Superbowl... Monday? - Non-stalgia

Well I did it... I dragged my ass out of bed at 5:45 this morning to head down to the local pub to watch the Super Bowl.  Now I have the pleasure of sitting at my desk for another 7 hours.


I took my time getting to the bar this morning.  American football is treated with extreme indifference here in Vietnam, so I didn't expect today to be any different.  Wrong.  I arrived shortly before the opening kick-off to find that there was not a single seat left in the place.  I was forced to stand through the entire first half, until a woman with an actual job had to leave.  The rest of the atmosphere might as well have been Vegas.  People clapped and cheered after every play, and why shouldn't they?  It was a good game.


I think the thing that struck me is how insignificant the whole thing felt.  I was sitting watching this bastian of American culture and it felt incongruous to our new lives.  Moreover, the importance placed on the game itself in the US was made to feel outsized and ludicrous.  I've never been totally okay with professional athletes making more money in an afternoon than I make in 5 years, but now it feels grosser than usual. 


When I stopped eating meat, I had cravings occasionally.  Eventually though, I realized that I had forgotten what things like steak and chicken taste like.  I tried a bite of chicken in November for the first time in more than ten years.  It didn't taste like anything. We are in a similar situation now.  It's funny to think that when we first moved to Vietnam, we searched for things that reminded us of home.  Now when we try to touch that nostalgia, we find that the thing we longed for is not as great as we remember.


I managed to assuage my guilt over having three bloody marys before 8am on the morning of a workday, but now I just want to curl up under my desk, George Castanza style, and have a nap.

I wrote that yesterday and wasn't sure where it was going, so I gave up.  So much for my "post every weekday" streak, but I suppose the only one keeping score on that one is me. Over the course of the day I tried to figure out how to finish it.  I wasn't sure what I was trying to get at.  I reread it this morning and this sentence stuck out: Now when we try to touch that nostalgia, we find that the thing we longed for is not as great as we remember.

On Friday night Reyna had to work late, so I went to the pub and had a beer.  It's nice to go down to the local bar alone and chat with the other westerners that live here.  This is a very pleasant change from living in Vegas.  You just never know what you're going to meet, but most everyone is friendly.  On Friday I met a middle-aged couple from The Netherlands.  We talked for about ten minutes or so, then they left to sit at a table to eat their dinner.  I assumed we were done chatting, but twenty minutes later they sidled up to the bar and sat next to me again.  They told me they'd ordered cheese fondue, which sparked a conversation in which both lamented the absence of good Dutch cheese here in Vietnam.  They got misty eyed talking about Sunday afternoons eating super strong Dutch cheese and drinking port.  They love living in Vietnam, but they really miss those afternoons.

Then they turned and asked me what I miss about the US.

My first response was, "friends and family."  Kind of a no-brainer to which they laughed and said, "other than people, what do you miss about living in the US?"  I sputtered and false-started about four times then I looked them in the eye and said, "Nothing.  I don't miss anything about living in the US."

How can that be true?  I spent the rest of the weekend thinking about that conversation before I got up to watch the Super Bowl on Monday.  If you've read this far, you've already read my feelings regarding that.  Those two events have led me to realize that the thing I miss about living in the US is the nostalgia I had when I longed for things.  The days when I would sit and daydream about that first Capriotti's sandwich, or watching my Georgia Bulldogs play a game*. 

*I did both those things while I was back in the US at the holidays.  The Capriotti's was insanely salty and the Dawgs lost their bowl game in a heartbreaker.

We're two days away from celebrating living in Vietnam for ten months.  It's amazing how fast it's gone and how far we've come.  Last night we had burritos for dinner.  There were a few hiccups, where we didn't have certain ingredients we thought we had, but it was a relatively painless experience.  I couldn't help but think back to the first time we had burritos.  Reyna had to go to five stores, spent untold hundreds of dollars and then spent hours cooking.  The enjoyment of cooking the dinner was totally ruined by the fire alarm in the building ringing every minute the entire time the stove running.  The security guard even came up to our apartment to yell at us for setting the alarm off repeatedly.  By the time dinner was ready, she didn't want burritos anymore, just to sit in the air conditioning and have a nap.  That evening, even though it was hard is one of my favorite memories of our first few months in Vietnam, and the struggles we had.  Every day was strange and difficult. 

We've really settled into this place and made it our home, but that's also the problem.  The parts of my life that I look back on most fondly are the times when I struggled and the times when life was difficult.  I don't remember the day I finished my first century bike ride nearly as vividly as I remember trying to do it the weekend before; riding fifty miles before realizing I couldn't make it, and then suffering through 30 miles home.  There were times when I thought I might actually die that day. Coming that close to the edge of my own ability and recovering gave me the strength to go out a week later and finish.  Experiences like that are the ones that define us and shape our character.  It's very odd to find that the nostalgia I carry now is for things that happened in Vietnam rather than things that happened before we moved.

This feeling creates a strange dilemma in my head.  Where is my home?  I've always considered the US as home.  We refer to it as "home" in conversations sometimes, but that's about it.  So does that mean that Vietnam is now "home?"  I have no idea.  If I let myself believe that I find myself feeling guilty about letting go the home I knew for 34 years before moving away.  How can a 34 year relationship just "poof" and disappear?  But it seems that's exactly what's happened.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'm looking for another challenge.  I've adapted and overcome the difficulties of living in Vietnam.  I know where to find soap, toilet paper, tortillas and tomato sauce.  I know where to go to find a custom motorbike, how to call a taxi and get them to come to the house, where to shop for a decent couch, how to spot "sketchy ice," how to drive around without fear of dying and how to not get lost.  Those were the challenges of 2011.  It's time to find a new one.  That way I can look forward to the new challenges rather than focusing on my "non-stalgia."