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Hi All, it's Ilene.

Language study procedes apace. I wanted to title this "I like to take pictures" but, alas, I don't know how to say that yet.

I can tell you I like to drink coffee: Toi tich uong ca phe.

I can also tell you that I like to eat rice: Toi tich an com.

However, I do not like to drink soft drinks: Toi khong tich unong nuoc ngot.

Enjoy a few photos from my January 2005 trip. This upcoming trip (a mere two weeks away, I realized today) will be my third trip to Vietnam. I've been writing about the effects globalization has had on Vietnam, and young urban women in particular, as well as writing about the act of travel itself. Vietnam occupies a certain place in the American imagination, and it tends to be frozen in time circa 1975. I find that being there produces an interesting clash between my "memories" of Vietnam (I was born in 1970) produced from news footage, iconic photographs, and popular films and its present reality.

Both of these pictures are from my second trip in January of 2005. (My first trip, in July of 2002 was pre-digital age--amazing how much that changes things. When we lived in Japan for a year in 1992, it was before email, before the internet. Hard to believe now that we were still communicating via paper letters and once in a blue moon two-minute phone calls.)

On both trips I traveled and worked with my good friend and colleague Thuan Vu, who is a Professor of Art at the universtiy where I am a Professor of English and Women's Studies. Thuan and I took a day tour with his brother Trieu and their cousin Trang, also one of the women I've been interviewing, to the Mekong Delta, where the first photo comes from. Though we arrived too late in the day to really see the floating market that was advertised in the Sinh Cafe brochure, we did enjoy yummy candy and snacks made in other villages in the delta--kind of like the Vietnam version of a day at Sturbridge Village. Who knew you could do so much with rice, coconut, bananas, and peanuts? Sweet and salty snack food heaven.

I took the second photo from the top of the Riverside Marriott (about the 25th floor if I remember right). I've always loved how it captures the commuter traffic just coming off of the ferry. From that high up, it was silent--the bikes roll down the ramp without a sound.

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