The first thing I noticed upon arriving was how much friendlier Americans tend to be towards complete strangers: saying “hi!” just because you happen to be passing in the hallways, smiling for no particular reason, engaging in random chitchat. It’s nice but it’s a little bewildering if you’re not used to having random people wedge themselves into your lives. I was grocery shopping back in Lawrence, looking at potatoes, when a little old lady sidled up next to me. She told me all about her potato diet, how she’d lost a ton of weight, and how she went to this seminar about the potato diet but didn’t shell out $65 for the book, she’d just stuffed all that information from Dr. So and So into that little potato in her head…and so forth. I kept nodding and smiling and thinking that if I were back in Korea, this little old lady would be shoving me out of the way with her cart to get to the discount potato bag. Koreans tend to be a lot more clannish and unwilling to engage strangers. It’s not that Koreans aren’t nice people – I’ve certainly been the recipient of unprovoked kindness, and definitely some over-sharing also. They’re just not quite as open, on average, as Americans.

Other than that, minor differences abound: yeah, in the States, you don’t have to bow to people older than you, or do that thing where you touch your hand to your arm when you’re giving something to someone (which makes it kind of awkward when you’re trying to juggle holding your groceries and paying for them at the same time). Particularly in Kansas, the environs is different: the skyline is vast and unobstructed by buildings. There are plenty of churches, but none with red neon steeples. Oh, and there are actually trash cans readily available, so people don’t generally toss their garbage on the street…

Exciting stuff, eh? That’s the problem I have been running into when trying to describe my life in Korea. My experience thus far has been interesting to me, but I can’t seem to boil it down into compelling sound bite format. Here’s how my reunion exchanges have transpired:

“So, how’s Korea?”

“It’s all right.”

I think the frustrating thing for teachers coming back home is that they want to talk about their Korea experience, sometimes desperately, but it’s hard to know where to start. It’s also difficult to find an audience that will really care to listen, because “I had to use toilet paper as napkins, and take my shoes off when going indoors” is just not as sexy of an anecdote as “I had to rebuild the roof of my mud hut every week during rainy season.” That is not to say that I think my experience, or that of any other expat in a fancy developed country, is somehow less valid than that of someone slumming it in some hovel in the third world. I just think it’s somehow harder to convey the sum effect of the differences between societies, when the similarities are so similar.

To wit: living in Korea is just like living America, except totally different in every way.

My mom is holding up, despite the tragic restrooms here, and the grueling tour activities which involve a lot of climbing (go Mom, she’s a trooper!). In Sapa, and even more so in Hue, she got really excited about all the cheap fruit and trinkets and other things. We had to buy another suitcase to carry all the snacks my mom bought for mere pennies at the candy store.

I’ve talked a bit about my mom’s reaction to being here, not so much my own. Of course I enjoy being here with my mom, even though she still thinks of me as five years old (comforting when I was sick; annoying when she yells across the restaurant for me to go to the bathroom).

It’s been complicated for me, too. Growing up, I always got flak from older Vietnamese people for not speaking the language. I thought I’d gotten over that, and it hasn’t been a problem until the Da Nang / Hue leg of the trip. The first thing the bus driver said to my mom, after introductions, was “how can she come here if she can’t speak Viet?” We’re on a big bus full of people for this part of the tour, and some of the tourists are locals who make bitchy comments about it (well, actually they make bitchy comments about everything).

There are four other young people on the bus, and one other girl who doesn’t speak Vietnamese. She’s Polish (here with her boyfriend, also probably part Viet, I’m not sure). The other girl could be Miss Little Saigon of Orange County – she’s pretty, dainty, fluent in Vietnamese and English, and probably in med school. She’s been nothing but pleasant to me. I kind of hate her a little bit. The tour guide told my mom he likes this girl, because she’s retained her Viet heritage while still living in America. (The implication is that he doesn’t care for me or my ilk, the kids who didn’t go to Vietnamese school).

I am accustomed to disappointing random old Vietnamese people with my poor language skills, but I never realized before how much shit my mom gets for it too. Apparently it’s her fault for not properly schooling me. I feel a little bad about it now, but it’s not like I’m the only kid ever born of Vietnamese parents, who doesn’t speak Tieng Viet. Honestly, sometimes I’ve felt less welcome here than a straight-up foreigner with no family connections to the land. They’d rather welcome some (white) foreigner here to learn about the culture and see the country. I don’t hear the bus people grumbling about the Polish girl, for instance. I feel like I’m not Viet enough and not foreign enough to be here.

This isn’t true of everyone I’ve met, of course – the people on our first tour group understood and pretty much didn’t care, as they have children of their own like me. One woman on this bus suggested to my mom that I apply to teach English here in Vietnam, and learn Vietnamese through a language exchange. I do want to learn Vietnamese and have a stronger connection to the home of my parents. The land is gorgeous and the food is the best. Also, Vietnam is rapidly developing and rebuilding after several wars. It would be nice to contribute to this process.

Right now, though? I feel more comfortable in Korea, since I have a clearer idea of where I stand. I’m definitely a foreigner, and know how to declare myself such: “waegook saram-iyeyo!” And I have a Korean-looking face, so when I’m not out with Eli I don’t get the stares. But I don’t belong in Korea, same as Vietnam; I’m even less familiar with the culture since I’ve only known it for a year.

This year, by the way, has taught me a new respect for expats. Like my friends scattered all over the globe like seeds, thriving in foreign soil. Like my mom. There will always be some quintessential part of me that is American, that won’t blend easily with other cultures. I’ve been thinking about how scary it must have been for my mother, coming to America for the first time, not knowing any English and having a young child to care for. How frightening it was for my aunt, who came over on a crowded boat that was attacked by pirates (yeah, really) near Thailand. I guess if my aunt could deal with friggin’ pirates, I could survive a few muttered insults from some Vietbillies.

Next issue: how we got ourselves kicked out of a Hanoi taxi! Stay tuned…

Update: wow, sorry for the “woe is me” post. I’m really having a good vacation, digital-pinky swear! Just a long bus ride yesterday, and the day before that, with a certain few jerks on the bus just got me temporarily down.

My mom reports that they are indeed mean to the Polish girl, calling her “fat” and stuff, quite literally behind her back. The main culprit is a woman who basically lets her toddler run amok and spit at people on the bus. Basically, who cares what this dumb cow says. My mom and I are off to ride bikes in Pho Co.

- attend a sleepover. I finally had friends in middle school, a feat I hadn’t been able to accomplish as a debilitatingly shy kid in elementary school, and I got to watch bad movies and paint my nails and play dumb games such as “light as a feather, stiff as a board” with girls who weren’t related to me (and were not, therefore, obligated to hang out with me).
- have playdates (see above).
- be in a school play. I didn’t have the lady-balls to attempt anything of the sort until I finally broke out of my shell, in high school. I played a doctor in a Christopher Durang play who perpetually drops dead babies. It was awesome.
- complain about not being in a school play. This would be more due to the drama teacher’s decision to not cast me in things, rather than anything my parents would have to say (honestly, I’m not even sure they were really aware that I was even in drama class in high school).
- watch TV and play computer games. I watched every episode of The Simpsons (allowed in my house because it was a cartoon and my parents were not hip to its general crassly adult tone) like eight times. Also, I was hardcore addicted to text-based MUDs as a kid. Yes, yes, NERD ALERT, but can YOU type 100 words per minute?
- choose my own extracurricular activities. My mom wondered why I didn’t do Science Olympiad like my genius sister, but instead chose this weird and obscure thing called “debate” that required her to drive my ass to the Wichita State University library almost every day, and to podunk Kansas towns every weekend.
- get any grade less than an A. I didn’t get a 4.0, but I was in a pretty tough college prep program in high school, so I wasn’t exactly slacking either, and I can’t recall either of my folks kvetching about my grades even once.
- not play the piano or violin. Of course I played both, as did my sister. I took to piano and still play, on occasion; violin, on the other hand – what a truly horrid instrument with which to arm a child. I vaguely recall recitals (attended by parents and other teachers, possibly forced at gunpoint or through blackmail) wherein the orchestra teacher actually made us stop mid-song and start over. I think when I have kids, I’m going to be Reverse Tiger Mother and forbid them from playing the violin, steering them towards more palatable instruments. “You will shred like Hendrix or else I’ll burn your stuffed animals!”

Sure, my mom is…well…let’s just say she never fails to provide fodder for amusing stories to tell my friends or post on a blog. She had her own ways of motivating me to do well when growing up, which mainly involved a lot of passive-aggressiveness and comparisons to other Asian kids: (“Eric played same song like you, but very good!” Stupid Eric.)

She never told me I was “garbage,” however, or ever gave me any indication that she could ever stop loving me for committing such a grave sin as getting a B on a test. She cares about me to the point of paranoia, and force-feeds me like I’m being groomed for foie gras, but has always backed off when needed. She hasn’t even disowned me for failing to have become an Ivy League caliber doctor / lawyer / important person! Failure though I am, from an evolutionary standpoint I definitely lucked out not getting a “Tiger Mom,” because you know what? Tigers eat their young.

Little baby Aria, shown with her favorite auntie.

My sister, doing her part to improve upon the family genetic strain.

She makes these tough little power fists when she’s hungry.

Raspberry smiles.

This is the woman so utterly defeated by email that I didn’t think she’d recover. Last Christmas, I bought her a shiny new (well, new to her) iMac and tried to train her how to use it, but she would repeatedly insist that she was too sleepy and would rather go watch the pirated DVDs she rents from the local video store instead. I’ve burned her mix CDs before (replete with Mom-friendly music, of course), to find out later that she has recorded these CDs onto tapes using her early 1990′s boombox. She’ll record songs she particularly likes twice or even three times in a row, so she won’t have to rewind.

I had given up on the idea of my mother abandoning her Luddite ways. “On the bright side, she’ll surely never join Facebook and see the X number of photos of me with a beer or a wine or ten in the vicinity.”

And even when I saw that my Aunt Rosie had joined facebook, I was not concerned because she’s the most tech-savvy of our aunts. She would try to talk the other aunties into buying DDR, for instance, because it was “a good workout.” And the other aunties would nod sagely and return to gossiping about us kids.

Then today, my sister hits me with the absolutely shocking news: Mom has somehow stumbled onto Facebook, and has created an account.

My first reaction was to rush to my profile page and de-tag frantically. After a good few minutes of this, which resulted in Facebook crashing for me and refusing to cooperate (damnable evidence, I bid thee SINK into the ocean), I had my second reaction: “wait a minute, why hasn’t she friended me yet?”

As a matter of fact, none of my other aunties have friended me, either. I could friend them, I suppose, but I’d rather not as I’m not sure I want to really reveal my life to my whole extended family and whatnot. Not that I am ashamed of how I live, or that I have photos of me shooting up in a ditch or something. In fact my photos are super tame and actually kind of boring. I’m just not really quite ready to reveal much about my life to my own family for some reason. I guess in some odd way I am more comfortable with complete strangers knowing the thoughts rattling around in my head than family members or even some of my friends. I was definitely impressed when krissy, for instance, related chatting about her PMS cramps with her father. Oh my god. I can’t even imagine talking about Aunt Flo with dad, and I am twenty-six. I have to leave the room even at the thought of it!

“Hmm,” said my sister, “maybe she tried to friend the other ‘karenology’.” It turns out that my sister has a friend who has the exact same name as me, and it is a little weird when I look at her profile and see a comment that really does not sound like anything I would ever say, and I go “whoa, has my account been hacked?” and then I remember that it is bizarro me.

“Phew,” said I, “That must be it. Bizarro karenology is totally taking the hit for me, and befriending my newly Facebooking aunties and mom.”

Now if this is the case – I guess I should be slightly annoyed that my family members don’t know what I look like well enough to realize that I don’t look a thing like Bizarro karenology – “hello, don’t you know what I look like? Also haven’t you learned by now that your own daughter never wears make up and dresses like a broke college student?”

But maybe this is a good thing. BK is apparently quite the shopping enthusiast, fashion plate and Asian club princess. Closer to the kind of good, normal Asian daughter that my parents want me to be. No distressing politics links or rants about the anti-abortion posters on our campus or beer or anything uncomfortable. Well, I don’t know that for sure, since BK’s profile is not public. Maybe she posts that kind of stuff too, which would be cool – and a little creepy, too. There can only be ONE!

Japan, with its fastidious attention to detail: nothing is left to chance there, not even the unfurling of tree limbs. Korea, flocked with duck-billed visor bearing women, vigilantly shielding their faces from the sun in an attempt to preserve their beauty (and ironically enough, looking awfully silly in the process). I think of all the countries, I had the toughest time in Vietnam – not just because I have the language capacities of a two year old (and a particularly slow one at that), nor simply because like a slow two-year old, I couldn’t cross the street without holding my aunt by the hand. It was in Vietnam that I had to deal with conflicting loyalties and identities. Here I could blend in, certainly better than E, who got the devil’s eye from an elderly woman in a market (who possibly took offense at his devil-colored hair) – but never fully. Even before I’d open my mouth to reveal my poor command of Vietnamese, my plumper frame and general look of wide-eyed cluelessness identifies me as foreigner, and I’d get stuck with the foreigner price. Vietnam is freshest in my mind, so I’ll begin recounting my days there – even though my journey actually started on the gaudy, noisy streets of Shinjuku.

Vietnam has price differentials – if you’re a foreigner, expect to get charged more than locals. This puts off a lot of tourists, including some of our friends who visited recently and got really tired of getting ripped off all the time. After awhile, though, I concluded that this is not because Vietnamese people hate foreigners or anything (although some might, like that old lady in the market). It’s not so much that they’re gouging foreigners, as they are helping themselves. First: Vietnam is still a third world country, in the process of rapid expansion, but getting a late start because of decades of ravaging war. So people are still very, very poor. Second: Vietnamese are extremely loyal to their kindred. Whenever possible, they’ll cut deals or try to go easy on their fellow countrymen, who they know probably need the help. Foreigners (and plump Vietnamese-Americans who can’t even speak the language) are probably rich and therefore don’t need the local “discounts.”

Every now and then I wondered how my life would have turned out had, instead of being born in the States, I grew up here. If my parents hadn’t traded rice paddies for wheat fields as scenery. If I grew up eating fresh mang cut every day, knew instinctively the proper pedestrian technique for avoiding death by herd of motorcycles, donned a face mask to shield my lower chin from sun-induced darkness. If there hadn’t been a terrible, protracted war that forced my parents to abandon their beloved homeland. If twenty million gallons of Agent Orange hadn’t been dumped onto this land, melting Viet Cong-shielding leaves from trees, skin from bones. As I toured the War Remnants Museum, looking at the photographs of the devastation inflicted upon my parents’ country by my own, the thought came to my mind: gosh, what if my family had been fighting for the wrong side?

But then, my family and other South Vietnamese suffered at the hands of their brethren up north. My uncle, much beloved by his sisters and mother, was shot by Viet Cong while serving an extended tour of duty (he re-enlisted to protect his younger brother from having to serve). I remember my dad’s voice, choked with rarely displayed emotion as he declared he’d kiss the soil, once the people responsible for wreaking utter devastation upon his hometown were brought to justice for their crimes.

I must stop here, because I don’t mean to make my vacation to Vietnam sound like a constant angst-fest. I had a wonderful time, eating the freshest, ripest, sweetest fruit – fruit whose paler, less flavorful cousins might be accessible to you in the States if you’re lucky – and spending time with dear old Auntie Needles, who doted on me like I was her daughter for the week. She’s the sweetest auntie one could hope for, and now it seems silly to me that I was so afraid of her as a wee lass – though, witnessing some of the ire she directed at cab drivers and waitresses, maybe I could see why a ten year old would fear her. For her part, she was ecstatic that I had made the trek to visit her, pinched my cheeks red in the manner of doting aunties, was endlessly patient with my bad Vietnamese and E’s culinary pickiness, and went to great lengths to make sure we had an amazing time there. I’ll miss having an Auntie Needles around to guide me through traffic and yell at taxi drivers!

More to come later, and as soon as I find my card reader for my camera, photos.

Now, for some odd reason, the “Vietnam” portion of the trip is making me the most nervous. Perhaps it’s because my Vietnamese is embarrassingly poor. I…well, I know the names of dishes my mom makes that I like. I can also say “sorry,” which will probably come in very handy. After that, I’m bracing for a chorus of “không biet nói Tieng Viet* Ha ha ha!!” Yeah, whatever, um, just put me and my boyfriend up for the night, mmm kay?

Maybe another reason is the traffic in Saigon:

For awhile I was actually kind of reluctant to tell my parents that I was going. I’m not sure why, beyond just this vague apprehension of offending my father, who has offered to take me to Vietnam in the past year. I eventually told him, and then my mother, and from both parents I was kind of met by this…silence. I don’t know if it was shock or surprise that I wanted to go on my own, or what. I told my sister about this reaction.

“Well, I don’t know about Dad,” she said, “but I think Mom is worried you’re going to get kidnapped.”

What?! Oh, that’s right, it’s just my reliably paranoid mom. Apparently since I don’t speak the language, that makes me ripe for kidnapping. I have the intelligence and street smarts of a four year old, see, and I would just willingly climb into the back of a car with anyone, even if I didn’t understand what they were saying! My sister has been suggesting a trip to Vietnam for years, and my mother’s always put it off, claiming to be too busy. But since I’ve told Mom of my plans, she has started seriously thinking about using her minimal vacation time to come visit when I am there.
I’m touched and would actually be really thrilled about having my mom there, to show me around and stuff – but they just cut her hours at work! And she’ll have a grandbaby to come visit soon, as well! I can’t help but think of what Suze Orman would say.

And then there was the issue of telling one of the aunties, who we’d be staying with. For the longest time I hesitated about contacting this auntie, who I’ll call Auntie Needles because she taught me sewing lessons when I was little. I learned how to sew by making traditional Vietnamese style dresses for my troll doll. Back then she was known as the sternest of the aunties, and my cousins and I were a little scared of her. Sloppy hems and other transgressions were met with sharp scolding. But in retrospect, all that scolding resulted in what was probably the most well-dressed troll doll, ever. And when Auntie Needles tired of America and went back home to Vietnam, something changed in her demeanor – she relaxed, laughed, and seemed delighted even to have us noisy kids running around!

I haven’t seen this auntie since I was ten, so I really have no idea if she’s relapsed to her grumpy auntie ways. Or if she’d be happy to see me, or annoyed that this random stranger-like niece was contacting her out of the blue, to crash on her couch. Or if she even remembered English – hell, my Vietnamese has vastly deteriorated since I last spoke to her.

Our departure date for Japan is coming up very rapidly, so I finally got off my duff and emailed her. If she was going to be slightly annoyed at me trying to bum her couch, then it would follow that she’d be REALLY annoyed if I did so without advance notice.

Here was her response:

welcome you and your boyfriend,very happy.Ok you stay with me and uncle My .we are ready everything for you…I love you and hope see you soon

She’s family. Of course she’d welcome me! Sometimes it’s easy to forget, the way we live here in the states, drifting apart on our own little islands.

Still, I’m a little nervous about my upcoming reunion with Auntie Needles. I kind of wish I still had that troll doll.

*Translation: “you don’t know how to speak Vietnamese?” The one phrase I will never forget, as I’ve had it barked at me by disapproving relatives all my life. I had no idea how to write that, by the way, and am just guessing using an online translator.

As I sat in the waiting room this morning, I contemplated just how difficult it must be for my mother and other people like her, whose grasp of English is tenuous at best. Medical complications and insurance issues in this country can be really foggy even for people who speak fluent English, who have doctorate degrees and such. Luckily for Mom, there is a huge Vietnamese immigrant presence in Houston, and services have popped up to cater this population. There was a Vietnamese nurse on hand to talk to patients, and the doctor she saw was Vietnamese. Putting myself in her shoes, I would feel immensely more comfortable going through an awkward or painful procedure, if I could at least understand what was happening. Just a few years ago, she probably would have had an incredibly frustrating experience at the doctor, with a higher potential of misdiagnosis, say. Or even worse, she might just not have gone to the doctor at all.

Despite these extra services, however, medical jargon can still be pretty hard to grasp for a complete layperson like my mom. The doctor explained to her, in Vietnamese, that they had found some whitish spots in her esophageal lining, that could indicate some sort of fungal infection, and that biopsy results would be available in a couple of weeks. Busy doctor that he is, he quickly rushed off to tend to another patient.

In the car, Mom asked, “why the doctor say I have mushroom in my throat?”

“I’m fine, at work right now. How you doing.”

“Good, I – ”

“Are you going anywhere spring break?”

“No, mom, I know we talked about me visiting you in Houston but I have a lot of work to do over break.”

“Don’t go to Mexico! It too much violence now.”

“Uh, okay Mom. I actually wasn’t planning on going there anyways…”

“Got to go back to work. Love you!” *click*

When my brother-in-law arrived, he did most of the driving by default. Despite the fact that she is terrified of his driving (he’s a touch, um, aggressive behind the wheel, to put it charitably!) (Hi, M!), he is a man and therefore automatically better equipped to drive than little girly me. Ordinarily this would annoy my feminist sensibilities, but in this case I was MORE THAN HAPPY to have someone else be the target of the backseat driving. Luckily for M, she’s a little more reluctant to nag him openly; unluckily for my sister, Chiaroscuro, she then gets the brunt of it. A lane change or slight route deviation would cue clucking, sighing and bossy murmuring in Vietnamese from the rear of the car.

Cars aren’t the only things to terrify my mother. My mother had called M’s attention to some ants milling around the base of her house outside. So far as we know, no ants had actually made it inside, but seemed content in their little ant hill suburbs. She said she was worried about termites, so M looked at them and tried to assure her that these ants were indeed ants, and not termites. She nodded and said that she knew they were ants, but still seemed to obsess over them. She had purchased some heavy duty termite toxic death in a can, and wanted M’s corroboration with her planned ant genocide. M wondered what exactly her deal was with these ants, and again reassured her that these ants weren’t doing any harm as they were.

“I know they are ants, but I heard ants can turn into termites!”

One: ants cannot turn into termites, unless biology has failed me. Two: her house appears to be made out of brick and concrete, not anything that is good to eat for termites. Then again, if an ant really could turn into termite, what’s to stop that horrible creature from eating brick, then concrete, then eventually chow down into human brains? Houston ain’t just good eatin’ for people.

Who can trust a world, in which ants can morph into termites and traffic dustups can devolve into quick-draw duels? Though I do not understand my mother, at all, I really wonder what it must be like to be her and to be terrified of everyone and everything, every day**. One of the first few nights I was there, I was relieved to be in a nice warm climate and a not-freezing house! My room was a bit stuffy, so I decided to crack open the window.

“BROOP BROOP BROOP BROOP!” “BROOP BROOP BROOP BROOP!” After my initial shock I realized I’d made a mistake, and ran down towards the alarm system, where my mom and brother were both running back and forth like scared chickens. “Sorry mom, I just opened the window! Sorry!” The alarm system automatically notified the police, my mom had to explain to a grumpy dispatcher what had happened, and I apologized profusely. I guess my mom is worried about crime in the area, and sure, South Houston doesn’t have the best reputation. But…she can’t even crack a window, to enjoy the nice weather? (Of course she probably also thinks this behavior is dangerous).

She also has barred and locked gates blocking entry to the outside doors, in addition to deadbolts and two other locks. Now, as my friend Krissy can attest, I am also kind of paranoid about safety things (for instance it is totally not safe of Krissy to take photos of herself while driving. and I don’t care if I am an e-nag. Hey, it’s in my blood). However, the things I am paranoid about and that my mother is paranoid about do not intersect. Mom is paranoid about burglars breaking in and stealing her early 1990′s TV set with bunny ears, or her collection of pirated Chinese soap opera teleseries dubbed into Vietnamese. Whereas my sister and I are paranoid about, oh, fire safety and potential barrier to exits.

I actually think that fire may be the #1 safety concern in Houston, but one that has astonishingly failed to become incorporated into my mother’s long list of terrors. I spent New Year’s Eve both enchanted by the many impressive fireworks displays going off around our neighborhood, and horrified. I mean, our directly-next-door neighbor was shooting off shit like roman candles and things, while standing directly beneath a tree. My mom said she was too scared to sleep on New Year’s Eves in Houston, because the fireworks sound a lot like gunfire. This is a valid fear in trigger-happy Texas. What is less than valid, from my perspective, is the fear that people will try and burgle your home during the New Year celebrations. Why then, of all times? Perhaps robbers will figure that the Houston PD will be too distracted dealing with people who caught themselves on fire, to be bothered chasing after them?

I never figured out her logic behind that, and I may never figure out her logic behind anything, ever. I do wonder if maybe next visit, the family activity should involve baking a big cake laced with Xanax, lounging around, and enjoying each others’ company – without fear.

* – In looking up all those Houston road-rage-turned-into-shooting articles to link – um, maybe Mom’s a little justified in her terror!

** – I just realized I have these two separate category tags, “Family” and “Crazy.” Perhaps I should just merge these.