All Good Things Take Time

 Salut,

I think the title has been my thesis for the last month or so. I think I was surprised by the whirlwind that orientation felt like, only to experience huge whiplash upon my arrival in the province. The first few days I was here, Chi Anh told me that all good things take time. She meant it in many ways: learning Vietnamese, connecting with teachers and students, becoming familiar with the community and the city. The hardest part, and often the most strenuous step, is the first one and the beginning.

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I finally got a new e-bike. One much smaller than the one they gave me at first, which is all in all good because the first was a bit of a safety hazard. Mr. Hoan says it is small, and I am small, so therefore it all works out. Ms. Trang said there are women out there in Vietnam who are shorter than me and manage to ride those big e-bikes. Touché, I guess. It is slower than the other one they lent me, but I am okay with that; I would rather be safe with a smaller, more manageable bike than a large, fast one. The small one, though she doesn’t have a name quite yet, is able to fit into my room, where I charge it. The last e-bike I was able to ride nearly a full week before it ran out of charge. The new one I need to charge every other day, almost every day because I drive around on it a lot. One of my new favorite hobbies is to go on a night bike ride around the city. The city feels like a ghost town during midday. I have heard it is common in Vietnam for lots of stuff to close from around 12 to 2 or so. For a midday siesta or lunch. But after sunset every day, the city feels most alive. Not only is it not unbearably hot anymore with the UV sun and its rays burning me, but the bright lights in the city add to the atmosphere. The first few weeks I have driven it, it has been out in the rain. I have acquired a large poncho, and people here drive come rain or shine, so the large poncho covers both me and the bike. Sometimes it has rained while I play pickleball, so I have to cover the bike when it’s parked. Luckily, the rainy season will soon be over. I am thankful I am in the north, which gets cooler weather.

Speaking of needing to charge the battery on my bike, one very unfortunate evening, I think it was a Monday, after pickleball, my bike broke down on the side of the road because it needed to be charged. The screen was deceptive; it made it seem like it was fully charged (the interface confuses me anyway). I called Ms. Trang, as I was not far from the campus we played at. She took me nearby to her aunt’s house, where they let me charge it outside their storefront. I charged it for maybe 30 minutes, and her aunt was kind enough to give us some free drinks from the storefront. Much like Kyrgyzstan, I am always in awe and admiration of people’s kindness.

In mid-September, Vietnam had the Mid-Autumn Festival, which is heavily associated with children. It’s a bit of a children’s holiday. The week before the “actual” festival and holiday, Lang Son hosted a huge concert in the middle of the city center. Lang Son likes to go all out. Despite being a pretty small city by Vietnamese standards, the city center is alive most days. I go to lots of cafes during midday when I don’t have class, and sometimes it is so quiet it feels almost eerie. I understand it, of course, I usually am there during weekday afternoon working hours. The concert featured a parade of floats, some shaped like moon crescents, flowers and petals, dragons and animals, etc. The main road was closed off, and the sidewalks became inundated with motorbikes. At the end, there was a huge drone show.

On the actual day of the Mid-Autumn Festival, in the evening, I went on a long bike ride around the city. I ran into my neighbors, who were out with their children. I really don’t speak Vietnamese well, so we talked through Google Translate. Tung (the father), Anh (the mother),  and their two adorable kids and I sat in a patio area inside a temple. I haven’t actually really visited the temples because they are rarely open when I’m out and about. We sat and ate pomegranates. Unfortunately for us, when we finished, we saw that the barbed gate had come up as it was late evening. Tung and Anh carried their kids and jumped over the landing, which was probably at least a 5- 6 ft drop (maybe 2m). Maybe I should have told them the story about the time I jumped out the window in my school in Kyrgyzstan. Anyway, their kids are adorable and cute and remind me a lot of Alihan and Adelya, but I am less able to communicate with them. Their son, whose English name is Ben, wanted to add me on his Zalo and likes to type out messages in English and Vietnamese to me on his iPad. Ben and his sister also wander into my room once a week or so and jump on my bed. I think they do it because the four of them take up the same amount of space that I have just by myself, and maybe they feel claustrophobic. I allow it because I enjoy their company.

I have made my first few foreign friends in Lang Son. There really aren’t many foreigners living in Lang Son, not like more expat communities in Hanoi, HCM, or Da Nang. I expected there to be more tourists, but I haven’t seen many, though Jessica opines that it probably isn’t tourist season right now. At the Vincom mall, I saw my first foreigner at WinMart. Her name is Alsu, and she is from Tatarstan (a major republic in Russia; they are one of the few Turkic ethnic groups in the country, and their language is Turkic and actually related to Kyrgyz). She is a colleague and mutual acquaintance of my student, Minh. They both work at a local private primary English center near the Vincom mall. She introduced me to her friend, Olga, who is Belarusian and has lived in Lang Son for several years.

I have actually found it very comforting to talk to Alsu, as her experience growing up in Tatarstan is very similar to Kyrgyzstan; the ethnic groups share many cultural and linguistic similarities. She and I tried to text each other in our respective languages, and though I am wildly out of practice, I was able to understand maybe 40% of it. I did not know this, but apparently there is a relatively sizable Russian expat community teaching English in Vietnam, which on the surface seems like a strange combination, but due to both the lack of interest in Russian here and the easy accessibility of visas for Russians, that combo together is what produces this. Alsu showed me a picture of people in her community in Tatarstan, and with their joluks (the name of the scarf worn by women in West and Central Asia regions to indicate that they are married; it is not quite the same as hijab), if I didn’t know better, then I would think they are Kyrgyz people.

Some people in our cohort have told me, and I have seen firsthand the attention they get. In Lang Son, people visibly look and stare at Olga and Alsu, and some try to take pictures or videos with them. ETAs have told me they get interrupted during meals by strangers for conversations or pictures. Here, foreigners (particularly ones who look white) get a lot of grace or leeway when integrating or not speaking Vietnamese. Unless they don’t speak a word of English, any Vietnamese person here will try to default to English when they see non-heritage people in our cohort or foreign expats. The ETAs who do try to speak Vietnamese will sometimes be met with a burst of applause or wild surprise by just saying “Hello everyone” or “Thank you”. I remember that feeling I had while in Kyrgyzstan, that simple joy local people found when I spoke to them in Kyrgyz. The way the taxi drivers and baristas and shop owners would smile when I talked to them. I hold onto that, because I have seen it happen here to me only once, when a group of male teachers drank a round of rice wine with me a few weeks ago, and they applauded me when I said thank you in Vietnamese. Otherwise, I am met with quite the opposite. Instead of awe and surprise, 90% of the time, I see instead a slow realization creep on people’s faces. 10% of the time, people can clock me as a foreigner, but the rest of the time, they immediately speak Vietnamese and slowly realize within a sentence or two that I don’t understand. I call it a look of dread. When I am with Ms. Trang or Chi Anh, I turn and watch them explain it to whoever they are talking to, explaining who I am. I am here because I want to share this experience of my life and my upbringing, though a small part of me is tired of needing to satiate everyone’s curiosity.

Perhaps this is the part of Fulbright I often forget about, about needing to be an American ambassador 24/7. I hope that maybe I can improve my Vietnamese and learn more about Vietnamese culture, but the invisible elephant is always in the room, that I did not grow up hearing Vietnamese nor grow up immersed in the culture. I said in my first post that I often feel like both a heritage and non-heritage person in my cohort, that I do fit into and also simultaneously fail to fit into the groups of our cohort, the “heritage” people and the “non-heritage” people (though our cohort does have a few biracial or half-Vietnamese people, which is another complex identity). As much as people lambast or misunderstand it, intersectionality is very real. Sometimes I think I do stand outside the other heritage people in our cohort, many of whom I love and admire deeply, but our childhoods and notions of “heritage” identity share little in common. For many of them, speaking Vietnamese was always at home, a mother tongue, something they find comfort in within their own families, and it is as familiar to them as the back of their own hand. To me, speaking Vietnamese is like speaking Kyrgyz, a difficult language I want a reprieve from when I can speak to people who speak English.

I do think it is a mistake to assume that just because half our cohort can speak Vietnamese means they are all having a more swell time than those of us who can’t. Of course, it is extremely convenient and solves certain problems, but it can introduce many others. I have spoken at length about my reluctance to be placed in South Kyrgyzstan because I was worried about being perceived as more Kyrgyz-looking, and as such, being forced to conform to a more conservative Kyrgyz society. The vast majority of our cohort who are Vietnamese Americans are women, so some face pressure or comments to settle down in Vietnam and marry a Vietnamese man. I think that identity has always played an interesting role in work abroad experiences. I think I did not give it as much thought in the Peace Corps, just because none of us were actually Kyrgyz, and only a few of us could even attempt to pass. This is also not exclusively a Fulbright thing; Fulbright Vietnam in particular seems to draw a lot of Vietnamese Americans to its program. Also, the Vietnamese American diaspora historically has a unique relationship with Vietnam and the US compared to most others.

Something I hope to pursue while I am here in Lang Son is making contributions to Google Maps. Vietnam, as many in my cohort have said, has a lot mapped on Google Maps, but it sorely lacks in many ways. Firstly, Vietnam has a lot of pop-up stalls or random shops that are local secrets or very small. Only big restaurants or stuff overly catered to tourists find a lot of footing on the map. There are two cafes, one takeaway cafe near my room, and another right next to the Chinese dance class I attend, that didn’t exist on Google Maps until I took photos and posted them. Lang Son has a vast swath of cool cafes with varying fun aesthetics and cool drinks. I suppose I’m in my boba and milk tea era. I hope that while I’m here, I get to map some of them out. Even ones that are on Google Maps lack pictures or have single ratings/reviews. I didn’t know this, but there are some huge contributors to Google Maps (sort of like Wikipedia editors), some who have made hundreds of thousands of contributions to mapping the world over the years. I am enormously grateful for all of them. Unlike Kyrgyzstan, which had its own alternatives in 2GIS and Yandex Maps, there doesn’t seem to be a local alternative here. Maybe it is a fool’s errand, because it really is only the foreigners or tourists who would use Google Maps, as locals by nature know the ins and outs of the city. Yet the type A person in me wants to map out the city. I never spent enough time in Jalal-Abad, nor did I have the insatiable curiosity or disposable income I do now to want to explore.

In my routine, I have tried to try a new restaurant once a week and a new cafe every other day, while still visiting some of my favorites every week. The cheapest juices and drinks are at the local stalls, there at night or in a hole-in-the-wall manned by a single lady. You can get freshly made lime juice, lemonade, or passion fruit for just 50 cents. My favorite, Lelela Tea, which is really close to my room, has a lovely woman there who operates a small hole-in-the-wall shop and has boba tea drinks for only a dollar. One night, I visited there and got clowned by some local boys who were waiting for their drinks. They were like 8 and 10 years old, and they laughed at my minimal attempts to speak Vietnamese with them. It is not a sit-down place; it really just has a single table and a few foldout chairs. I grew disillusioned with Highlands Coffee, though I know Alsu likes to drink her coffee there. A large part of me this year is committed to supporting local businesses in Lang Son, considering I have an unreasonably high salary for the region, rather than supporting the Vietnamese equivalent of Starbucks. It isn’t a bad place to try to find more foreigners, as it is adjacent to the Four Points Sheraton Hotel, but it’s all expensive anyway. Another of my favorite cafes I found is across the river and is what I can only describe as a Marxist reading cafe. Che Guerra and HCM have their portraits hung up, with literature about Xi Jinping, but the aesthetics of the cafe feature lots of bookshelves, outside ponds, and wooden bridges.

With a lot of free time, I have also been exploring the city. There are a few caves in the city. One is near a big hospital and has a small admission fee, but it is practically a bat cave. I visited when it was empty during midday (as I said, no one was around in the city then), and it had an eerie Minecraft cave vibe. The second one had a large altar in it. The city is surrounded by some gorgeous mountains, and there is one south of me that, when you ascend to the top, has the most beautiful views. In the center of the city, there is a famous flagpole atop the mountain. Visiting it is free, though I did have to pay a fee to park my bike (3k). Students at my college have to pay a fee to park their bikes in the huge lot (it’s a tiny version of the high school parking lot I used to drive in). I park in the teacher’s lot, so I am lucky and don’t have to pay.

Anyway, at some point, I hope to visit the flagpole at night; I unwisely went during an unusually hot afternoon. Lang Son city has many bridges, but it is far smaller than some cities in Vietnam, which I am thankful for. There are some ETAs who find it unmanageable to drive in their respective cities; they use Grab bikes or cars to get around, which I think can add up to a lot of money, unfortunately. As annoying as it is to charge my bike, my daytime rides are free, though I admit I have clocked a lot of distance in just a few weeks. I think I’ve ridden my bike in excess of 200 km in just 2-3 weeks. With the original bike the staff gave me, I clocked an over 18 km ride just exploring the city, taking detours, and getting lost over the course of over an hour. Peace Corps Volunteers and Boren Fellows aren’t allowed to drive e-bikes or motorbikes.

I teach three classes now, but four lessons a week, each about 2-3 hours long. I teach first-year, second-year, and third-year students. Before I started teaching, and when I was observing, some of the English teachers had warned me that the students’ level was low. I would say that is true for some students, and many of them are shy, but like all students, they are diverse, and some have genuinely decent English. One of my 2nd-year students uses British slang when he texts me, and he and I talked about how Duolingo (the green owl, as he called it) is a scam because it incorrectly taught him words in Spanish. Zalo, the app we use, is super convenient for everyone in that it has text-to-speech features and even translation with AI (which I don’t mind because it actually is able to translate Vietnamese slang decently well). It isn’t perfect, but on a messaging app, it is super convenient to have a built-in translator. It is super common in Vietnamese culture for teachers and students to message each other and have each other’s numbers. I mostly send my students fun stickers and ask them about their day. Like Minh, a handful of students are a bit older, and another one of my first-year students is a mom with children. I teach an array of listening, speaking, and pronunciation skills, but I personally target speaking. During the Peace Corps, we taught quite a lot of writing and reading, but here, most of our schools have enough of an English department to allow ETAs to focus on speaking. My old school in Kyrgyzstan had like 2 English teachers. I have heard some ETAs here only teach pronunciation, which I can imagine must be an unusual experience.

There is an air of casualness to the college I work at that surprises me. Northern Vietnam is stereotyped as being more disciplined, more rigid, more formal, and more professional than the South. I think I might find that at a university, but because I am at what is essentially a community college, the administration is very formal, but a lot of other stuff is not. The students themselves listen well and are fairly disciplined (unlike some horror stories I have heard from ETAs in other cities), but most are wearing T-shirts or sweatpants, and all the faculty wear business casual. There is the addition that the college campus also hosts primary and secondary students, which means there are hundreds of young children milling about all the time. Their principal wants to encourage me to work with some of those students.

Which brings me to one of my first side quests. I feel like I achieved a few side quests while in Jalal-Abad, namely a Spelling Bee or two, some extracurricular English clubs, that football team at the Barcelona Academy, judging the Olympiad, etc. Chi Anh asked me to be on the jury panel for the Cinema Voices Foreign Language Film Dubbing competition hosted by the primary and secondary school on campus. I accepted, and Chi Thao previously had asked me to briefly tutor a team competing. I agreed before I knew I was going to judge. I did not know beforehand that the film dubbing would be done by teams in both English and Chinese. Though my Chinese is rocky, I think I was able to decently pick up on the teams’ pronunciation and intonation. Chi Anh, on the other hand, could do sort of the same, though she doesn’t understand Chinese and seemingly didn’t know it would be in Chinese either.

The competition itself was okay. Some of the young students had excellent English pronunciation; others were almost unintelligible without English subtitles on the videos. Chi Anh asked me to do a short USA quiz competition, which I did, and it was very fun. From the US, I brought some merch I got from the America 250 State Fair, like stickers, postcards, pens, keychains, etc., and some of the students helped me give them out as prizes. Chi Anh said to me, “I knew all the answers to the quiz, so can I have one too? 🥺,” and I said sure. With the teachers, I think I have settled into a rhythm; I see Chi Anh usually once a week for Vietnamese class, and I see Chi Huong and Chi Thuy during my lessons, and I see Cô Trang almost every weekday at pickleball or Chinese dance class. Chi Thi and Anh Hoan have disappeared from me, but I know they teach at the other campus. I see a horde of other non-English teachers who I play pickleball with, but I admit that because I am not in their group chat, I only remember maybe ⅓ of their names.

It took me some time, but I was able to get bun cha and drinks with my second-year students and my first-year students. I am very lucky that I have small classes. Many of the other ETAs have large classes, some with 40+ students each. My college is already small, and with the English department already low, I am blessed to have small numbers. My first-year class is only around 20 students, and I teach them 5 hours a week. I teach my second-year class (around 26 students) and my third-year class (around 30 students) one 3-hour class each week. I am trying to get to hang out with my 3rd-year students, but the timing is just off because right after class is my usual pickleball playing.

Currently, I work Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday, with Thursday as my Vietnamese lesson day. I play pickleball Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and I attend Chinese dance class Tuesday and Thursday. It’s not the most rigid routine, but it is a semblance of a routine with a lot of flexibility and time in between, which I enjoy. Because I have so few students, I have slowly gotten to learn many of their name, though many students have the same name. I have many students with the names Thao, Linh, Ly, Anh, Tuan, Tien, and Minh (also, Vietnamese names are generally less gender specific, so I have both men and women with those names). In my Kyrgyz classes, I had like 8-10 Aibikies, Ayanas, Azamats, variants of Bekzat/Beknazar/Beknur, Alihans, etc. I was sort of shy about asking them to hang out in the beginning, but they slowly opened up. Everyone says Vietnamese students are shy, and it is true they are shy to speak English, but I don’t think they are any more shy than American students are to practice Spanish or French out in the wild with a native speaker. Many of my colleagues in the English department have excellent English fluency or knowledge but have much heavier accents, while some of my students have more American-sounding accents, which I attribute to some of the people I have mentioned who work in private centers (and have colleagues who are also foreign expats), or greater exposure to American music/media.

Chi Diu, our Fulbright coordinator, told us not to get hung up on whether or not we are good teachers, because despite our job being English Teaching Assistants, our ultimate goal is American public diplomacy and cultural exchange. I think I often forget that cultural integration and learning about Vietnamese culture or the language is pretty secondary to being a paragon of American diplomacy. Some ETAs described us as being for the cameras and for photo-ops. I like to think, and I have heard from students and my English co-teachers, that I am a good teacher. I can be unforgiving and persistent, and I demand a lot from them. I made one student do jumping jacks when they started falling asleep and put their head down. I insist that the students not only listen to me, but that they listen to each other, which I test by asking students to repeat back what their peers said out loud. I reprimand them if they don’t listen to me or each other. I confiscate phones if I see them out during class. I also was very honest with them upfront; Vietnamese technically is the 5th language I have studied or learned, so I understand their struggle well in learning to speak a foreign language. I understand their shyness, their reluctance to talk, and the embarrassment or insecurity they feel making mistakes. Among my two upper-level classes, I have instituted what I call “ the bear rule,” where if a student speaks Vietnamese/Chinese (or anything non-English), I pass them a stuffed bear I bring to class. Whoever has the bear when class is over must come to the front and sing an English song for 1 minute, and the only way to lose the bear is to catch another student doing it and pass it to them. I weaponize peer pressure sometimes, and if a student refuses to do it, I won’t dismiss class until they do. I have heard performances of "Happy Birthday" and "Baby Shark" since the rule came into effect. Part of me is surprised they still want to hang out with me, all things considered, but I think that a foreign teacher can pull things out of them that they otherwise don’t get from a local one. A few students have shared with me things I expect they would not tell their own teacher. As much as I love and believe in the capacity and knowledge of my co-teachers, I see the value that Chi Anh wanted in me and told me she believed I could impart to the students.

Vietnamese students are shy, but given the right environment and push, they are hilarious and funny. Two boys wrote, in answer to the question, “Have you ever met___?”, Vladimir Putin. During a class on directions, I had them break into teams and give directions to one student with their eyes closed to navigate around the classroom to collect pens. They all howled with laughter when the students with their eyes closed ran into desks. One student claimed that he drinks tea for 35 hours/week and watches reels on Instagram and TikTok for 120+ hours/week when we talked about our free time. I use a wheel to choose who will speak, and I have seen students visibly pray in class for their name not to be chosen. My first-year students seem to hardly know each other and aren’t friends, with the sole exception of Van and Hoan, two boys who have a one-sided beef where Van always calls on or eggs on Hoan, who has a lower level of English and gets visibly frustrated. I asked the class what they do for their friends, if they buy them gifts, and Van says he buys his friends a matcha latte, but when I asked him if he had ever bought Hoan one, he said no. That day, I invited the class to get drinks, and both of them were hesitant, so I said, “Buy Hoan a matcha latte!” and Van instantly agreed. Some of my students like to gossip about which students are dating each other, and I am sworn to secrecy. Despite their hilarity, they have moments of wisdom, insight, and introspection.

During a short debate, one student said that in answer to the prompt, “A short, happy life is better than a long, short one,” that we are not immortal, and that nothing lasts forever and we need to do what we can to be happy with the time we are given (paraphrasing). Another, on the opposing side, said that sadness is an inherent part of life, that we must learn to live with it as best we can (also paraphrasing). Part of me is sad that my limited Vietnamese makes it a struggle to connect with students with lower levels, but I think that when I think back to my time in the Peace Corps, I remember that love and care can be communicated with few words or none at all. Vietnam is a big gift-giving country, and I think back to that one time at the University of Transport Technology during orientation, when I was leading a small group activity in a game, and at the end, one of the girls on my team thanked me by giving me a small portrait she drew of me on a sticky note as a gift. At the beginning of each class, one student gives me a fresh water bottle, and some give me snacks during breaks. Three girls from my 3rd year class came to my room one afternoon to deliver mooncakes, a delicacy (one I only sort of like) eaten during the Mid-Autumn Festival. A large part of me is excited at the potential depth of relationships I can form with students my age or older (I had some decent relationships with the students who attended my clubs in Kyrgyzstan, but they were all minors who were busy all the time).

I did not expect to return to Hanoi so soon after orientation was over, but I have visited Hanoi twice since coming to Lang Son, most recently this past weekend. The first weekend, in mid-September, I sorely needed it because I was in a bit of a funk and feeling mopey. I got over it by literally just getting out of bed and getting on my bike and getting the confidence to explore cafes and work and not stew around in my room. The policy here is to notify Chi Anh and others about ten days in advance, but the first time, I was not aware of the policy, and she let me have an exception. I visited Hanoi, and she helped me order the car. I know that Vietnam has a robust train and bus system (having used the rail myself), but unfortunately, Lang Son is too small (too small being like 250k people) to get with it, so we use private chartered buses that I have to order tickets for on Zalo. Speaking of ordering the bus, Chi Anh and I had a semi-disastrous first Vietnamese lesson a few weeks ago, where she wrote me a dialogue or script on how to order a bus ticket, though her handwriting wasn’t the most legible. Once we practiced it twice, she, on the spot, called the company (this particular company didn’t have Zalo to text, just a phone number) and wanted me to try. The operator was annoyed with me, so Chi Anh took the phone from me and did it herself. I made the decision to use a company I could text to spare me the anxiety.

The first weekend I spent in Hanoi was refueling and re-invigorating. I tend to follow the crowd, plus Megan is always the one to suggest stuff. We visited the Hanoi Jazz Festival, which I thought was very fun, although I think some of my group don’t enjoy jazz as much as I do. We had dinner with Chi Diu at a very cool restaurant with mist near the entrance and lion dancing. During the most recent time I went, this past weekend, I went because Hanoi was hosting its Culture of the Worlds festival at the Imperial Citadel, a large 3-day festival of culture and food, and I volunteered with some others to staff the USA booth, which was run by the US Embassy. Megan, Jessica, and I got to visit a Harry Potter-themed cafe, recommended to us by Mia, and we are all Slytherins. They had robes and hats and wands you could take pictures with, and Harry Potter-themed drinks (I got the polyjuice potion, a sort of fruit smoothie drink, and butterbeer). They even had a “potions class” you could sign up for, a cocktail class, I think.

We got lunch with Chi Diu again, and we also got the chance to do a photo booth with her. Everyone else and I were astounded to learn that this was the first time she had ever done it; considering her love of taking and posing for pictures, and considering her long history with Fulbright, it seemed insane that no other cohort or person had ever invited her to take photos in a photobooth. I unsuccessfully tried to fix my phone battery; my students in Kyrgyzstan used to mock me for having an iPhone 13  mini (“it’s so small", they would jeerfully point at it and laugh), and with many years of wear, the battery has degraded significantly. Unfortunately for me, the technician said my screen glass has an issue, and opening it up to replace the battery could destroy the display, so I guess I will have to make do with power banks for the next year until I can upgrade my phone.

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I got the chance to meet some Vietnam Peace Corps Volunteers at the festival. The festival itself was super cool; apparently, it is only its 2nd iteration this year. It had booths from around 30+ countries, and the American food booth was selling pulled pork, Texan nachos, and iced tea (classic!). The cultural booth we staffed was mostly a spin-the-wheel giveaway, plus some VR headsets associated with Meta. I got to meet about four PCVs, but I only got to really talk to two, the ones who I shared a volunteering shift with. They both were at different times in their service, one about to finish (COS) and another halfway through. I had heard bits and pieces of their experience beforehand from Andy and Skylar, but it was interesting to compare my experience with Fulbright and theirs, and my Peace Corps experience and theirs.

They earn far less money than we at Fulbright do; we have far more liberties and fewer restrictions on travel and movement, and we are actually more spread out. Apparently, all the PCVs in Vietnam are all clustered around Hanoi and HCM, which is strange, because Kyrgyzstan spread us across the entire country. To my knowledge, the volunteer distribution probably depends on the country itself, and Vietnam’s program is very new. The PC program in Vietnam has only existed for a few years, while Kyrgyzstan’s is well over 3 decades strong. The volunteers told me their staff is excellent and supportive. Most of their cohort are not Vietnamese-American, and at least one I met had developed excellent Vietnamese during his time. They mostly teach upper high school and comparable hours to what I did, though it seems like they have fewer opportunities for extra clubs or grants. They also seem to be very rural; one volunteer I spoke to truly is in the trenches, in rice fields in a community with less than a thousand people.

I think it is easy to forget that some Peace Corps volunteers live in dirt or brick huts and bike to work on dirt roads, and although intermittently we lost power, water, and wifi, we never lacked any for substantial time, nor did I lack easy access or ability to go to a coffee shop if I really wanted. The volunteer in the rice fields even told me that if he didn’t wake up in the early hours of the morning, he wouldn’t be able to buy any good meat for dinner (they also seem to cook most of their meals as opposed to most of us who eat out a lot). They don’t live with host families, though most live similarly to us, in on-campus housing. I think their experiences are truly interesting, and it reminds me of the complexity of Vietnam and how a foreigner can experience Vietnam in a true spectrum of ways.

As I wrap up my first month in the province, I am truly happy. I heard a former PCV say that they wouldn’t describe their service as “fun”, and while I aspire to be self-sacrificing, I also actively pursue fun in whatever means possible, even if I am alone to do it. Now, I try to hang out with each of my classes once a week, which is more than enough for me (and my wallet). I have community in the two Belarusian/Russian expats I have met, I have community in the English teachers and the non-English teachers I play pickleball with, a burgeoning community with my students who make me laugh, and the community of Fulbright ETAs who I am happy to say I have seen more in-person than I thought I would. Finally, I have community in my friends and family around the world and back home, who I dearly miss (you know who you are).

I am very lucky in many ways, and I think I was very lucky in the Peace Corps as well. Not all things will be happy forever. One of the prompts I gave my students was “Money can buy happiness”. As Vietnamese students in a rapidly developing economy with often limited options and constant FOMO from reels, I understand their mindset when they nearly all said yes. I asked them how much money could buy them happiness, and they gave absurd answers like billions of dollars. Money is financial security, but I can promise I am happier in this moment now than lots of billionaires. Would the billions of dollars buy them happiness forever? Several wisely said no. The happiness won’t last forever, and all bubbles inevitably get popped. A few weeks ago, I was more mopey and sad, and I did wonder about my life, what I was doing, all the emotions and all the feelings. This too shall pass is the famous adage, and the sadness wave washed and fell away like all tides inevitably do. I hope for all the ETAs in my cohort now who are struggling or going through it; this moment for you shall pass too. Happiness is not an infinite state of being, but I am writing this now, and you all have found me at a moment with much to be joyful about. All good things take time.

​À Bientôt 

Grace

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I posted it on my Instagram, but I want to make space here to acknowledge and remember Kimberly “Kim” Gray, a Response Peace Corps Volunteer in Kyrgyzstan who recently and suddenly passed away on September 18. She was one of the few, if not the only, RPCVs I knew semi-well, and she had a vivacious light and energy to her. A curiosity, strength, and adaptability to her I knew in very few people her age. She spent her service in Bishkek, and she was nothing but kind and open and warm to all of us very young volunteers. Her wisdom and resilience made me a better volunteer and gave me a far greater perspective than I could have imagined. She is sorely missed.

Kimberly Gray, September 1, 1958- September 18, 2026.