Rain Falling on a Tin Roof

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...and Other Eccentric Thoughts on Romance. Also, Some Other Stuff.

Hello Everyone!
As the title implies, the beginning of this email isn't going to have a lot to do with my life in a foreign country, so read it or not as you choose 😊 There's some stuff about Vietnam at the bottom if you want to skip down there.

These thoughts were on my mind at about 5:30 this morning, when I was awoken out of an only-been-asleep-for-four-hours-and-still-deliciously-comatose sleep by a muted roar which I realized after a moment was in fact the rain. Welcome to the tropics! It was so loud and insistent that after a few minutes I plodded sleepily out onto the covered balcony to observe what sounded like a deluge of truly Biblical proportions. But although it was raining quite hard, it didn't look like I was suddenly living under the waterfall that my ears had led me to imagine. Peering up (through my drying tank tops and gym shorts and towels; the balcony is where the clotheslines are, because developing countries just don't have dryers), I saw the reason for this discrepancy in the roof of the balcony, right outside my bedroom window: corrugated tin. Ah.

As I laid in bed waiting for sleep to reclaim me, I thought of a line from one of my favorite songs by an artist named Norah Jones: "I want to wake up with the rain falling on a tin roof, while I'm safe there in your arms." Now, while I've always liked this song and that line sounds very peaceful and idyllic in theory, it occurred to me while I tried in vain to find sleep again that there is nothing romantic about rain falling on a tin roof. Given, this is from someone who can have an entire romantic interlude on the bedroom floor with a Swiss army knife and a ripe mango, so I think I might have different ideas about what's "romantic" than most people. But still. Do you know what I think is romantic? Eight or nine hours of uninterrupted sleep that involves no periods of water raucously banging on metal! And that got me to thinking about other theoretically "romantic" things that I've never understood, which I'm now writing to you as a sort of catharsis at the ungodly hour of 6am because I never, in fact, managed to fall back asleep.

I think romance just means something completely different to me than it does to most people. For one thing, I see nothing wrong with the idea of a romantic experience occurring when you're alone, or just with a friend. But as I said, I can experience nearly transcendental romance with an alluring piece of produce. And so much of what is generally considered "romantic" seems to me simply forced and cut-and-dry, and it's just so un-me. For example, I once knew that a guy I was dating was decidedly NOT for me when, at a very expensive restaurant to which he had very generously invited me, he moved aside the wine and water glasses and attempted to hold my hand during dinner. In the middle of dinner! I blinked at him, completely and totally baffled. Was he being ironic? No, he was serious. I was so confused. Who exactly did he think I was? For one thing, I can't think of anything more gag-me too-sweet stereotypical than holding hands over a table in a crowded restaurant. But much more importantly: hello, I'm...eating? In one hand is my fork, in the other hand is my knife, and in front of me is the most unbelievably exquisite, almost-bringing-me-to-tears with its buttery-beautiful-melt-in-your-mouth magnificence steak. Which hand did you want to imprison, precisely? And I'm supposed to...what? ...Sit and...look at you? Contemplate the mysteries of the universe? What? I'm HUNGRY. How would the sacrilegious and utterly heretical crime of letting this food get cold make anyone's life better? Just...what? In a counterexample, I was touched with an unspeakable depth of love and affection by the almost identical comments of two very close friends on separate occasions in restaurants. Upon realizing that conversation had ground to a halt as soon as the food had arrived, each said something to the effect of, "I love that we're not talking. And that both of us know it would actually be completely unacceptable to talk right now." See? Now THAT'S romance.

Probably among the most romantic experiences of my life that involved actual male people are those that have included spontaneous lectures on things like the health care system and microbiology and theoretical physics. Other than those, (a) the most romantic night I ever spent and (b) the most romantic thing anyone has ever done for me were related to guys who, respectively, are (a) one of the greatest loves of my life, who is gay, and (b) someone I gave a fighting chance but had absolutely zero interest in. In the former situation, my then-new friend and I found ourselves walking around the Penn campus on the first beautiful, balmy night of spring, talking about music and art and school and class and literature, reciting our favorite poetry to one another, until 6am. We've basically been in love ever since. In the latter, the guy in question walked all the way over to my house in the middle of a freezing night in February to bring me pseudoephedrine when I had a cold. I mean seriously, when it's the middle of winter in Philly and your will to live is being besieged and slowly, painfully conquered by rhinoviruses and mucus, what could be more romantic than Sudafed?

In any case, I'll stop there; let's just say that love and romance are many different things to many different people, and after a mere 22 1/2 years (and even amid bitterness at being robbed of sleep by a theoretically romantic scenario) all I can say is that I welcome all experiences and all forms of both, even if it's just to realize that they annoy the hell out of me.

So that's what I think. It's probably not what you think, but that's cool. I wish I could summon some kind of universal truth here, or something existential for you to ponder as you go about your day, but let's face it, I just can't summon existential truths on four hours of sleep (unless it's a life-or-death situation, like a final). I will include a little bit about Vietnam now though, since that's probably what you were looking for. Also, I'm going on a trip to a place called Ha Long Bay this weekend, which is supposed to be just insanely beautiful. My tour spends one night on a boat and one in a hotel, and although I'll be sharing a room I'm hoping it will be very cool. I'm sure you'll hear all about it in due course :-P But anyway.

Today is some kind of holiday; Michael doesn't know the name of it and the Vietnamese teacher here who told me about it yesterday was sketchy with details. Apparently it's some kind of ancestor-worship day when everyone takes the day off to go and clean their family's plots in the cemetery. Sounds like good times. For me it just means a change of my regular schedule because some classes are cancelled. I wonder how many relatively recent immigrant families in the US celebrate American holidays? What do they think of them?

Anyway, lacking local ancestors to worship, I am more excited by the prospect of today being the first day that the harvests of bananas and pineapples are available! You could buy them before now, but they haven't been very ripe. Michael bought a bunch of mini-bananas this morning - I had never had this kind before, they're small and fat and yellow, a bit firmer and starchier and less sweet than regular bananas. I had a characteristically-dorky moment when Michael "informed" me that bananas are all clones; ah, my friend, you are barking up the wrong banana tree! How about I tell YOU all the cool things I know about bananas? (I have dorky moments less often here than at home, but they do happen. Like when Michael laughed at me because he found out that the only magazines I read are National Geographic and Scientific American. "You ARE a nerd, aren't you?!" Or when I was talking to two Irish guys in the park, telling them to go to a certain website for expatriates to find out what fun things might be going on in the area.
"Expatriate? What's an expatriate?" they enquired in their fantastic Irish way.
"It's someone who lives outside of their home country. You know, like the Latin 'ex' as in 'out of,' and 'patri' as in 'country'."
They stared at me blankly.
"Nevermind." Maybe they couldn't understand my accent? Maybe I'm an unbelievable dork who springs etymology on strangers. Ho hum.)
So anyway, because they reminded me a little of the plantains that had made my life worth living during my homestay in Costa Rica, I decided to pan-fry the bananas with a little bit of salt just like my mama Tica (Costa Rican host mom) used to do. I really can't express to you how many of these indescribably wonderful things I would eat if I could (mounds. Mountains. Great heaping heaps. With every meal. God they're so incredible), or how much my soul has ached on the occasions that I have tried to recreate them with sub-par plantains in the US and failed. But through some ironic twist of fate, the flavors that emerged from that pan this morning in urban Hanoi recreated almost exactly the taste of my worshipful bliss in rural Monteverde. And suddenly the world was very small, and my life was complete.

I've also discovered the not-immediately-obvious way that Vietnamese spring rolls are created. You might have had them; theyr'e usually meat and/or fresh vegetables and herbs wrapped in a piece of pliant, elastic rice paper. Here they're just a little bit different. I found them one night when I was wandering around hungrily in search of something to eat for dinner. I stopped at a woman on the sidewalk surrounded by the characteristic tiny stools of Hanoi street vendors, creating what looked like thin-and-crispy-crusted pan-fried empanadas in a series of large woks in front of her. Again prodded internally by Anthony Bourdain ("If it looks good, eat it!" - I really have to buy that guy's book) I sat down and asked for one, but I had no real idea where to go from there. Since people are almost universally helpful (and respond to facial expressions, ha), I sort of stared at it looking lost and hoped for the best. In true Vietnamese fashion, the woman (and her friends) mimed the necessary actions for several minutes but in the end basically had to do it for me, haha. It turns out that you cut the empanada-like-thing (containing beef and onion and tiny shrimp and bean sprouts) into strips with scissors (obviously), then take a piece of rice paper (hidden in a small basket under the napkins) and load it with a strip of empanada and tons of lettuce and delicious fresh herbs that I can't even identify (they bring these to you in a big basket, the purpose of which I couldn't figure out until they showed me). Then you roll it all up and dip it into a bowl of the ubiquitous Vietnamese sauce that is spicy and sweet and all kinds of fabulous even though I have no idea what's in it. Haha, good riddance to the developed-country idea of paying for something to be assembled and brought to you. Nothing like food that you can watch being put together, and even more fun if you have to put it together yourself! Greasy, savory, herby, crunchy, spicy-sweet spring roll goodness.

I love Vietnam.

Love,
Katie 😊

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