As seen in The Observer on Feb. 2

This is it.  The moment I’ve been waiting for my whole life.  Tonight is the night I turn twenty-one.  When the clock strikes twelve and my Macbook calendar tells me that it’s finally February 3, 2012, I’ll let out a sigh of relief while casually sipping a cup of Franzia (because I legally can).  Along with that sigh, though, I’ll be shedding a tear or two.  You see, I am the second-to-last senior to turn twenty-one (Pat Coveney is last, in case you were wondering) and that title is not an easy one to give up.  You don’t go all your life being the youngest person in the room just to be put on the same playing field as everyone else by some legal threshold. My time is here but I’m not ready to go.  What if I didn’t have to?

Today is Groundhog Day, after all.  What if like Bill Murray I kept reliving today over and over and over again, the day before my twenty-first birthday?  Wouldn’t that be ironic?  What if I never turned twenty-one and became forever stuck in a state of underage youth, reveling in my inability to buy girls drinks or set foot inside the Backer?  What if I never had to be an adult, never had to grow up? 

Don’t get me wrong, I can’t wait to turn twenty-one.  I’ve been looking forward to this day since I learned the main effects of alcohol when mixed with fun.  But there’s a part of me that’s refusing to let go of my disability.  Besides, there are plenty of advantages to being underage while everyone around you is raging hard.  Big test coming up and have to study?  Oops sorry, can’t go out because I’m not twenty-one.  “Hey can you buy me a case for my dorm party this weekend?”  Nope, sorry, I’m not twenty-one.  Although perks of being underage are nice, my hesitation stems from a deeper realization. 

The longer I think about it, the more I realize that tonight is not about me being able to party.  It’s not about manhood.  It’s not about getting wasted.  It’s not even about Club Fever.  No, tonight is about the University of Notre Dame Class of 2012.  Tonight is about our collective twenty-first birthday.  It’s a sobering thought, graduation.  Some of us are sprinting to the finish, excited at the prospect of what awaits us beyond the finish line.  The rest of us, like me, are going to be dragged out by our ankles swearing that this was the best four years of our lives (let’s not kid ourselves, it’s only downhill from here).  However we choose to look back on our time here, though, let’s not look back in regret.  Let’s look back and say, “Damn, that was cool.”  As exciting as dorm parties and off-campus ragers may be, an entirely new world awaits us.  We’re legal now and let’s make the most of what life’s proverbial Mulligan’s and Kildare’s have to offer us.

So, seniors, let this final semester serve as our birthday party.  Let’s celebrate like we’ll never get a chance at being twenty years old again.  Climb Stepan with your friends.  Run the Holy Half.  Ask that girl to the SYR.  Go to Feve sober (warning: some regret may be involved).  Because when we’re stepping into the Stadium come May, when we’re minutes away from turning twenty-one, wouldn’t it be nice to not have to ask, “What if?”

Hi, let’s go back to Vietnam?

SHOW YOURSELF, COWARD!

I’m sitting on the bus right now, 30 minutes into our 5-hour bus ride to Saigon, the last stop on our whirlwind tour of Vietnam.  We’re coming up on the last two clinics of the trip and it doesn’t seem real that it’s coming to an end.  What a fitting end it will be though, in the largest city in the country.  It’s my favorite place in Vietnam.

For the past 3 days we’ve been in Mui Ne, a small beach town halfway between Nha Trang and Saigon.  We held our clinics there at a church, which was apparently a problem for a few corrupt policemen.  While we were away on the first day, they came to the hotel looking for us and asked the manager who we were.  They said our visas weren’t tourist visas and demanded to know where we were going and what we were doing.  Fortunately the manager was on our side and refused to tell them. 

Bills, bills, bills:  I’ve been getting bills in my inbox lately and I’m late on my rent payment.  Let me tell you, sitting in an internet café somewhere in the middle of rural Vietnam is not the ideal location to be worrying about making payments on time…

Burn, baby, burn:  We had a beach day yesterday and I got sunburned, per usual.  It’s ok though, I would rather deal with a bit of pain and charred skin for a few days than, God forbid, ever have to put on sunblock and have my skin feel like it’s been drooled on by 5000 cows.  I hate that feeling.  I heard sunblock gives you a higher chance of getting skin cancer anyways…

Down with the Sickness:  We had our first sacrifice to the god of water-borne illness a few days ago.  Pretty bad.  Projectile vomit and explosive diarrhea (or so I hear).  So bad that the victim had to miss 2 clinics.  Although he was magically well again for the beach day yesterday… hmmm…

Big shot: It just so happened that traveler’s diarrhea struck down the regular dental assistant and it also just so happened that his sister (the back-up dental assistant) had to stay home to take care of him.  My comrade’s misfortune was ultimately my lucky day because I had the chance to step up and be a real dental assistant.

Fact: I have met exactly 0.00055% of the residents of the state of Wyoming on this trip.  544,267 more to go.

 **Night Edit:  Just got back from karaoke and learning how to drive a moped.  It’s 11:30 pm and we have breakfast at 6am tomorrow and a full clinic day…

I’m getting really lazy with this whole blog thing, as you can tell.  More to follow at a later date…

Classic Ha Long Bay.

Introductions:  ”Hi, I’m going to be a college senior this year.”  Sounds weird.

I’m not really a play-by-play account kind of guy, so here’s just a bit of context to wrap your head around.  Since our last correspondence, we were in Hanoi for three days and we just arrived in Nha Trang today with 2 clinics down and 6 to go.  We had an off day yesterday to explore Hanoi.  I used it mainly to walk around looking for cheap things to buy, namely knock-off things that are expensive in the USA.  North Face backpack: $10.  DVD box set of all the Disney movies ever made: $39.  ”Rollex” watch: $10.  Being able to show off your fake wealth upon returning home: priceless.  

This is probably a bad thing, but I’ve learned more about dentistry in the last 48 hours than I have in my 20 years of life.  I’m not pulling teeth or anything like that, just helping out the dentists on duty.  Unlike shadowing in the US, I can get all up in the patient’s face to see what’s going on and do things like mix amalgam, talk to the patients, and hand the dentist his instruments like you see in the movies.  ”Forceps.  Mirror.  SUCTION.  I NEED SUCTION.”  Also, translating.  Lots of translating.  I think by the time this trip is over I will have learned all the different ways and accents with which to say, “Open your mouth” in Vietnamese.

Language, part deux:  I feel oddly at peace with myself when talking to the Vietnamese dentists, doctors, and nurses here.  There is something satisfying about being able to speak the language here, but that’s not all of it.  I think it has to do with the regions and different accents.  All of the medical professionals are from Saigon / South Vietnam and so they have the same accent/dialect/tone as me.  People in the North have a weird monotone-ish manner of speaking that is at once hard to understand yet strangely mesmerizing.  Being able to talk to people from the South kind of makes me feel at home, as if I were talking to my grandma or aunt or uncle.  Maybe it’s familiarity, maybe it’s the convenience.  Whatever it is, I like it.

Mosquito Bites:  I have mosquito bites.  They itch.  I scratch.  They hurt.  I made it through Africa scot-free, so here’s to another 2 malaria-free weeks.

The Motherland:  Also on this trip are several kids who were adopted from Vietnam by American families when they were only a few years old and are now returning to their birthplace at 11, 12, 13 years old.  I wonder how it must feel to know that at one point in time they were living the same life as the orphans that they are here to serve.  I think they’re still absorbing everything about the country and are trying to process it.  They’re really funny kids to be around and remind me of my little cousins at home.  

Srsly:  ”What’s the best time to go to the dentist?”  ”At tooth-hurty!”  Har har.  I don’t know how many times I’ve told that joke in the past week. 

Breaking News:  A hooker just walked into the hotel.

Yoink:  Watching kids getting extractions is the funniest because they have know idea what’s about to happen until they see the huge set of pliers flying towards them.  It’s interesting to see the different ways in which kids react.  Some go for the old cry-as-loud-as-I-can tactic in hopes of scaring away the ten-fingered tooth bandit while others calmy resort to stalling for more time.  ”I need to pee.”  ”I’m hungry.”  ”I want some water.”  Nice try.  Here have a local anesthetic instead.

King of Fruits:  Brought durian into hotel, and bus, full of white people.  Many were not pleased.  Success.  Wikipedia states: “The smell evokes reactions from deep appreciation to intense disgust, and has been described variously as almonds, rotten onions, turpentine and gym socks.”

Pee-pee:  It’s perfectly acceptable for men to pee on the street here.  They not exactly shy about doing their business.  Picture this.  A construction worker on top of a half-built steel frame building, at least 10 stories high.  Decides he’s too lazy to get down and whips out his member to rain urinary sweetness on those below.  Exhibit B.  A plane lands in Hanoi and the passengers are getting out of their seats and ready to file out of the plane.  From the back of the aircraft a small voice cries out in Vietnamese, “Mom, I need to go pee.”  A little boy squats down in the middle of the aisle, at this point filled with people trying to filter out, and leans into an empty water bottle.  No shame at all.  I was lucky enough to witness both of these accounts firsthand.  Also, picking your nose is not considered rude/disgusting.  People here don’t try to hide it.  They’re all up in their nose, looking like they could be conducting a nasal symphony of sorts.  You flash them a weird look and they look back at you—finger up the nose still—like you’re the weird one.

Fun fact:  If you say “Leper Colony,” for a split second people will be tricked into thinking you are referring to a colony of leprechauns.  We’re supposed to be setting up a clinic at one the day after tomorrow but alas, no.  The government foils us again with their freedom-loathing bureaucracy. 

Movin’ on up:  We’ve stayed at three hotels so far and each one has been progressively better than the last.  Our first “hotel” had roaches in the shower, which was conveniently located next to the toilet, sans any physical separation.  Our second hotel by comparison was heaven on earth, what with things like consistent air conditioning and a workable shower head.  Right now are at the seemingly king of all king hotels in Nha Trang.  At this rate, I predict we will be spending our last night in Vietnam in a penthouse suite on the 20th floor of the Ritz-Carlton in Saigon (if one existed).  Ironically, if you were to make a line graph labelled “Sanitation Level of Hotel” on the x-axis and “Workability of Facebook” on the y-axis, the graph would most definitely have a negative slope.

Breakfast at 0630 tomorrow.  It’s for the children.

Inconceivable!

Halong Bay, Quang Ninh Province