The 4 Stages and Comicbooks

It seems that my stay in Vietnam could be summed up into 4 main phases, upon reflection. And I’ll outline them here for mere posterity, if that.

First Phase: Characterized mainly by a sense of delirious acceptance amidst a world I didn’t understand but thought I was getting to understand. It took me a full 5 or 6 months to break out of this phase and realize that everything I was learning was all to naught. That what I was learning was mainly just dictated by what I wanted to learn, not by what I ought to learn, or could have learned. This first phase I was mainly fucking around, learning little by little, but not invested in the place that I was at. In many senses, being intoxicated, and not taking my role here very seriously. My students were generally secondary, although I really appreciated interaction with them. My friends were paramount. In earnest, this part of my stay is a bit hazy to me.

Second Phase: This basically came around the second semester. Eric, Lillian, Steven and Bich had all left. It basically came down to me and Emily. With Emily as my ever-increasingly close friend. We shared much in common. Philosophy, vegetarianism, raw experience with Vietnam, open conversation about romance and sex, and trips to Saigon. This open friendship helped me to kinda reflect on my experience in Vietnam. At this same time, I had accepted a bigger workload, teaching people from 6d, 7d, and 8d all at once. It was in this semester that I began to understand more deeply the politics and concerns of the students and teachers. Mainly I got deeper into what I saw were managerial problems with the Foreign Languages Department and the started to put together how I saw Vietnam, with respect to the present and the future. It’s around this time that I started to have almost daily realizations about Vietnam and Vietnamese people. Something clicked. All the cards that I’d been seeing and thought I understood, and didn’t understand were falling together: losing face, politeness, lack of promptness, family obligations, poverty, supposed government oppression, coffee, drinking culture, etc. etc.

I think it’s around this time that the thought that I was developing during the first phase came to fruition. The thought that Viet Kieu’s in the USA don’t really know what the hell they’re talking about when they talk about Vietnam. As I came to understand Vietnam more deeply I realized the way that people in states talk about Vietnam reveals their lack of understanding. Interestingly enough, my three years of studying colonialism, Orientalism, neo-colonialism, capitalism, global capitalism, etc. came in handy in seeing the psychology hegemony of “privileged Viet Kieu’s” versus Vietnamese. But of course, no book can truly tell you how people live, and how your personality is bound to react to them.

Third Phase: With the departure of Emily I was faced with a hole. She left for some international travelling across Southeast Asia. I was stuck here, and decided to finally implement a project with ten students over the summer to put a backbone behind the Foreign Languages Department. I also spent more time getting to know my colleagues more deeply. I think this is when learning about Vietnam wasn’t just restricted to one or two things daily, but every few days, my entire view of Vietnam changed completely. This is one of my first positions as a manager in Vietnam. The repurcussions of this risk helped me learn a lot about Vietnamese people and to gain some great friends. This was of the most pressing times of my life. The challenges that I met with here though were only precursors to what were to happen in the fall, when new students arrived and the supposed backbone we were trying to build was put to the test.

Fourth Phase: The income of fall students, and the reality of our planning came to fruition. I have never learned more about people than in the last two months. The reason for this is that my understanding of Vietnamese social interactions had come to a certain head. I feel like I can navigate the people quite smoothly, and naturally. I understand most of their generic intentions. And by understanding at least this much it’s helped me understand where I fit in as a semi-foreigner, how I can contribute to their culture in a way that is useful and sensitive, and how can I share myself in a suitable way (maturely compromising my own needs for acknowledgement and self-worth).