Thanksgiving: Better late than never

If you're more of a picture person, you can click here to see the album from our Thanksgiving weekend adventures.

Our first Thanksgiving in Viet Nam has been a good reminder of all that we are thankful for! Life, health, friends, being loved first, so that we can love others…..

It is a good time to say, even in the midst of a broken scapula, we are doing well and loving the city and new friends we have been placed with. We are very thankful this year that we are finding ourselves in the middle of exactly what we have been challenged to do for this time in our lives. Thankful to a Father who calls us by name and gives purpose in life.

The preparation started off with Jill and me (Joelle) working together to create our first Thanksgiving meal ever! And not just for our families, but for 10 of us in total. Our old teammate, Susan, joined us from Hanoi. And also, we were blessed by the presence of 4 of our long distance teammates for the weekend. These 4 girls are teaching in a city about 7 hours away by bus. They are with our same organization and it was a fun time of reuniting, laughing, sharing and encouraging. I myself was greatly encouraged by getting to see the hearts that our teammates have for their students. One more girl, our neighbor and coworker here at Quy Nhon University, joined us also, making the 10. She is from Belgium and experienced a first also – her first Thanksgiving meal!

Our visitors came a few days before our Thanksgiving celebration, so we had a chance to show them around the city, go bowling with them, take them to class and generally have a lot of fun.

The day of our celebration (which was on Friday due to teaching schedules) was a mixture of the traditional and not-so-traditional. In true Vietnamese style, Steven lashed half of our furniture to his bicycle and pedaled over to Jill and Jason's with it. Since it makes him more visible to (and thus less likely to get pegged by) speeding motorbikes, he's considering carrying around a stack of plastic chairs everywhere he goes now.


Even though the “turkey” (roasted chicken) was served with chopsticks, we managed to put together a very American food experience. You know all those recipes that call for canned this, or pre-prepared that…. we stared from raw veggies sold in an open market and ended up having quite the feast! Many hands make light work. Many hands also take up a lot of the counter space, so some of the prep was done on the kitchen floor. That errs on more of the Vietnamese style than the American, but worked just the same in getting everyone involved in the great afternoon.

And yes, everyone took part. Steven made everyone pumpkin coffee and also made whipping cream from scratch (using a whisk). Vigorous whipping may have reinjured his scapula, but we had really good whipping cream to go on top of our pumpkin pie! Meanwhile, Jason washed all the dishes and we women sat and relaxed after the meal. It was a great time. Like eating Thanksgiving meals at home, there was far too much food and we all did our part in eating it up.

Pop Rocks

We had our teammates and some students over for dinner this evening, and after dinner someone pulled out a couple packages of Pop Rocks that Joelle's mom had sent to us from the States. Having nothing even remotely resembling this fabulous candy in Vietnam, the students were (needless to say) flabbergasted, befuddled and beguiled. It was kinda funny.

Scapula schmapula

So, the motorbike incident. Here we go.

I (Steven) was on my way to my favorite coffee shop (which my teammates and I call "The Office" due to the fact that we tend to camp out there with their high-speed wireless and do a lot of lesson planning) when my plans were rather suddenly put on hold.

To get to The Office from the university, you need to pull a U-turn in the middle of a main street and then cut quickly to the right to turn into the driveway. Though it might sound a bit sketchy, it's a maneuver I've pulled off successfully many times since moving to Quy Nhon and is generally really easy due to the lack of traffic in this city. Thursday, I was a bit distracted by the fact that it was starting to rain and I was without a jacket--I wanted to get in under cover as quickly as possible.

As I pulled the U-turn next to the cafe, I noticed one motorbike coming the other direction at a rather high rate of speed. I started to pull to the right to turn into the driveway of the cafe, and then my cautious American brain made me hesitate (the speedy motorbike was in the right lane and I didn't want to try cutting in front of him). Bad choice.

Apparently the motorbike driver had seen me start to move right and thus had cut into the left lane. Things between us quickly became up-close and personal as Mr. Motorbike smacked into the back of my poor old bicycle doing (I would estimate) somewhere around 25-30 mph. As I suddenly found myself launched into midair in a sitting position, I instantly knew what was happening. It was a scene that I had rehearsed in the "worst case scenario" part of my mind many times before--me getting nailed by a speeding motorbike--and in all of those potential scenarios, it never really ended well for me. As I headed rather ungracefully for the pavement (screaming bloody murder the whole way), I was fully prepared for things to go from bad to worse.

I landed--near as I can tell from my memory and injuries--more-or-less on my butt and right shoulderblade in the middle of the road. I kept waiting for something from behind to bash into my head or wrench my arm or leg in the wrong direction. Nothing. Soon enough, I came to the realization that I was sitting in the middle of the road, looking back at a laid-over motorbike tangled with my bicycle, shouting something at the driver that I'm glad he couldn't understand.

The driver and passenger of the motorbike seemed to be okay and I was--to my utter disbelief--mostly okay too. I waddled around on the street long enough to grab my flip-flops from where they'd landed (they're Chacos and I didn't want them to get run over or stolen), then made my way to the curb where I sat down and did my best not to pass out. I think my body had released its full supply of adrenalin for the month in the half second it took for me to go from bike to pavement. I made a quick call to Joelle, who sped over on her bike to help me (and to disperse the crowd that always forms at any accident scene).

In a bit of a funny side note, the motorbike rider had been carrying a big handful of jicama (turnipy things) with them, which had gone sailing every which way when they connected with my bike. They rescued a few of them, and then onlookers grabbed the rest. One man stood looking down at me, white as a sheet on the sidewalk, as he munched the veggie that he'd plucked from the middle of the road. I would have laughed had I not been so close to tears.

The motorbike driver eventually came over to me, bowed his head a bit, and offered the best xin lõi (Sorry) that he could. That was that. I didn't really feel like making a big deal out of anything (lacking the language skills to do so even if I had wanted to), and was frankly just thankful to be alive. People went their own ways, Joelle helped get me into a taxi and we headed back to the university.

An x-ray the following day showed that I have a fracture in my right shouler blade. According to our nurse-friend Kimberly, it's a bone that's almost impossible to break on its own, without some sort of other major trauma or life-threatening injuries being involved. Perhaps it was a bit easier in my case, since my shoulder blades stick out like chicken wings from my 0% body-fat back. All it means is that I need to have my arm in a sling and not go violently moving my shoulder around for the next couple of weeks. Shouldn't be a problem.

There are some good things that have come out of this--like the fact that I don't have to do dishes for at least a couple of weeks, and that we had a string of visitors for a few hours yesterday afternoon coming by to make sure that I was okay and offering their advice. (So far the advice we've heard from students has amounted to: Drink lots of milk and orange juice, avoid eating chicken or sticky rice as those prevent wounds from healing, and don't take a shower every day. Reason for that last one...unknown.)

Anyway, that's the latest and greatest from here. Current broken bone count: 2 in less than 9 months. Yes, I'll be more careful. Yes, I'll wear my helmet whenever I ride my bike from now on. No, it doesn't hurt too bad.

Take care, y'all.

Pizza, Bowling, Dance Competitions and Halloween Parties

Well if that title doesn't sound like the most random assortment of activities, I don't know what does. But that's been our life for the past few weeks. I've been meaning to do something fun like make a video, but haven't found the time to sit down and focus. So instead you'll get a quick blurb on what's been happening and a link to our latest pictures. (If you want to skip right to the pictures, click here.)

Pizza: A couple weeks ago we invited a few of the students we've gotten to know the best to come to our place and make pizza with us. It ended up being a blast--it was only the first or second time any of them had had pizza. One of them told us the next day that she had been so excited she stayed up until 1:00 in the morning writing in her diary about the pizza-making experience.

This group of students has been pretty great. They're funny, they enjoy each other's company and their English is at a level where we're able to have deeper, more meaningful conversations with them. We felt like this was a "breakthrough" night, in that the students didn't just come over to have a semi-formal English conversation time with us, but felt free to just hang out and be themselves.

Bowling: A few days later we invited some of the same students (and some others) out to the Quy Nhon bowling alley. That's right--the bowling alley. Though it only has 8 lanes, the feel of the place is 100% Americana, right down to the stale cigarette smoke in the air. Well, maybe 95% Americana, due to the lack of chili cheese fries and the fact that Steven had to bowl in his socks (size 13 bowling shoes in Vietnam? Are you kidding me??). Joelle whooped everyone soundly.

Dance competition: Next in the parade of wackiness was the campus-wide dance competition. Each class participates (in VN students stick with the same group of students for every class through all 4 years of college, so they grow pretty tight-knit). We went to the competition just for the foreign language department and there were a good 400 onlookers. They took their dancing seriously. Tomorrow are the finals, in which the best teams from each department go up against each other. Will there be any halftime entertainment, you ask? How about a couple of off-key foreign teachers doing their best to sing "Stand By Me" to several hundred students? Yeah, that sounds about right. We'll let you know how it goes.


Halloween: American holidays are big here. We went to no less than three different Halloween parties, two of which were organized by us. We run an English club with Jill and Jason that meets alternate weeks--one week with 1st and 2nd year students, the next week with 3rd and 4th year students. We threw a Halloween party for both of those groups, and both times it was crazy-go-nuts. With a trivia competition, word search, "see who can make the most ridiculous costume out of common household items" competition, bobbing for apples, and plenty of Vietnamese candy, how can you not have a blast?


Things were made even crazier by the fact that Steven invited his 1st year students to English club for the first time this week (since they started classes a month later than everyone else). All three of his classes showed up almost in their entirety, plus several 2nd year students. We figure we had somewhere around 65 people packed into our one-room apartment. A little tight.

Well, that's been life for us lately. The year is going by fast, and we're looking forward to Thanksgiving, Christmas, and visitors from home for the holidays (woohoo!). Good times. Good times.

Classes and picnics

So the school year has officially begun for freshmen, which means that I (Steven) have actually started teaching. It's been a kick so far (though a bit exhausting, to tell the truth).

I teach three different classes that each meet twice a week for an hour and a half. One of my two speaking-focused classes is a group of English majors who are also teachers-in-training. The students in this class were required to have the highest English exam scores of everyone, thus they tend to be the most proficient (the word 'proficient' is used rather loosely in this case.) I have another class of 'general studies' English majors, who are studying English and nothing else. I teach them the same speaking lessons as the teachers-in-training, but their overall English level is a little lower. Finally, I teach a mix of reading, writing, speaking and listening to one class of students majoring in Vietnamese Studies. These are students who never chose to study English in the first place, but are required to take two semesters' worth for their major. The majority of these students would be classified as beginners--low, low, low level.


Part of the difficulty that all of my students have with understanding English is due to the fact that they all most likely studied grammar (and little else) in their high school English classes. While they might be able to read a sentence and tell me whether it's in the simple past or the past perfect tense, some of them don't understand when I ask them even simple questions like "What is your name?"

It's kind of a fun challenge teaching students who are starting from very little or no knowledge of the (spoken) language whatsoever. You can ask me in a few months how much progress has been made...

In other news, we were invited to go to a picnic this weekend with one of Jason's classes from last semester. We ended up at a beach a few miles out of town and got to participate in some fun picnic games, which included dividing into two teams and seeing which one could start a fire and cook the meat for lunch the quickest. (Our team won. Though anyone concerned about food safety might question the wisdom of seeing who can cook any meat product 'the fastest.')


Joelle and I also experienced a Vietnamese first: Being asked by a class to sing them a song. We were warned that this is inevitable, and sure enough after the sandwiches were finished, the requests started coming. The four of us foreigners managed to croak our way through a couple different songs, both of which were met with somewhat confused looks and delayed applause from the students. (If we'd really wanted to bring down the house we would have had to have busted out Celine Dion's My Heart Will Go On and we simply weren't prepared to do that.)

Though Joelle and I didn't really know any of the students, we were warmly welcomed and had a great time with them all. You can check out our whole photo album of the picnic here.

The Month in Review

The unexpected freedom we've had in the past month (due to the start of classes being delayed for military training) is about to come to an end. I got my schedule yesterday and it does indeed appear that the university expects me to start teaching on Monday (how dare they!) Before things get too busy, we thought it would be nice to take a look back at our first month or so in Quy Nhon and hit some of the highlights. It's been a time of preparation, adjustment and fun. The biggest changes between life in Quy Nhon and Hanoi have been the opportunities for outdoor recreation (very little about Hanoi makes you want to go outside, while Quy Nhon virtually begs you to) and the chances we've had to get to know students. Our highlights are focused largely on those two aspects…

Highlight 1: Lunch
One of the students we've gotten to know best so far is a third-year English major who had foreign teachers in the past and decided they were fun to hang out with. He's become Steven's personal 'exercise buddy,' joining him for jogs on the beach and swimming at least a couple afternoons each week. He's different from most university students in that, for about ten years of his life, he was a Buddhist monk. This makes for some pretty interesting conversations, as he has thought deeply about many issues that don't even occur to most people his age.

Although he no longer lives at the pagoda or wears the robes, he's still vegetarian. One day he invited us over for a vegetarian lunch at his apartment—a single, tiny room that he shares with his cousin. Though they had to cook on the floor with a single-burner stove and borrow dishes from the neighbors, he and his cousin prepared us a delicious lunch of tofu, veggies, eggs, noodles, and soup, topped off with some fruit and soy milk. It was pretty clear that he had gone far out of his way to buy the best ingredients he could afford, as we were the first foreigners he had ever cooked a meal for. It was a very heartfelt gesture, and one which we hope to return in the near future.

Highlight 2: The Mountain
Though this might sound silly, one of the things we love about Quy Nhon is the presence of un-flat land. After six months in the frying-pan flat environment of Hanoi, it's so refreshing to see hills (or, as some flatlanders might call them, mountains). One such mountain is visible right out our apartment window. It's the highest one in view for a long ways around; according to Google Earth it's around 1700 ft. above sea level, which is a decent climb by anyone's standards. It also has what appears to be a giant soccer ball sitting on top of it—some kind of space-age communications thingy. Naturally, we weren't in town more than a couple weeks before we had to climb it.

We started in the late afternoon, once the side of the mountain was in the shade (VERY important), riding our bikes until the climb became ridiculous. From there we hoofed it up a nicely paved but crazy steep road that climbed right for the summit. Along the way we came across groups of people camped out in the woods, apparently replanting trees on the recently-logged hillside. They looked at us as if we had just beamed down from the planet Xorthrax. What on earth were a couple of foreigners doing climbing a mountain for fun??

The higher we climbed, the more the view opened up below. We were able to see the whole city of Quy Nhon laid out on its little finger of sand below, surrounded by ocean, rice fields and rugged green hills. As we neared the top we found the remains of several pillbox gun emplacements and realized that the well-built road we had climbed was likely thanks to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The U.S. (which had a significant presence in Quy Nhon back in the 1960s and early 70s) had rightly felt that this was a strategic piece of ground. The dilapidated little concrete bunkers gave a kind of surreal feel to the place, looking more like the fallen watchtowers of an ancient civilization than remnants of the 60s.

Soon the shadows started to lengthen and we had to turn for home. On our way down past one of the tree planters' camps, an old lady with about half her teeth left came running out to meet us on the road. Grabbing Joelle's arm and using a mix of English, French and Vietnamese she invited us to join her camp for dinner ("An com! Dinner! An com!" she urged us.) When we explained that we had to get down from the mountain before dark, she asking us the requisite personal questions (How old are you? Are you married? Why don't you have any children?) and let us go with a smile.

For a complete photo album of our hike, click here.

Highlight 3: The Beach
Quy Nhon is a beach city. The fact that most of the town seems to be built on an oversized sandbar at the mouth of a lagoon contributes to this atmosphere—it's impossible to get away from the sand and the sea for very long here. Whereas people who wanted to exercise outdoors in Hanoi had to be very purposeful and organized about it (congregating in parks, doing mass aerobics routines to thumping techno music, etc.) people in Quy Nhon just stroll down to the beach. Every afternoon (when it's not raining) the beach is full of freewheeling games of soccer and volleyball, people jogging on the beach or floating in three feet of water while wearing fluorescent life jackets.

While we enjoy the life and vibrancy of a packed beach, we occasionally like to find places that aren't so crowded and noisy. The other day we came across just such a place. While biking along a coastal road to Quy Hoa (a small beachside village a couple miles south of Quy Nhon) we came across a side road that hadn't been there before. Bulldozed down the side of a steep embankment above the ocean, it was still in the process of being built. The dirt road ended at a jumble of rocks and boulders that fell 30 or 40 feet into the ocean.

Intrigued, we managed to pick our way along the rocks and down to a narrow strip of sand—a secluded, nearly pristine beach backed by cliffs and surrounded by rock formations on both sides. The water was clear and clean, the sand (practically) free of garbage, and the rocks perfect for climbing. We had found our new favorite beach hangout.

For a complete photo album of our beach visit, click here.

Give us a ring!

I just wanted to let you all know that the U.S. phone number to contact us in Vietnam has changed. It's a long, painfully boring story why we had to do this (and why it took a month to get everything straightened out), but the basic gist is that we've switched phone service providers.

Still, things should work the same as before. The number is located in Bellingham, so if that's a local call for you then you just need to dial the last 7 digits and it will ring to our computer in Vietnam. No matter where you call from or how long you talk, it will only cost you as much as a regular call to Bellingham would. So give it a try some time—we'd love to hear from you.

The number is: 360.746.0449

P.S. Don't worry that you'll call at odd hours and wake us up or anything. If we don't have our computer turned on, your call will just go to voicemail and you can leave us a message. That said, if you call any time after 6:00 PM PST until 8:00 AM the next morning you might just catch us awake and within earshot of our computer!

Basket Boat Races

Since moving to Quy Nhon about a month ago, life has sort of settled into a routine. Granted, it was a great routine—full of spending time with students and fun teammates, finding new coffee shops in town, and preparing to teach come October—but it was a routine nonetheless. Thus, when the opportunity to participate in a really weird group activity came up last weekend, we took it.

The event was called "The Basket Boat Race" and it was pretty much what you might imagine a basket boat race would be like. A little background information first, though, for the uninitiated: Quy Nhon has a sizeable fishing fleet—squid and many other squishy, fishy delicacies are plentiful in these waters. Rather than going to the trouble of constructing a marina, though, the fishermen simply anchor their boats in the shallows near shore and shuttle back and forth in small, round boats that look like baskets.

Combine this background information with the fact that Quy Nhon also plays host to a frequently-changing group of Peace-Corps-ish volunteers from New Zealand and you end up with an official Basket Boat Race. The Kiwis of Quy Nhon took it upon themselves to give all comers—not just Vietnamese fishermen—a chance to experience the glory of the basket boat. And, like true Westerners, they went and turned it into a competition.

Starting at the unconscionable hour of 7:00 Saturday morning, a random group of foreigners and Vietnamese began to gather on the beach across the street from the university. By 8:15, after only a few miscommunications and troubled translations, everyone was ready to don their bright orange life jackets and paddle their hearts out in groups of three. Everyone, that is, except for me (Steven) since I chose to be the official group photographer/videographer.

The resulting chaos (and fun) is chronicled in the video below.

This intermission brought to you by...military training

So for everyone who has been waiting to hear exciting stories of Steven's first days of teaching class in Quy Nhon, we regret to inform you that such stories have been delayed slightly.

One of the facts of student life in Vietnam is military training. Every year (or perhaps every other year...?) all college students in the country are required to spend a few weeks with their classmates sleeping in barracks or out in tents learning how to march, clean firearms, and the like.

This year for the first time, military training for freshmen was placed right at the beginning of the school year. The freshmen--who usually start class late anyways because their university entrance exams take time to process--are now starting a full five or six weeks later than everyone else. Mid-October was the last ballpark date I heard for when classes were starting.

Since I (Steven) am teaching all freshman classes, that means I've got an extra few weeks to plan, find my way around Quy Nhon, meet students from past years, find great coffee shops and the like. It also means I might have some extra time to update the blog, so keep checking back...

Pictures of life in Quy Nhon

We've been wanting to share a little bit about our daily life so far in Quy Nhon--where we live, what the city's like, etc. As a step in that direction, we took some pictures today in between rain storms and have just uploaded them to our web album. You can either watch the slideshow below, or click here to go to our album and see the real deal.

Bob Barker and Vietnam

Anyone making even a short visit to Vietnam quickly becomes familiar with the idea of “foreigner prices.” It’s not a difficult concept to comprehend: In a developing country where bargaining is expected and few prices are marked, it’s not uncommon for foreigners to pay a little extra when buying almost anything. The Price is Right would never do very well in Vietnam because it's simply second nature for most Vietnamese to know the exact, fair price for anything they might purchase, from carrots to squid to wardrobes. On the other hand Westerners, who are not in possession of such an accurate mental price list are—frankly—easy targets for vendors trying to make a little extra cash. In most cases, this amounts to maybe 15 or 20 cents and usually helps out the recipient much more than it hurts the giver.

It’s harmless, for the most part, and it doesn’t mean that the person selling to you is dishonest or doesn’t like you. The sellers just assume (correctly) that you have a lot more money than they do and you likely won’t go hungry if you give them an extra 20 cents. Still, to Western sensibilities, the very idea of foreigner prices can seem nasty, unfair, discriminatory, politically incorrect and downright offensive. Westerners hate getting ripped off (even if the ripoff amounts to pocket change) and the experience can sometimes leave one feeling mildly resentful towards the entire culture.

One particular Vietnam guidebook author must have been having such feelings when he wrote up his description of Quy Nhon:

“There’s little to see in Qui Nhon,” he declares in his glowing introduction to the town. “To make matters worse, the locals are rude, unfriendly, and ready to rip off the unwary.” Well there you have it.

It’s rare (and a little surprising) to see a guidebook writer make such a concerted effort to personally smear the entire population of a town of 250,000. But he goes on to bash Quy Nhon’s beach (it “contains raw sewage and other pollutants”), the towers of the ancient Cham civilization in town (“nothing to get excited about”), the area around the town’s central pagoda (“an industrial wasteland”), and eateries (“there are no decent restaurants”). It’s really an impressive array of insults to fit into such a short space.

Fortunately, Joelle and I haven’t based all of our decisions on what bitter guidebook writers have said. And indeed, not one of those descriptions has seemed to hold any water during our first week here. We’ve eaten delicious food at a number of ‘decent restaurants,’ we’ve yet to find any evidence of an ‘industrial wasteland’ in town and we’ve gone swimming in the ocean a few times already without having our skin melt or bumping into a single floating turd. And though the guidebook author himself comes across as a bit “rude” and “unfriendly” and has ripped off thousands of unwary people with a $22.00 guidebook of marginal utility, most of the locals we’ve met so far have been pleasant, welcoming, and fair in their dealings with us.

Case in point: I bought a new basket for the front of my bike today because my old one was falling apart. Though I’ll admit it sounds wimpy, baskets on the front of bicycles are not only exceedingly common here, they’re quite practical. (If you don’t believe me, you can try carrying three heavy bags of groceries home from the supermarket on your basketless bicycle next week and let me know how it works for you.)

The point, anyhow, is that I bought a new basket and needed help putting it on my bike. Fortunately, there’s a husband/wife pair that sets up their little repair cart in front of the university and works on bicycles and motorbikes seven days a week. They charge about three cents to fill up your tires with air, and a little bit more for more complicated repairs. We’ve visited them a few times already for different bike-related issues.

When I stopped by this morning with my new basket in hand, however, they were both busy working on other bikes. I wheeled my bike up, pointed to the basket, and got ready to wait my turn. I didn’t have to wait long, though, as one of the other customers who was waiting—a young guy about my age—came up and asked in English, “You want to change the basket on your bike?”

“Yes,” I replied, thinking that he would perhaps help translate things between me and the owners, as had happened before in a number of similar situations.

But instead of translating for me, he said a few things to the owners, dug around in their cart for some tools and, with two of his friends, started disassembling the old basket and putting the new one on. Needless to say, this sort of thing was new to me. It’s a bit like having the guys standing ahead of you in line at Burger King offer to go into the kitchen and make your Whopper for you. The whole process took maybe five minutes and looked professionally done at the end.

“How much do I owe you?” I asked the English-speaking one when they were all finished. He turned around and checked something with one of the cart owners in Vietnamese. She shook her head. He turned back to me and said, “Nothing. We just wanted to help you.” Huh. The ‘foreigner price’ today was apparently free. So much for the rude, unfriendly locals trying to rip off the unwary.

I returned to my apartment (50 yards away), grabbed the last American dollar bill I had, and went back out to give it to them as a token of appreciation. They refused again, insisting that they had just wanted to help. They did let me take my picture with them, and I gave them the address of this blog so perhaps they’ll read it and feel appreciated.

No matter what the guidebook writers say, we’re planning on loving and appreciating Quy Nhon and its people for some time to come. So there!

Alive and well in QUY NHON!!!

Hey all. We made it!

Though we were a little later than planned (just by a couple hours) we arrived in Quy Nhon this afternoon and were picked up at the airport by one of the International Relations staff from the university. We swung by the train station on our way into town from the airport, found all of our worldly belongings waiting there for us in tip-top shape (we had shipped them by train from Hanoi last week), picked them up and scooted on over to Dai Hoc Quy Nhon (Quy Nhon University) which is slated to be our home for at least the next 10 months or so.

Not a whole lot of time to write just now because our on-campus apartment is a bit of a disaster and we need to do some cleaning and arranging before we turn in for the night. Rest assured we'll get a real update out there for you sometime in the near future. Let's just say for now that we took a long walk on the beach (about 100 yards from our front door) this evening after dinner and loved the sound of gentle waves and the cool ocean breeze. We're glad to be here. Thanks to all of you for helping get us here!

Teaching and Moving...

...those are the things which have been consuming most of our time lately. Which is one excuse for why the blog hasn't been updated very regularly. The other excuse is that I (Steven) am just plain lazy sometimes.

This has been "crunch week" in a couple of ways. It's my first week of teaching actual classes of actual students. It's actually been quite fun, for the most part. I taught alone my first day and with a partner today (and tomorrow and Friday as well). Our practicum has been at the Diplomatic Academy of Vietnam, which has been kind of exciting. Today I actually had a class comprised entirely of Lao students, which proved to be interesting. [Note to the geographically challenged: Lao people are from the country of Laos, sandwiched in between Thailand and Vietnam. The entire country of Laos only has about twice as many people as the city of Hanoi.]


The words "Laos" and "laid-back" go together a bit like peas and carrots. A friend who taught a Lao class last year told us once that he was always wondering if there were a gas leak in the room, his students were so mellow. This group, indeed, was mellow. And quiet. And they had really, really long names. Just as I was getting used to Vietnamese names (which usually are a single, one-syllable word like "Thao" or at the most two single-syllable words like "Van Anh") the Lao students had names like Xaisomboun Soukhummalay (which, by the way, is a real name). Fortunately most of them had one-syllable nicknames which were a bit easier to pronounce.

I digress, however. All told, the teaching has been a lot of fun and I'm looking forward to getting to Quy Nhon and really getting to know my students.

While I've been in classrooms trying to pronounce names like Xaisomboun Soukhummalay, Joelle has been packing all of our earthly belongings into big bags that once held rice (weird, but that's what you get if you want big containers around here). It's a far more impressive feat than it might sound, and I'm glad she's the one doing it. She's done an amazing job of handling the logistics of our move to Quy Nhon (coming up in a little more than a week). This is all in preparation for tomorrow afternoon when we head over to the train station with a Vietnamese friend and send most of our stuff south on the rails. Hopefully it will be waiting for us when we get to Quy Nhon.

That's the long and short of it for now. Thanks for checking the blog and being our friend.

P.S. The hat was a goodbye gift from one of our Vietnamese teachers. The hot pink neck strap is a nice touch, don't you think?

Tropical Storm update

The storm ended up moving well to the north of us, and I think it lost its "tropical stormness" (i.e. the winds died considerably) even before it moved onshore. But it did bring with it a whole lot of rain. Hanoi hasn't been affected, but the rain has wreaked havoc in the far north of the country. Over 70 people have died up near the Chinese border due to flooding and landslides. This all hits a little closer to home for us since we were up in that part of the country just a couple of weeks ago. Some of the roads we traveled on were frighteningly unstable--we could see evidence of landslides and washouts everywhere--so I imagine they're in much worse shape now.

A family from our fellowship was traveling this week in that part of the country when their train became stranded between two landslides. They had to wade through waist-deep water to get to a nearby town where they've been stuck for the last couple of days--no way in or out by road or rail. Scary times.

For us, life continues as normal but for many people outside the capital this is a difficult time. Keep them in your thoughts!

Tropical Storm Kammuri Bears Down on Hanoi!!!

(Cue the dramatic music and show the sweet graphic with the palm tree bent in half by the wind.)

This just in: Tropical Storm Kammuri is lashing the southern Chinese coastline with ferocious winds in excess of 30 miles per hour! Currently, the monster storm is working its way westward toward landfall in Vietnam some time Saturday. Fearing the worst, Hanoi's terrified foreign residents have begun stockpiling essentials like ChocoPies, peanut butter and ice cream. Local stores are nearly sold out of flimsy ponchos and cheapo umbrellas.

Said frightened U.S. citizen Steven Shetterly, "It rained today. I had to ride my bike and my feet and legs got all muddy. So that was kind of gross." As Kammuri prepares to pummel northern Vietnam, only time will tell whether Mother Nature will spare Shetterly from having to get his feet muddy again.

Okay, in case you couldn't tell, the above was a bit tongue-in-cheek, overdramatic CNN/Fox News style reporting. Yes, there is a tropical storm moving toward landfall northeast of Hanoi. No, we're not particularly concerned. As of now, the maximum windspeed here is forecast to be in the 20-25 mph range. Which sounds like a breezy May day in Washington. It has actually been raining a lot today, which could prove to be much more of a concern than the wind. We live on the 2nd floor, though, so I think we'll be good to go. We'll keep you posted in case anything exciting happens.

No we haven't disappeared yet

...we've just been pretty dang busy. It's a lame excuse, I know, but it's true.

Here's the uber-condensed version of what we've been up to. I'm hoping there will be time to give a bit more detailed description of everything in the not-so-distant future.

The middle of July marked the end of formal language lessons for us. We haven't quite mastered the entire language yet, but we're close. (That's your cue to laugh uproariously). Joelle will be continuing with occasional classes through the rest of August, but Steven will be taking his TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) classes during that time.

After lessons ended we had a couple of weeks of freedom. Since we'll be moving to southern/central Vietnam in the near future we decided to see the north while we still have the chance. We spent a week traveling to the cities of Dien Bien Phu and Sapa in the northwest corner of the country (check out the pictures here). When we returned to Hanoi, Joelle's good friend Cheryl was in town (she has taught in China for the past eight years, so she's in the neighborhood anyway) and we spent a week traveling in and around Hanoi before the new teachers arrived.

Last Sunday we began classes with the new teachers who will be placed in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. We're learning some basics about Southeast Asian culture and communication styles as well as doing some intensive classes on teaching English. It's been a busy time of learning as well as hanging out with both new and old friends. This is the first day we've had free since last Sunday so we're taking some time to breathe and regroup.

Our time in Hanoi is winding down and we're finding that the place has actually grown on us in the five months since we arrived. Noisy, dirty, crowded and aggravating as it can sometimes be, it's been home to us and we've seen glimpses of charm, grace, joy and goodness beneath the exterior.

At the same time, we're growing more and more excited about getting to Quy Nhon, getting to know our teammates, and settling in there.

We'll leave you with a shot taken just the other day of the crew of crew of new Vietnam teachers outside Hanoi's Temple of Literature. We're a fairly good-looking bunch if I do say so myself. And I do.

Ninh Binh Part Two

How time flies. This is the second part of our Ninh Binh story (see below for the first part) which covers the rather eventful day two of our trip. Sorry it took so long to post.

On Sunday, the second day of our trip, we awoke late-ish and had breakfast and coffee in our room. Around 9 or 10 o'clock, just as the sun was really starting to get hot, we hopped on our bikes and headed out of town toward the mountains again.

We hit a road which ran through small villages along the foot of the mountains before turning and following a series of roads that worked their through valleys back into the hills. We were looking for Hoa Lu, an ancient capital city of Vietnam (and big tourist attraction near Ninh Binh). Once again (unwisely) using the map that had been provided for us from the hotel, we figured we could find our way there, tour the place and be back at the hotel before lunch.

Our ride took us through green valleys between these amazing mountains--past rice fields and small lakes and villages. We marveled (as we sweated profusely) that such things could even exist. It really felt as if we were in a movie at times.


As far as we rode, though, we didn't come across Hoa Lu or anything that looked even remotely close to an ancient capital city. We were lost. Multiple times. By the time we finally started asking directions and made it to Hoa Lu, we had gone probably 5 or more miles out of our way in 95 degree heat. We were exhausted. It didn't help that our first view of Hoa Lu was a big, dusty parking lot with tour buses and rows of vendor's shops. No imposing battlements or ancient temples--just big ol' buses and chintzy merchandise. I'm sure there was more to it but, as I told Joelle at the time, Hoa Lu really needed to work on its curb appeal. By this time it was well after lunch and we'd only brounght snacks with us. We decided that walking around in the sun for another two hours looking at the remains of some old buildings wasn't what we needed. So we sat in the shade with a Vietnamese family, ate and drank a bit, and got back on our bikes.


We took a different road on the ride back to the hotel, which ended up being even more spectacular than the road there. Still, we managed to get lost again and by the time we made it back to the hotel we were truly wiped. We had a very late lunch, packed our bags and prepared to head back to Hanoi. This is where things truly got interesting.

Rather than walking a whole entire kilometer from the hotel to the station, we decided to 'go local' and wave down the first bus we saw pulling through town that was bound for Hanoi. We didn't pause to consider that, if the bus was going to stop for us, it most likely would stop for anyone and everyone else.

As it was, a bus did stop for us and we got two of the last seats available (fortunately) and settled in for the ride. The vehicle we found ourselves in could best be described as an "old jalopy." It was really more of an oversized van than a bus, it had no air conditioning and room for about twenty people to sit. Joelle and I were numbers 17 and 18, approximately. By the time we got near Hanoi, we estimated that we were sharing that little bus with 35 to 40 people, four of whose sweat I was able to feel personally. People were standing, sitting on laps, straddling the gearshift up front, and hanging out the door. Just when I would think "We can't possibly fit anyone else on this thing," someone standing along the side of the road would wave us down, the ticket taker helper guy would hop out, squeeze them on board, and we would oh-so-slowly get up to speed again.

But things were to get more interesting still. At one point we had stopped to pick someone up along the side of the road when another bus (much nicer and shinier looking--I think it was a Mercedes) pulled up and stopped just to the left of us, literally inches away out our window. I don't know if the driver of the trailing bus hadn't been paying attention and had swerved at the last minute and stopped, if he was planning on handing something out his window to our driver or just what, but there he was stopped directly next to us. We stared at the other passengers out our window for a minute. Despite their being on a nicer bus, they looked just as cramped and uncomfortable as us.

Our driver, for his part, was looking in his mirror trying to make sure that the newest passenger had found a spot on his already overcrowded bus. Satisfied that he had, our old jalopy started to pull away...and with a loud pop proceeded to shatter the Mercedes bus's right side mirror. Oops.

Quick cultural note: As we all know, minor accidents in the States are usually resolved by the drivers exchanging insurance information (maybe a few snide remarks) and going on their way. Very orderly, methodical...boring. This minor accident was to be anything but boring. In a flash, the driver of the Mercedes bus was out his door and standing beside our driver's door, shouting through the window at him. A large volume of rather heated words were exchanged (none of which we could understand, fortunately) and then the Mercedes driver stationed himself in front of our bus--presumably to keep us from driving away--and started dialing his cellphone with a shaking hand. Soon, both driver's assistants were out on the road as well, adding their pointed perspectives to the rapidly-developing argument.


Apparently the Mercedes driver's phone call didn't achieve the desired result because after a minute both he and his assistant were back at our driver's window, shouting again (our driver--wisely--hadn't left the vehicle). The other driver started to pound on the side of our bus with his fist. At this point Joelle and I (who were seated directly behind our driver) were starting to look for an easy way to exit the bus should we need to. There was no easy way and so we resigned ourselves to sitting and seeing what happened.

Suddenly in the midst of the shouting, a hand--either the Mercedes bus driver or his assistant's--reached through our driver's window and gave him a solid slap across the cheek. Now other people on the bus were starting to look for a way to get out as well, and an elderly gentleman who was sitting next to our driver stood up, looked around for a second, and apparently for lack of anything better to do hurriedly buckled his motorbike helmet on his head.

A split second later another hand--this one a closed fist--made its way through our driver's window and connected squarely with his eye socket. Just when it was looking like our two buses might empty out and a full-on street brawl would ensue, our bus's assistant stepped in and pulled the Mercedes driver aside, calming things for the moment.

In a flash, our bus was rolling down the road again, with our driver nursing a bleeding gash under his right eye (his assistant had hopped back on after separating everyone). We continued on as normal to Hanoi, except that about a mile from the bus station our driver pulled the bus over, said something to his assistant, hopped out and walked off down the street wearing his dark glasses. The assistant climbed in the driver's seat and drove us the rest of the way to the station. Odd, we thought, but maybe the driver needed to get to a doctor or something.


When we pulled into the station, the full extent of our driver's wisdom became clear. No sooner had our bus parked than the Mercedes bus driver (who had also been going to Hanoi) and several of his friends came sprinting over to settle things with our driver. They were surprised and, perhaps, a little disappointed to discover that our driver was most likely already home and watching TV with an ice pack on his eye. Quick as we could, Joelle and I grabbed our things and exited the premises, glad that that part of our trip was complete.

All in all it was a wonderful--if partly uncomfortable and terrifying--trip.

Ugh...

In case anyone asks why businesses shut down and people sleep through the afternoon in Vietnam, three to four months of the following should provide sufficient reason:

Ninh Binh Part One

Okay, the long-anticipated narrative of our trip to Ninh Binh is here. You know you've been waiting for it. This first part will detail our first day in Ninh Binh and the second part will, predictably, detail our second day there.

The Ninh Binh trip came about primarily because Joelle and I (being the small town folks that we are) occasionally feel the need to escape from the noise, bustle and crush of humanity that is Hanoi. It was also high time for us to finally take the leap of journeying outside of Hanoi on our own. Ninh Binh was far enough away to warrant an overnight trip, but not so far away that we couldn't call for help and have one of our friends from Hanoi come find us if we got lost, incarcerated or otherwise waylaid.

Our adventure began on a Saturday morning as we shouldered our backpacks and climbed on the city bus that would take us to the Giap Bat long-distance bus station on the south side of Hanoi. A brief description of Vietnamese bus stations because they're a bit difficult to fathom if you haven't been there: The first (and arguably most important) challenge of riding bus in Vietnam is to get yourself to the right bus station. Larger cities will sometimes have three or more distinct stations, depending on which direction you will be travelling. Thanks to some Vietnamese students we had met the week previous, as well as our trusty guidebook, we knew the correct station to head to. First hurdle overcome.

Another interesting feature of bus stations is that from the moment you set foot in one, you will be assailed by different people shouting names of destinations. These are touts, recruiters or whatever you want to call them. They're trying to get you on their bus, for which they will be paid a slight commission. We had been warned by various knowledgeable sources not to go with the first person who shouted 'Ninh Binh' in our ears, but instead to proceed to the ticket counter and purchase a genuine paper ticket for our desired destination, the reasoning being that the ticket counter has clearly marked prices while the prices on the buses themselves often depend on the mood of the driver and the amount of Foreigner Gullibility you exude. So we bought our ticket at the counter, hopped on a minibus marked Ninh Binh, and waited our turn to leave the station. Second obstacle cleared. We were doing well.

The trip to Ninh Binh was faster and more comfortable than we had imagined. The only slightly disturbing part of it was the brother/sister combo in the seats across the aisle from us who took turns heaving into plastic bags for the majority of the trip. (To read more about the Vietnamese propensity for motion sickness from a teammate of ours, click here.)

An hour or so out of Hanoi, we saw something novel and exciting appear on the horizon: mountains. Having spent most of our lives in the Pacific Northwest, mountains or foothills have been an ever-present fact of life for us. Living in Hanoi on the flat-as-a-pancake Red River delta the past four months we've been missing the presence of un-flat land, and were gratified to recall what it looks like. Ninh Binh province is known for its crazily-sculpted limestone mountains, and it was to those mountains that we were headed.

Arriving in Ninh Binh city from Hanoi felt a bit like walking from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange into a public library. Other than the occasional truck or bus rolling down the town's one main street, the place felt deserted. It was heavenly. We found ourselves a quiet hotel, had a quiet lunch at an exceedingly quiet restaurant and prepared to head out into the deafening silence of the surrounding countryside.

For the purpose of exploration, we rented bicycles from our hotel and took a hand-drawn map of the area with all of the relevant attractions duly noted in something resembling English. Our first destination was Tam Coc, a river that wound through the mountains and actually worked its way under three of them in caves. The map made it look easy: Go down this road for a ways, turn left, go straight for a ways, turn right and you were pretty much there. That was where we made our first mistake.

The map, we soon discovered, could just as well have been showing us the way to Prince Caspian's summer home as to the Tam Coc caves. Its correlation with reality was, we later decided, mostly coincidental. As we pedaled the back roads outside of Ninh Binh in the heat of the day, we found ourselves tracing and then retracing our path through rice fields and villages, past a pagoda where a man was stalking something in the trees with rifle in hand, over village streets that were covered in a layer of rice stalks drying in the sun. Every three minutes or so we would stop to ask where Tam Coc was, and would usually be answered with waving arm motions indicating a general direction and maybe a turn or two to take. Thus, by a terribly circuitous route, we eventually came to Tam Coc and found ourselves in a small boat being paddled up the river by a lady who used her feet to row about as often as she used her hands.

Tam Coc was glorious. The pictures speak for themselves, I hope, so I won't waste too many words trying to describe it. The mountains were like none we had ever seen, and the abruptness with which they shot out of the rice fields was something else. We'd been warned that the place could be a bit of a circus but it really wasn't too bad. There were a fair number of folks there with us, also being paddled in their own little boats, but everyone's view was so often fixed upward at the mountains around us that we really didn't notice the crowds.

As we returned from our boat trip, the sky behind us was growing dark with clouds, and a few distant rumblings of thunder could be heard. We climbed on our bikes and headed back, trusting to our sense of direction rather than the map this time. Partway back, a valley opened before us, at the far end of which we could see a stairway climbing the face of a mountain to a pagoda at its peak. The hour was growing late, the thunder was moving closer and we had almost no water…but it looked beautiful. We had to climb it.

We bought some water from a nearby village store and started our ascent. As we climbed, the lowlands spread out below us like a patchwork quilt of different shades of green. We found ourselves looking across rather than up at the peaks of nearby hills and mountains, and as we gained the summit we were able to look down the other side and see the river we had just come from, winding its way through (and under) the mountains. All this happened as the sun sank behind the mountains and lightning flashed from the dark bank of thunderheads across the valley. The top of the mountain contained a shrine to some minor deity or another, but in our hearts we knew Who was truly responsible for such incomparable beauty, such unbounded creativity.

Our reluctant hike back down the mountain and the twilight bike ride across the flats back to Ninh Binh brought a fitting end to a beautiful day.

A ridiculously beautiful weekend

This weekend we took the plunge and actually ventured out on our own for an overnight trip to Ninh Binh, a place that's a couple hours south of Hanoi by bus. This was our first time venturing out of Hanoi by ourselves, and it was definitely worth it. The scenery was spectacular--like nothing we'd ever seen before. Big limestone mountains jutted straight up out of bright green fields of rice. We rode bikes through the villages and valleys and just marveled.

The trip warrants a much more complete description than I'm able to give it here, but if you're like me then all you really want to see are the pictures. So click here for a link straight to the album. A more complete blog entry about the trip will be forthcoming as time allows.

The New Casa

This might be old news to some, but we moved from our apartment into a house a couple of weeks ago. Here's the scoop: many of the folks from our organization go back to their home countries over the summer but since we arrived mid-year we'll be staying the whole summer in Hanoi. There was a family heading back to the states that asked us to housesit for them for about three months, and we consented. Given that we would be upgrading from a one room apartment to a three storey house without having to pay any rent, they didn't really have to twist our arms.

Thus it was that we packed all of our worldly belongings (which amounted to a couple backpacks, a couple duffle bags, some inherited wicker cabinets and a few assorted odds and ends) into a big taxi and made the mile and a half jaunt across town to our new digs. All told it was the easiest move I've ever made.

The new place is…well, it's great. It's quite nice--about five times the size of our old place--has three bathrooms, a full-sized kitchen (rather than the one person "closet kitchen" in our apartment), three bedrooms, an entertainment room with comfortable furniture (a huge bonus), an office and a formal living room that we refer to as the "throne room." The landlord happens to be the Vietnamese ambassador to Canada. And we get to live here for the rest of our time in Hanoi without paying rent. Crazy.

It's been an interesting lesson on perspective for us. If we had moved straight from the states into this house it's likely we would have thought, "Well this is a pretty nice place," and left it at that. But after three months of living in a single room (albeit a fairly large one) it feels a bit like we've moved into Buckingham Palace. We never knew that something as simple as a showerhead that hangs on the wall, a stove with more than two burners or a kitchen that fits more than one person could seem like such a luxury.

We'll try not to grow too accustomed to luxuries like full-size kitchens, however, as we'll soon be moving to Quy Nhon where word on the street is we'll be returning once more to one-room apartment living. But for the time being we'll live it up, enjoy the soft full-size couches and appreciate what we can only describe as a lavish and undeserved gift.

New pictures

We've (finally) got some new pictures up on our photo album. Mostly it's just regular life stuff in and around Hanoi. We also took a trip across the river to Bat Trang, a village known for its handmade pottery and we took a few pictures there as well. To see them, click here.

Celebrate your Vesak

Banners are a big thing around here. If something even mildly exciting or out of the ordinary is happening, most likely it will end up on a banner somewhere. Most of the time, these banners are in Vietnamese and, therefore, basically inaccessible for us. But over the last month or so, a number of yellow and red English banners have been popping up all over town, usually strung across main avenues or near traffic circles.

Here's what the banners say: "The 2008 United Nations Day of Vesak Celebrations." Eh? While it's nice to have a banner to read in English, the main purpose of translating something into English (i.e. communicating something meaningful to English speakers) was lost on me. I understand what the United Nations is, and I understand what a day of celebration is, but I'm at a loss as to what a Vesak is or why on earth I should celebrate it.


I began to grow suspicious that perhaps this was just a made-up holiday--a ploy by greeting card makers and knick-knack vendors to get people to purchase their wares ("Have you bought your parents a Vesak Celebrations card yet? Did you see those cute new Vesak dolls in the market?") I decided to start doing some investigating. First, I asked people from our organization--Westerners who had spent a good amount of time in Vietnam and would likely be able to explain why these banners were up all around town.

The answers I received generally amounted to this: "I'm not sure, but I think it has something to do with Buddhism." Not terribly helpful. So much for my Western experts. What I needed was a Vietnamese perspective on the Vesak issue. Things being what they were, though, I forgot all about Vesaks for a while until yesterday afternoon when we were chatting with our language tutor (in English) before our lessons started. Our teacher often has interesting life stories to share and has been a great source of knowledge about Vietnamese culture. Somehow during our conversation one of us mentioned a holiday and her face suddenly brightened.

"Oh!" she said, as if remembering something important. "Did you know that Vietnam has a holiday tomorrow?"

Seeing my chance to learn from a local expert, I sprang on it. "That's right. I've seen the banners up all over town. The 2008 United Nations Day of Vesak Celebrations, right?"

Our teacher nodded and smiled, clearly pleased that I knew what she was talking about. "Yes, yes." I waited for an explanation, but none was forthcoming. Perhaps, I thought, she assumed I was aware of all that a Vesak Celebration entailed.

After a bit of a pause, I continued. "Sooo....what is a Vesak Celebration, then?"

There followed a silent, thoughtful look from our teacher. Finally, an answer: "I'm not sure. I think it has something to do with Buddhism."

P.S. In desperation I finally turned to my knowledgeable friend Google and discovered that Vesak Celebrations indeed have to do with Buddhism. It's kind of a birthday/life/death celebration for Buddha himself. So there you go--no having to scratch your head in confusion if similar yellow banners start appearing in your hometown.