6 Months In Vietnam
Soon, I'll bid farewell to a place I've called home for nearly six months. Why I chose to pause, settle, and teach english in Vietnam you may ask? I wish I could give you some marvelously complex answer, but you get simple today. I was dead end broke and spending cash. Fast.
Had I paid more mind to my inbox with a "working.holiday@border.gov.au" email back in November 2017, granting me a 1-year visa to live and work in Australia, I'd probably be comfortably settled in westernized civilization working on a farm of some sort. But, God decided a little detour would do me good. And he was right.
Settling down in Vietnam for half a year has brought me back to what feels like a grand 'ol college reunion, but different. It's not a reunion - it's an expat community living together in big city, Hanoi. You didn't spend four years studying with any of these people. No one is in university and many chose not to attend one. No one is truly teaching english because that's the career they want to wholeheartedly pursue. It's really just a bunch of young adults experimenting with their time, making friends from around the world, spending lightly, playing below average games with quite-frankly, epic, Vietnamese kids, while making decent cash at the same time.
Settling in Vietnam has come with good days and bad ones. I've witnessed animal cruelty on a whole new level. I've watched countless motorbike accidents involving victims without helmets. Getting scammed is just part of the process in Asia. My motorbike was stolen from outside the kindergarten school I teach at (nope, you don't get those things back). I've also managed a class of 30, 4-7 year old Vietnamese children and didn't book a flight out right there and then. I've managed to teach new things to over 100 students both online and in person. I've learned the laws of traffic and tactically ride 40+ kilometers to and from work amongst hundreds of other motorcyclists. I've made friendships I know will last a while.
I've learned that beyond the sameness we humanity share as a whole, great differences will always lie within. Differences made up of unique struggles, downfalls, sicknesses, and successes, that are particular to our own. Not everyone will agree with you or your opinion, because they are their own and have opinions supported by their own distinct past. To fight this or impose that our understanding may be superior to theirs, is to beat a dead horse.
I've learned that time is subjective and everyone learns and grows at different speeds. What you learned last year through experience, someone else has not. But they will. The best we can do is share our wisdom without reservation. An innocent attempt to awaken another's consciousness.
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In my opinion, Vietnam is an unconventional place to save a pretty penny while you contemplate how you truly want to spend the coming years of your life. You work a pretty easy job just because the pay is through the roof, but do you enjoy it? Yes and no. Do you get out of class with your hair on fire, running to a bia hoi to down an ice cold 30 cent beer? Definitely. Is it worth it? Most say yes. I say yes.
It's a place where smiles are rich and most times honest. It's a place were people work with what they have, though it may not be much. It's a place where people truly want to learn about you and where you come from. It arouses your forgotten childlike curiosity which bears profound teachings you never knew would make so useful. It reminds you to not take life so seriously but to do the best you can with whole intentions.
To me, time is not wasted if the forthcomings involve an awareness you not had previously.
I used to want to be a teacher. Now, to some extent, I know what being a teacher would be like. It would be exhausting, stressful, demanding, plus some. It would require me to take responsibility for the precious educational experience of 20+ children each year. Now, I know that I am capable of being a teacher and what it feels like to have some reign in a child's development. Thats useful to me.
I've learned the ways I crave comfortability and how important it is to challenge that within myself. To become comfortable in turbulence. To observe, absorb, and note the subtle, and oftentimes unfavorable, behavioristic traits towards an unfamiliar culture.
I've seen the profusion of single-use plastics with inadequate number of recycle bins and understand why plastic pollution in our ocean demands our attention and a shift in our consumeristic behavior.
I have a better conviction of my personal ability to succeed at what I put my effort into and how I want to spend the coming years of my life.
This place strengthened my patience, loosened my standards, frustrated me to enlighten me, revived my spirituality, and showed me how much I depend on the ocean and mountains for my sanity. I learned how important it is to allow time for uncomfortability in foreign circumstances. To not run at the sight of uncertainty. Because when we are in these spaces of unfamiliarity, we grow our legs and forge our own navigation that might otherwise be overlooked - ultimately lending to our own ignorance and self-doubt.
Confidence arises out of chaos and to swim in the shallows of your fear is to sleep dejected in the absence of your purpose.