UCHANU Final Blog

EAP 2010 has been an otherworldly experience. I don't know how to begin describing what has happened to me here in Vietnam. So rather than fail to give my experience in Vietnam justice, I will focus on a few examples to convey the gravity of these past four months.


The experiences I’ve had this semester in UCHANU and Vietnam have undoubtedly changed my life. I’ve learned several things that have been integrated into my worldview. Gaining so many friends who have become like family to me has really changed the nature of EAP. UC and Hanu alike, I have grown attached to this group of people. Vietnam will not be the same when I come back without UCHANU 2010. Other experiences have also changed my life. For example, living as a foreigner in Vietnam has been extremely strange. I lived my whole life in America practically invisible. When I walked down the street, ordered food, shopped at restaurants, etc, my presence was so natural and taken for granted. In Vietnam, it’s been the opposite. No matter where I go or what I do, I’m always being observed and judged by Vietnamese people. Though I’m not held to their standards and norms, I’m still bothered constantly by mainly friendly curiosity. At first I thought of it like being a celebrity, but it quickly became a great annoyance. So much so, that I have difficulty shopping for anything by myself. I have a hard time shopping as it is, but when I have someone following me around constantly pointing out items in the store that they want me to buy, I absolutely cannot do it. This experience has given me insight into how minorities in all parts of the world must feel. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to it, but the experience has been integrated into my worldview. There are countless more experiences that have been integrated into the fabric of my life, but they are far too personal and complex to put words to here.

To comprehensively address the second question is as equally impossible as the first question so again, I’ll keep it simple and straightforward. Some of the obvious ways I’ll take Vietnam with me are my new language and my girlfriend. I will master Vietnamese, no matter how long it takes me. I want to become fluent. But already, I have the skills necessary to do so many things. Ican use my new language skills in America, or when I come back. Without getting to personal, my first girlfriend is here in Hanoi. What better way to take Vietnam with me than become a part of it. I was in love with Hanoi after the first week’s “scavenger hunt”, but now I have to come back. I don’t want to talk about this personal topic in any more detail, but I will end off with this: “Home is where the heart is.” Toi yeu Vietnam.

Relections on UCHANU group project

Project Kiem An has been almost entirely driven my small groups that have been, bit by bit, nibbling off chunks of work for the monstrous task Gerard as set before our class of mapping out how people make a living in Vietnam. The way our small groups operate has been largely left up to each group's individual discretion. This was a wise decision because it allows for people to maximize their own unique potential. My group has bee strange. At first, we tried to meet in person frequently and act collectively, but recently we have been doing everything individually. I don't like this change because I don't know how well we are doing. I no long have the pulse of our group. It's difficult to gauge anything, including how much work I am doing in comparison to other members. I have frequently asked the Vietnamese-speaking members of my group to let me handle all the tasks that are possible for English speakers, yet I still feel like I'm not contributing enough. I just hope the final product is high enough quality to contribute our class's goal.

Because I have not been able to do any interviews, I have been doing mainly English language grammar and spelling corrections for the translated transcript of the the interviews. My group is friendly with each other and works well together, but sometimes I feel like they resent me for not being able to speak Vietnamese. I wish I could help out more with the interviews, but there's not much more I can do but go to the interviews, take pictures, record video, smile at the interviewee, etc.

Freewrite Blog Entry

The semester is winding down and as expected things are moving faster than ever before. Besides the heavy projects and assignments in my history and UCHANU classes, I have to also juggle an increasingly more complex and involved personal life here in Hanoi. There are still so many things I want to do and see before the end of EAP. From getting new glasses made to taking a road trip to discover more of Vietnam, I have so much to do... and that's just in the net month. I could spend a lifetime in this country. There is so much history and beautiful nature to discover. The "developing" economy is so destructive and has implications for almost all aspects of Vietnam. I came here to study the economic and political aspects of Vietnam, but have learned so much more. I know I will come back to Vietnam after graduating from college. I don't know how long I will be here or what I will do, but for the short-term I have a solid plan to fulfill and concrete goals to accomplish.

Southern Trip

Last week in the South was a broadening experience for me. My idea about and what I saw in Vietnam was radically changed by my experience in the South. Previously, I knew Vietnam was not a monolithic culture. I knew there were differences in accents and traditions between the different regions. The Vietnam I fell in love with is the North, particularly Hanoi. First of all, Southerners don’t know how to make café sua da. Rather than using sua to sweeten coffee, Southerners use coffee to flavor their condensed sweetened milk- it’s really just liquid candy, not coffee at all. I had so much of it that I lost my obsession with condensed sweetened milk permanently. I know we went to tourist areas, but the South was too Westernized for me. From the way the youth dressed to the music I heard at cafes, the places was just a depressing reminder of the hell I escaped several months ago. I can think of several more differences between the North and the South but when it comes down to it, they are just justifications for a feeling in my heart. Hanoi is my home. “Saigon” is just too American for me.

I enjoyed Phu Quoc- it was a tropical paradise... but the Central trip was far more enjoyable for me.

Factory Trip

Last Saturday the UC students and a few Hanu UCHANU students took a surprise day-long trip to two different factories. The first factory that we went to was a garment factory called Hanosimex. The second was a Yamaha motorbike production plant. Naturally, we weren’t going to be shown factories that “beat their workers”, as Gerard put it. These factories had made sweatshop labor extraction easier on our tender First Worlder eyes.

The Hanosimex factory tour began with a talk around a large executive table about the achievements of the corporation. Ho Chi Minh’s bust cast its gaze downwards on us as we were told about the profits gained by this factory’s exploitative practices. If he could see what had become of his country, I’m sure his disgust and scorn would be as great as mine every time I think about it. The situation was so ironic that I couldn’t take the spokeswoman seriously. I kept imagining if Bac Ho’s bust came to life and started attacking the bourgeois factory owners and their lackeys. After that we went to the massive production line that took pure cotton and polyester and, through a long and capital-intensive process, spun the cotton into spools of thread. This part was interesting because there were only a few workers in the entire complex. Rather than workers laboring, we only heard the mind-numbingly-loud hum of the machines at work. We saw looms that apparently turned the threat into fabric, but we were unable to see that or the color dying part of the process. Next we went to the labor-intensive part of the process, the sewing room. I was blank-faced the entire time as nothing came as surprise to me. I also didn’t feel any worse than I normally do for these people. The fact that the vulgar Liberal hedonist First Worlder shop-a-holics felt “bad” for the workers angered me. Their lifestyle and existence is only made possible by this process. I’m just disappointed that the workers were friendly to us and waved and smiled, rather than trying to kill us as a slave kills his master.

Later in the day we went to a Yamaha production plant. It was interesting to see the assembly line in person, but again I didn’t learn much. It was interesting, however, to see the difference between a Japanese factory and a domestic factory. Everything was highly modernized and the production line was streamlined and efficient. They claimed that the entire process is synchronized so that the precise amount of needed parts for each bike is made simultaneously.

One of the most distasteful parts of the experience was having to hear the thoughts of the First Worlders that were with me. All of them without a doubt go through each day not even considering the fact that their environmentally-unsustainable standard of living exists, not because of their labor, but because of the stolen labor of Third Worlders. They rarely, if ever, think about how 25,000 children die a day from starvation and preventable diseases and that this situation was caused by the same system that affords them their decadent lifestyle. For them, the trip was like visiting a zoo or a museum- it is detached from their everyday lives. They refuse to see the connection between their parasitic existences as First Worlders and the exploitation and oppression of the majority of humanity in the Third World. As beneficiaries of the capitalist-imperialist system, it is not in their material interest to oppose the system as a whole, even if they outwardly express “sympathy” for the victims of ruthless exploitation. It makes more sense that First Worlders would support the system, regardless of how distasteful it seems at times to them. After all, where would they be without their consumer goods, vulgar media, crude worldviews, and Liberal hedonism? They’ll find out when the JDPEN disburses them throughout the Third World, puts them to work, and watches them very closely.

Sa Pa Trip

Last weekend I went to Sa Pa with a group of UC students. Originally, I hadn’t intended on going because the pictures I had seen on google images weren’t that impressive and because I had heard that it was a tourist trap. Though my second assumption was true, the natural beauty of Sa Pa surpassed all my highest hopes. The town, built by the French colonialists, was reminiscent of a European mountain château town. The older buildings, stone walls, and cobblestone paths were covered in ivy. The small lake in the center of town and the heavy fog set a romantic atmosphere. In all directions, the outlines of spiring mountains wrapped in clouds could be traced. While many Hanu students may feel Sa Pa is too cold, I think during Autumn it is the perfect temperature for me (though during this particular trip I was wearing sandals, shorts, and a t-shirt and was sick the whole time, so the cold wasn’t very pleasant). The café sua da in Sa Pa had a distinctly different taste than in Hanoi. I’m not sure which I prefer, but it was nice to experience the variety. The tourist industry has totally corrupted and commodified the local culture. I had no illusions when dealing with that reality. I was sad to see peddlers masquerading around in ethnic minority clothes selling their “authentic” bags to tourists. But while I was sad to see yet another tragic effect of global capitalism-imperialism, I was not surprised. Like what I wrote earlier, I wouldn’t have expected anything else. The major reason why I could never live in this seemingly perfect town was the people- both the locals and the tourists. Nothing is genuine or honest in a tourist town.

The trip to Heaven’s Gate was spectacular. The view of the town and the surrounding areas was majestic. Besides the leeches that left bleeding holes in my and a few other UC students’ feet, the climb to Heaven’s Gate was very fun and we took a lot of pictures. The next day we trekked for 5-7 hours to Ban Ho village. This village was not the Hmong ethnicity that Sa Pa town is riddled with. I’m not sure what we were supposed to learn from our overnight stay in Ban Ho, but it was nevertheless a great hike for me. Unfortunately, other students didn’t have as great a time as I did. From Carol’s accident to Kristine’s betrayal, the trek was clearly laced with deceptions at every turn.

Before we got on the train in Lao Cai to head back to Hanoi, Anh Thai took us to the border between Vietnam and the People’s Republic of China. Despite the dismantlement of socialism in China, I was still mesmerized to see the mightiest nation on the planet today.

I don’t know why I changed my mind and decided to go on the trip at the last minute, but it was a great choice. While I would love to go back to Sa Pa again before the end of the EAP program, I think if I have the chance to travel that far North again I will try to find a less-touristy region or town.

Freewrite

The 1000 years celebration of the founding of Hanoi was an interesting time for me as a political science and history student. The rabid Vietnamese nationalism that the UC students and others aligned with imperialism expected to see was not nearly as prevalent as predicted. This did not surprise me because the WWII-era Asian nationalism and anti-Western imperialism that served to combat the spread of the capitalist-imperialist system has been largely sidelined as Asia integrates into the global capitalist-imperialist system. What remains is not a cultural pride and hatred for vulgar uncultured philistine Western Liberal hedonism; rather the nationalism that I see is a crude form of racial chauvinism. It makes sense to me that this would be the case among Vietnamese who want to emulate Western culture, politics, economy, etc. So to conclude, my experience with the 1000 years celebration was in part a lesson in (or more accurately a confirmation of what I already knew about) Western cultural imperialism.

My unapproachable political-philosophical musing aside, I had a great time during the 10 day celebration. Walking around Ho Hoan Kiem at night was a remarkable experience. The lights, people, and music contributed to an atmosphere of positive energy and good will. The food festival at the Ho Tay waterpark was equally enjoyable for me, despite the fact that there was very little vegetarian food for me to eat. I went to the festival two days in a row because I enjoyed it so much. I was really happy when a grizzled American War veteran grabbed my shoulder, pointed, and said in a low, powerful voice “get out”. After he repeated himself a couple times and I began to understand what he was feeling, I smiled and said I agreed with his sentiment. It’s so sad for me to see all the revolutionary ideals that his generation fought and died to protect sold out by the comprador and national bourgeoisie. This old man’s generation may have sent the imperialists home in body bags, but the imperialist system eventually won out. I feel like crying when think about this great comrade’s life. He was a true patriot and genuine human being. The generations that followed and sold Vietnam out to the West are traitors to the spirit of anti-imperialism and national liberation. They are traitors to their culture and to their ancestors. While I was happy to see a comrade in person, the reality of the global situation caused it to be a moment underscored by sorrow for me.

Lastly, I want to say that I was really annoyed by the negative attitudes that the UC students displayed toward the celebration, granted I wouldn’t expect them to behave any other way. For imperialist citizens to say such things on Vietnamese soil really ticks me off.

Rice Harvest

Last Sunday the UC class and several Hanu students traveled to a nearby village to harvest a rice field. We left early in the morning and worked for several hours until we has cut, transported, and threshed the whole field. Though the field was not very large, it was somewhat difficult because the ground had not dried by that time and every step taken found us sunk almost a foot into the wet earth. I was happy to “experience” the daily labor of peasants, though I was naturally aware that the village we were at was not the typical poverty- stricken Third World village.






After lunch we talked to several villagers about the socioeconomic status of various jobs.

Many of us were surprised that the villagers did not consider jobs like construction worker as a very low-class job. In fact, I heard that people from other villages travel to this village to work as construction workers because the pay is better. I was confident that it was no ordinary village; it was clearly a lower-middle class community. In addition, I heard that some of the villagers were paying to have their houses remodeled for absurdly-high prices. There was no way average Vietnamese people could afford the kind of decadence I saw in this village. My prediction is that this village is going to be absorbed into the larger consumerist culture and economy of Vietnamese cities and become a suburb of Hanoi. While this may disappoint many, I'm just sad that still have yet to see a real Third World village.

Central Vietnam

Last week the UC students took a trip to central Vietnam. The whole time I was wishing I was still in Hanoi with my friends and familiar places. I feel like Hanoi is my Vietnamese home. However, the trip changed the way I feel about Vietnamese society. Many constants were revealed as illusions. It help me further understand the depth of Vietnamese society- not in a good or bad way, but rather objectively. It helped solidify my perception of Americans, First Worlders, tourists, bourgeois Vietnamese, etc. I ended up learning a great deal about exactly what I came to Vietnam to study. Though what that is exactly I cannot say, it is important to me.

One of my favorite “touristy” parts of the trip was when a small group of friends took a taxi to two tombs. The first was the tomb of Khai Dinh. It had very strange architecture that did not look very “Vietnamese”. Nevertheless, it was very nicely restored and consequently a tourist hotspot. My favorite tomb was the second one, the tomb of Thieu Tri. As we approached the ruins of the tomb grounds, I noticed an old stone bridge covered in moss over a stream. It reminded me of an old-world scene I’ve only imagined from books. The tomb grounds were surrounded by hilly forests that overlooked the tomb square and surrounding ponds. I could make out the shape of a lotus flower carved into the top of the ruins of an old tower next to the tomb. I was not the only one who thought the grounds were extremely romantic as there was a wedding ceremony going on the tomb grounds. I've always been a fan of tranquil places like this tomb. It was this experience that made Hue my favorite town on the trip. Quy Nhon would have taken first place if I had had more time there, but then again I liked it for a different reason.

Week 5 Assignment: Defining Poverty

Today Peter, Vi, and I went to phơ restuarant on Nguyển Trãi street. We talked to a well-dressed man eating at the next table. Though indirectly, we were able to get him to answer the two questions Gerard assigned to us.

1. How do they distinguish between being 'poor' and 'not poor'? With this one we'd like to see what sort of objective or subjective criteria they use, for example: having enough food to eat, having access to certain services, having certain possessions, etc.
- He jokingly said that if you're rich, we could buy his dinner for him. With further interigation, we were able to get a real answer from him. As far as an objective view of wealth, the man took a very pragmatic materialist approach. He said there is nothing subjective about economic wealth. However, he said that spiritually, one can be wealthy without material goods. He said that his country may not be rich materially, it is rich in other ways.

2. In the last ten years, has the gap between rich and poor increased or decreased? What specific signs have led them to this decision? Do they think that the current gap is too little, about right, too large? What will happen to the gap in the next ten years?
- The man said that in the last 5 years, the price of his phơ has doubled. He expects it to increase at a steady rate into the future. He said the gap between the rich and the poor will close for business owners and Vietnam will be continually better off. I felt that if I had asked him about the peasantry, he would have responded that they were a negative backwards force in the Vietnamese economy.

Paraphrased Transcript

Subjective:
There is nothing subjective about being poor; you are either able to buy what you want or you aren't. I believe most Vietnamese are rich with life and happiness. Satisfied with simplicity.
Objective:
If you are not poor, you can buy my food, haha. The poor people that I have seen are more mobile, walking around selling hoa qua or do choi instead of setting up a shop like my family's shop here.

10 Years yonder:
10 years ago we were selling pho for half of what we sell it now (15,000 today). Thanh xuan is still poorer than most areas in Ha Noi, like pho co, where they sell pho for 20,000. 10 years from now, I think prices around Ha Noi will be more similar ,around 50,000, but there will be more competition in the area. We will probably have to renovate our shop to compete with the newer establishments. I think business owners like my family will be better off and the Vietnamese people will be more wealthy in general.

Week 4 Assignment: Freewrite

This last weekend was very memorable for me. Due to Vietnamese Independence Day, we had four days off from school. While many UC students chose to take trips out of Hanoi, I wanted to spend the holiday in the nation’s capital city. As an advocate of national liberation movements and proletarian revolutions, Independence Day in Vietnam means a lot to me. The glorious triumph of the Vietnamese people over the French colonialists is a source of joy for me. The bus on the ride downtown was absolutely packed. Jesse and I talked about politics, history, and philosophy as we made our way to the city’s central area to see the fireworks. The bus let everybody off a few blocks from Hồ Hoàn Kiếm, the mythical lake where one of the nation’s first independence fighters, Lê Lợi, supposedly gained the power to expel Ming Chinese troops from Vietnam and establish an independent state. I had never been in a more crowded place than during that two block walk to the lake. There were people on all sides of me. The pressure and human body heat was intense. After the fireworks show, which was impressive due to the explosion of firework shells a mere 100 feet off the ground, I again waded through a gridlock of people, motorbikes, and cars. At one point I turned around to see what was grabbing on to my shirt and saw a chain of high school girls using me as a rampart against the waves of human bodies. Eventually Jesse and I made it out of that mess, ate pho, drank orange juice, and went back to our university. It was an exciting and emotional night for me.

Friday I went to an arcade with Eliza, Peter, and a Hanu student named Dung. While Peter demonstrated that he was clearly best at arcade basketball, Eliza proved herself the most skilled at riding the mechanical bull. I discovered a racing game from on of my favorite animes, so the arcade was very worthwhile. Afterwards Dung drove us around and we ate dinner.


Saturday I went to the Museum of Ethnology with a few of my UC and Hanu friends. Learning about the many ethnic minorities in Vietnam was very interesting. The replicas inside the museum were very intriguing and I took many pictures but the main attraction was the replicas of dwellings outside. The most amazing one was the replica of a stilted house with a pointed roof several times higher than the building itself. Because I could not think of a single logical reason to do this, I couldn’t help but wonder if it was just an exaggeration meant for tourists. Nevertheless, it was fun to climb and drink tea inside. One of the most interesting building replicas was the Vietnamese longhouse. It reminded me of certain Native American longhouses, especially ones I remember seeing when living in Pennsylvania. The similarities got me to think about the kind of environmental and economic factors that would lead totally different societies to construct almost identical dwellings. The trip to the museum was enlightening and fun. I will definitely be back.


Sunday we went to ceramic village. I was disappointed in the tourist-oriented structure of the so-called “village”. Though attempting to make my own ceramic bowl with Dung was fun, it felt more like Disneyland than traditional Vietnam. In any case, I was happy because I purchased several items as the village’s market for decent prices.

All things considered, this last weekend was well-spent and just as fun as the previous, more stimulus-driven, weekends. I do regret not being able to see my language buddy, but she had to go back to her hometown for the weekend to see her family.

Week 3 Assignment: Map 2

This week my project group went to a newly-developed, upper-class section of Hanoi. We mapped out the prices and locations of the same daily necessities that we did last week. The apartment complexes in our area towered above an overgrown field that contained straw huts for the construction laborers. The buildings that were completed were depressing, grey, concrete rectangles. The residents only left the buildings on motorbike and all were obviously wealthy. We could not locate a single item on our list in this new area so we had to walk about 10 minutes away into an older section of town to complete our map.

While I had a good time with my friends picking flowers and enjoying the overgrown plantlife, the area was disturbingly eerie. It had residents, but felt like a ghost town. Once we traveled into the older area I felt at home again. These new areas that are being built are secluded, sterile, and lifeless emulations of Western lifestyle. Living in such a place would be a nightmare for me. The lively yet comfortable street that we mapped the first week felt far more real than the staged “communities” that have been constructed for rich Hanoians and foreigners.

These sorts of Western sanctuaries are a bizarre new chapter in the [mal]“development” of Hanoi, but also a reflection of the process that many other Third World population centers will face if the First World’s economic imperialism continues. Third World cities will be polarized between rich and poor communities. There will exist two separate worlds within one population center. I experienced a taste of such a dichotomy, and I never want to again.

Week 2 Assignment: Map

Last Saturday, my project group mapped out the area around Hồ Đắc Di Street. We were tasked with cataloguing the locations and prices of various social and economic necessities that locals utilize in their daily lives. When we arrived, the bustling intersection seemed to be indistinguishable from others that I had been to. However, as we pressed deeper into the neighborhood I became aware of the many unique qualities of the Hồ Đắc Di area. The old Soviet-era apartment buildings with their improvised balcony-extensions lined the local lake of Hô Xã Đàn while looming in the background were the newly-constructed, extremely decadent, capitalist-era apartment buildings. The contradiction between the rich and the poor was very salient. Numerous modern cafes and tourist-oriented shops seemed to surround and conceal the impoverished slums that make up the core of the neighborhood. Opposing the newer buildings on the other side of the lake stood old French buildings left behind from the colonial-era. I realized that this neighborhood is more than just a place to live; it is a museum spanning hundreds of years of Vietnamese history. However, musing about such academic matters is not often a high priority for average Hồ Đắc Di residents who are just trying to make ends meet.

I believe the most important aspect of our assignment was capturing, if only in a crude way, the essence of daily life for a resident of Hồ Đắc Di. Being that we are only amateur social cartographers, the map is not as accurate as it could be. Nevertheless, I learned a lot from our experiences last Saturday. At first, I thought that the apartment buildings overlooking the lake were in a very serine and peaceful location. However, it’s only a quiet peace for the minority that can afford it. I personally would not want to live in an area with such a large gap between the rich and the poor. I would feel like I was looking down from some sort of Ivory Tower in those apartments. I know living elsewhere just hides that contradiction and that no matter how we First Worlders live it is at the expense of the world’s poor. Still, I wouldn’t be able to take seeing it day after day despite how enjoyable the lake and coffee shops are.

Week 1 Assignment: Gig

Even though I have no interest in ever working for any segment of the police force, I chose the homicide detective story to write about because when I was very young I romanticized the idea of being a detective. I read many of detective books and watched some detective animes. I was interested to know if a typical American homicide detective was as clever as the mystery detectives that I thought were so cool as a child.

The protagonist in this particular story from Gig is a female homicide detective named Monica. I hated the reasoning she gives for joining the police. She says that when she was young she thought all police were confrontational, condescending, “gangs of hoodlums” (Gig 531)… and yet she joined because she wanted to somehow change the system from the inside. Monica declared, “…you can’t complain about a system, a group of people, and then not try to do somethin’ about it… I never advocated burning down a system or blowing up a system” (Gig 531). I am not inspired by small-minded thinking.

Monica goes on to describe her vulgar behavior as a member of the “morality crew”. After detailing the underhanded tactics she used to lure people into traps and arrest them, she snidely comments, “Man, we had good times on vice” (Gig 533).
It seems that Monica quickly became the type of cop she once hated.

Monica always wanted to work on homicide cases because to her, pursuing a murderer is “just like an emotional high” (Gig 532). She then attempts to justify her bizarre obsession with murder by claiming she does what she does to “give closure to a family who’s lost someone” (Gig 532). The old Monica would have found such a statement ironic and cruel coming from a cop.

Monica says her passion in detective work lies in “interrogations”. She goes on to describe the mind games she uses to manipulate suspects into giving “confessions”. Monica boasts, “It’s an [sic] art form… [and ]I got the psychological edge” (Gig 533). Monica truly enjoys toying with people’s lives like a game. She also describes conversations with suspects in which she spoke condescending. Given power, she acts just like the cops she hated when she was younger.

After I read the next paragraph about Monica’s experience solving a murder case, I realized that detectives are not like Sherlock Holmes or Conan Edogawa. They are mechanical and vulgar, rather than heroic and romantic. They are people who can nonchalantly walk into a room full of blood and bullets, crack a joke about the crime or suspect, laugh, and arrest the criminal without a second thought. There is nothing romantic about this occupation. Despite her naïve attempt to uphold some notion of “justice” in the workplace, Monica failed to differentiate herself from the police she used to hate.

I think it is great that Monica has a passion for her work, but my conception of a detective is much different from reality. While I no longer have any interest in mystery detectives, this story was intriguing because it allowed me to see the reality behind one of my childhood dreams.

Assignment 0: Autobiography

My name is Andrew Marvin. I was born on April 21, 1989 in Denver, Colorado. Due to my father's occupation, I've lived all across the United States. In order: Colorado, Michigan, Washington, Pennsylvania, Sacramento CA, Utah, Los Angeles CA, Santa Barbara CA. I consider Moorpark (near LA) my hometown because I lived there the longest over the past 8 years. During high school I didn’t have anything that I wanted to "do" when I got out. Disillusioned, I was drifting along only going through the motions of living. I decided to go to UC Santa Barbara to study political science because it was my biggest interest at the time. About halfway through college I developed an even bigger interest in history but it was too late to complete anything more than a minor. Around my third year of college, I decided I wanted to intensify my study of history and political science so I started looking into the EAP program. This fit perfectly with my lifelong dream to leave the West. At first I considered Sweden and Germany because I was fascinated by many aspects of old-world European culture. I decided that studying in a cushy, white-washed First World country did not fit well with my field of interest (the Third World, global poverty, neo-liberal economics, etc). I also abandoned my plan to study in Japan for similar reasons. Though I've been a major Japanese history and culture fanatic for years, it didn't fit well with study. I finally chose Vietnam to study in because it was a perfect match with my education and because I've always been interested in Vietnamese history and culture. I want to know why capitalism was ultimately restored in Vietnam by the same party that started out to destroy it forever. I want to understand the class divisions within Vietnam and how the poor are kept chained to a life of abject poverty. Though I believe I know the answers to these questions and more already, I came to witness firsthand what I've only read about. I came to test theory against reality. I came to be a historian and a political scientist.