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!