Email updates from Ilene

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Robert here . . .
Ilene's not able to spend as much time posting to the blog as she'd like, so I thought I would share some of what she has written to me by email. (Don't forget to look at entries previous to this in case you missed the pix that she did post.)

She wrote:


Vietnamese class has been shifted to T, F, S, S, so it will be tomorrow before I see my tutor again. And this time it will be conversation, not pronunciation. I listened to the lesson again last night (the digital recorder came in handy).

I've done interviews the past two days with women I met on the 2005 trip. One is the daughter of the tailor who just married her Canadian boyfriend. She says I speak more Vietnamese than he does. He's been here 4 years.

I also went back to the used bookshop on Dhong Khoi and bought a lot of stuff: a few more of those scrapbooks, and photographs, and letters. I only scratched the surface, sorting through stuff for almost 2 hours.

I picked out a series of letters to the same people in HCMC from the same people in Paris and Algeria mid 70s-early 80s. Written Vietnamese, old air mail paper, stamps, etc. I also was able to sift through a box of photos and assemble a collection of photos from the same family, from the 1950s-60s. Beach and temple excursions, class photos, etc. Kids grow up, mom and aunt change hairstyles, Dad never looks comfortable on camera.

The scrapbooks are these multilingual collections of ads and comic books and magazine photos about all kinds of topics--they were each dedicated to a theme, no real writing from the author. I picked out a few that seemed most interesting. Some of them were more weird than interesting.

More American tourists today, so there are some here for sure. Most seem like my parent's age, but don't look like the obviously ex army guys I've seen before. New Zealanders today, in additon to the usual Aussies and Japanese and French. Germans too.

I haven't done late night expat restaurant stuff. I've been using late nights for the gym so far.

I'm going to get a cooking lesson--I got an invite to go to the house were the woman I interviewed today lives so her husband can teach me to cook pho. We're going to trade an English lesson for a Vietnamese lesson first, then motorbike over.

I'm starving now--skipped luch becuase I was at the book store and just had coffee for the interview. We're going to scope a sushi or a Korean restuarant for you.

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