Competency, lack thereof

The whole point of why I'm here teaching English to Vietnamese is to establish what is known as, "Communicative Competence," or the ability to understand and be understood in communicating with English-speakers.

I've developed a little bit of a Communicative strategy of my own, a complex system of grunts and nods and other gestures to (hopefully) advance my point and meaning to individuals that don't speak a word of English to my not speaking a word of Vietnamese. Sometimes we get within the same mile of understanding one another. Other times, I struggle to imagine how my carefully implemented hand gestures were so grossly misinterpreted.

A lot of the things I think here and the assumptions I make are horrendously incorrect. At times my anxieties evolve to the point where I'm not thinking sensibly on the ground level, much less on the elevated and more complex level of cultural navigation. But I think it comes from a lapse in focus. There are days when the traffic din and the street ruckus represent to me so much stress that I begin to resist them, and start almost immediately feeling those little sparks of irritation.

The biggest spark is the one that suggests people are doing things to spite me. I'll be walking along a stretch on unoccupied sidewalk, and someone on a motorbike will just pull right up into my path, running over my feet if it weren't for my own efforts, as if on purpose. I mean--look at this stretch of sidewalk. How is it that this person and I arrived at the same point in space at the same time? And how is it that it happens once every ten minutes?

These are thoughts that occur to me when I have not yet had my coffee. You all know that I am many things, but I am not a morning person. Wait-- OK, I would be a morning person, if I were at a cabin in the middle of the woods facing east across a serene lake pulsing with sweet birdsong. The cabin would also have a programmable coffeemaker in the kitchen. I would be a great morning person in that very specific circumstance.

The logical answer to the people in my way question is the obvious one: There are a lot of people here. So many, in fact, that it is difficult to have peripheral vision. You're not paying attention to others because the second you stop looking straight in front of you is the second you run right into whatever is inevitably there. It's a fundamental law of the universe: the moment after you stop paying attention is the exact moment you should have been paying attention to all along.

The issue of competency comes from a sort of fatigue, on my part, of having to constantly re-calibrate expectations. I find myself lapsing more and more into the old American way of doing things, like standing on a corner waiting for the walk signal. I found myself standing at a corner for several minutes the other day, just staring. There was no walk signal coming, there wasn't even a light posted on that particular corner, but I stood there waiting for it all the same.

But it's all part of the process. As a small-town Midwesterner, I was taught to be almost brutally self-conscious about my actions and how they fit with everyone else. It's a much more forgiving experience here--you can walk into a restaurant soaking wet from an impromptu downpour and no one casts a second look.

It's still very much a learning experience.

As for the standard news, I've moved to a cheaper and somewhat noisier room. I'm sad to leave that sunny beautiful palace I stayed in last month, but the economic advantages are undeniable. There are some comforts here as well--I can use the kitchen so I can start cooking again, and there's an excellent rooftop patio that's a nice beer-and-cigarette hangout for when I get home from work. The major drawback is that there is no WiFi, so I'm at the mercy of public wireless networks and coffeeshops for uploading pictures and registering new blog posts. Be patient, I'm still alive.

Just a little distracted!