i'm in love with a city

I'M IN PRAGUE.

Now, originally I was going to start My First Study Abroad Blog Post talking about the moment I fell in love with the city. Or, in other words, the moment my cab from the airport hit the top of a hill (after a few miles of nothing but normal-looking trees and flat road), and I saw the entire, fairy tale city spread out in front of me, the red roofs, the spires, and all. And I was in awe. There is no other word to describe it. The image of Cinderella's town at the very beginning of the movie comes to mind (the old-school version, where they used to show an overview of the "town" and then zoom in on a particular area as they began the narration), thanks to the dominance of the Prague Castle. I mentally played cheerleader to my taxi driver (...who did not speak English) by, given my generally decent sense of direction, I would think, "Please turn right, please turn right. ...YESSSS! Go left! Go left! ...SCORE!" in order to somehow -- through mental willpower -- make my dorm building end up in the center of the city.

But instead of all that, I'm going to focus on the moment I first really interacted with a Prague local.

So it turns out that not only is my dorm pretty near the center of town, but I'm also on the fifth (read: TOP) floor of my dorm, which means I have a great view, but that my thighs are going to get a killer workout in the upcoming four months. That also means that after unpacking, trying to figure out how to use the Internet/phone, laughing with the girl living across from me about how we both are now super inspired to visit Greece thanks to Mama Mia! and The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 (don't judge us), I was about to faint from hunger. Literally! So, since Lilly (the girl living across the hall) was taking a nap, I decided to venture out on my own (this is big, you guys) to find lunch.

My map was totally incomprehensible (it was all in Czech!), so I walked out, turned left and headed straight, as per some general directions a girl downstairs had told me to take to get to an area of cafes/restaurants. I walk down the adorable cobblestone alley and see this cute little shop with a sign that says "Sandwiches." It looked cute, so I open the door and am about to go inside when I hear a man's voice yelling Czech at me.

Oh no.

Well, after I worriedly go, "Sorry?" he informs me that the place is closed. Relieved that I wasn't breaking some previously unknown intrusion law and totally despaired over how I was going to find food, I ask if there was another place nearby where I could get a bite to eat, he asks me what I wanted, and when I say I just want a sandwich or something, anything, he goes, in the classic way that only a Central European can say it:

"...I could give you a sandwich."

I probably could've kissed him right then. So he unlocked the cafe, went down into the kitchen, and I waited outside by the road for my free lunch.

Well, turns out, there were no more pre-made sandwiches downstairs since it was the weekend, and the place apparently didn't get that much business. The feeling of doom comes over my entire body, until all of a sudden I hear Czech Guy go, "I can make you a sandwich. If you're not scared, you can come to the kitchen."

What? "Should I be scared?" I ask.

"Well, no. Well, you'll see."

And that's when I break the first rule of How Not To Get Screwed While In A Foreign Country; and I told him that it was my first day in the city. "In that case," he goes, "we're making you a sandwich."

I walk downstairs with him into the kitchen and survey that it's 1) pretty clean, with the ingredients all packed away, but also 2) that the ingredients did not have any labels on them to tell me what they were or when they expired. Czech Guy started poking at the bread to see if they were good or not, and when I asked about their status, he said he wasn't really sure since it was Bio Bread.

What the fuck is Bio Bread?

Well, he didn't know how to describe it in English, but basically he just said that it was "really healthy," so I figured it was probably organic or whole wheat or something like that. I poke at it to see what it feels like, and it's rock hard. I'm crushed, until I realize that: THIS IS PRAGUE! THIS IS ONLY THE FIRST RESTAURANT I'VE SEEN! I'll just go down the street to look for another cafe!

And thankfully, I found one with outdoor seating.

just being utilitarian

I suppose everyone has to starve at some point in their life.

And my time is definitely now.

After what I can only describe as a painfully frustrating last dinner at home before I fly out tomorrow morning, I got my budget laid out for me for my upcoming semester abroad. And as everyone knows, the beauty of living life free of food points is that the money allotted for food no longer necessarily needs to go towards food. Granted, this is also a major policy problem when applied to larger government projects, but in the case of little ol' me, life sans a meal plan has taught me one great fact of my life:

I'm willing to starve for cute clothes and trips to faraway places.

I mean, it builds character, right? Didn't we learn in economics that consumers should maximize their utility per dollar spent? I'm just being efficient here.

what happens at the resort stays at the resort

“They scream, they sing, they fall down, they take their clothes off, they cross-dress, they vomit,” Malia’s mayor, Konstantinos Lagoudakis, said in an interview. “It is only the British people — not the Germans or the French.”

- "Some Britons Too Unruly for Resorts in Europe" (NYTimes)

I wonder what do they think about American college students.

i hate feeling like all i'm doing is waiting

It's so strange being home right now, during the down time between Vietnam and Prague. I feel like all I'm doing is watching the clock tick until I'm on that plane Bohemia-bound and my life can start again. Granted, I should be packing, but that's a whole other issue to talk about (though really, all I have to say is a big fuck you to check-in luggage weight limits).

In the meantime, it makes me sad getting all the welcome-back emails from Duke administrators (...and sorority exec board members), having to RSVP "Not Attending" to all the random Facebook invites to welcome-back parties at all-too-familiar venues (venues whose names I can actually pronounce!), having to hear about Shooters stories over the phone instead of during the obligatory 3 am McDonald's run or the standard Sunday morning froyo binge, and knowing that everyone starts school again tomorrow. The Sanford Institute seems like a world away, and I can't believe that it'll be January before I return to that maze of a building. I can only hope Roger, the guy who works at the Sanford Deli, will still remember my name and the way I like my French Connection wrap.

In a weird way it's like I'm regressing back to the summer before freshman year, with all the same anxieties over how I'm going to do laundry, or try to cook (let's face it, knowing me, I'll probably just end up eating out every night and/or living off of cereal and granola bars), or who my roommate is going to be (though to some extent, I'm kind of glad we don't find out who our roommates are before we land in Prague because that saves me from awkward introductions over Facebook and phone calls spent trying to talk about sleeping/eating/studying/partying habits -- first impressions just really need to be made in person). At least this time I'll be in one of the greatest cities in the world instead of Durham, North Carolina (which, granted, definitely has its own unique charm, but it still just doesn't even come close).

a turning point

My iPod is officially too small for my iTunes.

my body astounds me

OH MY GOD.

I JUST WOKE UP.

And it's like 6:30 in the evening. I went to sleep at around 1 am, totally exhausted but thinking that, hey, that's a time I'd normally go to sleep and I have to beat jet lag! Actually, that's a lie, I totally fell asleep at around midnight, but we were watching a movie and so 1 am is when Carrie woke me up to drive me home.

That means I just slept for... over 18 hours.

HOLY SHIT.

THIS MADNESS HAS GOT TO STOP.

i can feel my tan fading away

I'M BACK IN THE STATES.

Times I've had to catch myself from saying "oh my god" or "thank you" or "excuse me, miss" in Vietnamese: 4.

First words uttered upon landing in LAX: "I'm cold."

Earlier today, I was also craving a sua chua (translation: yogurt drink) while at Target and had to settle for a Yoplait Light yogurt drink instead. I think it was strawberry flavored or something. It was not the same.

Speaking of food, here's a list of the insane amount of food I ate on my last day in Hanoi: Hello Panda, European chocolates, a baguette with jam for breakfast, a yogurt drink with shot of expresso, bun cha for lunch (translation: pork meat in a bowl of nuc mam sauce served with cold rice noodles and vegetables), hua gua dam (translation: mixed fruits -- lychee, avocado, watermelon, jack fruit, dragon fruit, etc. -- with condensed milk in a cup that you add ice to), a baguette with pate for dinner, and bubble tea.

The Vietnamese roommates surprised me with how sentimental they all were, but I've since decided that the world needs more sappiness. Everyone had little bookies that they had people sign (like yearbooks!), so I quickly grabbed a notebook I used to use for Vietnamese class back in June and had people sign that. Iris, Trung, and Sam all gave me cards; VT told me to never feel alone, gave me a little fat cat for good luck, and came to the airport with us to say good-bye; Hoang held my hand as we walked back from bubble tea, sang "She Will Be Loved" with me around the lake -- changing the lyrics every now and then to, "And you will be loved" -- and blew kisses at me through the bus window as we were heading to the airport; Thu, my roommate, cried when I said good-bye; and so did Ha, Johnny's roommate, who came with us to the airport too and chased after Johnny for one last hug as we headed towards customs. The roommates all talked about working hard to be successful so that they can come to America and reunite with us one day, but it's sad to think about how long that might take in reality. (It's also weird to think that if/when they do come to the States, their children will be... me, the first generation Asian-American. And in many ways, I do feel like spending this past summer in Asia has helped me understand my parents a lots more and how they grew up.)

The flight back home was quite an ordeal. I was majorly confused by the service from Hanoi to Incheon, which was both lax and annoyingly persistant. My check-in bags were 22.5 and 26 kg, but the lady didn't say anything to me, despite the 23 kg weight limit. Asiana air service is cool, right? Wrong. The flight attendants during the actual flight kept waking me up for food (at midnight?!? I don't even remember what I ate; I think it was beef and rice or something like that), wine (both white and red, the lady made sure I knew), coffee, and to tell me to put my seat up (or rather, I got woken up by her putting my seat up suddenly). Basically that mean that by the time we got to Incheon airport in Korea, we were all deliriously, hilariously exhausted. I passed out for about 2 minutes of bliss on the padded seats in a waiting area (seats without arm rests are a traveler's best friend), but then got hustled along by the others in search of an information desk. We had a 13-hour layover in Korea, so we were determined to go into the city, even though Alex pointed out that we'd probably either get raped or robbed in our state of exhaustion/sleepiness/incoherence. We ended up getting tickets for a 5-hour long city tour of Seoul (it's an hour bus ride from the airport to the city) that included seeing the palace, a museum (that even had a section on food in our exhibit on Korean life -- that's Asia for you; we take our food seriously), a tourist shopping street (I got a handmade necklace there for 6000 wong), and lunch (bibimbap for me, which came in a clay pot).

Honestly, I have no clear recollection of the flight from Seoul to LA. I slept for about 10 of the 11 hours, waking up only for food (I had some beef and rice dish again that you wrapped in lettuce and then kim chi with rice) and then for about 30 minutes of "What Happened in Vegas" right before we landed. Overall, I was pretty impressed by the Korean facilities. The Incheon airport is really nice -- incredibly clean and orderly with lots of things to do in the airport -- and the plane itself was pretty comfortable, with little side thingies on your headrest (that let you rest your head on the side so that you wouldn't get those awful neck cramps), good food, and individual TV screens that let you select which movies you wanted to play when.

American airlines seriously need to take some tips from Asian ones because flying domestic on Northwest after flying international on Asiana was 1) a total, unorganized mess (I didn't even get to say good-bye in person to Johnny, Rosie, and Caroline because the whole, confusing ordeal at baggage claim got me separated from them all!) and 2) not at all as comfortable. I was stuck sitting bitchseat in the middle of a 3-person row and I'm pretty sure I tried to put my head on the shoulder of the girl sitting next to me, thinking in my dreamy, sleepy state that she was Yushen. Awkward.

Things I've had to readjust to upon returning to America:
- how wonderfully clean and modern the bathrooms are
- how intense the water pressure in my bathroom is
- how large and thick toilet paper, kleenex, towels, etc. are
- how heavy metal utensils are
- how quiet the traffic is
- how inefficient NOT jaywalking is
- how large supermarkets are
- how refreshingly not invasive salespeople are
- how clean everything everywhere is
- how conversational strangers are
- how quickly everyone speaks English
- how many chocolate products there are
- how many cars there are
- how orderly traffic is
- how large personal space bubbles are
- how big and tall everyone is
- how few Asians there are in my town
- no longer having wet towelettes at every meal
- dry heat
- my cell phone's ring tone

You'll probably notice that the first few things on the above list were all bathroom-related. Let's just say I'm probably still psychologically recovering from our trip into the Central Region. (There were toilets in pure darkness, toilets that were just holes, toilets that were just holes and needed to be manually flush, toilets that were just holes on moving trains, toilets that weren't even holes in the ground but were actually changing rooms, meaning that you'd have to pee on the floor [...I didn't actually use those...], you get the idea.)

In other news, jet lag is a bitch. I woke up at around 6:45 am today, saw the school bus go by my window, wondered why summer school was going so late, and then realized first that it was still only Tuesday in this time zone and second that schools here have already started. Insanity. I spent my first day back home running errands and also picked up both a new, unlined, 240-page Moleskin journal (to replace my old journal that's now completely filled, thanks to this summer) and the Quick & Easy Vietnamese Home Cooking for Everyone cookbook, which -- after flipping through the pictures and the index -- I've decided has all my favorite dishes, except for hua gua dam.

My goal for this summer is officially to successfully make nem (translation: spring rolls). Asia Mart, here I come.

young and wild and free

Holy shit, I'm 20.

it's my last day as a teenager

I love being a summer baby. But it kind of sucks that I rarely ever get a chance to celebrate my birthday with my college friends, since we're always out of school come August 7th.

This summer, therefore, is pretty special. Not only am I turning 20 (CUE FREAK OUT!!!), but it's my first birthday away from home in a really long time. Not going to lie, whenever I imagined what it'd be like to turn 20, I never pictured myself in Viet Nam.

Anyway, last night the VTV 6 director wanted to take us out to karaoke, so all of us and the Vietnamese roommates loaded into three cabs and went over to the Old Quarter for some good old-fashioned bonding over bad singing/screaming. When I walked through the door though, I heard somebody shout, "SURPRISE!" and then realized that the music the people in the room were singing along to wasn't some Vietnamese pop song I'd never heard before but actually this really upbeat "Happy Birthday to you" song that I've heard about three times already at Solace (and once at the Loo, but who's counting). In the middle of the room were three cakes for me and Caroline (her birthday was this past Monday, but she was in Bavi teaching English then, so we hadn't had a chance to celebrate it yet): one with the traditional "Happy birthday, Caroline and Lucie!"; one with a little Vietnamese smiley face wearing a conical rice hat; and this beauty:

Translation: "Very beautiful, how much?"

LOVES IT. It was all so unexpected that I had even left my camera in my room, not wanting to have to carry a purse around all night. I'm a fool. But a fool with cake.

viva brasil

Last Friday I experienced Brazil in Hanoi.

Although tickets sold out within the first two hours and were only available on the black market after that, somehow Dave got 2 tickets to the “friendly” football (soccer) game between the Brazil Olympic team and Viet Nam.

What a great way to kick off August (no pun intended).

The game didn’t start until 8 pm, but by 4:30 Dave and I were already on our way to the Sheraton hotel. He works out at the gym there and therefore had gotten word that the Brazilian team was staying there during their time in Hanoi. We hung around the lobby with maybe 15 other fans and saw the team come out and get onto their bus to go to the stadium.

Outside the conference room, we also ran into a crazy girl fan from Singapore who had actually snuck out of the country by telling her parents she was doing something for school and spent $600 to come to Hanoi and see the team. But she didn’t even have tickets to the game!

The team’s bus had backed up traffic on the street to a level of madness that I’d never seen before, so Dave and I barely had time to grab some pho bo (noodle soup with beef) on the street before it was time to get a cab to the stadium.

When we arrived, the roads were already completely filled by Vietnamese in red and white jerseys. Dave had changed into a Viet Nam jersey as well (he was wearing a Brazil one when we had been at the Sheraton earlier), so I was pretty outnumbered.

We got a lot of stares, probably also because I’m pretty sure most people think I’m Vietnamese here. (Possible explanation: our tour guide from the Central Region trip told me that I apparently look like some famous Vietnamese model/actress/singer.)

A little friendly rivalry.

Our seats were in the front row of the upper level – not too shabby for having paid less than $20 for them. I was the only girl in our row, and the Vietnamese team had an absolutely insane home court advantage, which is ironic since the Vietnamese also normally love Brazil, but I suppose national pride takes priority in this case.

All that was wasted, though, because Brazil ended up winning 2-0!

After the game, Dave and I had to walk for about an hour down the road to find a taxi that would take us back to his house for less than 200,000 dong (the cost was only 100,000 dong to get to the stadium, but since so many people needed cabs, the prices jacked up, of course – that’s Asia for you). By the time we got a cab, I had about six missed calls on my cell phone from people wanting to know how the game was live and where the hell we were.

First things first, though: we had to get Dave’s motorbike. Let me take this moment to talk about how fucking amazing riding a motorbike at night is.

For starters, riding around during the day is definitely still fun, but traffic can tend to get a bit insane, especially during the 5-6 pm time slot (aka the universal rush hour time). Hanoi as a city, though, shuts down rather early. Most people are home by 9 pm, almost all young women have the traditional 10 pm curfew, and all bars save maybe one or two that pay off the police are closed by midnight at the latest. So after 10 pm, you can be pretty much guaranteed that the streets are going to be more or less empty.

Could the conditions be any more perfect for completely gunning it down the highway?

Imagine: you’re on the back of a motorbike hitting maximum speed, the wind is singing around you, through you, tugging at the jersey you're wearing that's about two sizes too big, and whooshing by you is the city, the lake, the sky, the stars.

And you’re flying. There’s no other way to describe it.

Zooming around on a motorbike after hours is probably my favorite memory of the city. I actually feel myself regress to about age five, as I yell for Dave to go faster, faster, faster down the road, as we rip around the traffic circles, my feet almost brushing against the gravel as we turn.

As we leave Dave’s house, he tells me that we’re going to take a different route this time, and all of a sudden I’m overlooking the lake, the city sparkling in the distance. The street, which the locals call Lover’s Lane or Korea Street, is famous as a place where couples rendezvous for late night activities of the scandalous nature, and both the road and the sidewalks are covered with graffiti of the cutest variety from couples leaving their names and/or a message to their significant others.

After that detour (totally worth it), we finally met up with some of our friends at Nutz, a club inside the Sheraton, which was actually just about to close, so we all go up into the lobby area and hang around the conference room where the Brazil team is talking to the press, we hear.

We catch the team as they’re leaving and end up having about an hour long conversation with the Vietnamese team's coach in French, Portuguese, and English. He’s really nice and invited us all to his house in Portugal if we’re ever, you know, in town.

Oh. And:

RONALDINHO SIGNED MY JERSEY.

Just Ronaldinho signing my jersey and touching my waist.

No big deal.

The night ended with a stop at Solace for dancing and me getting shown “how they dance in Brazil” by a guy from Sao Paulo. Apparently, it involves a lot of twirling.

I got back to my room at around 4 am and found my roommate still awake, with a surprise for me on the table:

August is my birthday month.