My Holly Jolly

I woke up on Christmas morning and smiled.  I took one of those deep breaths where you feel the winds of relaxation rush from the happy pit of your belly.  One simple reason: a much needed day off to be spent with friends.  The staff at work pooled their money and bought me a gift the day before.  I was questioned intently about what I wanted.  I really didn’t want anything, and I especially did not want to break their banks.  “A scarf?” my friend pleaded with me.  “Ok, yes, a scarf would be fantastic.”  So the next day a group of excited kids with sparkling eyes shuffled like little robots into my adjusting room.  “Merry Christmas!” they shouted, and presented me with a gift wrapped in paper covered in christmas trees and santas.  They all looked so proud.  My boss followed them in.  “I am so surprised!” she said.  “I didn’t tell them to do this, they did it by themselves.  You know they are very poor.”  My little angels.  I opened my scarf, which turned out to be a beautiful flowing red knitted poncho.  Ouch.  My heart.  I was speechless.  I can’t wait to come up with something really great to get them all for their New Year next month.  My boss got me the best mattress in Vietnam.  I’ve been sleeping on thin squishy foam.  Last night was a dream.  There were nights in Vietnam when my mom and I slept on box springs where every position comes with a jab.  I am in deep appreciation.  

So I get out of bed on Christmas morning, and I get ready to go.  I have to be at my friends’ house in 20 minutes.  Then the doorbell rings.  Ka chunk, ka chunk, I turn the lock in the door and anticipate a possible bill collector (they just show up, I’m not in any financial trouble).  So there’s Kaz, fresh off the airplane from Thailand.  I met Kaz in my parent’s kitchen.  His aunt worked with my dad on the Starbound in the Bering Sea of Alaska.  At the time he walked in the front door, said, “Hey.  Kaz.”  I said, “No, I’m Cass.”  “He said, “No, I’m Kaz.”   Ahhh.  Kaz has to renew his Thai visa.  I was expecting him the day before, but then he didn’t have a visa to enter this country, and told me he would have to sit in Bangkok for two days.  Kaz just turned 21.  He’s got on those moon boot skater shoes, fluorescent swim trunks, a tank top covered by a flannel, and a shark tooth necklace.    He can’t believe how cold it is here.  He made it all the way to my door by himself; a true christmas miracle in this country of backward streets and labyrinths.  “Just in time for Christmas brunch.  Come on.”

So we did brunch at a high end restaurant with seven americans, one auzzie, and one brit-auzzie.  We were quite a group.  The vietnamese santa came and gave us candy, and we stayed for four hours and finished off the night bar hopping.  Now I’ve got a little brother to watch out for for two weeks while he’s here in Vietnam.  That’s what I like about encounters across the world.  You see your friend from kindergarten in your home town, and it’s all, “Hey, great to see you.”  Someone you met for the smallest moment in time becomes like family when you are far away.

We had coffee, beer, wine, and spiced red wine TO CHOOSE FROM (endless glass)  So we just got one of each, most of us : )

Shhhhh

I don't expect this blog to be particularly interesting, but because I've made a personal commitment to keep writing, I hope something decent will come out.  Sometimes you get so tired, you don't care one way or the other . . . . and that's how I'm feeling right now.  I'm at the point where I just want to make bullets of my daily activities, just to feed those who have an interest.  So here's what's going on:  I've hired three men DC's to come over, and they should all be over in January.  I feel like they will only make a good thing better.  It's one thing to chat with the staff in broken english all day, and it's another to share the experience with people who are right there with you with the same goals and background.  The clinic opened to the general public yesterday, and I am the only doctor.  At first I was feeling a bit bombarded . . . maybe we should have talked about how to schedule to not make me feel like I constantly had five people waiting for me?  Today was much better.  The goal is SLOW and STRONG.   I can only give so many new patients my best efforts every day to spark the good word about chiropractic . . .  That point is now understood amongst management, and I don't actually mind that I have to work everyday until another chiropractor hops the pacific pond.

How are the attitudes of the general public?  I am doing my best to spread the word that chiropractic is for everyone, not just aches and pains.  I had a woman yesterday come in to ask about her husbands back pain, and I learned they were trying to have a baby.  Well!  Don't mind if I tell you how chiropractic might help with that!  It would be a very exciting feat!  One of my docs from Canada wrote me today to tell me that he met a vietnamese family in Edmonton who had heard about our clinic.  Well well well.  Awesome.  The funny thing about the culture which is so different, is that they will not feel happy with you as a doctor if you do not give them a pill to take.  The clinic currently has an empty pharmacy, to be stocked with pain meds, water pillows, vitamins & supplements, and various other supplies.  I can't in good conscious tell them to take anything.  So in usual form, I tell them, if you feel like you have to, then I'm not stopping you.  I clearly have to conform to an expectation, and then draw them in another direction.  It will be a task.  I usually answer questions with, "No one wants to take pain pills, so . . . "  Then they just look at me.  My translator takes an extra step without my consent, explaining that in America, the general attitude is to avoid pain pills, but that's not how we feel in VN.   They chuckle at me.  Education is key, and once I have some muscle behind me (other docs) I'll have more time to get the big idea across.

When I left America, I wondered how little ole me would fare with my chiropractor co-workers who would most likely have more than my two years of experience in the field.  Now I'm here, running the whole shebang, and I got to choose who I wanted to work with.  I've set up the entire protocol of this huge place (a fifteen million dollar building), with three body guards, two cleaning ladies, two x ray techs, a night watchman, 8 receptionists, and 20 physiotherapy/massage grads.  I didn't hatch the idea, but I've had a big part in bringing it together.  In a way, it's what I had planned from the second I saw the ad.  But how it happened can only be part of the secret.

Rulers

There are ways to measure the passing of days gone by with units not found on calendars or cell phone clocks.  I've been known to measure time in how long it takes to grow out my toenail polish.  For instance, I might remind myself that by the week ONLY my big toe still has color, it might be time to forget about the boy or the vacation or the special event that may have prompted the pedicure in the first place.  There is just something comforting about holding onto a great experience and knowing it was just a toenail in time away.  But when my best friend has heckled me enough, I sadly sigh into the bathroom cupboard, pull out the acetone, and say goodbye to THAT life experience.

Over here I've started working 6 days a week, soon to be 7.  The opening ceremony for the clinic is next week, and apparently I am the star.  The biggest news station in Vietnam will be there.  I'm not really sure how to handle the responsibility or the spotlight, but when unsure, fake it til you make it.  I certainly don't feel like anything I'm doing is all that difficult; it's just a lot of hard work, plugging along day after day.  Especially for a princess like me who has, in the past, convinced herself that she NEEDS (a lot of) downtime.

You don't have the luxury to be picky over here.  If a local friend drags you to a street stand serving only one dish, you eat it.  You pick up those dirty chopsticks washed haphazardly in cold water sans soap, sitting there on that table two feet off the ground.  You squat down on a plastic blue stool one foot off the ground.  And you even feel like you went the extra mile to squeeze some lime juice on the utensils and wipe them off vigorously with a napkin.  I laugh every time I sit at these mini kiddie tables.  This is the most natural form of dining out, but I still always think of a movie called "Land of the Little People" which my mom taped for me on the VCR straight off the TV without pushing pause at the commercials, somewhere around 1988.  Seriously, just imagine the table four year olds have to sit at on Thanksgiving, only a lot dirtier.  You get used to these things.  You take what you get, sometimes because it is the only Vietnamese word you can remember.  I'm proud enough just to be able to say pho ga (chicken pho) when I can't read a word on the menu.  As I'm writing this, my neighbor is blasting some awful Vietnamese music like it's House Party 2, and what am I gonna do, knock on his door and complain?  That option just isn't logical.

My very first blog had something to do with having too many choices, and I have to say I feel a sense of serenity at not having to decide all the time.  There is freedom in captivity!  But it's also fun to slowly push out; to learn the word you need to get what you want next time; to recognize streets and call out cab drivers.

I've almost gone through a tube of toothpaste.  I only have four tubes of Crest left.  My Aveda shampoo is almost gone.  I gage my supplies on a daily basis and contemplate mixing it up with some Vietnamese brands, because I'm not ready to be left alone in this country without my home comforts.  I will lose those parts of me in stages, and I will suffer when I squeeze out the last drops.  Another chapter over.

Getting Back to Brass Tacks: Chiropractic in VN

The first time I laid eyes on my chiropractic staff, I didn’t realize that this would be our first meeting.  The boss lady had called me at 2 pm and told me to meet her at the clinic at 3 pm.  I was sitting in a coffee shop overlooking Hoan Kiem Lake, eating a sandwich.  I was wearing flip flops, shorts, and a t-shirt.  I think my legs were pretty hairy too, and all scabbed up from mosquito bites.  I finished my sammy and jumped in a cab.

I sauntered through the clinic gate at 2:55 and was met by the clinic 24 hour security guard.  I asked for the boss with her name and a shrug, and he led me back to the courtyard.  As I rounded the corner, I was met with applause from a U shaped group of twenty-something year olds.  Whoa.  “The doctor!” my boss proudly exclaimed, and the clapping continued.  The day before had been my first effort to learn a vietnamese sentence.  I started out strong: “I don’t . . . .I . . . . don’t . . . . .”  Hmmm.  I looked down at my fingers.  Must be stage fright.  “Ummmmmmm. I don’t . . . . speak . . . . . . Vietnamese” I managed to get out in their language.  As I think I’ve said before, if you don’t get it perfect, they still won’t understand you, even after all the effort.  “Who here speaks English?” I asked in English.  I was met with stares.  The girl next to me turned to me and said, “We are very happy to meet you and very excited to work with you.”  My boss turned to the crowd.  “Can you understand her English!?” she barked in English.  She was met with unsure nods.  She dismissed the class and led me away.  I wondered what they could possibly think of me, a fellow asian of about the same age, looking like any traveling backpacker coming off of the street.  

I have been training “the kids” for about five days now.  I went through my prepared material in the first two days, and wondered how I was ever going to be able to keep them busy for ten days.  I was actually pretty nervous about not having enough material by the end of the second day.  I basically gave my standard chiropractic health talk that I would give to any patient, but in this case left a lot of time to make sure nothing was lost in translation.  They need to know what I am doing and why I am doing it so that the clinic can run as smooth as possible and so they can explain chiropractic themselves.  They eagerly ate up their anatomy lesson and memorized which organs and systems are being affected by the nerves exiting each vertebra.  If they didn’t know the function of an organ, it turned into a lesson on organ function.  If they couldn’t grasp the sympathetic nervous system, I took the time and patience to explain it to them until a light bulb would go off and then the Vietnamese would be flying across the room and other faces would light up too.  I started to feel really proud of my little students.

The morning of the third day, I looked on amazon.com hoping specifically for “Chicken Soup for the Chiropractic Soul” but willing to settle for any inspirational stories about chiropractic for the kindle.  There happened to be one, and I downloaded it just before I had to run out the door to catch my motorcycle ride to work.  I figured, worse come to worse, I can read in English and my translator can translate.  The boss stresses that learning english is just as important as any chiropractic information they get.  Only two translators understand me at 90%.  The other two understand at about 65-75%.  So this requires a lot of repeating and slowing down.  They enjoyed the chiropractic story so much.  As the published stories usually end in a miracle, there was much clapping and looks of surprise.  I decided I would try to tell them about a miracle every day.  Apparently, for most people, the first few days was just noise coming out of my mouth, but they are beginning to catch on.

For the last couple of days, I have just been winging it.  Since they did so well with learning where the nerves go, I spent a day teaching them about dermatomes (areas of skin innervated by a single nerve root) and how to test for problems.  After that, I figured I might as well teach them which muscles are supplied by the spinal nerves, and how to test muscle strength for each level of the spine.  This morning I said, tell me everything you know about Cervical vertebra number five.  Their reply: “It affects the throat and lower neck muscles, you test the dermatomes of the outer part of the arm, and you muscle test shoulder abduction and elbow flexion.”  My little angels!  Today they learned the process for taking a case history (OPQRST, PC).  Then I acted like the patient and made them ask me questions.  In this way, I have a code word for a series of questions I want them to ask, and I don’t have to waste the time on translation because they know what to ask.

The thing I stress the most is that chiropractic brings hope to life.  In the spirit of my great chiropractic mentors, I show inspirational youtube videos like my buddy Peter Kevorkian, and repeat some of the great Kevin Donka stories.  It brings tears to their eyes, as they have never imagined that they could be part of something that will have such a big impact on the world around them.  It brings tears to my eyes too.  

I spend a lot of time writing on the board, because they understand better when they can see it.  I draw pictures.  Yesterday I thought I had better learn their names.  They are named after actual “things” here.  We have two Victories, two Waters, a Mountain, a Cherry Blossom, a “such as or the same” (this one wrinkled her nose at her name’s meaning), a Flower, two Rivers, a Forest, a Happy, an Advantage, a Hero and a Sunny, just to name a few.  I learned 27 Vietnamese names in ten minutes, and they were so happy when I went through the list the first time with no mistakes.  Of course, musical chairs would tarnish me big time. 

And my pronunciation is never perfect.  They love to correct me.  I ask them to teach me new words every day.  I say it, and I get 27 answers back with an encouraging nod for me to try again.  They beam at me.  They tell me they love me and adore me.  One of them has volunteered to bring me back and forth to work every day.  They invite me home and bring me food and take me grocery shopping.  They asked where I live, and after telling them, they said, “Your street is named after Heroine.”  “No way!” I exclaimed, wondering if I lived in the ghetto.  I mimed sticking a needle in to my arm.  “Heroine?”  We all broke out into laughter.  “Heroine is girl Hero, and your street named after famous vietnamese heroine who is 16 year olds.”  Well laugh out loud.  Even though some are older than me, they are my kids, and I am happy to be around them every day.

I am working my butt off over here.  I told my boss I would be happy to be in charge of new doctor recruitment.  I know when I looked at the position, I had my doubts because the emails in English made me question if anyone would even be able to communicate with me.  The applications have been pouring in, and every question is important and must be answered.  It is, however, a lot of effort to put out for someone who might not come.  On my third day of training, I was called up to the bosses office to receive the news that the other doctor who was supposed to be back next week decided not to come.  This basically means that I am now solely in charge of the chiropractic direction of this three million dollar clinic.  I get to chose the protocols on everything.  I get to shape the impression of chiropractic in this town of six million in Vietnam.  The  cool thing is that when I ask my staff, what does chiropractic focus on?  They say, “The nervous system.”  What travels from the brain to the body by way of the nervous system?  “Signals.”  What do the signals carry?  “Information.”  What disrupts the flow of information?  “Subslushation.”  If you think Americans have a hard time with ‘subluxation,’ come over here.  I feel really glad that the philosophy that I learned at Sherman goes over with admiration, but most importantly, without argument.  In America, some patients find chiropractic to be absolutely amazing.  Here, they all do.  It is really really really cool.


The Clinic and Staff:

Extreme Makeover: Home Edition

I sure am glad I waited three weeks for this apartment.  It’s hard to describe how it feels to come home to a place that I inhabit solo.  It feels good to be within these walls.  All the bars on the windows and doors, which I will refer to as “the fixins,” are so french quarter with the lavender walls that I think, “You are lovely against the white shutters” and I beam in their general direction.  What I was expecting to be a large porch has been transformed into a magical second bedroom, catching the morning light and encouraging stomach crunches, push-ups, and dumbbell curls.  The truly awesome thing about this place is that there are windows between every room.  The two bedrooms are separated by large sliding windows.  There are small pop out windows from the bathroom to the kitchen.  There are sliders from the second bedroom to the kitchen.  Who needs privacy?  Since I have no furniture, I also think this would make a good Marrakeshian “pillows everywhere” room.  My friends from Edmonds, WA have deemed it Carrot’s room.  They imagine that I will adopt Carrot and they can be co-owners from the next street over.  See Carrot’s ad here:

I have a Siberian husky dog. But unfortunately, my mom is allergic to its fur so I have to sell her, which is my last choice. Otherwise, my mom will throw her to the street :( This is so sad because she's very special to me.

Some information about her

- Her name is Carrot

- She's a Siberian husky

- She's 6 months old & weight ~20kg

- She's very nice & friendly, even with cats

- She loves to go jogging, play ball

- She prefers beef & pork & ribs than seafood or crab/fish/prawn

- She's well taken care by my uncle, who is a vet, so I don't have any paper but if she has any problem, just ring me, I'll tell my uncle to come over to your place :)

Siberian husky is easily bored if you leave them alone. So I want to find Carrot a loving, caring new parents. I don't want my baby to be left behind. Carrot will come with some of her favorite toys :)

I bought her for 12 mil dong. I will sell her for 10 mil dong. I can reduce the price a little bit if you are a really big dog-lover.

Email me at catherine5989@hotmail.com or text me if you are serious. Thanks

But I already have a CARmela and a ROTtweiler, and there is no room in my life for CARROT.  James and Megan do not cease to pursue the dream.  Off of Carrot’s room (the name will stick, I think) is a barred up window with an opening that swings shut.  My landlady speaks no english, so she flung open the cut-out and mimed jumping out of it.  I made a “birds flying” motion with my hands and an implied question mark.  Maybe this is where you release birds that accidently fly into the house.  She shook her head and was stumped.  Her daughter told me today that it’s the fire escape.  Hmmmm.  If I jumped outta there, I would get entangled in a mess of telephone cables which hover over a barbed wire fence.  Tough decision.

There are still a few things left to be done for the apartment to be completely ready.  Had to walk about a mile to the Vincom Towers, a shopping center, to get towels.  I went into the nicest bedding store I could find, grabbed two towels, two hand towels, and bathmat, and rang them up.  The total came out to one million five hundred thousand dong.  It's twenty thousand dong to a dollar.  I guess I grabbed the equivalent of The Hotel Collection.  Oh well.  Now I have really nice looking towels that don't really get you dry.  I have ok’d the fact that I might come home to workers all up in my house.  I just pack all the important/expensive stuff to work with me.  Tonight I came home and noticed that about a quarter of a new bottle of Aquafina was missing.  Wow, they totally just opened my shit.  I had also created a dish dry rack with a large bowl and all my clean dishes drying in it.  For some reason, it was half full of water.  It was sitting next to one of my formerly clean cups which was also half full of water.  I rewashed everything, and thought to myself, “Really!?”

And that was my first full day in my Vietnam apartment. Minus the bulk of the day training my chiropractic staff.  More to come on that later.

Front door area

Check out my sweet piano!

Workout Room

No Reason to Cook when Good Dinners Cost a Dollar

Bathroom Decor

Wash Machine

Dryer

Tourist Woman

Today is my last real “vacation” day.  I never thought I could be so content doing nothing, but it’s been pretty cool.  Every morning I wake up on the second floor of my hotel, cursing the slats in the door that let morning sounds drift up from the ground floor.  I go downstairs and Tuyet (we had been calling her Twit, but it’s really more like Doo-wit, meaning snow) makes me breakfast.  I realized today that she has never had a day off.  I mentioned this to her, and she said, “yes I work full time,” and then smiled at me.  Poor thing rides a bicycle 7 kilometers to work every morning, and spends every afternoon at cooking school.  She has gotten in the habit of calling me ‘sister’ and every day we have language lessons at my table.  By the time I've finished my second cup, there are yellow post its scattered all over the table scribbled with english and vietnamese.  Vietnamese sure have a hard time with the ‘shhh’ sound.  Sometimes I have to remind her that she should take care of the people waiting for their first cup of coffee before we continue.  Today I learned, “I love you very much,” which sends the bell boys peeling out of the room giggling with their hands over their mouths.  I learned a phrase about how the vietnamese girls like to come out at night (to kiss) from the front desk girl, and after repeating it back to her, she said, “Madame I think you are very funny.”  Well you’re the one who taught it to me.

Tomorrow is not only Thanksgiving, it is also moving day!  Have no idea how the apartment turned out, so I’m very excited to see my new digs.  I have reservations at a restaurant with my American friends.  For $30 we can enjoy turkey day from far away.  This is an outrageous dinner bill by vietnamese standards.  I can get a delicious meal for three to four dollars, and we are talking more than one course.  But a small price to pay for a taste of home.

Friday morning will be my official first day of work, though I’ve been doing a fair amount to get the clinic going.  Unfortunately, opening day keeps getting pushed back.  If I wasn’t enjoying myself doing nothing so much, I’d probably be a little peeved.  As of right now, we have two chiropractors come opening day.  The clinic will be open 7 days a week, 9am to 9pm.  Looks like I’ll be making my overtime.  I’ve been put in charge of recruitment of new chiropractors.  This is really fun and I’m enjoying the process.  If only I had someone like me to answer my questions before I came.  Blind leaps.  They make life more interesting.  I really do need to get some people over here though, to avoid burnout.  I went to meet with the boss the other day, and she had a makeshift round table going with about thirty staff members.  I was as I usually am, sorta hippied out in flip flops, and I can only imagine what they were thinking.  I said as best as I could in Vietnamese, "I don't speak Vietnamese."  Then a little talking in English.  Then the boss said in English very sternly, "who can understand her!?"  Doesn't seem like anyone could.  I start training them on Friday, and who knows how long it will take for my message to come across.  I think I'll start out with the Harvey Lillard story, back in 1895 . . . 

For not knowing who I was getting involved with, it sure has been a pleasant surprise.  My boss has a picture of her and John McCain on her desk, and she has been on the cover of the vietnamese equivalent of Times magazine.  Her brother is an artist who has sold his works to the Bills, (clinton and gates), as well as various royalty, etc etc.  They take good care of me.  I feel like there is a whole team of people designed to make my life go smooth.  They pop up with dinner invites and shopping outings and I am forever grateful.  There is a pretty large expat community here, and most days I am meeting up with someone new, gently putting my feelers out into this new life.  

That’s the summary for now.  Pictures to follow of the apartment!

Language Lessons

I have been in Vietnam for about three weeks now.  When you first arrive it’s like you see everything from the other side of the window.  There’s a barrier and you don’t quite know how to get to the other side.  Riding in the backseat of a taxi, buildings and people and motorbikes blur together and you wonder how you will ever become a part of the beating pulse that is Hanoi.  Then as you sink into a routine, you begin to recognize the street corners.  You know the lady selling the french bread spends spare time scrutinizing craniums, plucking white hairs from scalps that are going alarmingly bald from the process.  You make a fist and hold it defensively near your chin, because you swear, if the zippo guy strikes a light in your face one more time, you may just knock him out.  You watch three little boys perched on a parked motorbike at the roads edge, yelling “hello taxi!” and you wonder how you could ever get to the point of letting your children play unattended next to a busy street.  And then you start seeing tourists everywhere, and you have to chuckle as you watch a husband forge into traffic as his wife whimpers and darts back to safety.

I told someone last night that I finally feel like I am beginning to sink into this place, and he said, “Careful!  Pretty soon you’ll be kicking toward the surface trying to get out!”  It will be what it will be.  Every day I try to learn a few new words in Vietnamese.  As I sit here writing this, my cook is asking me, “ex-cuse-a-me madame,” and pointing to her eyes, nose, mouth, ears, for me to translate.  Yesterday she taught me to count to ten . . . mot, hai, ba, bun . . . 

The Vietnamese language seems impossible.  I have an upper hand because there are many similar sounds in chinese that white folks just have a really hard time with.  Vietnamese is a tonal language involving six tones.  There are upswings, downswings, flats, and who knows what else.  What this means is that you could have a word like, “Ngon.”  I know that it means delicious or fingers or toes, depending on how the ‘o’ sound comes out.  The only way I can think to describe this difference is to ask you to remember saying “ahhhhhh” at the doctor’s office.  One “ahhhh” might be the sound that comes out through barely parted lips, and the other would be opening your mouth as wide as possible.  The thing is, if you are off slightly (and how could you not be) they will stare at you with blank faces and your efforts will be all for naught.  No wonder most expats don’t bother.  

I am planning on starting a beginner’s course in vietnamese next week.  However, last week I answered an ad in The New Hanoian for Russian Lessons with Tania.  Nobody understands why I’m doing this.  I think Russian is the most beautiful language while Vietnamese sounds like cats fighting.  Vietnamese is only useful in Vietnam, whereas a vast part of the world speaks Russian.  AND, when Vietnamese don’t speak english, there is a good chance that they may know Russian.  And I think I should get fluent in Russian, because in my estimation I’m about 15-20 percent there already.

I met Tania at a coffee shop and I liked her immediately.  She pulled up on her motorbike, greeted me, and began her mental estimation of how much I knew already.  It was meant to be a meeting to determine if we would be a good match.  We ended up spending five hours together, as she dragged me all over the city on the back of her motorcycle to show me her favorite city spots.  We have already had our first lesson in which I learned the complex russian alphabet.  I’ve gone back in time to my child days of decoding puzzles.  It’s a pretty satisfying feeling when I have a “breakthrough.”  She kind of closes her eyes in proudness and gives me that thumbs up like I just split an atom.  So cool.  Mental Exercise.  Now to start doing the work out videos I just downloaded on iTunes.  The food is much too good around here.

House Hunters International

So in every immigrant’s new life, there comes the issue of where to live.  Here were my options: take the recommendation of the bosses and go for the place that wouldn’t be ready for three weeks OR look around with rental companies who are looking to make their cut.  First I tried the rental company, because three weeks in a hotel can add up:

the house i looked at was really neat and in a good location, but the shower is right over the toilet so the bathroom floor would always be wet, and it sort of stinks, the kind of stink that would never go away cuz of the drain pipe.  But its right on a really central street lined with trees, with a little "rosario market down below" and a bar just around the corner called 17 cowboys, lots of little pho stands, and tree lined streets.  Pleasant.  So you walk down this little alley past side stall hair salons and other eateries, past little hanging cages with a songbird each, and then you turn left into another short alley and there are some really tall narrow buildings lining this charming little mini alley.  So its got a pretty front gate from floor to about 10 feet high, and it's locked.  Beyond is a small courtyard where you could potentially park a motorbike.  It turns out to be a "homestay" with the owners living downstairs and two apartments upstairs.  The other apartment is an american couple.  I'm told the owner speaks good english.  There is a maid, and I can probably convince her to do my laundry for cheaps.  So you step up to their bottom level, and keep in mind tall and narrow, cuz their house is spread up five levels, with the top two being the apartments.  Honestly feels like a tree house.  There is a bridge over a tiny pond going into their kitchen.  The wood steps are a dark beautiful color, and you climb up to the second level and see a piano and a guitar, and a family room in general. Then its a stair climb, but again, beautiful winding wooden stairs as you pass a wall decorated with adorable regional pots.  then you get to the fourth floor, and at the landing you see a door to the left and to the right, both which are locked.   The maid flings open the door to the left, and it is a tiny kitchen area with a fridge, cupboards, counter, a hot plate, and a dinky kitchen table.  Mona said, I betcha that fridge stinks!  The door to the right leads to the living area, opening into a living room with the ratty furniture, go past the tiny bathroom, decent sized bedroom with no mirrors, and a little balcony where you can sit outside.  A wall of windows face the stairwell, but there are curtains that can be let down.

all this for 500/month.  pros: feels like a birdcage/treehouse, cage within a cage situation due to the fact that you would have to get past the gates and a whole family and my locked doors to get in.  Probably the family would look after me a bit, and would potentially have friends upstairs.  great location, probably 1 mile to work.  cons: less privacy, stinky.  and my friend helping me said it might be more embarrassing to bring someone home.  thanks. for. that. info. lol.

Option 2: Take this 70 square meters apartment and hope it turns out great.  Nice view of a lake, private, down an alley filled with police officers families, so much less chance of crime.  Cons: Not as attractive of a neighborhood.  1 mile from work from a less awesome direction.  At first the land lady wanted $500/mo, $1500 due upon looking, and $1500 due upon move in, No wash machine.  My boss had a nice little chat with her, telling me one must make demands, and got it down to $1350 every three months with a wash machine.  When the lady said she was worried about me running off, my boss claimed responsibility for me.  She got my back!

View from the Porch

 Kitchen and door to the porch

Protection from street thugs : )

I'm going with Option 2!  Move in date is November 22nd!  Stay tuned for "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition!"

Some Hanoi-Ances

I was walking down a street, and man bolted out in front of me, stuck one finger over his left nostril, and sent a snot bullet whizzing past in front of me.  It happens a lot.  No need for Kleenex over here.  Thanks for helping me work on my limbo!

It was pointed out to me by another American that many men have super long thumb fingernails.  We commiserated on the fact that it must be used to scratch deeply into itchy areas.  

I’m not sure if it expresses gratitude for a great meal, but I have a hard time concentrating on palatable pleasures when I can hear people eating from across the room.  Most people eat with their mouths open, smacking their chops happily with absolutely no self awareness.  I know this, because I can’t stop staring at them, as if my pleading eyes will make them stop.

Sometimes people just break out into song as they are hangin’ curbside, and they are singing with their eyes closed and all their heart.   And it's just plain amusing.

I get mad when people can’t understand me.  I know it’s wrong to get upset.  I come to their country and they can’t speak MY language!?  Just part of why I made myself do this in the first place.

I was in a tiny shoe shop and the shopgirl just lit up on a cigarette.  Can’t escape cigarette smoke here : (


I saw a man get hit by a bus trying to make a three point turn.  He was standing with his back to the bus, smoking a cigarette.  The look on his face when he realized he was being run down by a bus was priceless.  He went to the window to chew the driver out, and the driver laughed and drove away.  

It is normal for someone to hock a loogie on the street in mid conversation with no shame and continue the conversation.


You guys just had daylight savings and I went from 12 hours from Texas time to 12 hours from Carolina time.  I guess Vietnam can't be bothered.

Observations thus far.

Oh, one more that I can only speculate on; calling the cable guy.

Sapa, Vietnam

Currently trekking around Sapa, a mountain town in northern Vietnam.  Tonight we will do a homestay in a village.  More to come, but I just wanted to post some pictures.

Taxi!

So my mom is here for two weeks and we are trying to be in vacation mode/find a place to live/get to know the city.  The hotel is starting to feel like home and the staff like family.  There is one shining girl in particular who is always chirping, “Hello madame,” and screeching “Yes of course, madame!” to every question we ask.  One night we told her we were on our way to dinner to the restaurant Highway 4 (from the Lonely Planet guidebook.)  I had just spent 30 minutes researching which restaurant I wanted to go to while Mona slept, hunched over my laptop uncomfortably as there is no desk at which to write.  So this little chickie asked us where we were going to eat, and when we told her she scrunched up her face remorsefully and said, “I think I know someplace better for you.”  So while I nodded and smiled at her as she called a taxi, I still got into the taxi and gave the address to Highway 4, a restaurant of high reviews.  On the ride, we passed a poppin restaurant filled with people and good vibes.  I recognized the name as another restaurant from the book that I wanted to check out.  For a split second, I wanted to yell, “stop the car.”  But little good that does when the driver doesn’t speak English.  So after about another mile we arrive at Highway 4. We climb the stairs into the restaurant, but something is amiss.  There is no hostess to greet us and the tables are eerily empty.  However, clanging and voices can be heard from the kitchen, as well as voices from upstairs, so we ascend.  It seems as though a private party is going on in a side room, but all other floors are empty.  We get back to the lobby and hop around from foot to foot, wondering what the hell is going on.  As no one ever shows up, we walk back down to the street.

It’s not the busiest street, so after a minute of hoping for a taxi, we start walking toward the next street up.  But then we see a taxi parked on the side of the road with a sleeping body reclined in the driver seat.  At this moment, we have to go around him, but we are sort of stuck next to him as we don’t quite want to step out into traffic zooming around us.  So Mona being Mona, she knocks the window, and sort of puts her hands up in the air, like, “you gonna drive us?” He says yes and motions for us to get in.  Well, we can’t because the seat is totally reclined.  So we just stand there.  So he gets out and opens the door for us.  And we just look at him and look at the seat, and its sort of getting interesting watching how long its going to take him to realize we can’t get in if the seat is  down.  Finally he gets it, I show him the address of the restaurant that we passed one mile prior, and we are off.  The first thing he does is get on his cell phone like he is trying to find out what the address is.  And he is driving slow.  Really really slow.  So we take a left down a fairly narrow street, and we are starting to get into what I can only call the GHET-TO.  Mind you, the restaurant was pretty much a straight shot down a main road.  So we are creeping along past all these stalls of barber shops and ladies with their heads tipped back getting their faces tweezed.  Motorcycles are flying past us, and we are creeping along and the driver is just having himself a nice ole conversation.  At this point Mona is cussing and every other word out of her mouth is “STUPID!”

So honestly, the road keeps getting narrower, but it’s to the point that we do not want to get out of the car in this ghetto.  We come to a Y and he forks right.  At this point we make it ten more feet, and we are damn near lodged in this alley, with motorbikes pulling up in front of us and behind us as well.  At about this point he realizes that he’s gonna have to back up, but there is nowhere to go.  No one will give way.  When he backs up one foot, motorbikes flow past through the crack like a heavy leak.  People are yelling.  He is still on the phone.  He gives no regard to who he may hit, and does come within an inch of a family of three on a bike.  The angry mother pounds the car with her hand and I feel more pounding from the back of the car.  Mona’s cussing starts getting more frequent and louder.  I’m quiet and amused, because what else is there to do in a situation like this?  He looks back at me and says something in a very desperate manner.  Mona tells him he's stupid.  It takes us about fifteen minutes of backing up and going forward inches at a time to get the car turned around.  We are backing into metal signs and crunching up against parked motorcycles.  We get going out of there, but remember how the road is narrow?  Other cars are driving toward us flashing their brights. Our driver just plows ahead and when there is nowhere else to go, he tries to veer up onto the side walk, and unbelievably, he makes enough room for the cars to get around.  But then we are hung up on something and the car is not moving.  I can see a main road a short ways down a side alley, so we throw the meter amount of money at him and fling ourselves from our trap.  We hail a taxi and make it back to the restaurant that I almost yelled “stop” for an hour before.  If only, right?

The ride back to the hotel costs twice as much as it should, like the meter is on fast forward.  By now I know the roads well enough to also know that he is not taking the most direct route.  It can make you feel like a victim and harden your heart toward what you idealized as a wonderful cultural experience.  But then you gotta think, if I was driving a taxi all day and some foreigners jumped in my cab, would I enjoy the ride a bit in order to not work so hard looking for the next pickup?  And don’t chiropractors do that all the time in the insurance game?  Throwing on ice packs, therapies, and modalities which ultimately grow the dollars per ride, thus not having to attract more patients in to make the “feeding the family” quota?  Who is to say that the path back to health won’t be stronger with the extra attention, or the ride back to the hotel more enriching with the extra bit of sightseeing?  And who’s to say it isn’t being taken for a ride.

Meeting Vietnam

I have made it here to Vietnam.  This is a real, “where to begin?” moment.  Every day that I haven’t written, I have compiled numerous ideas in my head about how to relay the experience.  I’ll start off by saying that I used to be an extremely sensitive person.  TO EVERYTHING.  Hurt feelings came too easily.  A slight veering over the line by the driver of my car (or the car headed directly towards me) caused a sudden physical jerking reaction (and if you’ve ever driven me, you know it well.)  I can’t stand to touch certain types of material on the palm of my hands; it gives me goosebumps and sends a shudder down my spine.  So you get the idea.  I think Vietnam is going to be like one huge latex apparatus designed to decrease the sensitivity . . . Because here is what walking down the street to go anywhere in Hanoi is like: there is a haze of gray smog that hangs over the city.  The street unfolds before you with an endless stream of throngs of motorbikes headed in each direction.  An eight year old boy rides his bicycle perpendicular to traffic across four lanes.  Cars intersperse here and there, but are few and far between due to the two hundred percent tax on owning one (30,000 becomes 90,000).  A sidewalk is not meant for you to take a stroll; a sidewalk is a place to park your motorcycle in front of a storefront, next to wrinkled faced grandmas squatting and selling eels swimming in buckets and rice laid out on flat thin woven baskets.  Petit women looking worn out take small steps at an alarming pace with a bar balanced across their shoulders and their wares hanging in baskets at either ends.  A man pushing his bicycle is so laden down with ornate flowers it seems as though he is a moving garden among the chaos.  You pass an alley which turns out to be a secret path to a stellar restaurant where you can choose what you want to eat live out of the mini aquariums.  You get to the point that the sidewalk is completely blocked before you, and you MUST look behind you before you step out into the street to go around the build-up.  As you step out your ears are suddenly accosted at close range by a sharp beep beep beep beep beep as you feel the wind of a van swerve around you.  The honking never stops, as it is an ancient communication brought to life in this great new century to alert your fellow that you may be about to run him down.  Miraculously, all vehicles and pedestrians have a magical forcefield surrounding them which allows a reprieve from ever actually colliding.  So that as you walk into traffic with your mother singing “hail mary full of grace” beside you, you can step through oncoming vehicles like it aint no thang.  And so, after two days of walking and riding in taxis, I am starting to be less sensitive, because that is the natural course when you confront your biggest fears over and over again and find out that you are fine.  

What my experience of being a chiropractor was really like . . .

A patient is bringing his daughter to my office next week with the intent to gently encourage her toward the chiropractic profession.  To say that I have mixed feelings about this would be putting it lightly, but I will certainly present my profession like the Sherman Warrior I was trained to be, and we’ll let the cards lie where they fall.

Kitty and Carfungal

For those who don’t know much about my profession, let me present an overview.  I’d like to say it will be brief, but there is much to understand.  In short, I am a chiropractic girl living in a medical world.  “Aha!” you say.  “So you lean more towards natural medicine?!”  “No!” I say back exasperatedly.  “I help your body work better by removing interferences to your nervous system so that you won’t need medicine in the first place!”  You nod, get adjusted, and then ask, “Now if I’m sore should I take ibuprofin or alleve?”

There must be about seventeen chiropractic schools in the country.  Depending on how you look at it, about three to six of these schools make philosophy a strong part of the curriculum.  The school I went to made it the central theme.  Why this is important: Focusing on philosophy gives us the “why” behind what we do.  I dedicated myself to a profession that was founded on a principle; well, 33 principles to be exact.  To sum it up, you have an inborn wisdom within you, which is an expression of the wisdom of the universe and nature.  This wisdom exists in your nervous system, and it is constantly controlling every function of your body 24/7 without you even having to think about it.  Isn’t it amazing?!  There is a big nasty word called: SUBLUXATION. A subluxation is a misalignment of your vertebrae, which puts pressure on your nervous system, causing an INTERFERENCE to the signals being sent from the brain to the body and the body to the brain.  A chiropractor’s sole purpose is to locate, analyze, and correct vertebral subluxations so that you can live to your maximum life potential.  Now try telling this to the construction worker who can’t afford to miss work, who just hobbled in and can barely move.  Fun stuff!

The reason why I called my blog, “From Here to There and the Subluxations Between” is because a subluxation is an interference in a message.  We can liken it to static on a phone line.  It could also be compared to the dimmer switch being set to low.  “When you are subluxated,” I tell my four year olds, “you don’t shine as bright”.  So while I will be documenting my experience in adjusting people from America to Asia, I am without a doubt that I will encounter daily “Subluxations” in my attempt to live in a country where I know none of their language and they know little of mine.  And I will present this to you on my blog for your information, delight, disgust, curiosity and/or pleasure.

If you go to the school that I went to, it will be deeply engrained in your psyche that we must educate the public on a way of life to which they are not privvy.  We know this big amazing secret, and this is a secret that the early chiropractors had to go to jail over!  Because, you see, when the early chiropractors began to see that everyone was getting better from their ailments, it just became apparent that chiropractic cured everything!  This is about the time that the medical profession got angry and sent chiropractors to jail for practicing medicine without a license.  And that was followed up by a smear campaign that I think is only now beginning to let up a bit.  But I still have patients who come in and say that their orthopedist told them never to go see a chiropractor.

At my school, we had a lot of assemblies that we would have to attend to build morale for us being the tiny group of Chiropractic Warriors of our profession.  It is important to know that there is a whole other aspect of our profession who focuses solely on musculoskeletal joint disfunction and PAIN.  These chiropractors make it hard for us warriors to sprinkle our fairy dust notions of health and wellness.

So there was this one particular day that Dr. Gelardi, the school president, was reading aloud letters from the old jail days between a chiropractic couple who at this point I can only remember their names as being Kitty and Garfunkel.  Someone more knowledgeable can correct me in the comments section, if need be.  Anyways, I listened to this speech with my dear russian friend at the time.  At this point, we may or may not have already been housemates with a fellow Italian-American student, but we were definitely well acquainted with each others every day expressions.  The Italian especially liked to express himself with the word, “Vafoncculo.”  You can look up the meaning yourself, but it’s not nice.  Okay, no offense to anyone, it means, “Go F yourself.”  So we’re sitting and listening to these letters back and forth from jail, building up camaraderie amongst our profession.  When Dr. Gelardi is finished speaking, the Russian looks at me and says, “Coss, I done know what de hell GeRALDi is saying about kitty and carfungal (which to him sounded the same as Vafonccul) but it sounds like somebody is getting f---ed.”

Yes, that would be us, dear friend, entering into a profession where the collective state of mind of society goes against the very ideas that we are trying to preach.

So to sum it up, this results in frustration.  I am frustrated when medical doctors can sit in their offices and have a non stop never ending flow of patients coming through their door, focusing on death and disease, while chiropractors have to spend their weekends doing spinal screenings and knocking on doors, telling about life and living.  I’m tired of telling the same story over and over to people who can’t afford it or don’t care.  And I cringe to know what they are really thinking when we tell them, “You can’t just stop coming when you feel better!  You could still have subluxations that need correcting!”  By no means will I ever stop trying though.  The seeds I plant may take hold after being watered by another source.  And I do appreciate and respect all the patients who have gotten “The Big Idea.”  Also appreciated are my chiropractor friends who support and encourage me.  They are the best most awesome people.

The professors in school told us, “The days of hanging out your shingle and expecting the office to fill up are over.  You just can’t do it anymore.”  In the spirit of Cass, I’m saying “Yes I can.”  I don’t know exactly how its going to happen, but I am going to a job that I get to go to, do my adjusting, and go home.  Though I’ll work 40 hrs a week instead of 20, having the extra energy not used up by constantly worrying about keeping a steady patient load feels like a gift.  When someone else hangs out a shingle in a brand new country with no other chiropractors and does all the marketing and advertising and pays me a salary, it takes away all the things I didn’t like about being a chiropractor.  And here’s the kicker - I saw that the bosses put another ad out for one more chiropractor to top off the four already on their way, and it also listed the number of local staff for the clinic.  Brace yourself.  It’s 50.  After a year of doing everything on my own, a staff of 50 will be like walking on air.  

While I would love to have my own private ferry business and drive a boat around my beautiful San Juan Islands all day and tie sailors’ knots and such, chiropractic is the profession I have chosen.  It is made up of lovely people who care.  For those who have chosen like I have, I have seen it take some people down and I have seen people thrive off of it.  But here I stand, never expecting it to take me half way around the world.  I don’t know what I will tell a teen age girl next week, but I will do my best to represent.

Leaving Home

When my dad was 17, he boarded a plane to Saigon, Vietnam to procure a job.  He touched down on June 22, 1967.  He fully expected his father to be waiting for him at the airport, but as he came to find out, Gramps had no intention of picking Mike up.  It was just that type of “tough-love” family relationship.  Too scared to leave the airport, Mike waited.  After a few hours he spotted a man from the plane ride from Hawaii to Guam, and begged him to take him to the tanker company.  The man obliged and guided Mike in a taxi to the front doors of the company and even took care of the cab ride.  Mike went into that building and announced that he was reporting for work.  They told him to take a hike.  There was no way Mike was going back out there.  At this time, the war was in full swing and the streets were a scene the likes of which he had never experienced.  He planted himself in a seat and he waited all day.  After much discussion, the office came to realize that they had sent Mike a letter of intent to hire him, and they would have to relent.  Had he left on demand, his life may have taken a completely different path, and I would not be here to write this account today.  They sent him to a hotel to wait for his call to duty, and he did not leave that room for three days and three nights.  On his fourth day in Vietnam, he went to work on the tugboats.

My dad worked in Vietnam for five years.  About two years in, he went back to San Diego.  He knew he was supposed to sign up for the draft and he figured he’d better look into it.  The court ordered him to appear, and, representing himself, he answered a very pressing question put forth by the elderly female judge: “Where have you been hiding for the past two years?”

His response: “Vietnam.”

It was an answer that stumped a judge who had heard it all until then.  He was duly entered into the draft, but his number was never called.  Though my dad was a bystander on the streets of Saigon, he never took part in what they are now calling over there, “The American War.”  He met my mom when the boat pulled into Singapore, and the rest is history.

I am 28 years old, and I intend to live an unordinary life.  In about a month, I will be moving to Hanoi, Vietnam.  This is in answer to an ad I saw in the chiropractic classifieds.  The ad had been catching my eye for about three weeks before I yelled across the house, “Mom, what do you know about Hanoi, Vietnam!?”  You see, my initial mental response to this ad was, “Who would ever want to go live in Vietnam?”  She called back, “Ohhh, its Verrrrry nice.”  Really?  Well let me just google it a bit and find out.  Hmmmm, Froder’s is calling it one of the top ten destinations of 2010.  Next month will mark its one thousandth anniversary.  It’s one of the top cities to shop in Asia.  Good food.  Good coffee.  Hmmmmm.  Let me just send in my resume and see what happens.  And they asked for a picture.  I’ll let that one ride as the asian persuasion.  Can’t hurt.

Besides a major birthday for Hanoi, next month also marks a big day for me.  It is the one year anniversary of my very own chiropractic office.   It’s also my last day in the office for a while.  This is the office I built up from scratch in a town where I knew practically no one.  It took exactly two months from the day I made the decision to open my practice to the day I opened my doors for business.    It was the scariest two months of my life and I lost about fifteen pounds in the process from stress.  At the time it was my hope that I would be able to cover the costs of doing business.  I took a one year lease on my space, and prayed that I would be able to cover the rent.  I set a modest goal for what I hoped to make in the first year.  I reached that goal after month 8.  (note to self: set higher goals.)  (Note to other chiros: Phyllis Frase, practice coach.)  On October 19th, I will gently wrap my practice up, and place it in my proverbial pocket for later.  Did I just compare my practice to a throat lozenge?  Well it did get me through some tough times and it did make me feel better in certain respects.  In the future I will look back on it as that year after chiropractic school that I lived with my parents and had my own doctor’s office.  Weird combo, I know.  More about that later.

This is a shout out to my friends and the other young professionals who might be reading this!  I have a lot of chiropractor friends, and for some reason I have an oddly lot of lawyer friends as well.  Wasn’t there some type of general consensus growing up that if we got “Dr.” on our degree, that things would be peachy?  It may just be my crowd, but the economic state of affairs is pitiful.  After procuring the mountain of debt in student loans, which cannot be gotten rid of with a simple declaration of bankruptcy, we are sent  off into the workforce with a heavy burden to carry.  It can be down right depressing!  My overhead just to get by in business and personally each month tops six thousand dollars.  And I live with my parents!  Is it any wonder that I dream of the days of being a coffee barista with no student loans to pay off?

What is the American Dream?  And who is really living it?  Who is this “Jones Family?”  And why do we have to keep up with them?  Somewhere along the way we all get brainwashed, and there is no escaping it.  We are born naked, and then we take on layers and layers of ideas until they culminate in the grand product of “us.”  It’s not necessarily a bad thing, but I think it is important to recognize the different hats, mittens, scarves, t-shirts, etc, that we wear . . .  Also that we do not wear them blindly, but question the purpose for why they got put upon.  

So what am I wearing right now?  Wouldn’t some people like to know.  I see myself coming up in a society that lives by the following: the more you make, the more you spend.  I see four year olds that have their own Wii and iTouch.  I know plenty of people, myself included, for whom its okay to spend ten dollars a day at a certain five pointed ‘bucks, and never think to bring in their own coffee mug.  It's really not okay the amount of coffee cups I go through in a year.  I’d like to take off the “over-contributing to pollution” hat, and replace it with the “bring-my-own-cup” cap.  And then there is the overall: grow up, go to college, get a job, get married, have kids, and retire.  And then when it doesn’t go that way, we feel like we aren’t doing “it” right.  My point is, there are things we do every day without question, and I’d like to start waking up to being a total american zombie.

Personally, I know I am spoiled.  I have been given and taken every opportunity.  The american way is that we give our children the freedom of choice.  I love to watch parents negotiate with their kids in a toy store.  “Honey, do you want this one, or this one, or this one, or this one, honey which one do you want?”  As a friend just pointed out to me, she had kids in Cambodia bowing and thanking her for a toothbrush on Christmas.  If all I got on Christmas was a toothbrush, I would cry.  As I sit back and analyze my life, having every choice open has led to a deep feeling of dissatisfaction.  How can I be satisfied with the life that I am living when I know there is a more interesting parallel reality of which I can be living instead, right now?  This is a problem, because it does put a damper on my actual reality.  So I am again taking another choice, but this time forcing myself to stick to it.  And you are my witness.  I am going to place myself into the most bizarre parallel reality that I can come up with at this point, and not allow myself to change my mind.  I hope this settles it. 

This summer I went swimming with a friend.  I am not a very good swimmer.  There is a definite limit of how far I am willing to go.  My friend suggested that we swim across the lake to the cliffs.  I said there was no way.  Then I hesitated.  Wanting to impress, I said that I would give it a shot, but he had to do lifeguard duty just in case.  Overall, I probably swam nearly half a mile.  I don’t usually swim more than two lengths of a pool.  And something profound happened.  I realized that the only thing stopping me are the mental boundaries that I have in place for myself.  Remove them, and there’s no telling how far I can go. 

So I’m taking a job in Vietnam.  I don’t know more than three words in Vietnamese: “hello, goodbye, and very much.”  Thanks Oanh Hong Le, for telling your family you loved them very much at every break in chiropractic school : )  I don’t know anyone in Vietnam.  And I am in anticipation just as much as you are to see how it all turns out.

Thanks to the people who inspired me to do this by making their own plunge.  Your waves have rocked my boat.

A De Rouchey Van Praag

C Carter

T Cartwright


The adventure starts in a month.  Stay tuned!