Good morning Vietnam!

[Disclaimer: So, although I didn't get the chance to finish blogging about SAS in real time - 2 years later I am finally posting this piece that I actually wrote while we were in Vietnam (approx March 2011)... I just edited the end. :) ]

Sailing up the Saigon River to Ho Chi Minh City (known as Saigon before communist regime came into play), was amazing.  It was interesting to see how similar it felt to sailing up the Amazon River, but with Vietnamese boats and fishermen, rather than Brazilian.  This was my second visit to Vietnam, I visited the north back in 2007 with my classmates (see previous blog posts).  Saigon was definitely a different, more modern feeling city than Hanoi.  Since I have already seen HaLong Bay and SaPa, we decided to stay in the south.

We were fortunate to be traveling with our good friend, Annie, who is Vietnamese and had a family member in Saigon.  I feel like in our time there, I had the privilege of traveling like a 'local' and experiencing all kinds of great foods.  Service was also a focal point for our time here.

Our first meal off the ship was at a cute little place with a deceivingly westernized name, called "Wrap and Roll" (see yummy freshness above:).  Annie ordered for us and we had 3 different kinds of spring rolls, roasted chicken cooked in banana leaves, and a few other delicious things.  Saigon had a distinct Westernized feel.  In Hanoi in the north, I remember definitely feeling the French influence in the architecture and in the city layout, but Saigon felt much more cosmopolitan.  There were high end stores like Chanel and Louis Vuitton, modern malls, an oversized colonial post office, a replica of Notre Dame (see photo below), a backpackers district, and the all encompassing Ben Thanh Market. This market was a huge warehouse with hundreds of little stalls selling everything from fabrics and shoes, to candies, dried fish, and North Face backpacks.

On our second day in Saigon, we got to meet up with one of our friends from California who happened to be in Vietnam for business.  We met up for breakfast at a place called, Pho Hoa Pasteur, which is apparently where pho (a vietnamese soup) was made popular.  I've had pho before, but never for breakfast, and that is actually when most people eat it in Vietnam.  It was delicious and so authentic in a hole in the wall type place.  Here's the evidence...

The following day we went to a center called the Christina Nobel Foundation, which is a program for street children, and they have a variety of facilities.  They have a live-in center, a medical clinic, school, art program, and other locations throughout Vietnam.  This was one of the most organized and best kept programs I've seen.  We were there because our friend Annie made a connection with them, and through her involvements with Freedom in Creation, we were able to have the children in the art class paint some pictures and create a poster.  It was a great experience, and although there was a major language barrier, we were still able to elicit the smiles and hugs that melt your heart.  That night we went with a big group of friends to dinner at Nha Hang Ngon, which was a sister restaurant of one I loved in Hanoi.  It's an open air restaurant with French decor, and authentic Vietnamese food stalls lining the perimeter of the restaurant.  The food was amazing, and Annie and her cousin just ordered a bunch of different things for us.  We also did our fair share of karaoke in Vietnam... which was such a fun group activity with the private rooms.  So fun!

The next day we went on a Semester at Sea sponsored service trip to a school in a more rural area for children with disabilities and who are hearing impaired.  We rotated through a few different classrooms and played with them during recess.   When we were outside playing, these two little girls came up to me and wanted to take pictures.  I soon realized that they were twins, and they so reminded me of my own nieces whom I missed tremendously.  I showed them my nieces pictures, and they looked at each other and laughed as they realized they were twins too.  It was definitely a moment I won't forget.  I let one of them use my camera and she wanted to take a picture of me -- I'll never forget that - I was wearing my green SAS shirt giving a peace sign.  She was so excited to get to use my camera.  This 'service' experience and the other brought back memories of my dissertation research and the idea of ethics in service.  While I don't consider this a true service experience, I think it was more of an exchange that was still beneficial to both parties.  The teachers and principal at the school were extremely proud and excited to share with us all of their projects and initiatives.  At the end of the visit, they invited us to buy some art created by some of the children as a fundraiser for the school.  We could not resist.

The replica of Notre Dame in Saigon

Overall, Vietnam was great and I feel like we got to have a unique experience with a good friend.  She hadn't been back to Vietnam in a number of years and it was fun to see the sights and foods from her perspective.  This was the only country I've been to before on this voyage, but I had never been to Saigon.  On an unfortunate note, for the first time in all of my travels - I got robbed in Vietnam.  It was our last day, in my last taxi to the ship... I was leaving the Ben Thanh shopping area, and my friend and I decided to separate because she had another errand to run and I had felt safe getting around.  I looked at the cab driver in the mirror, and I had a gut feeling (always follow your gut!!!)  He didn't really smile when he picked me up, and I knew something was up.  I only had the specific amount of dong left to get back to the ship, and I saw that the meter was skipping... as others complained about being scammed like this earlier in the week.  So I confronted him, and after a heated and somewhat scary exchange, he ended up with my iphone.  I had pulled it out to show him the numbers of $ that I had on me - and handed it to him to see (as I had been doing while shopping).  He took it, started yelling at me in Vietnamese, and tried to grab my bags.  Luckily we were parked right outside of the port, so I got out of the cab after giving him all the dong I had left.  I didn't realize that he had my phone until I got to the ship.  I am lucky that it wasn't a worse situation, and ultimately, it was just my phone and a bruised ego.  I survived and found it somewhat freeing to not have a phone (to the point that after we returned, I stalled on getting a new one!)  Overall, despite this incident, I really enjoyed this experience in Vietnam.  The food was amazing, the sights were sensational, and the service experiences provided more awesome opportunities for reflection and growth.

On the Amazon, reflecting on service…

The Amazon River during the day

 Sunset on the Amazon

I cannot believe that we are actually sailing on the Amazon River right now.   It's kind of crazy to be going about our day to day work, and look out the window to see brown water, jungles, different
vegetation along both sides of the ship, and sometimes even a small village or canoes with kids going by.   We've also had a few different types of insects join the voyage.  Our journey takes us 1,000 miles
into the Amazon, where we will stop in Manaus for about 5 days. Surreal and beautiful, the sunset tonight was breathtaking, and the cloud formations and trees were like something out of a movie. It's
neat to see the different people on the ship gravitate to different moments. We were glad to witness the last sunset on the Amazon from the forward of the ship.

Earlier in the week we had an MLK Celebration, and it was great. Quite a few people were in attendance and we were able to show a clip of MLK as well as. Raja, Bianca and I co-facilitated this event, and made it a collaboration between spirituality, diversity, and service.  I played a clip from one of my class projects I did on MLK, then Raja  facilitated small group discussions. It was very heartening to have  great discussions about service, social justice, and spirituality on
this voyage.

Another moment that stood out for me in the last week (or so), was in our required course: Global Studies.  Jeffrey Kottler shared his amazing experiences starting the empowernepaligirls.org group to help provide education and new opportunities from lower castes in Nepal. It was so great to hear about his work and also to see the response by the students, faculty, and staff who are touched and interested in getting involved.

I've also had an amazing time getting to know the students and learning about their interest areas within service. There are a number of students interested in different human rights campaigns, and
it also happens to be that the 50th Anniversary of the Peace Corps will take place while we are at sea, so we'll be planning something around that as well. For now… off to sleep before some exploring in
Manaus tomorrow!

Journeys of a lifetime

I can hardly believe that in 9 days, we will be embarking on quite possibly one of the biggest and most amazing trips imaginable.  In previous adventures, I've likened some of my experiences to the Amazing Race, but this is by far the closest to it.  It is something I've been wanting to do ever since my undergrad days at UCI, when I would hear the stories of my mentors in the Dean of Students office talk about their travels as administrators on a floating university that circumnavigates the world. 

I am SO excited to be headed out on Semester at Sea.   On January 7, we will be leaving our humble abode to embark on a journey of a lifetime. After a quick stop in Atlanta, to visit some family, we'll head to the Bahamas where we embark on the MV Explorer, our home for the next 108 days.  Our itinerary is as follows:  Bahamas, Dominica, Brazil, Ghana, South Africa, Mauritius, India, Singapore, Vietnam, China, Japan, Hawaii, and finally San Diego.  We will actually be traveling down the Amazon River in Brazil -- wow!   With about 700 students and 100 faculty and staff on board this small cruise ship, my job will be to facilitate reflection activities and promote awareness about community service and learning.  I'm ecstatic about this opportunity to bridge my dissertation work and recent experiences in Bolivia, all together on a voyage unlike any other I've been on before.

Another journey of a lifetime coming up, is that I'll be getting married in the fall!  My fiance, Mark, will be on board the SAS voyage as well.  One thing we are looking forward to doing as part of our personal pre-wedding journey, is learning how to say 'I love you' in each language and find out about the different customs and traditions for celebrating love.  This journey will have so much meaning in so many ways.  Not only will I be traveling with my life partner, but it just so happens that I have a few great friends who will be on board as well.  Another good friend will be meeting up with us in Vietnam.  Once in a lifetime is an understatement, and 2011 literally feels like a dream.

Right now we are in packing mode... both for storage and the trip.  How do you pack for 4 months on a boat traveling around the world?  Well, I'll do my best, and have various experiences to draw from to help me out - and I need to remember to pack light since I'm sure to accumulate things along the way.  One perk of heading out on the Spring voyage is that we will skipping winter this year.  Well, okay, we've got a few days in here, but for the most part, being in the Southern hemisphere will be great.  As with every experience I've had abroad, it's impossible to know what I will see, who I will meet, what experiences we will encounter, but one thing I know for sure is that this is going to be an AMAZING adventure and I am looking forward to each step of the way.

Reflections on Bolivia

Just this past weekend I had a reunion with the students with whom I traveled to Bolivia last summer, and it was a great time to reminisce, get together, and think about where we were and what we did. Even though the busy-ness of being back at work and on campus got the best of me, I realized that I wanted to go back and finish writing about our experiences there. Over the past few weeks, I've attended conferences and presented on the topic of how international service influences college students, and thought about how it's also changed my life for good.

In looking back at our experience, our time in Tiraque was not without its challenges. From being in a new environment, in a school that had never had this type of volunteer program before, to navigating a scenario where our volunteers were inadvertently put into a position of perpetuating a paternalistic educational paradigm, to language barriers, the group weathered a lot of difficult situations. But what I learned is that it is true that what defines a person is not the situations that they encounter in life, but how we choose to respond to them. I think each person did the best they could in the moment, and there were also a lot of great experiences we all look back on fondly.

As we left Tiraque, the last day we participated in a march, which was actually pretty fun. The night before we helped students make posters and signs, then we marched around the town chanting, "Tiraque Limio" and "No Botar Basura" - and Martin the director mentioned that this was a true piece of Bolivian culture, to protest. As we said goodbye, there were lots of hugs, and well wishes, and wondering of what would come next for each of us on our respective paths. The connections that were made would leave a lasting impression on each of us, and continue to be part of our own experiences as we reflect back.

Before we left Bolivia, we stopped in Cochabamba one more time to do last minute shopping for souvenirs at La Cancha, and watch the World Cup finals... which was pretty cool. It was neat to see Spain win the World Cup at a Brazilian Cafe in Bolivia :). Then we got to take a trip to Copacabana, right on Lake Titicaca, which was a phenomenal little town. It was a great break and treat to get to spend our last night in Bolivia in a great hotel right near the water. It gave us the chance to see more of this country that we only scratched the surface of getting to know in the month that we were there.

We also stopped over in La Paz for 1/2 a day, and did a quick walking tour of the city, walking through the witches market, different plazas and districts, and getting a glimpse at the capital city.

Overall, words cannot describe this trip... from unforgettable freezing cold showers, to touching moments with the students at the talent show, to great group bonding and journaling marathons. There are a million little moments that just thinking about them brings a smile to my face. I'm thankful for the experience to participate in this trip, and also thankful for the memories and friendships that I was able to make along the way.

Pre-departure thoughts...

Well, in a few hours, we will be embarking on what is sure to be an exciting adventure to Bolivia. This time I've correctly identified my flight time/date, and started packing a week in advance :). We start with a flight from SFO to Miami, and have a 45 minute layover before we transfer flights to La Paz (yikes, lets hope for an on time arrival). Then we hop on another short flight to Cochabamba. For the first few days we are there, we'll be staying in Cochabamba for a general orientation, and then we'll head out to Tiraque, to El Centro Tata Esteban, where we will be spending most of our time.

A few nights ago, my friend Liz organized a great dinner where I got to meet a few of their friends who engaged in service in Bolivia (one did the Peace Corps, and the other actually interned for FSD!) It was an amazing time, and I'm so glad we got the chance to talk about Bolivia. Meredith, who worked with FSD before, actually knew the folks we'd be working with and it was very comforting to meet someone who had such great things to say about her experience.

I'm extremely excited for this trip, and am looking forward to so many things -- the students' experiences, meeting and getting to know the people and making lasting relationships, contributing in any way we can, seeing a new land, learning about indigenous culture, and recognizing personal growth and understanding in myself. I know that this will be unlike any trip I've had before, and am looking forward to being challenged and stretching beyond that which I've been comfortable. One of my favorite parts of travel is the eager anticipation with which you meet the experience. I have no idea what will transpire, who I'll meet, or what I'll learn, but that is part of the excitement. It translates into a lot of life experiences, and over the years I've come to embrace and cherish that anticipation. It's like the butterflies you feel when you know something good/exciting is about to take place. Once I'm there, I'll know what they were about. Until then...