It is a long journey from Cleveland, Ohio, to Hanoi, Vietnam. Mine took something like 33 hours, comprising three plane rides (including a 13 hour jaunt across the Pacific), twelve hours of stopover time in L.A. and Taipei, and very little sleep. I don’t sleep well on planes, and even a couple doses of the painkillers I was prescribed after my appendectomy didn’t knock me out as I had hoped.

My long journey isn’t quite over yet. Like Frost, I have miles to go before I sleep. Or, preferably, while I sleep. Tonight the MCC staff are making a 12 hour train trip to central Vietnam, departing Hanoi at 11pm, for a retreat. My first week in Vietnam will consist of days at the beach, tours of Danang and other central Vietnamese cities, shopping, eating, and traditional music. Not a bad way to start the year, I imagine.

My first impressions of Hanoi are, of course, influenced by the sleep deprivation that will probably haunt me in the form of jet lag for some days. It’s a loud city. The traffic seems on the verge of collision and death at all times. The air is thick with a humid heat, and my first ride on the back of a motorbike came at the tail end of a sudden and severe downpour.

But it’s exciting to be somewhere entirely new. Flying in, my face pressed to the window of our 737, I smiled stupidly and commented excitedly to myself on the tree-carpeted mountains, the muddy meandering rivers, the three- and four-storey houses that are tucked into every river bend, and the ubiquity and beautiful uniformity of their red clay roofs.

My first attempt at grasping what was being said in Vietnamese (”You said ‘two people’, right?”) was a failure (”No, ‘twenty’”), but I’m ready to give it a few more tries. We start language classes next Wednesday after we return from Danang.

I don’t think I’ll be able to stay awake for the next seven hours until our train leaves, as recommended to counter jet lag, but I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep before then either. I’m not sure where that leaves me.