I’ve been criticized by the parentals
and Libby for being too negative last post. I’ll let the irony of that one sink
in for a second. It’s only going to be pure positivity from here on out, also
it’s Thanksgiving so it’d be sacrilege. You know the movie Inception-dream
within a dream within a dream. Well replace dreams with emotional roller
coasters and you have a semi-accurate picture of life here. We had a dinner party
on Monday night with an old friend(ish) I hadn’t seen in a while and the last
time we he had talked, he told me about about going home soonish and he was
like “I told you that? No I’m fine now, I’m going to stay for a while.” Had a
new teen class. Thankfully VUS seems to stop just short of shooting both your kneecaps off. Shockingly they
were nice, well-behaved teens and the three hours breezed by. Anyways, good food, classic rock and roll and
not-Dalat wine was a nice reminder of relaxed enjoyment (it’s hard to escape
the throbbing of techno music or bad pop music here in Vietnam). Of course our
small talk at the end devolved into telling stupid stories of our classes…sort
of felt like complaining-lite…
I feel like I understand the crusty
old guy teachers at VUS. They’re constant whining and bitching is a simple
self-defense mechanism and a substitute for the I’m assuming non-existent
therapists here in Saigon (they just can’t help it). On this Thanksgiving day I’m
thankful I’m not resigned to the crusty old teacher’s fate. My therapy will be
google-searching plans for our backpacking excursion…If anything can help me
escape the screaming children, Google can! I think I mostly have The Innocent’s Abroad to blame for the poor tone in the last post.
If only I could have read this book 6 years earlier I think I could have
unlocked some sort of creative genius. Now I just have a botched attempt at replicating
his superhuman humor that manifested itself as disparaging depression. I’ve
been telling everyone to read this book. You should read it and then maybe my
post won’t seem so depressing. It is beyond hilarious. I think it might’ve replaced
Catch-22 as the single funniest book
I’ve ever read. I had just finished reading Anna
Karenina when I picked this book up, and yes, I think I recognized its
greatness, but it was missing that spark you get when you’re reading a great and fun book. I think maybe Anna
Karenina disqualified itself from being fun with its length alone.
Anyways, we’re going to a
Thanksgiving party/dinner tonight. I’m
sorry I sort of wished I could have guilt-tripped y’all by saying we were going
to go sweat outside and eat some noodles for dinner alone on Thanksgiving. I
think the proper term I’ve been seeing from my friend’s parties back home is “Friendsgiving.”
I’m curious about the turkey, it was $150, maybe they kept it alive on the flight
over from the states or something?!?… I’ll let you know how Ferguson tastes…Ya,
I’ve already named him Ferguson. Mark Twain and his crew had a running joke of
calling every tour guide they hired Ferguson…and asking every Ferguson if the
creator of every monument/artwork/document they saw was still alive in as
straight a face as possible (ex. Michelangelo, Christopher Columbus, Ancient
Egyptians). If you find that as funny as I do, you should give the book a try.
Ps- Very illuminating article
(first 2 paragraphs at least) about Thanksgiving…I sort of feel like I just
found out Santa Claus wasn’t real… http://tomnichols.net/blog/
….not sure if I was the only one who thought Thanksgiving was loosely connected
to Native Americans
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