ok! OK?

so, i don't know how much people who are reading this know what exactly i'm doing over here. here's a quick background. i'm currently in vietnam until early august working with the first anonymous HIV testing site in Vietnam (though there are more than one now, we were the first). it's pretty cool, to see how research (University of California San Francisco), non-governmental organization (Family Health International) and Vietnamese employees and government work together.

as part of my observation and research with them, i sat in on three days of a six-day training course about HIV counseling. it was very interesting as i blindly groped my way through a lot of technical vietnamese. however, i am proud to say that i now know the words for injection drug user, men who have sex with men, and female sex worker very well now. oh, and condom. condom = "bao cao su" = (literally translated) raincoat.

so, my talk here is about condoms. i've been saying "ok" like americans say ok; in other words, when i don't know how to end a conversation. turns out that "OK" is a popular condom brand here in Vietnam. so, i've been saying the equivalent of "Trojan" or "Durex" repeatedly. a coworker kindly informed me of this.... and so for the past few days, i've been trying to find a way for me to end conversations in my rudimentary vietnamese. i'll keep ya'll updated on that.