culture shock

So, it's almost the beginning of the next Lunar New Year. Yesterday was my last day of work for 2 weeks and the craziness, which has been in preparation for some time, is in full swing.


Because I'm an idiot, and planning to have my students over for dinner tonight, I had to go to the grocery store. Most everything closes down for at least a few days, so people are scrambling to be prepared with groceries, gifts, money, anything they might need on hand. It's like preparing for a tornado.


And going to the grocery store today-- which I regret-- was like the day before a "chance of snow" in Griffin. And at the risk of over-using comparisons, it was like going to Walmart on Christmas Eve, only with way way way smaller isles. SO... add that on to the culture shock that I am having, and it's lucky that I didn't go on a ramming spree with my little basket.

You have to understand the situation first. Everywhere I go, people stare at me. They nudge their buddies, they shout "hello!" or "what your name?" or the occasional "f*** you!" assumingly because they heard it on t.v. Everyone's reactons differ. Sometmes I get lenghty interviews, or they go on about my Vietnamese. Usually they just want to help the poor foreigner, but what they don't realize is that they are insulting my intelligence. I have had patience. But it's been a year and a half of being treated like an invalid.

I parked my bike and the security guard only used hand motions with me. Please speak, I said, in Vietnamese. But he smiled and waved a 2,ooovnd bill so I'd know the price for parking. Then he held up two fingers, in case he hadn't made himself clear. I already know the price. I would also have understood if he had said real words to me.

I was looking for the best little clump of parsley and an old woman came up next to me with a plastic bag and showed me that the vegetables are supposed to go in a bag to be weighed. I conjured up a smile, nodded my thanks, and muttered under my breath: "Not my first time at a grocery store, lady."

Kids ran past me and stopped to show their dismay at seeing me. Covering their mouths and giggling, they ran off. One man comes over and I hear him tell his son to ask me where I'm from. A nervous boy in stuttering English manages a, "What country you from?" "America," I answer. He runs back to his dad and relays the information. Everyone who passes me stares intnetly into my basket.

The isles are so crowded, and I think it's a cultural thing to push. There are so many people here today and I think my patience is thinning quicker because of it. A girl cuts in front of me in line because she has fewer items than me. I thought there was a chance that she didn't know that the foreigner she just cut off is undergoing full-fledged culture shock. So I decided not to blame the entire country for her behavior.

Finally, my turn to check out. The boy behind the register nervously types the price on a calculator and hands it to me. I wanted to scream, "PLEASE JUST SAY IT TO ME!" I take my receipt as everyone stares. I've been having all of these thoughts, but in the half hour I've been in here, I've said one word.

I hand the security guard my number, trying to show him that I've done this dozens of times and he doesn't need to give me the step-by-step. It's sprinking a little and he points to the sky and slowly and loudly says, "MUA!" the word for rain. Granted, it's possible that my Vietnamese has actually gotten worse this year, but people talk about the weather more than they ask me if I'm married (and that's a lot). Yeah, I said, with a sort of-grin. Mua.

You're probably waiting to hear about me screaming and then ramming my bike into the man who mimed eating corn to try to sell it to me next. But I didn't. That story would be much more fun to tell. Instead, I calmly told him in English that I didn't understand his hand signals, but if he was selling harmonicas, I might be interested.

Then I rode my bike home and Jenni told me that we got our salaries early-more than a minor miracle. I made dinner and my students came over for a double birthday party and we had a blast. So it was a great day.