Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Vietnamese-American Relations

Beginning with a movie viewing of "A Dream in Hanoi" and continuing with visits to both the Ho Chi Minh City museum and the War Remnants Museum, we've been discussing Vietnamese-American relations a lot this past week in Ho Chi Minh City.

The movie we watched was sort of an introduction to some of the issues we may face with our Vietnamese roommates. We all received letters from our roommates yesterday, and there is a lot of excitement and anxiety floating around. How good is their English? What if I do something culturally insensitive? What will we do together? In the movie we watched, we learned that Vietnamese people have very different viewpoints of "face" and "personal space." Honor is quite important to them and hugging and lots of public displays of affection are not so common. On the other hand, they may have no qualms about standing quite close to you on the bus or taking your stuff without asking. I'm curious to see which of these generalizations play out with my roommate. I'm hoping she will be able to show me her family and we will be able to communicate to each other about the differences about our lives and cultures in a positive manner.

The two museums we visited were a subtle reminder that we are living these ten weeks in a communist country. Propaganda was definitely present. In the Ho Chi Minh Museum, giant murals of the northern communist Vietnamese liberating adoring southern citizens. The War Remnants museum was formally called the Museum of American War Crimes. Although the name was changed when relations improved, many of the exhibits are still very anti-American. One entire room was full of pictures of Ho Chi Minh doing charitable acts. A photography exhibit on the top floor had a balanced viewpoint as the photography featured was by an American photographer. Regardless, morale was low as we walked through. I was overcome by the pointlessness of the war, and many of us expressed our discomfort of being American in this museum specifically.

In other news, the white students on the trip have officially been documented in two family videos and a not so discreet candid photo. We leave for Quang Tri on Friday, and we are promised that we will be stared at even more. Our program advisor Alyce informed us today that it is raining buckets there...get ready for culture shock part two.

Needed: Two part rain suit for Quang Tri.....and tailgate

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