“The Parallel universe is a hypothetical self-contained reality co existing with one’s own. Where the choices you make in this life are played out in alternative realities.”
It’s been a year. I have been living, teaching and traveling abroad in Vietnam for a year. I reflect upon all that has happened in my time abroad, as it was not a smooth transition, and I am astonished. I have created a whole entire new life for myself on the other side of the world. In a culture so different that ‘pork floss cake’ is a thing and boiling hot soup is being slurped down at 7:00 AM, on the street, when its already 90 degrees outside.
I am so involved here with my own daily living routines and friends. One day I found myself eating lunch on the floor, in a circle, with a Vietnamese family whom I work with and I didn’t even think twice about it being aberrant. Living in a compound of Vietnamese families, I am no longer a stranger but part of their community. I have a little six-year-old boy who waits for me to come home from work. Tony comes into my house to hang out with me, watch YouTube videos, and I’m attempting to teach him English. I have been taking Vietnamese language lessons in my neighborhood. Lets just say, I have really stepped up by bargaining skills at the local markets—come shopping with me! This is the phase of living abroad, which I have been calling, adapted.
I recently opened my own business, called ‘Ride With Me.’ Ride with me has been an idea of mine, since the first day I attempted to ride a motorbike in Saigon. Which if you remember from my previous stories, was an utter disaster. Partnered with a Vietnamese family, we’ve started teaching expats how to drive and manage a motorbike in Saigon. It started as a passion project but it has been fairly successful since only opening two months ago.
On top of all that, I am still teaching full time. This school year has been far more challenging, physically tiring, and mentally draining then any career I could remember. Putting on a high energy level performance everyday, to fifty ESL first graders, is something my energy level, can’t even handle (My children are very lucky, they are so darn cute!) The teacher’s office, where I spend the majority of my life in, is a full-blown sitcom.
With a cross-cultural teaching environment we are uncovering the many differences between the western world and the Vietnamese world. We overcome “cultural differences” everyday. Like, explaining to our Vietnamese friends that a baby- daddy is NOT a dad who looks young….then, spoken loudly from one side of the office one interjects “She wants the sperm of a Vietnamese man so she can have a hybrid baby” is a typical conversation and dynamic in our workspace.
Living in Vietnam is just liberating. With no laws abided by or rules set in place, it is the city of freedom! You can ride your motorbike on the sidewalk if there is too much traffic on the road, and the 7/11 will open your beer for you so you can take it into the bar across the street. I am living a life that was never even imaginable to me. A life, I never once foreseen, or could paint a picture in my head about. If you were the worlds greatest google-er you still could not picture what living abroad in Vietnam is all about, it’s impossible. Dreaming about what your wedding day will look like, as a young adult is easy, as it’s all over the tabloids and social media. But living abroad in Vietnam, all the little details, side alleyways, street life… I’ll still never truly be able to paint it all out for myself, or anyone else. I’m adapted but I still can’t take all of it in yet. My life is a movie that has never been played before. It’s a parallel universe that only the people in it, with me, will ever truly know. I don’t know, even the slightest bit, what I want to do next year. What I do know is that this is my now. I am living the best possible, unimaginable life, I could possibly be living.
Thank you to all who have been NAMaste-ing with me! Cheers to the one year mark!
