Day 4 (also the day where we go sightseeing)

Group photo!

This is, if you haven't already figured out, a relatively light week for us. Our experience can vary between 8 - 10 weeks and we are choosing to spend 10 weeks here and thus I think we are using this week mostly the way we intended to. Rather I should say I think this is a justified and sensible use of our time. I have hit the ground running for different projects in different cities (in India) and I have known and been in favor of the motivation for that. That being said, it has been a really long time since I had the chance to slowly immerse myself into a new project. I think being in a new country, where I don't speak the language at all, where our work has relevance but not the pressing immediacy of say a disaster relief project (which I have worked on), I am grateful for the opportunity to explore the city, meet with different people and treat this like a marathon instead of a sprint.

Where I mime for a towel and forget what wearing shoes feels like

Miming is our primary method of communication here. My favorite one was enacting a towel in the aisle of a supermarket to a confused and possibly slightly embarrassed salesgirl. When the face towel gestures didn't do it, I pretended to take a bath and rub myself vigorously. She then figured it out and led me to the stack of towels. Which was great except the entire team was standing there and I am pretty sure she thought I was the biggest idiot ever.

***

It feels like my feet have forgotten how to wear shoes. I blame being encased in lined boots for months in the Minnesota winter. I have three pair of shoes and have almost gone through one whole roll of medical tape. At least thirty Band-Aids. I switched from shoes to slippers today and got blisters on my feet, because why not.

***

I have been told (not asked but told) at least six times between the time I left Minneapolis and got here that I am Indian. I have always known that I am Indian but I have not been reminded about it in this way. This  reminds me what a quintessentially Indian face I have. 

Work music playlist aka rediscovering music from my college days

:D

Day 3 @ Work

The wedding dress shop where we
 reached accidentally in the morning

We are spending this week mostly meeting with people at various non-profits in Hue. We walked over to Dean's hotel in the morning, spent a little time chatting with him about different approaches to forest conservation and community livelihoods, till Mr. Chuong from CORENARM came, and headed to the office for Hue Union for Science and Technology Associations (HUSTA). There was some mix-up with the directions and the taxi driver drove us straight into the courtyard of a fancy wedding dress shop. We made it to our meeting on time and met some very senior people, including the Chairman. They were very gracious and explained about the work they are doing, which has involved supporting CORENARM and agriculture, but also goes beyond it. I am grateful to CORENARM for doing this for us, this is making our experience so much richer. There seems to be a significant development sector/organization presence in Hue and it is nice to learn about it. We were also told about Hue has a large number of universities and doctoral students. Many of the residents of Hue have highlighted how they enjoy the pace and quality of life here more compared to say a bigger and busier city such as Ho Chi Minh.

Nina's Cafe

Dinner today was at Nina's cafe, which I would strongly recommend (here's their website http://ninascafe.jimdo.com). I had fried eggplant and even though it was green and I am used to purple it was really nice. For those of you thinking if we are working at all (friends and family :)), this is our orientation week and is meant to be lighter and get us acclimatized and settled in. We have been making slow but steady progress on pinning down our project.

Tintin poster at Nina's cafe
(followed a brief discussion about the racism in the books!)

Day 2 @ Work

A very bad picture
 of our office space (sorry!)

We started the day earlier today to meet with our adviser and discuss our options. We are still fuzzy on the exact details but it seems like we are move in the broad direction of Community Based Forestry Management (CBFM) and Enterprises (CBFE), with a possible focus on rattan. As someone with no experience with forest and land issues, I have known right from the beginning that I have a lot of learning to do. Before I can delve into the specifics of CBFM in Thua Thien-Hue, which is where we will work, I need to understand how it works in general and then in Vietnam. I realized that I am using a funnel approach to learning and as I learn about the environmental aspects, I am also trying to understand how the political and social structure plays out at the macro, meso and micro levels (an approach I learned from one of my professors in Fall 2013).

Day 1 @ Work

Our day started with running to get some delicious cold filter coffee, miming (this was all Meagan) and successfully getting either butter or condensed milk with bread, meeting at the hotel lobby and heading out to work. We met with our faculty adviser Dean Current, who just got in this morning. We are working with Consultative and Research Center on Natural Resource Management (CORENARM) and Dung Ngo, who is one of the Founders, has been our main contact. He introduced us to other staff in the organization and gave us an introduction of the three main tracks they work on: natural resource management, sustainable forestry, and disaster management and climate change. He was telling how a group of graduate students got together and had the idea and passion to found CORENARM.