Travels

Wow—I’ve been meaning to write an update for a while now, and I just realized that my last post was at Christmas! Before leaving, I thought that keeping a blog would be a nice way to process all the new experiences and share them with family and friends, but I’m realizing that I’m not really a verbal (or public) processor. Through this process of cultural transition, I’m experiencing more and more my need for space and alone time to think and try to make sense of so many new experiences, challenges, questions, and interactions.  Sometimes the idea of sitting and writing about everything seems more draining than the experiences themselves! But because I REALLY want to stay connected with you all at home and share with you like I would if we were together (or at least attempt to), I’ll try to be better about writing 🙂

I’ve been here for seven months so far, and I am just now starting to feel like I know what I’m doing…or at least kind of know. I’m beginning to notice things I didn’t notice before and feel more part of the flow of everyday life rather than just an observer. One huge factor in that was a trip I took in February.

I went with four other Americans to central Vietnam (Phong Nha, Hue, and Hoi An). One Thursday evening after class, we took the southbound overnight train and spent almost a week travelling.

In Phong Nha, we stayed at a lovely little farmstay surrounded by red dirt roads and rice paddies.

  

While there, we ventured into the caves at Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park and enjoyed the fresh air and gorgeous views. We weren’t able to go into this cave, though.

                       

My favorite part of Phong Nha was visiting a semi-wild primate area. German primatologists have set up the area at the national park as a rescue for endangered primates traded illegally in Asia.

There, they are able to transition back into a life in the wild. Anyway, our directions for getting there were to bike through a small village, turn right, look for a mountain that looks like a camel’s back, then turn left. After a few wrong turns and many muddy roads, we found it. Everybody we talked to said we probably wouldn’t see any of the monkeys because of the rainy weather, but we did! After trekking around the perimeter of the mountain, we found a group of them and had a good enough view to watch them swinging in the trees and leaping along the side of the mountain.

                                      

                         

It was a fun adventure, and I loved getting to see the beautiful scenery as we went!

On our way to Hue, we drove through the DMZ and stopped to see a system of tunnels where people lived during the war with America. The area was the  most heavily bombed area during the war, so we saw many craters serving as a reminder of the not-so-distant history.

                                  

Then we arrived in Hue, the former imperial capital of Vietnam that sits along the Perfume River.

           

We stayed there for  day—long enough to visit the old imperial city, walk around town a bit, and visit a small café where the owner takes these gorgeous photographs portraying life in Vietnam.

                                                  

Then it was onto Hoi An, just south of the Hai Van mountain pass, so the weather was sunny and warm.

              

At night, the old town was lit up with lanterns along the river. Beautiful!

                                           

Seeing different parts of the country led me to a new realization (that should have been obvious from the get-go). For my first six months here, I had been equating Hanoi with Vietnam–that’s about as ridiculous as thinking all of America is just like New York City. I didn’t realize it while it was happening, but many of the challenges from the beginning of my time here were in adjusting to life in a big city, and not necessarily adjusting to life in a new country (although that was definitely a huge part of it). Seeing more of the country helped me to understand the culture and the people just a little bit more–and I came back to Hanoi refreshed and actually feeling ready to return!

December Highlights

This was my very first Christmas away from home, so I have felt especially homesick this holiday season. One thing that Samantha and I have talked about a lot is how the feeling of being homesick can actually be good because at the core of it is a longing for our ultimate home and spending eternity with our Creator.

It makes me think of the C.S. Lewis quote that says, “If I find within myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.” I like that.

I stayed pretty busy with teaching, weekend trips, and different gatherings. I’ve uploaded some pictures from the past month onto Flickr (you can see them here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sncarter1989/sets/72157628677045999/).

Included in the album are pictures from…

*Our Christmas Party: Sam and I worked with a few ELI teachers who teach in our same department to plan a Christmas party for our program at the university. There are A LOT of students, so we set up different Christmas stations for each class to visit at different times—first they heard the history of Christmas and ate Christmas cookies, then sang Christmas carols, and then made paper snowflakes. We had about 350 students show up; it made for a looooong day, but being able to share with them the Christmas story for the first time made it worth it. Oh yeah, and having one of my students show up dressed as Santa was pretty great too 🙂

*A day trip to Thai Nguyen: We had a week off before Christmas as a break between semesters, and both Sam and I were itching to get away from the noise and smog of the city. We weren’t able to go anywhere very far away, but we did go to a town north of Hanoi for a nice day trip. We went with our friend Nga and my student Van Anh (who is also helping me learn Vietnamese) to Thai Nguyen. We travelled 3 hours by bus to get there, and it was really interesting to see more of the countryside as we drove through. We visited the lake and a park during the off-season, so it felt a little strange and creepy (kind of like the feeling of a ghost town or an abandoned amusement park). The lake was absolutely beautiful, though, and my favorite part of the day was sitting by the lake shore and breathing in fresh air and listening to silence.

*Christmas Eve and Christmas Day: Christmas Eve we attended a party for all of the English Departments at our university. Like every Vietnamese party, there was a lot of picture taking, singing, and eating.The teachers in our program dressed in traditional Ao Dai and sang a song celebrating Tet (lunar New Year) and Sam, our friend Susan and I sang “White Christmas.”

Later on Christmas Eve we went out with our friend Hoa and ate Mexican food. In recent years, many Vietnamese people have started celebrating Christmas by going out on Christmas Eve and walking or driving around to “feel the Christmas spirit” (I’m still not entirely sure what that means). It was fun (and a little strange) to see all of the short, skinny, and dark Santa Clauses and all of the people out walking around.

*A weekend trip to the countryside: This past weekend we went to visit our friend Nga’s home for two days. This was definitely my most favorite experience in Vietnam so far—I loved meeting her family, staying in her home, and seeing daily life in a small town. Though parts of the trip were a bit stretching, I really appreciated our hosts’ hospitality and warmth.

Hope you enjoy the pictures!

~Grace, Joy, and Peace to you this New Year~

Thanksgiving

There are so many things that I am thankful for this holiday season, but number one on my list right now is that I have a friend and teammate who is much better about blogging than I am 🙂

Samantha has written a lovely little post about our Thanksgiving celebrations here in Hanoi and has put up a video and some great pictures:

–>http://www.destinationjourney-samantha.blogspot.com/2011/11/thanksgiving-x4.html

And while you’re there, you should read some of her posts from the past few months, too!

Happy Birthday, Dad!

My dad jokingly approved of my moving here solely on the condition that I learn to cook Vietnamese food (I’m pretty sure he was only half joking, though). So, for his birthday I learned to cook my first Vietnamese meal–and was it ever delicious!

Our sweet friend Nga was kind enough to teach Samantha and me. She planned the meal, took us to the market, taught us how to cook it, and made sure we presented the meal well. The process took nearly all day, beginning with a crowded bus ride to the local green market (buying the meat was quite an experience!) and ending 7 hours later with full bellies and a clean kitchen.

The Menu:

Boiled quail egg wrapped in pork and fried in fish oil,

                             

Spicy lemongrass chicken,

Chicken vegetable soup,

     

Coconut sticky rice,

and Green Bean Chè (a sweet and sticky dessert)

           

So Happy Birthday, Dad! I hope this builds anticipation as you wait for me to cook this delicious meal for you next June. Sorry you have to settle for pictures for now!  🙂 Love you.

And so it begins…

As of tonight, I have been in Hanoi for exactly three weeks and have completed my first two weeks teaching, and to be honest, I am EXHAUSTED. Though not without a few “bumps” here and there, these first three weeks have been so good, but they have also been very full.

Teaching and lesson planning have taken up most of these past two weeks. The semester started off with a few challenges. In fact, I officially commenced my teaching career by showing up to my first class with the wrong textbook. All those hours of nervous planning the previous week turned into four classroom hours of introduction games and adlib grammar and pronunciation practice. Though I did show up with the correct textbook the next day, the whole first week was full of little “surprises” (unannounced room changes and other little details) that kept me on my toes and reminded me that things just work differently here (moment-by-moment as opposed to planned in advance).

I have enjoyed getting to know the students and other teachers here. For the most part, the students are enthusiastic, eager to learn, and excited to have a foreign teacher for the first time. A fellow teacher explained to me that most of the students in our program are “provincial hopefuls” who scored the highest on exams and get to continue their education in the city. Others are native Hanoians who received average marks on their exams; there are no “Hanoi hotshots,” as she called them. They are such a fun group of students, and it really is a privilege to teach them.

Most of the teachers in my program are young women in their mid-twenties who graduated from this University a few years ago. It amazes me that many of them are young mothers, working to get their Master’s degree, and teaching for other programs all at the same time! There seems to be quite a bit of pressure on them. Even with all the busyness and pressure, they have been very welcoming and helpful in our transition into teaching. I enjoy visiting with them in between classes.

The rest of these two weeks have been filled with sightseeing around the city with new Vietnamese friends, becoming familiarized with the bus system (and the Asian way of riding the bus), getting to know our REI community, and being photographed by random people in the supermarket. I have put a temporary pause on language learning while adjusting to teaching, but I have managed to learn the necessary phrases for survival, such as the Vietnamese words for coffee, chocolate, and ice cream. These have proven to be quite useful 🙂

We have a wonderful team here and it has been a joy to begin to get to know them. They have had us over to share meals, given much needed wisdom, advice, and encouragement, and sent us back with leftovers (what a blessing!) 🙂 Our directors have even invited us to stay at their apartment this weekend so that we can be away from the University for a day or two, so I’m really looking forward to some much needed rest and reflection!

Well that’s about it for now. Thank you all for the encouraging emails and updates from your lives! It really helps keep me going and feeling connected to home. Love you all! 🙂

P.S. I have opened a Flickr account to share pictures. If you want to see them, the link is on the right –>

[Orient]ation

My first week here was full of experiences that are serving as a sort of orientation to Vietnam and Vietnamese culture.

First, I became more oriented to Vietnamese timing and planning. “Time” and “plan” have different meanings here, and what we mean by the word “workshop” in the States is far different than what is meant by “workshop” here in VN. We were told to arrive a little over a week before classes start for workshops. And so we moved into the University last Thursday. We knew that “planning” here is often more last-minute, and so we waited to hear a time and place for workshops. We didn’t find out until the following Monday that we had absolutely NOTHING scheduled for the entire week.  We have since scheduled meetings and classroom observations to prepare for teaching, but this first interaction (and a few more similar interactions since then) served as a good orientation for life in Vietnam this year.

With no workshops and a lot of extra time, Samantha and I were able to do some exploring and become more familiar with our surroundings. We found the market (and now must learn how to bargain in Vietnamese), a few places to eat, a print shop, bookstores, and a park (and about a million places in between!). The park will be a nice place to go when I feel the need to get out of the city and see something green; it is only a 20 minute walk from here and has many beautiful green trees and a little lake.

                                                                                             

Our Vietnamese friends have also helped orient us to one of the best parts of living here: FOOD!

We went out with fellow teachers last Sunday and tried “Hot Pot” (which I later learned is actually Korean BBQ). The cook brings out a pot of boiling broth and a plate of raw meat (chicken, beef, fish, squid, and FROG!) and a plate of different kinds of flowers. You put the meat and flowers in the broth to cook and then enjoy. I must say, I was pretty nervous to eat frog, but I ended up liking it and having a few pieces. Our friends also introduced us to moon cake, a food they eat to celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival, which was this past weekend. We tried moon cakes with green been and taro root filling, but there are many different kinds.

                                 

Later in the week we went out with our friend Nga and she introduced me to my new favorite dessert; it’s called “sữa chua nếp cẩm”; it’s a sticky rice/yogurt drink—very cold and refreshing!

The last aspect of life in Vietnam that will take me a while to get used to is being stared at everywhere I go. Our part of the city (Cauy Giay) does not have many foreigners, so we really stick out! Sam and I have decided that we will just have to learn to like the attention. (It has helped us meet new friends, though. A freshman girl at the campus market yesterday came up asked if we spoke English; she was so excited to practice her English that she walked and talked with us for over an hour!)

It’s hard to believe that all of this “orientation” took place in just one week! It leaves me feeling a little exhausted–but at the same time I am filled with joyful anticipation when thinking of how these new friendships might develop and what this year will bring.

First Views of Hanoi

Well, we made it!

After arrriving in Hanoi at midnight on Tuesday–after 28 hours of travel–we took our first Vietnamese taxi and went to our director’s twelfth-floor apartment where we spent our first night in VN. This was my first view of Hanoi in the daylight:

                      

There’s so much to take in–so many buildings, people, motorbikes, and new sounds! Coming from Midwestern suburbia, all the noise and activity can be quite overwhelming! Even as I write this, I am a little distracted by cars honking, people shouting in the streets, and the geckos chirping/barking outside my window (I hope it is outside my window!). Last week at this time, I didn’t even know that geckos made noise!

Within the first 24 hours of being here, we bought cell phones, learned to take a taxi, exchanged currencies (and made friends at the bank!), learned how to shop using the Vietnamese currency (dong), moved into our on-campus housing, met some of the university staff and other international teachers here, and learned some key Vietnamese phrases. Now the next time my taxi driver asks if I will marry a Vietnamese man, I will know what he is asking and won’t embarass myself again! (My teammate Samantha has written more about our first day here and has posted some pictures on her blog, http://www.destinationjourney-samantha.blogspot.com/ ).

Along with that little bit of language learning, I have been setting up my little on-campus room. Here are some pictures. Notice anything different about the shower? 🙂

            

The shared kitchen is right next door. The classroom I will be teaching in is right out my doorway–I’m so grateful I won’t have to cross any streets getting there! This picture of the school building was taken from my doorway. My classroom will be on the fifth floor.

These past few days have really been a whirlwind of many things, but the highlight of all of it has been meeting other teachers. We met two Vietnamese teachers who will be on our team–both young women about my age. Tomorrow they will take Samantha and me around the older part of Hanoi and show us around. I’m so excited to see this part of the city, but even more excited to begin to build friendships with our new collegues.  We have also met some other international teachers–a young woman from Spain is here teaching Spanish and another from the US who is with ELIC. I will meet the rest of my team on Monday when workshop begins.

Thanks for reading! Hopefully my next post will be a little more coherent when I am not so jetlagged! 🙂

“Building people to build a nation”

If you’d like to learn more about the organization I am with, here’s a link to its website –> http://reivn.org/

So…why Vietnam?

This month I will begin teaching English in Vietnam. I will live in on-campus housing with other international teachers and will teach an English conversation and pronounciation course in the classroom building just 300 feet from my room. The students in the program are university students working toward degrees in various fields and are in a one-year intensive language study program to improve their English (many hope to study abroad or take content classes in English). If all goes as planned, I will teach the same group of students both semesters.

So why did I choose to go to Vietnam to do this? 🙂

My two answers:

The short answer:

a recruiter came to Northwestern, presented the opportunity, I applied, I was accepted, I leave Tuesday.

The long answer:

As I was preparing for student teaching last December and just starting to look for jobs teaching English in the US, a man from Resource Exchange International (REI) came to present a teaching opportunity to one of my ESL methods classes. He shared that due to recent legislation, the Vietnamese government was looking for more native-speaking teachers of international languages (English being one of the biggies), and one university was looking to hire English teachers through REI.

Right away, I thought, “Nope. This isn’t for me!” But a quiet voice in my heart encouraged me to hold it with an open hand before my creator, trusting that he would lead me along straight paths (wherever they may end up). And so I researched the organization, began talking with representatives on the phone, and eventually applied.

These are the main reasons I decided to go:

1. TEACHING. I got my degree in teaching English, I enjoy teaching grammar, I prefer teaching older students, and I actually like planning curriculum . This is a great opportunity to put all of this to use! I hope to develop my instructional abilities and to learn from the many gifted and experienced staff members from the university and from REI.

2. LEARNING. There are so many issues, lifestyles, places of the world that I am just plain ignorant about. There is so much that I don’t know or understand. I hope this year will be full of learning–learning about what it is like to live in the East, learning a new language and culture, learning how to live on less, learning what it is like to live and communicate when I am the minority, and learning to like new foods. (I also hear I may have to re-learn how to cross the street :))

3. FRIENDSHIPS. I anticipate that I will learn the most through friendships, through sharing life with people I would otherwise never meet. I hope to learn through students, fellow teachers, friends, and other internationals. I want to learn more about what it means to be Vietnamese. And I hope to share some things that I have learned and about the hope, peace, and joy that I have found.

4. GROWTH. How I would love to grow–in my knowledge of the Truth, in humility, love, wisdom, focus, in my attitude toward adversity. I think this year will be a very growing one. And VERY humbling!

I’m anxious to see how these reasons for going and expectations will line up with reality. We will see!

Hopes

Hello and welcome to my blog 🙂

As I prepare to leave for Vietnam (one week from today!!), one of my biggest concerns is staying in touch with my dear friends and family. With most friends now scattered across the country, staying in touch is hard enough from home, so add a 12-hour time difference and a couple thousand miles and things really get tough! I hope that through this you will feel connected with my life in Vietnam and keep me updated on yours as well 🙂

About the title: I realize that my voice is just one of millions; so many others have far more interesting lives, opinions, and stories. There are far better writers and people with a much quicker wit than I have. But I hope that I can be faithful to tell the story that God has given me. I hope that, though I am just “one more scribe,” that I can be one who tells of the faithfulness of her Creator and Saviour simply through recording everyday moments.

So here we go!