Week 3, bigotry...and I'm just plain happy.

It's midnight...So that means this begins the third week of my departure from the US...And WHAT A DAY IT HAS BEEN!

Having come from the LanguageCorps program of 18 people with only one other person destined for Vietnam, I didn't have high hopes of forming a long lasting bond with the 39-year old, African American, ex-NYPD cop...But I certainly did not have any expectations of being belittled to the brink of depravity. While silent treatment over the course of a weekend spent in a beautiful paradise--cause unknown--seemed ridiculous...I was utterly unprepared for an outburst of racist accusation when I made the, apparently, major error of contributing my thoughts to a class-related discussion this morning. After being called a slew of humanity-insulting names and then talked over in all efforts to discuss this grave misunderstanding...I realized that a mere mortal can't fight the devil inside a disturbed individual. While I could not eat a thing all day until 9pm (for those of you who know me realize what an anomaly this is), and cried for a solid hour...I have, over the course of a day, made peace with this awful experience.

I made a date for coffee with my longtime Vietnamese friend, Minh, and through her wonderful motivation to coordinate with a few other friends I've not kept as good a touch with, I ended up enjoying two hours in the company of Minh, Thu and Anh Hung, a teacher of the SIT program I went to Vietnam with in 2003. I left Da Cafe feeling like I wanted to cry...But for an entirely different reason than the tears the morning brought. I was so deeply touched by others' willingness to enjoy a simple coffee, having not seen them in seven years, and their memories so amazingly intact, in spite of having seen multitudes of study abroad groups just like mine. They could remember every member of my group and even silly details such as my boyfriend's name at the time. I thank the powers of the universe for giving me this gift following a morning I will not forget for the rest of my life. There was nothing or no one that could bring me happiness like these three did tonight and I will never forget the feeling I felt when I parted with them. It's not that we had particularly amazing conversation or that they stroked my ego or anything describable...It was simply that they showed up at 6pm to enjoy mine and each others' company.

I feel much pity for human beings in this world who have been so ill treated in their lives that they not only expect the worst, but actually LOOK for the worst in people. I feel sadness for those who, in a moment of self-doubt, go to the deepest, darkest place in their mind and use that as a weapon against others. When someone makes you feel badly, the immediate reaction is defense and self pity, but, the truth is, when you've been so lucky in this life, you need those moments of misery to be able to appreciate and contextualize the entire lifetimes of misery that other people live. You get back what you put in and since my day ended with wonderful people and a smile on my face, I'm quite certain that tomorrow holds nothing but happiness.

This city...there's just something about it...I can't wipe the smile from my face. I'm not a city person--but in a metropolis of nearly 6 million people--I couldn't feel more at home. Even when a push becomes a shove, it's still not enough to kick me off my cloud. There's NO wound a few Saigons won't numb...and heal. So cheers to that.