Linh’s village

I apologize in advance but I will eventually be posting three blog entries this week because I did so many different things this holiday weekend and I really want to remember all of them.

The first place I went this weekend was Linh’s Village. It was probably the favorite part of my weekend. It was a little odd having tons of people point and stare at me Linh told me that in the whole time she lived there she had never seen a foreigner there so I guess it makes sense. The village was beautiful. The open air market made the market near campus look like a tiny hole in the wall. People carried live chickens home for dinner and fish swam in tanks waiting for somebody to pick them. There were tons of vegetables… including one that Linh said she hadn’t seen before (her mom does the shopping, not her). The temple was also beautiful; by far the largest I have seen in Vietnam so far. I guess there is more room for temples outside of the city. I was fascinated by how many things took place at the temple. Linh pointed out several painted lines in one of the temple courtyards where children practiced sports and held competitions in the summer.

At one point a monk showed us into the communal living quarters for the monks in the temple. There was a beautiful garden filled with grapefruits and other fruits. Eventually we reached the temple wall where we could see the surrounding countryside. It was amazing how much change the village had seen in such a short period. There were several large factories nearby that Linh said had been built in the last 5 years. There was a brand new road that cut through sever farmer’s plots of land… I wonder how much they were (or weren’t) compensated for that land.

I was also interested to see how close the graves were to the fields. There were literally morning glories (the food not the flower) growing right on top of some of the graves. Guess they make good fertilizer. Oh… another random thought about food. I had never realized just how much stuff lives in flooded fields. The morning glory field looked like it was shivering because so many frogs kept on breaking the surface of the water.

Another really interesting thing we did at Linh’s Village was interview Linh’s father and her neighbor about their jobs. Linh’s father works as a mechanical repairman fixing things like rice cookers fans and TV’s. While the jod sounds simple it was clear he was incredibly skilled. He had to study at a University in Ho Chi Minh city to learn his craft. I watched him pull out tons of complicated parts tangled together in boxes and explain from memory what each one did. Even though I couldn’t understand Vietnamese it was clear that he was incredibly proud of his job. He kept on putting his hand over his heart while he was talking and there was a certain gleam in his eyes that made it clear that he truly loved his profession. I’ll be interested to learn exactly why he loved his job so much once the interview is translated.