have from that.  But I will post a picture of the best news of the week:

Welcome, Finnegan!

A meeting with Pres. Tung gave us an added call to commence the foundation of a tradition of service work and humanitarian projects that local members of our small branch here can participate in.  Up until now church humanitarian work has been under the direction of LDS Charities.  In most countries local members can be involved in LDS Charities projects, but the current laws surrounding the visas granted to LDS Charities prohibit members' involvement in those projects in our city.  So Pres. Tung is looking for other ways for the local church to be of service.  So that is on our minds.  Today we started the early stages of laying out how we will go about becoming acquainted with some of the local charitable organizations here, since we learned in our previous callings the benefits of working with an established, good, organization rather than trying to create something from scratch with a small group.

This week we did some more alley walking as we ran errands.  This one was part of a "commune" nearby, a neighborhood that is primarily residential and organized under the direction of its inhabitants.  The lack of businesses and the narrowness of the way made it a quiet and interesting walk.

My English students are coming in during "office hours" (time when I'm studying during Lewis's lectures) more these days, which is good.  And the more advanced group is getting closer to feeling confident with large group conversations. (Both classes bravely tackle partner conversations with classmates--and those are fun to watch).  I think that as we head into the vocabulary building stage that will be easier.  I am interested in creating some good thoughtful discussion time with them over the course of this class.  But right now our main focus is learning how to make and recognize those odd English sounds that don't exist in Vietnamese in order to make make all the words we know more intelligible. 

On Monday Lewis suggested that we go see Van Miéu, the royal academy/university for scholars established nearly 1000 years ago in Hanoi.  He had seen it with Elizabeth many years ago.  It's no longer used as a school, but is preserved as a historic site and is used for scholarly affairs or international, government-sponsored gatherings.  The architecture was lovely, the courtyards peaceful and the lotuses were in bloom.