Sivan's firework birthday candles were a hit!

Amali going for the ball! 

What a great year for her -- being in a school with only 25 kids per grade has given her opportunities to play sports, perform music, and take on leadership responsibilities.  She has grown with the experience.  She came a child and returns a young woman.

Well, sometimes.

The pineapple lady in the alley by my building

Planning the return

   Record heat wave in Hanoi -- It is early May.  Normally the temperature hovers in the low 30s.  But this week we had four days of  >39 Celcius, with a 42 C maximum on Weds.  Air Conditioners can only do so much against the heat in uninsulated buildings.  The swimming pools opened this week and yesterday Becky and I lifted at the gym for a half hour and then moved to the pool where we swam for another 45 minutes.  I hope to make this routine, time permitting.

   But we have shifted gears here, from "living the expat life" to "planning our return."  Becky is looking at new teaching positions in APS, I am planning how I will approach my new role as Coordinator of Environmental Initiatives at Sandia Prep.  Amali has begun studying for her Bat Mitzvah, both girls are trying to figure out their "sleepover schedule" to visit with friends when they return. 

   I have spent hours, mostly late at night when the internet is faster and people are awake in the West making travel arrangements and summer plans for our family. 

   Here is how our summer is shaping up:

   Becky and I finish school in late May.  Our friend Esther comes to visit and she and Becky travel together, while I stay home and pack lunches and shop for food and withhold allowances and experience all the other joys of parenting teenagers.

   Sivan and Amali finish school on June 15 and board their plane on June 17 for the 27 hour ordeal back to ABQ via Tokyo and Dallas.  They have two four-hour layovers.  Am I worried?  They are too old for unaccompanied minor services, but are they old enough to go it alone?  I am confident that they are.

   Becky and I will not return to the US until July 5.  We are trying to figure out where we want to travel.  We could keep it really cheap and travel over land through Laos and Cambodia.  Or we can take a reasonably cheap flight to Kuala Lumpur and relax on the beaches of Malaysia.  Or we can spend a bit more and visit the Myanmar before it gets spoiled after it completely opens up to tourism.  Tough choices are better than no choices.  

   The girls will stay with their grandparents and arrange for visits with friends.  After 8 days, Sivan will board a plane for New York on June 26.  She will head up to Camp Naaleh, near Oneonta in Upstate NY (a recently revived incarnation of the camp her father and aunts attended in their youth) for 3 1/2 weeks. 

   Amali will go up to Hummingbird Music Camp in Jemez Springs for two weeks beginning July 1, after which she will go to Comedy Camp for a week at The Box theater.  Then Chuck and Amali will fly to NYC on August 21 and pick Sivan up from camp on Aug. 22.  Back to Brooklyn and then Sivan heads back to ABQ on Aug. 25.  Chuck and Amali hang out with the NY cousins a few more days and then drive up to Maine to visit the Connecticut cousins.  Then back to NM on Aug 2.  One more week and then Folk Dance Camp -- at least the girls will go.  Then back to School on Aug 13 for Chuck and Becky, Aug 14 for the girls. 

   Somewhere in there we have to make time to visit dentists, orthodontists, pediatricians, veterinarians, rabbis, cantors, DMV and driving schools (for Sivan), principals, and friends.  No problem.  (Mostly, we expect friends to come to us).

   I have had to buy health insurance for a couple months, and have begun shopping for a second car -- Toyota Prius, Honda Fit, or Mazda 2?  Any other votes? 

Keep cool.

Chuck

Big Vietnamese roly-polies displayed on the mountain path to the Perfume Pagoda in Hanoi

Too Many Charicatures of Americans

This blog post reflects my observations of the growing Vietnamese middle class.

I have had my students read excerpts from Thomas Friedman’s 2008  Hot, Flat, and Crowded in which the author links climate change, economic growth and the communications revolution, and population growth to explain the major world problems – war, poverty, disease, famine, government instability, tyranny, and loss of biodiversity and depletion of natural resources.  As a journalist, his sources – personal anecdotes, recalled conversations, and news summaries – are less rigorous than I would prefer, but his presentation is clear and his writing accessible.

He begins and ends the book with the not-so-new idea that everyone wants to be just like Americans.  The ambition of every family, every city, every nation is to develop a wealth that will allow for all people to live become like us.  He then goes on chapter by chapter to convey the dire consequences of 2-3 billion “Americans” instead of the 350 million in our country and another 500 million or so scattered about the globe today.  Humanity already lives beyond its resource supply, so doubling or tripling the number of affluent consumers will lead to disaster after disaster.  “Petrodictatorships” and terrorists, Crash of fisheries and loss of productive farmland, and the looming costs of the climate crisis are three examples.   Friedman gives credit to the great benefits of technology, the internet and wireless communications as economic equalizers: Every developing country now has a growing middle class, creating a snowballing effect of investment, growth, consumption, and more investment, growth and consumption...  But this same middle class constitutes the “Too Many Americans” of his thesis.

What I have seen this year in Vietnam suggests that the perception of definition of what it means to be an “American” is part of the problem.  The middle class in Vietnam, and elsewhere in the developing world is preoccupied with status symbols – Large Mercedes sedans, SUVs, or high-end sports cars are the vehicles of choice.  I have seen more Rolls Royces, Bentleys, and Maseratis driving around the crowded streets of Hanoi that in New York or Chicago.  Other displays of wealth include the constantly growing houses, and construction of massive 2^nd homes out in the country; shopping only at brand name stores in dozens of new western-priced shopping malls going up all over town; and eating lots of meat, less rice, and increasingly, western foods like ice cream and chocolate. Middle class Vietnamese families do everything possible to send their children to (a) boarding school in the US, (b) boarding school in Australia, Canada, or England, or (c) international school here, all in hopes that their kids will go to university in the US. But the school system here is not training critical thinkers who will pursue a liberal arts education abroad – just consumers who will study business, finance, economics or engineering so that they can get a high paying job so that they can buy a bigger car, build a bigger house, take expensive shopping vacations to Kuala Lumpur or Singapore…

There are almost no overweight adults in Vietnam, but an increasing number of overfed children.  I see parents chasing their children around the lobby of my building or in sidewalks and alleys, bowl and spoon in hand, forcing the child to eat and eat and eat.  Vietnam is one generation away from food insecurity, subject to the whims of drought and flood.  Their eating habits – eat as much as possible now because tomorrow we may have nothing – haven’t changed, whereas the caloric content of their foods have double or tripled.

 So what have the imported from our culture – material consumerism, worshipping the dollar, and a preoccupation with advertising wealth.  But they have not adopted our inventiveness, our appreciation for nature and conservation, or our value of education for its intrinsic benefits.  How do we begin to export those qualities of Americanism?  I don't know.  We achieved our wealth by depleting our resources and despoiling our land.  Their mimicry of our overt symbols of wealth is understandable.  Sadly, the less visible yet equally American qualities of social justice and personal responsibility remain unknown and invisible.