Christmas Questions

I found a list of questions about personal holiday traditions and I tackled this in this post. So, here's a little about me and my Christmas practices.

What is your favorite Christmas film?

I actually have several favorites and it is difficult to pick just one. Here are the first few I thought of.

The Ref

(1994) - A cat burglar is forced to take a bickering, dysfunctional family hostage on Christmas Eve.

Gremlins

(1984) - A boy inadvertently breaks three important rules concerning his new pet and unleashes a horde of malevolently mischievous monsters on a small town. 

Die Hard

(1998) - An NYPD officer tries to save his wife and several others taken hostage by German terrorists during a Christmas party at the Nakatomi Plaza in Los Angeles.

Rare Exports

(2010) - In the depths of the Korvatunturi mountains, 486 meters deep, lies the closest ever guarded secret of Christmas. The time has come to dig it up. This Christmas, everyone will believe in Santa Claus.

A Christmas Story

(1983) - In the 1940s, a young boy named Ralphie attempts to convince his parents, his teacher and Santa that a Red Ryder BB gun really is the perfect Christmas gift.

Trading Places
(1983) - A snobbish investor and a wily street con artist find their positions reversed as part of a bet by two callous millionaires.

Scrooged

(1988) - A selfish, cynical television executive is haunted by three spirits bearing lessons on Christmas Eve.

Have you ever had a white Christmas? 
I grew up in the Midwest so I've had plenty of white Christmases. (minus the cocaine)
And, yes, Christmases is the proper plural for Christmas.
I offer Bing Crosby's words as proof.

Suck it, grammar nazis!

Where do you usually spend your Holiday?
This will be my fourth consecutive Christmas outside of the US. I am not only out of my home country, but I've been in countries (China/Vietnam) where they don't even recognize Christmas. So, not only do I not go anywhere, I usually have to work.

What is your favorite Christmas song?
Carol of the Bells
Anything played by Trans-Siberian Orchestra

Do you open any presents on Christmas Eve? 
We tried a couple of different traditions when I was a child. We eventually settled on Christmas Eve presents AND we always saved one to be opened the day after Christmas. I don't remember why. Today, we don't exchange gifts.

Can you name all of Santa’s reindeer?
At one time I could and might still be able to, but since most of them never bothered to learn my name, I just don't care anymore.

What holiday traditions are you looking forward to the most this year?
We don't really have any traditions. My wife and I only spent one Christmas in the States after we got married. Since then, we have been outside the country. We are away from family. We have no children around and it is typically a workday. We try to get out for a nice meal, but that's about it.

Is your Christmas tree real or fake?
I grew up with a fake tree, so the idea of bringing a real tree into the house was totally foreign to me. As an adult, I learned that we only used a fake tree because it was discovered that my younger brother Kyle was allergic to the real tree.

As an adult, once I got divorced I discovered that my kids weren't really interested in the tree, so I haven't had one since. That was over ten years ago. I will probably never have a tree again.

What is your all-time favorite holiday food/sweet treat?
Reindeer Testicles

Be honest:  Do you like giving gifts or receiving gifts better?
Honestly, I hate both. I find the exchanging of gifts extremely uncomfortable. I refuse to participate in Secret Santa activities any place I work and only begrudgingly do it at family events. I don't know why I am this way, but I am.

What is the best Christmas gift you have ever received?
When I was in high school, my parents got me a stereo. I didn't even know I wanted one until I opened it. It was great. It is probably the gift I got the most use out of.

What would be your dream place to visit for the Holiday season?
I have no idea. I hate cold weather, so no traditional places. I already live on a tropical beach, so no point in aiming for something like that. So…I guess I'll go with the Moonlite Bunny Ranch.

Are you a pro present wrapper? Or do you fail miserably?
I rarely give gifts (see above answer), but on the rare occasion that I do, you'll be lucky if I even take it out of the shopping bag.

Most memorable holiday moment?
Every year brings to mind the time I wandered into the kitchen hours after the big family meal and found a plate on the counter already loaded with turkey, mashed potatoes and dressing. I didn't know who's it was, but I tossed it in the microwave for a moment and snuck off to enjoy it without getting busted by whoever prepared it. I learned later that it was food which had been scraped off people's plates and was about to go out to the dogs.

What made you realize the truth about Santa?
My brain. I'm not stupid.

Do you make New Year’s resolutions?  Do you stick to them?
I made resolutions when I was younger, but I do not anymore. I haven't made any in years. I learned long ago that it is a waste of time. Change happens when you really decide to make the change and dedicate yourself to it. Not because the calendar changed.

What do you wish for Christmas this year?
I feel like I have a pretty good life. My wish is that it would continue.

What makes the Holidays special for you?
There is a lot of assumption built into this question. The holidays are not special to me. I have nothing against them (other than having to hear Christmas music for three months straight), but they are not special. I enjoy seeing my family, but I enjoy that any time. Holidays or not.

Favorite Christmas smell
My favorite smells would be mostly nostalgic. The smells of my mother baking Christmas cookies and making mint chocolate. The smell of a fireplace or wood-burning stove. The morning of the family get-together and the house smelling of all the food that is being prepared.

What is the worst/weirdest gift you have ever received?
The weirdest was given to me by my sister-in-law. Christmas morning, she handed me a very cold gift. I opened to discover an 8-pack of Klondike bars. She laughed as I opened it and said, "You know. Because of that joke you said."  Neither my wife nor I had any idea what she was talking about.

The worst (not that bad, really) came from an aunt. My mother's side of the family was much further away than my father's. We didn't make it to see them every year, but when we did her sister always made sure she got us a gift. It was the same thing every time we came. A Matchbox car. At 17 years old, I still got a new Matchbox car. It was sweet that she bought us anything. I am not complaining. I guess that since they did not see us very often, it was forgotten how old we had gotten.

Favorite Holiday drink?
I discovered egg nog a few years ago. Don't know why it took me so long to try it. I love it. Spike it with cinnamon and bourbon to make it even better.

Have you ever spent Christmas in another country?
Ha! Yes.
Puerto Rico in 2001 (not really another country, but felt like it)
I spent two in China.
This will be my second Christmas in Vietnam.

What place/landmark in your town do you love to visit during Christmas?
I honestly don't have a place I like to visit other than my family's house. When I was a kid, several of us would go to my great-aunt's house down the road to go sledding because she had a huge hill in her front yard.

Were you naughty or nice this year? 
That really depends on who you ask.

Do you own/wear a Christmas themed jumper or T-Shirt?
No. The closest I have come to Christmas themed clothes was a tie that had the manger on it. I wore it to church one year, but it is long gone.

You Get a Vial & You Get a Vial & You Get a Vial

Red and I have been married a little over five years and things have been great. We really were made for each other. Despite having moved about a dozen times around three different countries in the short time we have been together, the worst stress we've encountered was when our bedtime routines happened to coincide and I started brushing my teeth a few moments after Red had started.

After a few brief flirtatious smiles in the mirror back and forth, the reality of what was happening came crashing down on us. The unspoken words were instantaneously birthed and started frantically flitting about the tiled room:

"Who's going to brush the longest?"
"Who cares about their dental health more?" 
"First one to stop is disgusting and does not deserve love." 

Today, we won't even enter the same bathroom at the same time. And that works for us.

Despite those occasional moments of crazy, our interactions are typically far from problematic. We work very well together. And we understand each other.

Well…most of the time.

Today, due to a problem we are having with our passports, Red casually mentions, "Well, maybe our new passports not showing up is just God taking care of us because I'm going to be dead in a few days."

Red generally leans toward believing she is currently living her last week on earth. She hasn't been right a single time, but I know she will rub it in my face the first week she is.

Since this is typical of many conversations in our house, I simply replied, "That would be nice to keep us from wasting that money."

This slowly morphed into a conversation about what to do if one of us did kick the bucket. And living in a foreign country, there is much to consider.

• Does the body get shipped back to the States? 
• Is there a need to fly home for some sort of service or does the surviving spouse just make a phone call to their in-laws to give the news?
• If I do have to send my wife's body back, should I pay for the exorbitant shipping or could I just buy an extra seat on the plane and lug her around myself? 
•  Could I get away with folding her in half into a large suitcase and save the extra seat fee?

This all led to the conversation about how my wife wants to be cremated anyway. So, if I could get that done here before heading to America (or shipping her), the cost consideration completely changes. However, for the first time, I started to consider what I would do with her remains after she's been Thanosed into powder.

Do not read anything into this, but I would not be keeping the ashes or displaying them anywhere in the house. This has nothing to do with how I feel about my wife. It is just not me. I also would not have an internment somewhere to be able to go visit and Red's only wishes are that they should go to whoever might want them. This made me realize something I had never considered. Ashes are not like a whole body. There is no law that says they all have to go to one place. They can be split up and sent to as many different places as you want.

OK. Who wanted the dark meat?

This means that anyone who wants a piece can have one. I got online to see how much ash a human body produces and found a formula that told me that my wife would break down into a little over half a gallon of ash. Specifically, between 10 and 11 cups. You can find anything on the internet.

This means I could send a cup to each of her four siblings, a double portion to her parents and still have over four cups left to sprinkle a little into my pancake mix each morning.

Or…I could separate them into much smaller portions and place them in decorative vials to be worn as pendants or carried in the pocket. And before you think this is strange, there is already a market for this.

Click here to buy these in a variety of styles

Little birdseed packets are often handed to people as they exit a wedding to throw at the happy new couple as they leave the service. These Red ash-filled vials could be handed to the visitors as they leave the funeral. The main difference is these can be thrown at anyone since the person of honor will not be making an appearance.

Or…I could sell and ship them to her hundreds of cousins. (She has a very fertile family.) I could even start various bidding wars for family members to prove how much they loved her. The more they're willing to pay, the more Red's memory is honored.

I think I'm onto something. I'm going to start a GoFundMe page to get money for vials.

On the Road Again

There is a very common stereotype that Asian people cannot drive. And like many stereotypes, it did come from somewhere. Now that I have lived in a couple of Asian countries for the last few years, I am beginning to understand where it comes from.

It is not true at all that Asian people cannot drive. In fact, they are excellent drivers. However, if you get even a glimpse into the world in which they have to drive in their home countries, you can quickly understand why they drive radically different than the people in the Western world.

The attitude on the roads here in Vietnam can only be described as “different than America” or possibly “predictable chaos”. I have found the Vietnamese people to be friendly, selfless and humble, but as soon as they get onto the roads that all seems to go out of the window. It’s every man for himself here. If you leave a gap at a traffic light of a couple of feet or so, you can expect somebody to pull in diagonally in front of you. If you aren't already moving two seconds before the lights go green, people will get angry. If you are crossing the road at a crosswalk, people will not stop. You will be beeped at, swerved around, wheel clipped, shunted and stressed out at every given opportunity. But you have to get out there if you expect to cross.

This is not a joke.

This really is how it works

Move forward at a steady predictable pace.
And NEVER stop or step backward.

Traffic lights are a guideline. I am told that they are new here although I cannot find the facts as to when they were first introduced to back this up. What I can say is that they are few and far between for a city the size of Da Nang (1.1 million) or Hội An (150,000 and less than a dozen traffic lights or stop signs). It’s a normal thing for people to run red lights. Quite often people will start aggressively beeping horns at you if you have the audacity to stop at a red and block their way. At many junctions, it is a free-for-all, with the Vietnamese drivers having perfected the art of not slowing down. You would be amazed at just how last second people can leave the intersection to avoid an obstacle. Razor-thin margins of close calls are expected every time we venture out of our house.

Hesitation will get you killed

Define for me who has the right-of-way here

Lanes? What lanes?

So, if you grew up in this chaos and were then dropped on the streets of America, your driving may seem quite erratic to the people around you.

Despite this rectum-clenching scenario I just described, I am very excited about the events of this week.

I got my driver's license.
Sort of.

This is a license to drive a car. I have no use for this. I drive a motorbike (illegally for the last year--SHHHHH!). But it was the first step in the long process of getting a motorbike license. Similar to how you have to buy the farmer a couple of beers before he'll let you kiss his cows.

First, I had to get my American driver's license converted to a Vietnamese license. This involved a trip to a government office in Tam Ky. Then a couple of weeks later, I had to travel to Da Nang to get a medical check-up. I talked to over a dozen different doctors about my medical history, my family, my purpose in Vietnam, my job, my intentions on staying and my ranking of bún chả, mì quảng, and phở noodles. I was weighed, poked, monitored, blood pressured, blood was drawn and I was drug tested, urine tested, and questioned endlessly.

Tiniest urine sample vial I've ever used.
LESSON LEARNED: My penile aim is impeccable.
I got a tight stream, yo.

After three hours of grunting at Vietnamese doctors, I got my paperwork proving I was healthy enough to drive a motorbike in Vietnam. Or even on one of the moons of Jupiter.

It says it on there somewhere.
Just trust me. Shut up.

After all that, it was just a matter of passing the driving test. And this is where it got difficult.

Now, I know how to ride a bike. I've been doing it for over a year in all this chaos. Illegally, but still. In the States, I rode a Harley.

Much more machine than the toys they have here.

I am not in the least concerned about my ability to handle the motorbikes of Vietnam. However, I was quite concerned about the test. For several reasons:

• They provide the bike which is made for tiny Asian people (not 6'3" Americans)
• Every bike has little idiosyncracies (tricky clutch, varying brake strength, touchy accelerator, etc), but you are not allowed to practice with the bike they give you. Get on and go.
• You must wear their helmet. It did not fit on my head.
• Most people (73%) fail.
• My knees hit the handlebars.
• My big feet kept triggering the foot brake.

These are just some of the problems I encountered when I went to the practice lot. There is a place in Da Nang that has all the markings on the ground for people to go practice. You go to a bike rental shop and rent a bike like the ones used for testing and go practice. This was how I learned that I hated the bikes we would have to use. But I practiced for hours anyway. I felt ridiculous and told my wife there was no way I would pass this test.

Two days ago, we went to the testing facility. This place is only open once a month. If someone fails, they have to wait a month before coming back again. They test for everything in that one day.

Behind the facility for big trucks, buses and cars.

We were taken in the back to tackle some treacherous stairs to the bike testing place.

If you are handicapped, you must be confused
about needing a license.

The testing site was rigged with ground sensors. If you touched the line, the system knew it.

An instructor (with a translator) walked us through the course. First was the figure 8, then a straight section followed by a zig-zag and ending with a heavily speed-bumped area. Just stay within the lines. We start with 100 points. Every violation deducts 5 points and we needed 80 to pass. This means we were allowed only 4 or less. Side note: If you put your foot down once, you fail.

One of the other Americans testing with me asked, "If we go outside the barrier, the tire hits that cord twice. Once going out and once coming back. Does that count as one or two violations?"

The instructor looked sternly at him, "Why do you ask this?

"I just want to know how many marks that will be against me."

The instructor turned away shaking his head and yelled, "Stupid question. Does not matter. Do your best. You either pass or you do not. Let's start."

We all looked at each other. No more questions I guess.

The first of my friends to try was a South African man and he was pulled off the track before he did one circuit on the figure 8. Done. Failed before he even hardly got started.

The next was a 60 y/o man from Idaho. He pulled a perfect score. So, it could be done. I was assigned my bike and did a quick circle in the parking lot while being yelled at by the instructors. I just wanted to get a quick feel for the bike. My legs were splayed straight out to prevent hitting the handlebars. I pointed my feet out to keep them away from the brakes and I noticed the gas caused the bike to jump when the transmission finally caught.

I started into the 8 knowing that I better keep a steady speed because moving the accelerator would have unpredicable results. I hit two violations within seconds of entering, but managed the rest of the course with only one more. I finished with an 85. I passed!

I still am not a legal driver until the license is in my hand. I am supposed to receive it on October 31.

No more running from the cops. I've had to do that a couple of times in the last year. YAY me!

I'm ready to be legal. I'm looking forward to not having to hide in the small town we live in. We will actually be able to get out and drive without having to worry. It's time to see the rest of Vietnam.

End of Summer

All this week, my Facebook Memories have been reminding me that Red and I left the States three years ago this week. It has been fun seeing our adventures of navigating our new life in Beijing flashing across my screen each morning.

This was a big day for me.

In only five years of marriage, Red and I have changed jobs over a dozen times, visited nine different countries and lived in three of them. When we moved to Vietnam, we didn't even have jobs lined up. We just hopped on a plane confident that "we'll figure it out when we get there."

Even watching us from far, people should pretty easily be able to observe that neither Red nor I are scared of change. We definitely have things that concern us, but walking into the unknown is not one of them. And when you choose to live in another culture, that is a valuable quality to possess. An adventure into the unknown is thrown at us almost every time we step out of our house. It takes a long time to learn all the intricacies of another culture. We have learned that we must be extremely flexible and just go along with almost any mystery, confusion or change that is thrown at us.

I am experiencing a bit of change in my home right now. Summer has come to an end. As a teacher, this carries special significance. All the kids are headed back to school. However, this affects me in a different way than traditional teachers.

In this part of the world, kids go to school for much longer hours than in Western countries. And for most of these kids, even when they are not in school, they are still taking supplementary classes, extra lessons, tutoring appointments, advanced skills training, and many more things. 

When I was teaching in the classroom in Beijing, on Monday mornings I would often ask the students what they did over the weekend. I eventually stopped asking that question because the answer was always the same.

"On Saturday, I had an English class, a math class, and piano lesson. Then after lunch, I had another math class, a swimming class, and a calligraphy class. Then I did homework until I went to bed. On Sunday, I got up early to do homework until my school placement tutor came at ten. Then after lunch, I had my piano recital, Chinese class, and culture class."

These kids also have similar stories about what they do after school each day. It is almost always more classes and doing homework. I feel so sorry for them. The classes and stress never stop. It is work work work all the time.

Now, I am one of the teachers that many of these kids meet with after school and on weekends. I no longer work in the school system. I provide them with part of their supplemental English education. I spend months getting to know the kids and their learning patterns, how to get them to respond, how to draw them out and how to best teach them. Every lesson is individualized for that student. And a couple of times a year, it all changes.

Because I am an extra teacher in their already cramped schedule, things could change at any time. If a parent decides their kid needs to take another math class, they have to find a way to fit it into their schedule. So, occasionally, one of my students disappears. Although, I never know why. It could be a scheduling conflict or they feel like they have met the objective they were trying to achieve through classes with me. It could be because they don't like my style and sought out another teacher. Either way, I am never told. They just disappear one day. It's sometimes sad when a student I have really grown to enjoy falls off my schedule. There is never even an opportunity to say goodbye.

This month is one of the times when things really get shaken up. I may not be a school teacher, but the school schedule does affect me. I can only teach classes in the evenings and on the weekends because that is when the kids are free to take extra classes. And this month all the kids returned to school from their summer break. This means, their summer schedule has been disrupted and everything has to be redone to accommodate the new school year. New classes and teachers mean new challenges that must be met by their extra classes. This means every family re-assesses their educational needs. So, even though I do not work in a school, the lives of every one of my students are in transition. This means massive rescheduling happens. 

Almost overnight, half of my students are gone and replaced with new ones. I get new students all the time, but it is generally one here and there. In the fall, I get a bunch at once. And the ones I have grown to love over the last year are just gone with no notice. No one ever says, "This will be our last class together." They just disappear.

I know regular school teachers get new students every year, but on the last day of school each year, they know their students are moving on. They can say goodbye and are mentally prepared for it. When I get a new student, I don't know if they will be a part of my life for the next three weeks or the next three years. And I won't know until they disappear. It sucks.

Some kids, I am happy to see fall off my schedule, but there a few I genuinely miss and want to be able to follow up and see where their lives take them. But I'm getting used to it. I love my job and would not want to do anything else.

Well, if I have to work.

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Today's post was inspired by the writing prompt, "It was the end of summer."