The Shetterlys in Vietnam

A Quy Nhon Christmas

2011-12-21T18:48:00.000-08:00

All smiles.

So it's not quite Christmas yet, but we thought we'd post this video Christmas card for those of you who keep up with us. Last Friday, Steven and Will (the other foreign teacher at Quy Nhon University) had a party (or actually a series of parties) for all 200+ of their students at our house. We invited each class of over 50 students to come, one per hour, throughout the afternoon and we had different activities for them to try--games, songs, card making, snowflake making, cookie decorating. In all, about 120 of the 200 showed up and we had a blast. An exhausting blast, to be sure, but a blast nonetheless. You'll get to see some of the party, along with just some pictures of our family getting ready for Christmas. Maybe post-Christmas we'll post a follow-up video as well. In the meantime, Merry Christmas and enjoy!

(I apologize for the "squished" look of the video. Apparently my video editing program is having some problems distinguishing between widescreen and not-widescreen. We'll see if we can get that fixed.)

The Grand Tour

2011-12-17T22:53:00.000-08:00

Here we sit one week from Christmas already! Where have the last three months gone? We realize we have done a poor job of keeping you up to date on the last months events in our lives - but after we take you on a house tour and get you reaquainted with Quy Nhon, I am sure we will get more regular with updates!

Our first 3 and one half months of renting a house and living in a comunity has proved to be great for us!

I (Joelle) had some hesitations for sure, but I have loved it. Now please join Micah as we take you through the house we have come to know as home.

To start with, our house stands like most Vietnamese houses - narrow and tall.

You can see Steven's arm placing our internet wires in the right place. I don't know if he's ever had to hook up his own internet before, but in living here we often find ourselves doing tasks we have not done before.

I have really loved having space for a real kitchen! (If you remember, the "kitchen" in our old apartment was basically just the corner of a room).

We hosted Thanksgiving here and plan to have a group for Christmas as well. It's been great having a kitchen to do all the prep in for those events.

Excited to go upstairs I guess!!

Here's Micah in his very own bedroom! It's actually the first time we've had the space for him to be in his own room and he's been doing well with it. We do have a real crib set up for him now, but we keep the travel tent up and ready for when our 7 month-old teammate, Ezra, comes over and needs to have a nap.

Bath time in our beautiful bathroom! This is the more...hmmm...decorated of the two bathrooms we have, and we use it pretty much just for Micah's baths.

The third room in the house we use for storage and Steven's office. It's nice (for me maybe more than for Steven) to have him be able to have a space in the house to work. Nice because he can come anytime I need him!

The rooftop of our house is open-air but covered. It's nice and breezy and is a good place to hang out on days when the house gets too warm. It also has a kind of ridiculously over-the-top fish pond (complete with little figurines from the popular Monkey King legend) that Micah is fascinated with. He can sit for quite a while and make fishy faces at the goldfish.

And finally: the view from our rooftop. Mountains dropping into the South China Sea. Not bad.

Well, thanks for joining us for this brief tour. Take care and do check back now and then. We'll try to keep this thing updated a bit more frequently now that we're settled in and going strong.

Touchdown and TVO

2011-08-31T23:52:00.000-07:00

The Shetterlys have landed.

As I write this, we're in the middle of TVO (pronounced like the popular TV-recording hardware, TiVO) which stands for "Team Vietnam Orientation." Currently we're at a hotel perhaps an hour outside of Hanoi, on the banks of the Red River. We're here with a group of great people--individuals and families who are dedicated teaching and serving in Vietnam. For some, it's their first week in Vietnam. Others have been here 5, 10 years or more. It's our fourth year coming back, and it really has begun to feel like home.

Our flight went fine, with Micah proving once again that he's a great traveler. The stewardesses on Korean Air only had to employ their patented baby-calming tactics four or five times on the entire 15-hour journey. Our first few days in-country were spent with our old Quy Nhon teammates, the Fizzards, at their house in Hanoi. The Fizzards' two girls, Ella (4) and Madeline (2) were thrilled to the squeaking point to have a new playmate around. For Micah it was a bit of a transition from the Transformers, trains and trucks of his cousins this summer to the dolls, kitchen set and pretty princess blankets of the Fizzard girls but he handled it well. For a one year old boy, a Barbie is just as fun to throw against a wall as a ball is.

With the tropical summer still in full swing, the backyard inflatable swimming pool at the Fizzards offered some relief from the heat and a good deal of fun as well.

One of the favorite new toys, however, isn't really a toy at all (go figure). It's a baby bed/tent that Joelle's folks got Micah for his birthday just a few days before we returned to Vietnam. The tent folds up into something the size of a kid's bicycle tire but, when expanded, has plenty of room for Micah...and a few friends.

(In the picture you can see the Fizzard girls, Micah, and the newest member of Team Quy Nhon, Ezra.)

Speaking of friends, Micah has around 89 million of them here in Vietnam. Soon he'll need his own tour bus and roadies. Although reaction to him was halfway subdued while we were in big, cosmopolitan Hanoi, we moved an hour outside the city and all stops are removed. Micah is the cat's pajamas and the bee's knees all rolled into one cute little frame.

Joelle and I made the classic blunder of showing up about 10 minutes early to lunch at the hotel's restaurant our first day here. Since the wait staff had nothing else to do, they swarmed on Micah, coo-cooing with cellphone cameras at the ready. Micah--who's grown a little more attached to mom and dad over the summer--wasn't quite sure how to take all the attention. It's something he's going to have to get used to, whether he relishes the attention or not.
Being back in Vietnam has been great and we're enjoying our time together as Team Vietnam, but we're even more excited to get back to Quy Nhon, unpack our bags, meet old friends and students and stay in one place for a while. In the one and a half weeks between leaving the States and settling in Quy Nhon, we will have spent the night in seven different places. We're ready to stop moving for a while.

Our journey south begins tomorrow as we take a bus back into Hanoi. We'll spend one more night in a hotel in Hanoi, then fly out for Quy Nhon with our new teammates, the Bankstons, on the 6:30 flight Sunday morning. Looking forward to it.

Windy City Wanderings and Ponderings

2011-07-27T19:44:00.000-07:00

Time for a Stateside blog. Time for any blog, for that matter. It’s been forever since we’ve updated. See what happens when a baby comes along? Blogging is the first thing to go when things get busy, apparently.

Well, it’s late July and that means Steven is doing time at Wheaton College outside of Chicago. Ok, “doing time” isn’t exactly a fair description of what Steven has been experiencing. He’s about ¾ of the way finished with a Master’s degree in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (mercifully shortened to TESOL by most people). He’s taking classes through a program generously offered by our teaching organization, which is paying his tuition. It’s designed for teachers, thus classes are offered in intensive blocks in July and January. And by "intensive" they mean "really, really difficult." Fitting six credits worth of graduate studies into a 4 week period is a challenge for everyone involved--professors and students alike. It translates into long days in the classroom and longer nights spent reading, writing papers, developing curriculum, designing phonological diagnostic tools, etc. Coffee consumption climbs to record levels. Dreams at night consist largely of phonetic symbols dancing on desks, or various educational theorists chasing you across a landscape composed of PowerPoint slides. But enough complaining.

It's actually been a really fun summer session. The classes have been useful (if a bit demanding) and a number of our friends from Team Vietnam have been studying in the program as well, giving a sense of camaraderie to the whole endeavor. Even better, we found some cheap last-minute tickets so that Joelle and Micah were able to fly out from Washington for several days to visit. There's nothing that brings a little sanity to situation quite so much as a beautiful wife and a 10-and-a-half month old with a huge, dimply smile who waddles around making dinosaur noises and throwing things. That's just plain good for the soul.

Steven worked a little extra in the days leading up to Joelle and Micah's visit, so we were able to have some downtime together without 20-page research papers looming in the shadows. On Saturday we stuck Micah in his REI backpack and headed down the block to catch the commuter train into Chicago. It was Joelle's first time in Chicago and Steven's second, so we didn't really know quite what to expect. Turns out the excitement started before we even got off the train, as every car was full of Cubs fans on their way to Wrigley Field. Apparently an important part of getting ready for America's Favorite Sport involves drinking a lot of America's Favorite Beverage: really cheap beer. It seemed that everyone on the train (minus us) was holding a can, cup or brown-paper-sack-wrapped bottle of something. The three guys sitting across the aisle from us had nothing at all to hide, with a 12-pack open on the floor between them. I was beginning to wonder if perhaps we'd accidentally found our way onto a chartered train headed for a Lake Michigan Booze Cruise.

Whatever the case, we arrived safely in the city and realized promptly that we looked really out of place. The picture below says it all: earth tones, Chacos, coffee in hand and child in backpack. We look like we're ready for a hike in bear-haunted wilderness (or at least a mildly rustic Bellingham park) rather than a stroll through the business and cultural capital of America's heartland. Proving, of course, that you can take a family out of the Northwest but you can't take the Northwest out of a family.

Despite our utter failure to blend in with the locals, Micah made friends wherever he went. He waved at and played peek-a-boo with everyone on the L-train, and got waves and laughter in return (Safety note: waving at and playing peek-a-boo with people on the L-train is highly inadvisable unless you happen to be a really cute 10 month old).

Eventually, via the L-train and good old fashioned hoofing it, we found our way a bit north of downtown to Lincoln Park, location of a fairly sweet free zoo. Since free is a good price any day of the week, we walked in and introduced Micah to his first giraffes, rhinos, lions and, yes, garbage-can-dwelling-aardvarks.

He had a blast. Since he's learning different animal sounds, it was fun to see him smack his lips at the fish, make dinosaur roars at the rhinos and say mboooooooo mboooooo to just about everything else that had four legs ("mbooooo" is his approximation of "moo" which--strangely enough--is the first animal sound he learned). After we had made noises at every animal in the zoo, we headed back to Wheaton for some dinner with our soon-to-be Quy Nhon teammates Will and Kristin (and their 2 month old little guy, Ezra).

Joelle and Micah headed back to Washington on Tuesday morning, so Steven is left by himself to weather the last few days of class. He heads home on the 30th and is looking forward to some time with family and away from textbooks.

Hard to believe it, but a month from now we'll be back in Vietnam for a week of training with the whole country team. After that, it's back to Quy Nhon and life in a place we're growing to love. We're really looking forward to this coming year and thank you for keeping up with us. We'll be sure to fill you in on all the latest...whenever we find a free minute or two. :)

Could it be a new video? Yes, it could.

2011-03-27T22:55:00.000-07:00

Well, it's about time isn't it? Here are some highlights from the last few months in video form. Thanks for your patience with us. Somehow there just isn't as much time as there used to be for making videos and writing blogs. Hmmm. Curious.

For those reading this on Facebook, click here for the video.

More Micah and a trip to Thailand

2011-01-20T07:31:00.000-08:00

For those of you who aren't on Facebook (all three of you) I'm posting a link to some sweet recent Micah pictures that I posted to our online album right about...HERE.

Saturday we fly down to Saigon, spend the night and then head out the next day head for Chiang Mai, Thailand where Steven will be taking his TESOL Master's classes and we'll be attending our organization's annual conference. We're looking forward to seeing the rest of the members of Team Vietnam, as we missed being with them at the usual beginning-of-the-year festivities. All told we'll be gone about 3 weeks, so we might not be quite so able to stay in touch in the near future here.

Rest assured we're all well, Steven taught a couple of classes this week (and loved it), Joelle has made banana bread for half the city in celebration of the Lunar New Year and Micah continues to grow. And smile. And look really cute.

Laters.

Gimme a brrrrrreak!

2011-01-16T00:01:00.000-08:00

Well, it’s gotten down to a bone-chilling 68 degrees here in Quy Nhon, so I guess you could say winter has arrived.

Actually, the weather has been cloudy and cool (for the most part) since we showed up in early December. The lows get down into the upper 60s and let me tell you—that feels plenty cold for Quy Nhon, especially with a fresh breeze blowing in off the ocean. Joelle and I can’t recall a stretch like this where we’ve been comfortable wearing long pants and long sleeves (even socks and shoes!!) outside for such a long period of time. Come April when it’s 85 degrees at sunrise I’m sure we won’t believe it was ever this cold.

When the temperature here drops below 70, the locals start piling on the clothes. Layers and layers of clothes. Jackets with fur-lined hoods, turtlenecks, big puffy ski-type jackets, gloves. Kids run around in full snow-suit outfits complete with ski masks. It looks a bit like that awful movie The Day After Tomorrow (if you’ve never seen it, you’re fortunate). This screenshot should suffice to give you the idea:

Anyway, in the midst of all this wintry weather, Joelle and I regularly take Micah out for walks in his stroller along the beach. In fact, we consider this to be ideal walking weather because a) we’re not soaked in sweat within 30 seconds of leaving the apartment and b) the normally crowded sidewalk along the beach is often almost deserted at this time of year.

The Vietnamese we do see when we’re out think we’re downright nuts, I’m sure, and neglectful parents to boot. I mean, we’ve got our four month old baby outside in 68 degree weather wearing nothing but long sleeves, long pants, socks and a blanket. For shame. Where’s the snowsuit? Ski mask? Scarf? Moon boots? Some of them just look at us, look at the stroller and shake their heads. Others stop and take the time to explain that it’s certainly not weather for babies to be outside in. They point to the cloudy skies and we hear two words repeated again and again from many different mouths: lanh (cold) and gio (windy).

An interesting side note here: In traditional Vietnamese belief, “bad wind” is responsible for just about every malady known to man. When it gets windy, people start dropping like flies. I was made aware of this during my first year of teaching when one of my students fainted in class and had to be carried back to her dorm room by some classmates. Why had she fainted, I asked her classmates, thinking that perhaps dengue or malaria or at least a good strong case of typhoid fever had been the culprit. “It’s windy today,” came the reply. Ah hah.

In windy weather, children should—at minimum—be dressed like this one:

In any case, we often either smile and nod knowingly at the advice folks give us and keep walking or else we explain that Americans like “cold” weather, that the current temperature back home is somewhere around 35 degrees, that Micah was born in America and that the inside of our house was around 68 degrees for the first few months of his life. So khong sao. No problem. As if bad wind ever hurt anyone. Pshaw. Now if we can just get over these darn colds…

You know you're celebrating Christmas in Vietnam when...

2010-12-23T20:30:00.000-08:00

You know you're celebrating Christmas in Vietnam when...

the refrigerator you bought for Christmas is adorned with a massive sticker of the not-so-well-known superhero, Mr. CoolPack.
one of the main selling points of said refrigerator is that it can "stay cold all day when the power cuts out."

finding a real, honest-to-goodness turkey breast at the supermarket is one of the highlights of the holiday.
the only thing around that smells remotely like an evergreen tree is the scented candle someone gave you from the States.

Christmas breakfast consists of eggs, bacon, Swedish tea ring and fresh mangoes, guava and dragonfruit.
your visitors from "freezing" Hanoi go swimming on Christmas Day. In the ocean.

It's been a great Christmas--there were 13 of us who got together to celebrate. Seven friends with our organization came down from Hanoi to spend the holiday with us--a family of five (the Breedens) and a retired couple (the Davenports) spent about five days here enjoying the warmer weather, ocean views and quiet life of Quy Nhon. Since this city can feel a bit isolated at times--especially during the holidays--it was a blessing to have such fun people to share a few days with.

A few days after Christmas we decided to give a belated gift to the vendors of Cho Khu 2, the market where Joelle usually shops. These ladies have gotten to know Joelle over the past couple of years and--as Vietnamese women are prone to do--asked her repeatedly when she was going to have a baby. After all their asking, they were thrilled last year to learn that Joelle was pregnant, and even more excited when she returned this year without the belly. But where was the baby?? After several solo visits to the market, Joelle felt that a riot was imminent if she didn't bring Micah soon.

Yesterday, they got their first chance to meet Micah, in all his cute foreignness. The resulting chaos is chronicled on this video, which I shot while Joelle fielded questions and fended off pinching fingers. So, for a glimpse into Vietnamese market culture and the excitement surrounding babies here, watch below. (For those reading this on Facebook, you need to click the underlined title of the video, which takes you to the page where you can watch it).

Micah's Market Adventure from Steven Shetterly on Vimeo.

That's so METRO of you (and other stories from our first two weeks back)

2010-12-19T02:53:00.000-08:00

Since our time back in Vietnam thus far has been fairly chaotic, this is going to be a hodgepodge of snapshots from what we've experienced.

Snapshot 1: It's Tuesday, this must be Quy Nhon...
So until recently, Micah hadn't slept in the same place for more than a couple of nights ever since leaving Washington: the plane, a hotel in Saigon, the first hotel we stayed at in Quy Nhon, our apartment, a different hotel where we had a retreat with our teammates, and now back at our apartment. The poor kid has no idea where he is going to be from day to day. We've finally settled back into our apartment for the next month or so (until we head to Thailand for our winter conference), so that should provide him a little stability. He really does take most things in stride, and although he's been poked and squeezed and tugged at and sniffed (yes, sniffed) by more people than we can count since coming back, he almost always has a big, dimpled smile for new folks that he meets. Kind of irresistibly cute, really.

Snapshot 2: That's so METRO of you
Honestly--and perhaps sadly--one of the things we were excited about upon returning to Quy Nhon is the fact that METRO has arrived. What is METRO, you ask? Well, to Westerners like us you could say it's a little slice of paradise.

First, some context. Imagine, if you will, living in a city of a quarter million people where practically the only baked goods available are little loaves of French bread and little rolls with cheese and mystery meat baked into them. Imagine a place where ice cream comes in flavors like "Taro Root," and tastes like they forgot to add the cream. Where the only condiments you can put on a sandwich are mustard, mayo and ketchup (if you're lucky). Where you have to bike a mile and a half across town in hopes that the one bakery in town where they sell cheddar cheese won't be out of stock (again). Where the only two breakfast cereals readily available are corn flakes and something called "Honey Stars" which tastes like sweetened, ground-up drywall. It comes to this: The Vietnamese do a wonderful job of cooking Vietnamese food. In general, they could care less about Western food and thus they don't stock any of it in their stores.

It makes a lot of sense, but for those of us who like a bit more variety in our diets, we're kind of out of luck. Selection is limited, and tends to be scattered in stores across town, so that if you want to make burritos for dinner you end up biking six miles and visiting four different places for all the ingredients. A good way to keep in shape, for sure, but a little disheartening as well.

Enter: The Game Changer. METRO is a German-owned company (we think) that tends to sell things wholesale to businesses. Think Costco. This October, they opened METRO Quy Nhon, and eating will never be the same again. We visited it for the first time this past week with our teammates and I think I walked through the whole place with a dazed smile on my face, whimpering under my breath in shock. It's as though Santa Claus himself opened a warehouse and stocked it with stuff just for me.

Australian ice cream. (Mint chocolate chip, even!) Salmon. Washington apples. Whipping cream. Massive blocks of New Zealand cheddar. Balsamic vinegar. Hershey's and Dove chocolate (all of which are locked in individual cases with electronic alarms). Multigrain bread. Shall I go on? Dried cranberries. A dozen different kinds of cereal, including All Bran (hello, bran muffins!). Hot chocolate. Tons of colored paper and office supplies for teaching. Tasteful Christmas decorations. Barbecue sauce.

We truly have no idea who in Quy Nhon will buy most of these products, other than the 15 or so foreigners who live here, but man is it fun to see all of that goodness in one place.

So then, what will this do to all the mom-and-pop businesses that you find on every street within the city? My guess is: Not much. We, for example, will still buy our fruit and veggies and meat at the local market. It's fresher, cheaper and very relational (really, how many mega-grocery store checkers pat your butt and tell you that you look more beautiful today than the last time you were in? This is the kind of personalized service Joelle gets--for free!--when she goes to visit the local market ladies) Presumably, most Vietnamese realize this as well and only the ones drawn to the "modern" (expensive) way of living will be tempted to buy lower-quality produce at higher prices. But if we get a hankering for rocky road ice cream or a vinaigrette salad dressing or (heaven forbid) Hershey's dark chocolate, it's nice to know where we can find it now.

Snapshot 3: Meet the Rowleys
One big change since last year is that our teammates are new. Our good friends and teammates of the past two years, Jill and Jason Fizzard (and their two girls Ella and Madeline), have accepted a position with our organization's leadership in Hanoi and are relocating there.

Our new teammates, Jeremy and Laura Rowley and their son Isaiah arrived in September and by all accounts have done a great job of getting settled into teaching and daily life here in Quy Nhon. We feel kind of bad that they were here for three months without us, but they seem to be doing swimmingly. The Rowleys are from Manitoba and, like us, prefer the quieter, slower pace of life in Quy Nhon to the hustle and bustle of the bigger cities. They also like the outdoors, coffee and U2. We should get along just fine. :)

Home and thankful

2010-12-08T18:37:00.000-08:00

It's about time we got this blog thingy started back up again, don't you think?

After six great months back in the States, we've returned to Quy Nhon as a family of three. It's good to be back.

As I type this from the Seagull Hotel, our son Micah (cutest little guy in the WORLD) is snoozing in his travel bed and Joelle is across the street at the university doing some apartment cleaning before we move in. We'll be tag-teaming the apartment today while the other one looks after the little guy.

Micah was a joy to travel with; although we were a bit worried about how much plane-sitting, taxi-riding and hotel-sleeping he could endure it turns out he's just as happy a kid at 35,000 feet as he is at sea level. With the exception of a couple of short cranky spells, he was all smiles and giggles (or snoring) the whole way across the Pacific.

As expected, Micah--being the cute, chubby white baby that he is--has drawn plenty of attention on this side of the world. Everyone from waitresses to hotel workers to flight attendants have wanted to pick him up, squeeze his feet and make funny faces at him. We've been told that for some reason it's not culturally appropriate in Vietnam to call people's babies "cute" or "lovely" or any such thing, but that rule has been broken with impunity when it comes to Micah. The stardom hasn't gotten to his head just yet--he seems to be just going with the flow, for the most part.

Joelle has already received her first unsolicited piece of advice on parenting as well--the kid needs to wear a hat, according to the lady cleaning the floor in the Saigon restaurant where we ate breakfast yesterday. When we explained to her that we had walked all of 30 feet (across the street from our hotel to the restaurant) she seemed to accept that.

Around Quy Nhon the weather has been downright chilly--all the way down into the low 70s, if you can believe it. We were reminded just how different people's perception of temperature here is on the ride into the city from the airport--a little boy was riding his tricycle alongside the road while wearing a full-face ski mask. Winter's icy grip seems to be loosening, though, as the next few days are supposed to be up in the low 80s with sunshine.

All told, we're glad to be back. It was hard to leave family and friends behind in the States, but we both sense that this is where we're supposed to be. And although it's a bit more complicated than before, it's a lot of fun doing it all as a family of three.

Cúp điện!

2010-04-29T19:22:00.000-07:00

Cúp điện, cúp điện. The two-syllable phrase is heard all over Quy Nhon these days, often accompanied by a sigh and roll of the eyes or a resigned half-smile. The power's out. Again.

In a country that is heavily dependent on hydroelectric dams to provide electricity to its citizens, water is power. Literally. Which means that, after what's been called the driest rainy season in 40 years, Vietnam has precious little energy to go around.

Rolling blackouts started in Quy Nhon a couple weeks ago. Not wanting to begin with half-measures, they started by shutting off power to whole swaths of the city for 15 hours at a time--a move which proved to be rather unpopular, disruptive to business and life in general and (it was later discovered) actually forbidden by law. Fine then. Fourteen hour blackouts became the norm. Twice a week, in most parts of the city.

Then someone came up with the bright idea to conserve by shutting down power to the entire city all night on Sundays. Now, when I was living in Washington the electricity would occasionally get knocked out at night during a storm and I wouldn't realize until I overslept my alarm the next morning and saw the clock blinking "12:00" at me when I woke up. But in Vietnam, nighttime power outages are pretty much impossible to sleep through.

With overnight temps in the mid-to-high 70s, humidity to match, and sun-baked brick buildings radiating off the heat of the day, our apartment quickly becomes stifling without fans or some sort of air movement. I would reckon that most folks in Quy Nhon (Joelle and I included) had about two hours of uncomfortable, much-interrupted sleep the night they shut the whole city down.

Realizing that they were well on their way to creating a city full of irritated, sleep-deprived zombies, the authorities most likely fired or exiled the yahoo had suggested the all-night outage, because it hasn't happened since (a very good thing). Instead, they've begun cutting power daily from 5:00 to 7:00 in the morning--all-in-all a much more bearable state of affairs.

Living on the university campus has had its advantages for us, as we've been spared from the long daytime cuts (though seemingly random cuts lasting from 10 minutes to 2 hours have been common enough).

During all of this, I've reflected on what would happen in a North American city, were the civic leaders suddenly to declare four or five months of regular blackouts in the middle of summer. I think "tea party" doesn't even begin to describe the sort of outrage that would be directed at the government. Lawsuits would be plentiful. Senate hearings would be convened. Militias would be organized. Eco warriors living off the grid would chuckle to themselves and pour another bowl of organic muesli. Most people, in other words, would basically freak out.

Not so in Vietnam. Though some might grumble, the attitude here seems to be one of "We've been through a lot worse than this. Just make the best of it." So people just take long naps, head out to the beach where the breeze is fresh, or cruise around the streets on their bikes and feel the wind. The guy who runs the photocopy shop I frequent has just lost about 30% of his business due to lack of power. Rather than spending his free time organizing riots and making molotov cocktails in the back room, he now spends two days a week kicking around a soccer ball in the park with his friends or visiting people in other parts of the city. It's just what you do.

So, next November and December, when the heavens open up and the rains pour down I promise I won't grumble about not being able to go out, or whine about the mold growing on our walls. Instead, I'll smile, flick on our electric tea kettle, and quietly say thank you.

The Binh Dinh Exploratory Commission Inaugural Journey

2010-04-23T22:12:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was an "I love Vietnam" day for me (Steven), and particularly an "I love Binh Dinh province" day. I'll tell you why.

As I'm sure I've explained before, Quy Nhon is far from the beaten tourist track (though it's grown noticeably more popular in the last year and a half since we arrived). But compared to the rest of Binh Dinh province, Quy Nhon is a veritable tourist magnet. Except for a couple of spots on the main bus routes, hardly anyone who's not Vietnamese ventures very far outside the city, including us.

This was going to have to change. And change it did. A couple weeks ago, a New Zealand volunteer living in Quy Nhon told us about an old Catholic seminary he had been to. He described for us the general part of the province it was in, but said it would be hard to find if you'd never been there before. Perfect. I did some digging online and Jason rounded up a few of our friends with motorbikes. We set out from Quy Nhon yesterday morning under delightfully cloudy skies with some vague directions clipped from a website (in Vietnamese) and a not-so-detailed map of the area.

As it was, we only had to backtrack once and we got far more than we were hoping for out of the whole deal. The seminary was great--quiet and peaceful, with stately old trees swaying in the breeze. It's been officially shut down by the powers-that-be since the early 1980s, but an elderly Vietnamese priest still lives there and cares for the place, and employs a husband and wife couple who help him out.

We've heard two different versions of the history of the place--one, that the seminary and church were built by the French in the early 1900s; another, that they were built by the Portuguese long before that. It's possible that both are true--the site could have been used by the Portuguese (perhaps even as early as the 1700s) and then re-built by the French later on. Either way, the grounds are well-kept and it's a wonderfully quiet place surrounded by rice fields and well-shaded by the trees. I asked the priest/caretaker if it was possible for people to come spend a night or two there (they certainly have enough rooms) and was told with a smile that sure it was possible so long as permission was granted by the authorities. Which, I'm guessing, means "No."

Either way, I'd like to go out again and spend the better part of a day with a Good Book and a journal. Seems to be a great spot for reflection and thinking.

Our journey wasn't over yet, though. As it turns out we were right out near the hometown of one of the friends who had come along with us. Following his lead we wound our way through more villages and rice paddies until we came to a Catholic cemetery that, according to our friend/guide, dates back four hundred years. The tombs were impressive and shaped like lotus flowers, turtle shells and other crazy, unidentifiable objects. One of the tombs even had stairs that descended underneath it--right down to the water table (which in that part of the country was only about five feet beneath us). We didn't venture down to see whether the tomb's occupant was hanging out down there or not.

From the cemetery it was just another couple of miles to an old Cham tower--the oldest of the 14 towers left standing in the province, apparently. The Cham were a people group from India who settled most of southern Vietnam a long, long time ago. They were eventually driven out by the Vietnamese coming down from the north, but not before they'd built themselves a bunch of brick towers all over the countryside. This tower dated from the 11th century, and was in quite good shape for being around 1000 years old. The Cham were remarkable for building things with bricks but no mortar. Somehow they fitted everything together so precisely that they didn't need the stuff.

From the tower we circled back around the lagoon behind Quy Nhon and hit the new highway which runs the length of the sandy, deserted "economic development zone" across the water from the city. We cruised along the wide, vacant stretch of asphalt and across the long bridge spanning the lagoon, back to the city and civilization. All told it was a tour I would have been happy to pay $30 or $40 for, which we got instead for the price of a couple liters of gasoline and lunch for our friends. Days like that make me happy to be here in Vietnam, happy to have friends willing to drag me around by motorbike for half a day, happy to be slowly unfolding the history and character of these people.

Rather than just posting a bunch of pictures, I thought a video would be in order to share a little more about this trip, so you can take a look at the link below. (Watch it in full screen for full effect, of course.)

Binh Dinh Exploration from Steven Shetterly on Vimeo.

Chuc mung nam moi!

2010-02-17T02:46:00.000-08:00

Well, a happy New Year to everyone. No, I didn't just awaken from a six week long coma or look at the wrong month on the calendar this morning. Here in Vietnam, the (Lunar) New Year happened just a few days ago.

New Year's is a big, big deal in Vietnam. It's known as Tet, and the celebrations go on for a good week, at least. Traditionally, Tet is a time when families welcome back the spirits of their departed ancestors by putting goodies like fruit, rice wine, and sticky rice "cakes" out on the family altar. They send them off after a few days by burning paper money (which the spirits presumably take back to spend in the afterlife). In the meantime there are fireworks and lots of visiting of relatives and friends.
We're not gonna lie--there are some fairly annoying aspects of Tet. We find that kids are given a long break from school and no one really knows what to do with them. Packs of middle schoolers roam the streets with airsoft guns shooting bystanders who catch their eye (including foreign teachers who happen to be riding their bikes around town at the wrong time). Happy New Year to you too, kids. People also tend to drive their motorbikes with an extra dose of crazy thrown in at this time of year and we hear ambulance sirens with sad regularity.

One of my favorite things so far about Tet, though, are the colors. Vietnam is normally a colorful country (in many ways) and Tet is the colorfullest time of year, to coin a new word. Yellow and red are the main ones, but it seems that, so long as it's bright it's all right. Here are some recent pictures with brief explanations for you.

This is the cay may--a special kind of tree that blooms at Tet. I think they're rather expensive, though, so they're much less common than these flowers...

...which lined one of the main streets in town for a good mile on both sides, right up until New Year's Day, when they all mysteriously disappeared.

Flags are plentiful. It helps, I suppose, that red and yellow are big Tet colors.

There's a Children's Park with rides and playground and such right across the street from the University that's usually fairly mellow and quiet. Not during Tet, though. Balloons are the big thing.

My attempt at a cool shot.

It seems that Wal-Mart doesn't have a worldwide monopoly on silly oversized inflatable holiday characters.

All of the markets close down for three days or so during Tet, so everyone does their holiday shopping the day or two beforehand. Crazier than usual.

Visiting graves, cleaning them up, burning incense...all part of the package for most people.

Of course, the cows continue to do their part in keeping the grass trimmed.

Prettier than any firework, balloon or massive inflatable creature--in my humble opinion.

It's a bird...it's a plane...

2010-01-15T17:39:00.000-08:00

What on earth are these people doing?

Beach ballet?

Fleeing from oversized, crab-clawed extraterrestrials?

Ultimate Fighting: Beach Edition?

Here, maybe this picture will help…

That’s right. Not Ultimate Fighting, but Ultimate Frisbee.

What you’re seeing are the first publicly released photos of the Vietnamese National Ultimate Frisbee Team in action. What’s that you say? You didn’t know that Vietnam had a National Ultimate Frisbee Team? Well, they do now. Because that’s what our shirts say, and there’s no one around to tell us different.

It all began last year when I (Steven) took note of the fact that the only sports people seemed to play on the beach in Quy Nhon were volleyball, soccer and a local specialty I’m going to call “throw handfuls of wet sand at members of the opposite sex and run away.” Since I don’t particularly enjoy or excel at any of these sports, I decided—along with my teammate Jason—to introduce something new to the mix.

Jason and I happen to own identical 175-gram Ultimate discs (a sure sign that we would be good friends from the get-go). One day, we pulled them out and started tossing them around with students on the beach at exercise time.

At first, the kids were--to be honest--downright terrible. Many were the Frisbees that had to be fished out of the ocean. There were plenty of near-misses, with wildly-flung plastic discs nearly causing serious injury to elderly folks, young couples and small children alike.

But things slowly improved. Under the patient tutelage of Steven and Jason, the students (shall we call them ‘apprentices’?) stopped hurling the discs willy-nilly and gained some control. They began catching more than they dropped. They learned different styles of throwing. They discovered Rule #1 of Frisbee, which is this: It really isn’t that difficult.

The students—who numbered just three or four at the beginning—enjoyed tossing the Frisbee, but they didn’t really understand what the big deal was. Throw, catch. Throw, catch. Throw, miss, chase into the ocean and retrieve. It got a little tedious after a while.

But wait, we told them. There’s more.

One day, when we had a total of six people out on the beach, we played our first “real” game of Ultimate. As expected, it started off pretty terrible but the students caught on quickly. And they enjoyed it.

Throughout the second half of last year and the first half of this year, we’ve continued playing regular games of Ultimate with the students. The group has grown from three or four regulars in the beginning to seven, eight, sometimes ten students (plus the two foreign coach/players). At times crowds gather to witness the sheer awesomeness unfolding before them. Some of them actually have enough courage to come down and play with us, and a few of those stick around and become part of The Group.

We even have visiting foreign players who put in an appearance now and then—Joelle plays once in a while, and we usually rope most of our visitors into playing at least one game while they’re in Quy Nhon.

Partway through first semester this year, I realized something: These students were good. I mean, they were really good. They were fast, they knew how to throw and catch, they understood the game. And they made me work hard to keep up with them. When others showed up to play, the students themselves were able to explain the game and teach the newbies how to play much more quickly than I could. Hmmm. An important Nugget of Wisdom in there somewhere, to be sure.

We finally reached the point toward the end of first semester this year that we figured our skills (and, indeed, our fame) had grown to such a point that we would have to make ourselves official. And by “official,” I mean we had to make cool shirts for us to wear.

In a time-honored Vietnamese tradition, I went out and “borrowed” a couple of design ideas from various places, put them together, and we had ourselves a shirt design. This is what I came up with.

So, now that we are the undisputed representatives of Ultimate Frisbee in Vietnam we just need some other national teams to contact us and play a game or two. Any takers? Anyone?

P.S. Yes, we're aware that there are already some Ultimate leagues in Hanoi and Saigon...and we're willing to consider taking them on as minor league partners to our franchise.

P.P.S. Thanks to Sylvia for taking some great pictures of the team in action, and to Paul, for being a visiting foreign star player.

Christmas in Vietnam

2009-12-27T01:10:00.000-08:00

Q: What do a bunch of cute kids, a freaky Santa face, a swivelly computer chair, a Swedish tea ring and the game "Bananagrams" have in common?

A: They're all featured in Steven and Joelle's 2009 Christmas From Vietnam video! Check it out.

Steven & Joelle Christmas 2009 - Vietnam from Steven Shetterly on Vimeo.

(You should probably watch it full screen and in HD to get the full effect.)

You have entered...the Economic Development Twilight Zone

2009-12-14T19:12:00.000-08:00

This holiday season has been a full, busy, but great time for us as we've had a chance to share about Christmas and our reasons for celebrating it with hundreds of excited students. It's really quite impressive to look at the holiday from an outsider's perspective--just how much effort and money we as Americans pour into Christmas. No other holiday even comes close. No wonder people around the world are fascinated with it.

In addition to trying to explain Christmas to everyone, we've been doing all our 'normal' stuff--teaching classes, hanging out with students, going to the market, meeting with teammates, etc. etc. etc.

We've been busy, so it was with no small amount of enthusiasm that we woke up last Saturday, saw that it was going to be a relatively cool (less than 85 degree) day, and decided to get on our bikes and flee town. The trip we took was one that we had been planning for a long time--one that would only really be possible in cooler weather, due to the time and distances involved. It was, as it turned out, a trip into Utter Weirdness.

We started by riding across town to the Thi Nai bridge--currently the longest bridge in Vietnam at about two miles. The bridge was built across a big lagoon which lies behind the peninsula that Quy Nhon occupies. It was constructed for the express purpose of connecting Quy Nhon and its port to another, larger peninsula on the other side of the lagoon which is slated to become the Nhon Hoi Economic Zone (take a look at the map below, if that helps).

Since real estate on Quy Nhon's narrow peninsula is in short supply, it made sense in someone's mind (or pocketbook) to encourage industrial development on this other peninsula in an area resembling the Sahara desert, with towering sand dunes and little else. The result was a kind of weirdness which seems unique to East Asian countries with centrally-planned economies.

The best way I can describe it is as a cross between the setting of a 1960s "last man on earth" sci-fi movie and Alice in Wonderland. Roads that go nowhere, creepy deserted warehouses, concrete animal statues--this place has it all. Upon reaching the far side of the bridge we found out that our camera batteries were low, so we weren't able to take very many pictures. But take a look at what we did capture, and I'll try to let the pictures do most of the talking.

Here we see the Thi Nai bridge in the background and a fit young man with a sweet steel-frame bicycle. (No it's NOT a girl's bike. All the bikes in Vietnam have the angled cross-bar like that. They really do.)

Our first discovery when we reached the far side of the bridge was an exciting one. At the base of the bridge, some sort of resort was under construction. And as anyone who's been to Southeast Asia knows, no high class resort is complete without a menagerie of concrete animals to "enhance" the natural landscape. In this case, the animals were dolphins (apparently being launched into the air by an underwater explosion of some sort) and seals...

...harpooned seals...

...with holes in their heads...

...and giant swans.

Leaving our animal friends behind, we moved further into the Nhon Hoi Economic Zone, past a huge (deserted) gas station, and a (deserted) strip mall with billiards tables, a cafe, and a karaoke bar. We entered an area with big roundabouts and massive six- and eight-lane, newly paved roads...

...many of which dead-ended in sand dunes...

...all of which were almost completely deserted and half covered with sand.

In fact, the only economic development we saw in the Economic Development Zone (apart from the deserted gas station, half-constructed resort, and empty strip mall) were some big warehouses that must have taken a beating in the two big storms this year; the majority of their roofs were lying in pieces scattered about on the sand beside them.

After some further biking on deserted six-lane highways through the dunes, we came to the little fishing village of Nhon Ly. To reach the village you have to bike past a massive graveyard that's probably as big as the village itself. Graves stretch across the dunes for perhaps a half mile before you actually come to the village. Kind of creepy.

Nhon Ly village was a friendly little place with narrow, winding streets and some nice-looking (though not-so-clean) beaches. But it's a long ways from nowhere.

All told it was a good, worthwhile trip--if not for its scenic beauty then for its sheer oddness and its glimpses of another side to life in a quickly-changing country.

Chance of a White Christmas: Nil

2009-12-06T18:34:00.000-08:00

This morning I got an email from my dad with a picture of my parents' house in the newly-fallen snow of last night's flurries. A quick check of the weather back in Washington shows lows in the teens and highs in the 20s and 30s for the next few days. A white Christmas looks like a real possibility.

And here in Quy Nhon? Well, we've got lows in the teens and highs in the 30s too. Just look:

Oh, wait. That would be 30 degrees Celsius. Yeah, sunny and upper 80s for the highs most days in these parts. Last year at this time we were smack in the middle of the rainy season, but there's nary a drop to be seen for the next week here at least.

That hasn't prevented us from getting in the holiday spirit, though. Thanksgiving/Christmas is a great time of year not just because of good food, packages from home, nice music and the presence of minty things in the house. It's also a great time to share with students.

This year, for instance, we celebrated as close to a "real" Thanksgiving as we could with several of our close student friends. Joelle made a ton of food, we read the Thanksgiving story, played some games and had a generally great time.

Then, two days later, we did it all over again, this time with our teammates Jill and Jason and some other foreign friends. Watching Planes, Trains and Automobiles while eating homemade pumpkin cheesecake and apple pie brought a fitting and familiar end to the Thanksgiving festivities.

After Thanksgiving, of course, it's time to get ready for Christmas. Though we settled for a miniature fake tree last year, we went all the way and opted for a real, live one this year. And when I say "tree," I mean, of course, "small ornamental shrub." That's right--for about $1.75 we went out and purchased one of those 70s-era evergreen shrubs that take over people's flowerbeds and are all prickly and usually give you rash if you brush against them. Nothing says Christmas like a 70s-era prickly rash-inducing ornamental shrub, right? Most people in the States who had those particular shrubs came to their senses in the early 90s and tore them out, but in Vietnam there still seems to be a market for them. In any case, it works fine and it's about as close as we're gonna get to the real thing. One nice, familiar holiday surprise was the poinsettia we were able to purchase at the same time.

Thus, with some rearranging of our room, the addition of some lights to the windows and a few other decorations here and there, we've got a room outfitted for Christmas. And if we turn both of our AC units on, you just might be able to close your eyes and imagine Jack Frost himself nipping at your nose.

Of course, one thing we'll never be able to replicate here are all the friends and family we've left back in the chilly, dark US of A. So, while we love Quy Nhon and are looking forward to sharing Christmas with our Vietnamese friends, we will be missing all of you and thinking about you lots.

Local adventures

2009-11-11T22:23:00.000-08:00

For a more complete set of pictures relating to this story, check out our photo album.

So far this year our schedule hasn't allowed for any far-ranging trips into the hinterlands of Vietnam. (We'll save those for when we have visitors here with us), but we have been able to get to know the area around Quy Nhon a little better and that's been a very good thing.

A random encounter with a Dutch tourist looking to explore the surrounding area provided the motivation for Joelle to organize a trip with a couple of the girls she tutors. They headed about an hour out of town to a 'natural area' called Ham Ho--a river with some cool, sculpted rocks--and then hit up some Cham towers on the way back to town. The Cham people lived in this part of Vietnam long before there was a Vietnam--they were a Hindu culture from India that once ruled a good portion of Southeast Asia. The area encompassing Da Nang, Nha Trang and Quy Nhon was their main center of operations in Vietnam. There are still some hilltop towers left in the area to remind us of what once was. (Not quite Angkor Wat, but still pretty cool.)

The next day we hopped a bus with our friend, Phung, and headed out to her hometown in the same general vicinity as Ham Ho. Phung lives in the hometown of a guy named Quang Trung (or Nguyen Hue), best known for driving the Chinese out of northern Vietnam and uniting the country under one ruler back in the late 1700s. There's a museum in his honor, which Phung was proud to show us.

We also had a chance to visit with her great family. Phung's grandparents, who spent 14 years living in Louisiana, are now back in Vietnam living with her mother and younger brother (Phung's father passed away in a motorbike accident several years ago, prompting their move back to Vietnam). One of the first things her grandpa did when he saw us was to shuffle into the other room and return with his green card and Louisiana driver's license, which he was evidently very proud of.
Older Vietnamese people--with their pajama suits and comb-overs and beautiful smiles--have a way of just charming the heck out of you and these two were no exception. We loved them pretty much instantly. Now we've got a date to return and celebrate Tet (Vietnamese New Year) with them, which should be a hoot.

Oh yeah, and while visiting Phung's hometown, Steven had to ride around on a ridiculously small bike, much to the amusement of Joelle, Phung, and everyone else on the street who saw him.

Tropical Storm Mirinae

2009-11-05T05:29:00.000-08:00

On Monday, November 2nd, Tropical Storm Mirinae lumbered ashore in central Vietnam, bringing a surprising amount of wind, rain and waves along with it.

Having recently survived Typhoon Ketsana (a Category 2 storm which hit about 200 miles north of us) we weren't really expecting too much from a puny tropical storm like Mirinae. The main difference, however, was that instead of hitting 200 miles away, Mirinae slammed into Phu Yen province, just a few miles south of Quy Nhon.
We weren't the only ones surprised, as this article makes clear. While the wind in Quy Nhon was definitely stronger than Ketsana due to the storm's proximity, it was the rain that we couldn't believe. 600 mm of rain fell in our province in a 24 hour period. That's 23 inches in 24 hours, the heaviest rain here in about 60 years and far above and beyond anything we ever saw in "rainy" Washington State. Since the bulk of the city is built on a fairly sheltered sand spit far from any large rivers, Quy Nhon itself was unaffected by floods but many of the low-lying areas in this part of the country were inundated. So far, 98 deaths have been blamed on the storm, with 20 people still unaccounted for.

Despite everything it threw at us, we stayed safe and dry in our on-campus apartment here (except for the occasional foray outside with ponchos and video camera). Through the entire storm the power never went off and we never ran out of water. The same can't be said for much of the rest of the city, which is currently going on 5 days with no running water. Everyone seems to be taking it in stride, though. Life is basically back to normal in the city, with students attending classes and people back at work.
A friend of ours who had returned to her hometown (about 40 miles from Quy Nhon) to weather out the storm with her family brought back this random and kind of sad story: An old man who lived down the road from her kept 100 pigs on his little farm. As the rains started to fall, he didn't pay much attention--this is Vietnam and it rains a lot here, after all. But by 9 PM the water had risen quickly and washed all of his pigs downriver. A single sow was saved by a man who somehow either hauled it into his boat or towed it to shore. He took it back to the old man and sold it to him for 200,000 VND, or about $12.

And now, if you're not tired of storm videos yet, here's what things looked like from our perspective...

Tropical Storm Mirinae - Quy Nhon, Vietnam from Steven Shetterly on Vimeo.

Peanut butter and jelly, Vietnam style

2009-10-16T01:32:00.000-07:00

Sometimes life in general just takes a lot longer in Vietnam. While it's true that we don't have the distractions of TV or cars or Wiis or iPhones to make life complicated, sometimes even really simple things--like making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich--can get complicated here. Watch the video below and see what I mean.

How to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich...in Vietnam from Steven Shetterly on Vimeo.

(If you're reading this on Facebook and the video isn't embedded, try this link: http://www.vimeo.com/7093323 )

Typhoon video

2009-09-30T01:49:00.000-07:00

A short video of Typhoon Ketsana as seen from Quy Nhon--before, during and after. Not quite CNN quality, but you get the picture. (If you're reading this on Facebook you probably don't see the video. Click here to go to it.)

All quiet on the eastern front

2009-09-29T05:36:00.000-07:00

Well, that was interesting.

We are alive and quite well after a slight grazing by Typhoon Ketsana. The storm rolled ashore around midmorning, 200 miles to our north, and I'll tell you what--I wouldn't have wanted to be any closer. (If you look closely, you can see "Qui Nhon" down on the bottom half of that big orange-looking storm).

Starting around sundown yesterday, the wind started howling and growling as the storm approached land, and didn't really let up until midafternoon today. Joelle contemplated heading out to the market this morning during a short lull, but abandoned that idea once things really started kicking. It was a good choice, as a ride around town late this afternoon showed--trees all over town had been snapped and tossed before the wind.

During one particularly fierce gust this morning we heard a crash next to our apartment, followed by a sustained chorus of high pitched Vietnamese girl-shrieks. We walked out on our balcony to see what had happened--an 18-inch diameter tree standing in the middle of the students' bike parking lot had snapped and fallen right in the midst of the crowded lot with students all around. It smashed a few bicycles but, to everyone's great relief, no students. Shortly after that, classes were cancelled for the day and the students headed quickly home to ride out the rest of the storm.

Something I had anticipated which didn't materialize (thankfully) was a big storm surge. Our apartment is about 200 yards from the beach and I half expected to see saltwater spray outside our front door this morning. No such luck.

Da Nang and places north of here didn't fare as well. Around 2 dozen people are confirmed dead already and that number will probably rise as news comes out from the more remote areas. Keep them in your thoughts.

I'll end with a collage of the storm's aftermath (click on it for a larger version). Take care, everyone, and stay dry!

Storm update

2009-09-28T09:22:00.000-07:00

It's about 11:30 pm (past our bedtime) but we're awake listening to the wind howl outside. After a lull this afternoon, the wind picked up again this evening. There have been some good gusts so far but nothing more severe than a typical stormy November day in Washington.

However, the same can't be said of our friends and teammates, the Farnums, who flew from Hanoi to Da Nang the other day to celebrate their wedding anniversary at a nice beachside resort. Da Nang happens to be directly in the path of the approaching storm--currently a Category 2 with winds around 100+ mph. They've been moved out of their cabin on the beach and put in a hotel about a football field's length away from the beach where they can watch the whole thing go down.

Also, the parents of Mo ("Muh"), a student that Joelle and I got to know last year, live right in the same area. Their house floods regularly as it is, and it looks like this one's going to be worse than normal. She sent Joelle a message this evening telling her that she's very worried for her family. (You can read about our visit to her family's house last year here.) Please keep Vietnam in general and especially the Farnums and Mo's family in your thoughts over the next few days here!

More updates as time, internet and electricity availability allow...

Typhoon Ketsana

2009-09-27T21:34:00.000-07:00

Well, the tropical storm which just dumped 13 inches of rain on Manila has beefed itself up to a Category 1 typhoon and is now bearing down on Vietnam's central coast. Currently it's still a ways out at sea but the winds have kicked up and the rain has definitely started.

It's predicted to make landfall near Da Nang, about 200 miles north of us, with 70 to 90 mph winds and lots of rain. The effects here in Quy Nhon shouldn't be nearly as bad. For us, any troubles we experience will probably come from rainfall. It's kind of interesting (and a little scary) to watch the swells roll into the bay here, though. Quy Nhon itself is in a fairly well-protected little cove, but looking out across the bay you can see where the waves roll full-force into the rocks. Powerful stuff--and this is from a fairly weak system a couple hunred miles away.

I'll end with the requisite picture of a palm tree blowing in the wind, and a promise to keep you all updated if anything exciting should happen.

Not quite summer camp

2009-09-18T00:26:00.000-07:00

Time for a little snapshot of Vietnamese culture. A visit the other night from one of our friends—a fourth year student that Joelle got to know well last year—provided the insight and pictures for the entry you’re about to read.

One very big difference between Vietnamese college students and North American college students is how the two groups spend their summer vacations. Reaching back into the fog of my distant past, I can recall that an average North American college student might get a summer job, mooch off of mom and dad for a few months, work at a summer camp or perhaps go on a road trip with their friends. While Vietnamese students might take part in similar activities (with perhaps a bit more emphasis on the family side of things), every couple of summers they get to do something quite different from their American counterparts: military training.

Upon graduating from high school, Vietnamese have two choices: They can either continue on to some sort of post-secondary education or they can enlist in the military for two years. Not surprisingly, most of the students whose test scores are high enough choose to continue studying. But those students who do go on to higher education don’t get to fully escape the military. In a sort of accelerated “see what you missed” tour, each class of students has to attend a few weeks of training at least a couple summers out of their university careers.

While the words “military training” might conjure up images of crawling through mud under bands of concertina wire while drill sergeants shout obscenities at terrified trainees, we have been assured numerous times that military training is actually good fun. “We spent most of our time talking and playing cards,” one of the students assured us. “It was a good chance to get to know the other students in my department,” said another. In other words, it’s kind of like summer camp. Except instead of learning how to paddle a canoe or build a good campfire, students might instead learn how to disassemble and clean an AK-47 or successfully spot enemy aircraft at great distances. Merit badges are not awarded, unfortunately.

In the Vietnamese educational system, classes are formed the first year of university and remain the same throughout the four or five years that a student is in college. In keeping with this tradition, classes attend military training together as well. They sleep in the same barracks (at least two to a bed, no doubt), eat the same lousy food, and avoid the same outhouses. Though it might not do a whole lot to prepare them to repel invaders, it builds community and deepens friendships within the students’ classes and departments. And that’s not a bad thing.

From here on we’ll let the pictures—provided by our friend the 4^th year student—tell the story.

Military training lasts from a couple weeks to about a month. Students do morning exercises together, have a couple of instructional sessions and have a bit of homework they need to do each day, but for the most part they've got lots of free time.

If you're observant, you might note that there are a lot of girls here. Boys and girls do train and study together, but this is the Foreign Language department which is about 95% female.

This is Joelle's friend, showing off the sweet barracks where the students stay.

The trainees have to buy their own uniforms. Some of them complained that the military-style pants were too big for them and thus were allowed to wear jeans.

Judging by all of the pictures Joelle's friend showed us, posing for photos in front of the chalkboard was one of the more popular ways for students to pass time at military training.

Students meet each day for "class" under a fig tree. Taking pictures with the figs was also quite popular.

This was the base laundromat. Students wash their own clothes by hand (just as most of them do at home) and hang them up to dry outside. Groups of students stand guard in 1 hour shifts at night to keep anyone from coming and stealing their clothes hanging up outside.

Getting ready to head back to Quy Nhon after an enjoyable couple weeks of training.

We hope you, too, enjoyed this brief glimpse of life for Vietnamese students!

Ways to know you're back in Vietnam

2009-09-06T23:27:00.000-07:00

Should you one day wake up to find yourself in the middle of a hot, humid country and you begin to wonder exactly where you are (Belize? Brazil? Bangladesh?) it may be useful to check the following telltale markers to determine whether you are, in fact, in Vietnam.

Marker 1: Whilst walking on the sidewalk, do you find yourself frequently having to avoid motorbikes that don't fit on the street? If so, you may be in Vietnam.

Marker 2: Are shower sandals provided in your hotel bathroom? Are said sandals much, much too small for your feet? If so, you may be in Vietnam.

Marker 3: Whilst standing in your hotel shower, does the showerhead point directly at your belly button? (See "A") At the same time, are you in immediate danger of giving yourself a concussion on the water heater? (See "B") If you answer "yes" to both of these, chances are quite good that you're in Vietnam.

Marker 4: Do you see people taking advantage of a road flooded by an overflowing lake to wash off their motorbikes? Further evidence that you may indeed be in Vietnam.

Marker 5: Are you astounded and humbled by the beauty of this place--the sky, the rice fields, the ponds, the people? Have you answered "yes" to each of these questions? Then yes, you can safely assume you've found yourself in Vietnam.

We're baaaaaack...

Some thoughts about train trestles

2009-07-27T14:39:00.000-07:00

This entry was written a couple weeks ago while I had a lingering cold and thus had time to sit and ponder things a bit more than usual. I'm just finishing it up now...

Not feeling well but still needing to get out this morning, I took a walk in the 90 degree heat (a la Vietnam) up the road to Cedar Springs, a beautiful retreat center set at the edge of the Cascade foothills. It does the soul good just to stroll through there--stop by the pond, check out the flowers, and cool off in the shade of the giant cedars which give the place its name.

Today's walk also took me to an old railroad bed and out onto a trestle which spans a deep, forested gorge. Normally I'm in such a hurry to get somewhere that I walk across it without really thinking about it. Today, I stopped. And looked down. And felt a bit dizzy.

It really is a strange thing, being suspended a hundred-plus feet up in the air on a timber structure that was built over a century ago by people long dead and buried. To be clear: I'm not one of those weird railroad-obsessed guys who spend all their free time putting together model trains and watching documentaries about the specs of different sorts of steam engines. But when you stop and consider for a moment, you really do have to be impressed by the sheer engineering and logistical feat that is a train trestle. The fact that people using little more than some pulleys, maybe a steam donkey (whatever that is) and a lot of elbow grease could build something so massive and structurally sound is astounding.

One of the most impressive things about a trestle is the number of relatively small support beams that hold the whole thing together. I'm no engineer, but I would venture to say that, by itself, a single beam can't do a whole lot. I suppose you could toss it across a ditch and ride your bicycle over it if you were so inclined, but I wouldn't try driving a train (or a tricycle, for that matter) on it. Yet as the individual beams are bolted to the structure they become part of a system that, a hundred years down the road, still serves as a pretty dang good bridge.

I didn't linger too long on the trestle (lest someone see me and think I was a weird 'railroad guy') but as I walked home I was struck by how this was an object lesson for the work Joelle and I have been doing in Vietnam.

As I've supported cross-cultural workers in the past, I've sometimes wondered if my individual prayers to the Father or the small amount I'm able to give them each month really make much of a difference. Perhaps some of you have wondered the same thing as you support our work in Vietnam. From my vantage point now, I can answer that question with a resounding YES.

Just as a train would never have been able to cross that gorge at Cedar Springs without the support of those hundreds of individual beams, so Joelle and I would never be able to work and serve in Vietnam in our current capacity without the prayers and financial support of so many of you. Your petitions to the Father on our behalf and your sacrificial giving are not only appreciated--they're absolutely essential to the work that's being done.

As we prepare to return to Vietnam in just a few days now (August 19th!) we are very conscious of that, and thankful for the support we've received from all of you. Thanks!

Blogger, meet Facebook

2009-07-20T15:22:00.000-07:00

Okay, so it's really a simple process and I don't know why I haven't done it before, but I just wanted to officially announce that new posts to our Vietnam blog (http://sjsvietnam.blogspot.com) will now appear--by means of some fantastic cyberwizardry--as new notes on Facebook. Hopefully that way some of my Facebook amigos will be able to better keep up with what we're doing in Vietnam, if they so choose.

That's about it for now. Yep.

Video

2009-07-09T13:22:00.001-07:00

In order to show folks what we've been up to for the past 15 months or so, we put together a short (5 minute) video with pictures and some interviews with students. It's focused mostly on the teaching aspect of our work over there, and though you're hopefully aware that our focus is broader than simply teaching English, we hope it gives a good glimpse of what we've been doing and what some of the students are like.

So, click and enjoy. Also, please note that there should be a new blog entry with more information about our summer directly below this entry, published just a short time before this one. Two entries in one day, you ask? Yes. That's what happened.

Family, Friends, Fundraising

2009-07-09T10:58:00.000-07:00

We're about halfway through our two and a half month visit back in the States and it seems an appropriate time to take a look back at what we've done so far and a look forward at what's to come. While it might not be as exciting and exotic as hearing about what's been going on in Vietnam, we still think it's important stuff.

First for some of what we've been up to so far:

Our first several days back were a bit rough, with Steven suffering the one-two punch of jetlag and some stomach thing he'd picked up on the journey home. Here's what that time looked like for him:

Soon enough, though, everyone was feeling great and good times with family and friends ensued. We especially enjoyed getting out into the gorgeous North Cascades and doing a little camping and hiking with Rachel (Joelle's older sister), Seth and their two boys. Vietnam's mountains are beautiful, it's true, but there's something about the forested valleys and snowcapped peaks of the Cascades that can't be matched.

Steven's parents recently bought a house and made the move from Oregon up to southwest Washington. We've made a couple of trips down to visit them and help with a few projects, including laying a sweet new floor in their kitchen.

Toward the end of June, Joelle's younger sister Bethany returned to the States for a visit after eight months living and teaching in Egypt. Globetrotters that we are, we had last seen her in Thailand in January of this year. The reunion was a good one, made even better by the fact that we stopped at Gordito's Burritos in Seattle on our way back from the airport. Where else can you get a burrito that three grown adults can share, eat their fill, and still barely finish?

The end of June brought the beginning of Joelle's 29th year of life, a birthday she shares with brother-in-law Seth. And since Bethany was in Egypt over her birthday in May, she joined in for a triple birthday extravaganza.

When the birthday really got rocking, Seth, Steven and Will donned galabaya, a traditional Egyptian outfit that Bethany had brought back for them. Will's, unfortunately, was a tad small on him.

Being a contractor, Joelle's dad has ready access to 100-foot rolls of vapor barrier black plastic. Add sprinklers, a hill, a big bottle of hand soap from Deals Only, a warm sunny day and you have...The Mother of All Slip-n'-Slides.

Finally, the 4th of July arrived with unusually gorgeous weather which gave us the chance to head up to Mt. Baker with some of the fam and go hiking in the glory of creation once again before coming down to enjoy fellowship, food and (of course) fireworks.

So that's what we've been up to (at least some of the more exciting stuff), but what lies ahead? While we can't be 100% sure, we do know a few things: One needed focus for us is fundraising; though we had a surplus in our account when we left for Vietnam, due to some generous one-time gifts, we currently have a significant shortfall in our monthly support budget. We're trusting--as we have before--that if we're doing what we're supposed to be doing, the money will come in. Thus far, the one who called us has been faithful in providing everything we need to live and work, and we've no reason to believe He's going to change now.

As far as "our part" in everything, we'll be speaking at a couple of fellowships and, if you get our newsletters, you'll have the chance to either begin or renew a monthly support pledge. If you're in the area and would like to meet to discuss any of this (or just to have some coffee and catch up) we'd be happy to do that. You can reach us by email at steven.shetterly (at) elic (dot) org or call us at 988-4038. We'll be around Whatcom County until the middle of August.

In related exciting news, it's now possible to donate to our work in Vietnam online, using either a credit card or checking account. If that sounds interesting, you can click here for more information.

Have a spectacular summer and thanks for reading and keeping up with what we're doing. It means a lot to us!

Final adventures and the trip home

2009-05-26T19:03:00.000-07:00

To see pictures from this trip, click here.

This is being written from the living room of Joelle's parents' house in Sumas, Washington on a cool, May evening. Getting here from Quy Nhon was a bit of a process, which began with an overnight train ride to Saigon, a short flight to Hong Kong, and then a long hop across the Pacific to Vancouver, BC where we were picked up and whisked back to the States by Joelle's family. Still a little hard to believe that, for the next two and a half months, America is home for us again.

The week before we left was filled with goodbyes, packing, organizing, and at least one fairly sweet adventure. Phuong, a 4th year student who's been a good friend all year, invited Jason and Steven to visit his hometown in a remote part of Dak Lak province. This was not your typical tourist town visit by any stretch of the imagination; Phuong told us that--apart from his foreign English teacher who visited the year previous--we were the first foreigners to set foot in that part of the country in a long, long time.

Our journey started with a bus ride south along the coast from Quy Nhon. We hopped off the bus at a crossroads about 20 miles shy of the tourist hub of Nha Trang and flagged down an overcrowded van on its way up into the highlands. Wedging ourselves into the backseat as best we could, we survived a hair raising trip on windy mountain roads ("some of the most dangerous roads in Vietnam," Phuong assured us) to the sleepy mountain town of M'Drak.

From M'Drak we were picked up on motorbikes by Phuong's brother, brother-in-law and uncle and carried even further into the countryside. After a lengthy check-in procedure by the authorities at a small local police station we were allowed to go all the way to Phuong's commune, a group of about 70 houses in the midst of coffee fields, surrounded by jungle-covered mountains.
The residents of the commune are, by-and-large, transplants from a single town in northern Vietnam. Phuong's family lived in a poor, overpopulated region near Hanoi and moved to Dak Lak when he was a child, drawn by a promsie of free land from the government. The village that we saw--small, simple houses dotting hillsides covered with coffee trees--had been hacked out of the wilderness by the hands of those first settlers. Electricity arrived in the village just five years ago. Trips into town used to take a full day on a muddy trail (rather than 15 minutes on a dirt road).

We were warmly welcomed by Phuong's family and fed all the best meals they could provide (boiled chicken for breakfast, fresh fish hotpot and dog for dinner). Since most of the village was curious about the foreigners, large crowds were common at mealtimes as people tried to figure out what we were up to.

One of the things that most impressed me about the visit--in addition to the sheer remoteness of it all--was just how self-sufficient Phuong's family was. Rather than heading to the market every day, they grew their own vegetables, raised their own chickens and cows, kept enormous fish in a pond next to their house, grew a variety of delicious fruit in abundance, and bought home-grown rice from their neighbors. Were the global food supply to collapse tomorrow, Phuong's family would do just fine.

A highlight of the trip was the hike Phuong took us on through the rolling hills near the village, down a valley to a meandering stream and finally down to the base of a huge waterfall, roaring in wild splendor, surrounded by nothing but mountains and virgin rainforest. We took turns jumping off of rocks into the pool below the falls, shouting for sheer delight.

Among other things, the trip convinced me (Steven) that I really need to study more Vietnamese if I want to communicate with people outside of a university setting. It was also a good glimpse into the lives that many of my students have lived, as the majority of them come from the countryside rather than the city. Overall, though, it was simply a blessing--a fitting finale to 15 months of work and adventure in Vietnam.

May Holiday

2009-05-02T19:22:00.000-07:00

On April 30th, 1975 the course of history changed dramatically for Vietnam. Officially called "National Unity Day" here, it's better known in the West as the Fall of Saigon. Without getting too political, it's the day that North and South Vietnam ceased to exist as separate entities and became, instead, the Socialist Republic of Viet Nam.

April 30th is now celebrated in Vietnam as a national holiday which--to no one's surprise--is followed by May 1st (another national holiday--known in much of the world as International Workers' Day--which has little or nothing to do with giving bouquets of flowers to people.) This year, these back-to-back holidays fell quite conveniently on a Thursday and Friday, which led to a four day weekend which was further stretched to a five day weekend for us by the fact that Steven doesn't normally teach on Wednesdays anyway. All that to say: We've had some time on our hands this past week.

So, with bus tickets in hand, we left Quy Nhon on Wednesday morning for a 5 hour trip up the coast. Our destination was Hoi An, an ancient Vietnamese port town that's now a major stop on the north-south tourist route. We first visited Hoi An in December with Will and Carissa and, while it doesn't rank as the most "authentic" Vietnamese experience available (tourists outnumber locals about 3 to 1, I think), it's easy to get to and is a good spot to buy reasonably priced souvenirs. Since we'll soon be seeing our families, friends and supporters for the first time in 15 months, we figured we had some shopping to do.

Hoi An was much the same as we remembered it--pretty, rainy, and crawling with foreigners. We did our shopping, had our fill of Western food and were ready to return to Quy Nhon with our loot. As it turned out, our last day held something far different and more authentic in store for us.

Mo, one of Steven's first-year students, happened to be home visiting her parents over the long weekend in a village just a few miles outside Hoi An. Joelle has been getting to know Mo (pronounced like the first syllable of 'mother') over the last few months and she had previously invited us to come visit her hometown. So we took her up on her offer and, around 10:30 in the morning, found ourselves in the quiet village of Dien Ban, walking up to the front door of a small house and being greeted by Mo, her family and several curious neighbor kids.

Mo told us that she's the only person in her village who speaks English, and we believe her. She said that several years ago a couple of foreigners rode their bicycles through town but we were first ones to visit since then. We strolled with her along the narrow streets of the village, past a house with red chili peppers drying on the porch and roof, stepping off the road when cows came trundling along the opposite direction. We visited her uncle's house where the family's most recent rice harvest was spread out evenly all over their living room floor as it dried (they would normally dry it outside, but the weather hadn't been cooperating).

Back at Mo's family's house we sat down to a tasty lunch of duck and taro soup with her parents, her older sister and her sister's boyfriend. We weren't able to communicate a whole lot with the family (we asked some basic family information in Vietnamese, and her father asked how long we'd been married and if we had flies in America like they do in Vietnam). Still, we felt welcomed and honored just to be there. We've been off the beaten track plenty of times before, but never had the chance to sit down to a meal with a family in the countryside.

The family has a total of seven people, with three beds to share among them all. Mo pointed to a pair of queen-bed sized lofts about 10 feet off the concrete floor of the main room and explained that that's where they went when it flooded. One of the bunks was for all of their furniture and possessions, the other was for the people. The floodwaters reach about four or five feet deep inside their house every couple of years. "We used to be very poor," Mo explained, "But we're doing better now." Mo--the youngest of five--is the first in the family to go to university.

The bus trip back to Quy Nhon later that afternoon took us through rice fields and small towns, over swollen rivers under a threatening gray sky. As we went, it was nice to feel like we understood the things we were seeing just a little bit more than we had before.

To see pictures from our trip, click here.

Living the Good Life

2009-04-01T19:22:00.000-07:00

As I write this, there is a man in flip-flops pounding on our bathroom wall with a chisel and sledgehammer, removing broken tiles and making an incredible racket. He and his partner just finished destroying part of our floor (also due to a whole row of tiles which broke rather alarmingly all at once one day). Our apartment and my lungs are covered in a fine dust of concrete and tile fragments, and the weather outside is gray and soggy. Some days are like this.

But as much as we might try stir up sympathy by making everyone believe that we live a life of deprivation and hardship here, the secret is getting out--most of you (especially those who have been able to visit us) understand by now that Quy Nhon isn't exactly the armpit of Southeast Asia. It is, in fact, amazingly beautiful and largely undiscovered by international tourists. In recent years, though, there are a few who have begun to recognize the tourism potential of this area and thus we've started to get the first really nice, world-class resorts being built along this stretch of the coast.

Somehow this past week we had the opportunity to visit not one but two resorts a short distance outside of Quy Nhon. The first, called Life Resort, is a small, comfortable place about five or six miles south of town, sharing a beach with a fishing village. If I were in the practice of giving out stars to such places, I might give it four or so. The beach is clean and the rooms nice and spacious; it costs about $100 a night to stay. The day before our 3rd wedding anniversary we rode the city bus out to the Life Resort and met the new manager there--an Australian fellow who we'd heard was really nice. As it turned out, the reports were correct; he let us into the resort for free, gave us some complimentary cold drinks, sat down for a chat with us and then let us use one of the guest rooms to shower and change after we'd gone swimming at their beach. So we swam, enjoyed the beach, had a good dinner and headed home. A pretty sweet evening.

Four days later we were at it again. This time, our personnel director Susan was visiting from Hanoi and all of us (the Fizzards, Susan, Joelle and I) got into a taxi and headed a little further south to a place called Bai Tram Hideaway Resort. "Hideaway" is an apt name in this case, as it's located off a spur highway at the end of a 3 mile stretch of what is quite possibly the worst dirt road in Vietnam. The jostling, bone-jarring ride was worth it, though, as we were greeted with our very own pristine, private beach and clear, turquoise waters.

Bai Tram is still very much under construction. At this point it consists only of a restaurant/reception area and seven villas (out of a planned 150 or so). We didn't mind, though, as this meant that we had the place almost entirely to ourselves. A former Quy Nhon student and a good friend of Jill and Jason's is the Guest Relations Manager and was able to get us in and show us around. The villa she took us to--a single bedroom house with a separate living area, private pool and beach view--goes for around $700 a night. Sheesh. We swam in their pool, took a dip in the ocean, climbed around on the rocks and generally made believe we were fabulously wealthy for the better part of a morning.

As I floated in the cool water and took in the scenery I quietly contemplated the lifestyle of a volunteer English teacher in Vietnam. Visiting two gorgeous resorts for free in the space of a week wasn't exactly what we had anticipated when we signed up to come over here, but hey--we'll take it.
And even as the sound of chisel on bathroom tile continues to reverberate around our apartment, I can honestly say that our entire time here in Quy Nhon (not just the time spent at 4 and 5 star resorts) has been far beyond what we could have asked for or imagined.

To see some pictures from our pair of resort adventures, click here.

Kontum

2009-03-17T20:43:00.000-07:00

To skip all the blah blah blah and just see some pictures of our weekend in the highlands, click here.
The last couple of weeks we've been blessed once again to have a friend visiting us from the States. Kimberly--a friend of Joelle's since their days in New Zealand--came for ten days to see what life is like in Vietnam. After a few days seeing the sights around Quy Nhon, we decided to take a few days and explore somewhere else. Steven had to be around to teach so we couldn't go too far; looking at a map we saw Kontum--a province in the highlands on the Lao border, a bit north and west of Quy Nhon. The guidebooks described Kontum as kind of a remote, end-of-the-road, out-of-the-way sort of place. In other words, just where we wanted to be.

A three and a half hour bus ride took us from Quy Nhon through low plains and rice fields before climbing steeply up winding mountain roads into the hilly plateau of Vietnam's central highlands. A tourist trap Kontum is not, and our first impression of the city was a bit underwhelming. It has the feel of a place that is entirely under construction--roads ripped up, machinery moving to and fro. The surrounding countryside was pretty, but not as striking as the territory further south around Dalat.

However, the big draw to Kontum isn't the tourist amenities (of which there are none) or the scenery but the ease with which you can visit ethnic villages and interact with the people. In other parts of Vietnam where we've seen ethnic minority folks it's always had a bit of an artificial, circus sideshow sort of quality to it--the main purpose of some of the villages we've been in has seemed to be selling souvenirs to foreigners. Not so in Kontum. Just on the edge of town are three or four different villages, and a few kilometers out are many more. The province has around 700 villages, if I remember my numbers correctly. Though some of the villages have modern brick buildings, a lot of the people live in stilt houses with walls made of mud and straw. Their cows camp out downstairs. Everyone was extremely friendly--the kids in particular--and no one tried to sell us anything.

We had a guide for one of our days out in the country and then just walked and biked the rest of the time. I'll let the pictures tell the rest of the story...

The Year in Review...

2009-02-24T04:38:00.000-08:00

Exactly one year ago today, a plane out of Hong Kong touched down at Noi Bai airport outside of Hanoi and disgorged two very tired, rather disheveled and discombobulated Americans. These travelers' names were Joelle and Steven and they weren't coming to Vietnam to take pictures, buy a few silk scarves and leave. Like a stubborn case of athlete's foot, they were going to be around for a while.

In the twelve months since then, we've seen a fair bit of this here country. We've tasted its food (even some of the stuff that looked gross), swam in its seas, hiked its mountains. We've made friends, embarrased ourselves on numerous occasions, had close calls with pickpockets and purse snatchers, been hit by a speeding motorbike, and somehow gotten a newly-purchased wardrobe stuck in a tight spiral staircase. We've ridden on planes, trains, basket boats, xe oms and elephants. We've watched mold grow on every single piece of clothing and furniture we own, battled hordes of giant cockroaches, sweated more than we ever imagined possible, and witnesed our bus driver getting punched in the eye by a rival bus driver. More than that we've laughed till we cried with our Vietnamese friends, had deep conversations in broken English over strong iced coffee and wondered how on earth a place so different from our home could still be so dang beautiful and sometimes feel so much like...home.

It hasn't all been easy. There have been broken bones (two of them), miserable nights spent in the bathroom, and tears (lots of those) over loved ones so far away. There have been birthdays that we've couldn't make it to (including several literal days of birth, with babies back home popping out like to make Orville Redenbacher throw a fit). There have been hikes we could have gone on, massive snowstorms we missed, foods we have longed for, and people on the other side of the ocean that we really wish we could have just sat down and had a burrito with once or twice.

Has it been worth it? Yes. Absolutely.

Are we excited about coming home for the summer in a few months? Yes. Absolutely. As wonderful as they are, Skype and Facebook are no replacement for a real chat, and we're so looking forward to being able to see many of you this summer. We're also incredibly thankful for the support, encouragement, emails and blog comments y'all have given us over this past year. We miss you guys.

As a parting gift for our one year anniversary, we now present to you the Shetterly timeline--a few key pictures from the past year in Vietnam:

Spring 2008: Encountering the joys of learning a tonal language, our first six months in Hanoi were focused largely on language study. Here we are with one of our tutors.

April 13, 2008: Approximately 8 seconds into his first basketball game in Vietnam, Steven blocks a bullet pass with his right thumb, which promptly breaks. Here he is awaiting medical care at the clinic in Hanoi.

May 2008: The weather grew warm. Uncomfortably so. The logical course of action was to stick a big fan up the back of one's shirt and look like a body builder for a while.

May 2008: 90 degrees in the shade with 70% humidity and somehow she still manages to look good.

June 2008: Ninh Binh, our first escape from Hanoi without the aid of someone who speaks Vietnamese. We survived, and saw a rice harvest in full swing to boot.

Summer 2008: East meets West. The pervasive influence of punk culture extends even to this young, impressionable Vietnamese caterpillar.

July 2008: A scenic shot of the historic battle site of Dien Bien Phu...and Joelle's forehead.

September 2008: A bird's eye view of Quy Nhon, our new home, confirms that yes--this is indeed a dang beautiful place.

October 2008: A class of Vietnamese students goes to the beach for a picnic and invites some foreign teachers along. A good time is had by all.

November 2008: Steven makes a fool out of himself by singing "Stand By Me" with his teammate Jason in front of 500+ students. Joelle continues to look really good. Both receive flowers.

December 2008: Christmas parties and excited students. Fun.

Christmas 2008: Visitors from distant lands arrive to celebrate the day with us. We are blessed.

January 2009: Three Iblings siblings and Steven make their way through southern Vietnam on the way to Thailand for classes, a conference and elephant riding.

Those who sow in tears
will reap with songs of joy.

He who goes out weeping,
carrying seed to sow,
will return with songs of joy,
carrying sheaves with him.

-Ps. 126

Anyone still reading this thing...?

2009-02-01T00:00:00.000-08:00

Wow. I wouldn't blame you at all if you had stopped checking our blog. As it stands it's been well over a month since we last updated.

To employ a much-overused phrase: It has been the perfect storm of busyness, travel, computer problems and laziness that has kept us from updating you all on our lives in a timely manner. Sorry 'bout that.

As I write this, I sit overlooking a city street from a cafe in Chiang Mai, Thailand with a brand new HP laptop at my fingers. How did we get here? Where did the new computer come from? What on earth has been happening the last month and a half? I'll try to give you the quick-and-dirty (or not so dirty) explanation below:

December flew by in a blur of activities, visitors, celebrations and extra classes. As a team, we wanted to make the most of the season with students, so we had several things planned each week. From cookie making parties to Christmas movies to a big party with around 120 students AND Santa Claus himself, we did our best to communicate the meaning of Christmas to anyone and everyone who would listen.
Partway through December, Joelle's brother Will and our friend Carissa arrived in Vietnam to celebrate Christmas with us. We had a great time showing them around Quy Nhon, traveling with them, introducing them to students and enjoying the season.
After Christmas, Carissa headed back to the states and Joelle's younger sister Bethany arrived from Egypt where she's been living for the past several months. After a few days in Quy Nhon we picked up and traveled to Saigon via the scenic route (hitting up the coastal city of Nha Trang and the highlands city of Da Lat on the way).
From Saigon, we flew to Bangkok and then Chiang Mai where we've been for the past few weeks. Steven took classes for his MA degree in TESOL for two weeks while Joelle, Bethany and Will gallivanted around the area.
Sadly, our time with Bethany and Will came to an end. Will headed back to the States while Bethany returned to Egypt. We had a couple days of down time, then started our annual conference with our organization.
For the past several days we've been hanging out with some 600 other teachers from all across Asia taking teaching workshops, fellowshipping, learning a lot from the Word and relaxing. In another few days we'll be returning to Vietnam and a period of relaxation before the next semester begins. Whew!

As for the new computer: If you'll recall, I (Steven) got pegged by a speeding motorbike a couple months back. In addition to a cracked shoulder blade, our poor HP laptop was part of the collateral damage of the whole incident. It had been riding in the bike basket and landed hard on the pavement when I went down. Though it didn't die instantly, it slowly grew less and less usable until it was finally apparent that a new one would be needed.

One of our teammates offered to have her parents bring us one from the States (they were coming to visit her in Thailand). We took her up on the offer and a few days later, lo and behold, we had in our posession a newer, faster, and cheaper laptop than our old one. Sweet.

So we are back up and running with the technology stuff again. If you've tried calling or emailing or checking our blog or pictures lately and haven't seen much, our apologies. We're a bit backlogged now on getting pictures uploaded, but hope to have that done soon. Check our photo album regularly to see if anything new has been added.

Thanks for being patient with us. Really, we're alive and we're glad you guys care about us!

Thanksgiving: Better late than never

2008-12-05T02:31:00.000-08:00

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

2008-11-16T06:39:00.001-08:00

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

2008-11-15T07:48:00.000-08:00

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

2008-11-06T06:49:00.000-08:00

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

2008-10-19T07:27:00.001-07:00

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

2008-10-10T23:46:00.001-07:00

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!

2008-10-02T22:31:00.001-07:00

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

2008-09-26T23:59:00.001-07:00

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

2008-09-15T19:47:00.000-07:00

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

2008-09-10T02:30:00.000-07:00

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

2008-09-07T00:43:00.000-07:00

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!!!

2008-08-30T07:51:00.000-07:00

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...

2008-08-20T07:41:00.000-07:00

...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

2008-08-10T02:11:00.000-07:00

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!!!

2008-08-07T07:28:00.000-07:00

(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

2008-08-01T22:19:00.000-07:00

...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

2008-07-06T19:56:00.000-07:00

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...

2008-06-26T00:02:00.000-07:00

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

2008-06-21T02:31:00.001-07:00

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

2008-06-17T02:15:00.000-07:00

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

2008-06-06T05:57:00.001-07:00

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

2008-05-18T20:46:00.000-07:00

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

2008-05-13T03:41:00.000-07:00

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.

The last few weeks

2008-05-09T23:20:00.000-07:00

Hey, it's been a while since we've updated the ol' blog, so we figured we'd just give a sampling of what's been happening over the last few weeks.

A couple weekends ago, we put on our old youth leader hats (not literally) and helped out on a youth retreat with our international fellowship. It was a good time with about a dozen youth from all over the world, though very little sleep was to be had. We came back rather tired, and (in another sign that he's becoming an old man) Steven proceeded to get a flu-like thing a couple of days later--fever, chills, headache--all that fun stuff. For her part, Joelle had sympathy sickness for about 14 seconds and was fine after that.

As I (Steven) was starting to recover from my flu symptoms, a nasty sore throat set in and refused to go away. Since we were headed to the clinic for follow-up X-rays of my broken thumb we just had the doctor take a look at my throat (which he figured was probably strep) and had some antibiotics prescribed. My thumb is healing fine, but I'm starting to get tired of health issues.

The school year is wrapping up here, which means that a lot of our team members will soon be heading back to their home countries for the summer. Since we arrived mid-year, we'll be among the few from our organization who stick around in Hanoi for the whole summer. From everything we've heard and experienced so far, it's gonna be a toasty one, for sure. One of the couples who's leaving for the summer has asked us to house sit for them while they're gone, and we've obliged. Since their family lives permanently in Hanoi and includes two children, their house is a wee bit bigger than our current studio apartment, plus we won't have to pay rent for a few months. We're definitely excited to get to know our new neighbors and a different area of town.

Well, that's all the news that's fit to print for now. Do keep in touch, and keep checking back here. I'm sure something exciting will happen soon and when it does, rest assured it'll end up on the blog. Tam biet for now!

It rained the other day...

2008-04-24T01:33:00.000-07:00

...and how.

This was not your typical Pacific Northwest drizzle, nor was it even your not-as-typical Northwest downpour. This was Southeast Asia rain, and for a while it felt as if the entire South China Sea had been picked up and dumped on top of us.

We were in the middle of language lessons when it started, and the rain was falling so hard we were having a little trouble hearing each other talk inside our apartment. By the time it stopped a couple hours later we had a good five or six inches of water in our courtyard, and parts of the alleyway outside our house had perhaps a foot or so of water. I looked outside to see leaves, bits of styrofoam, garbage bags, etc. flowing out into the alley and on out of sight.

Except for putting on ponchos and grabbing umbrellas, people in the neighborhood more or less carried on as normal. From our roof, I saw that one of the ground-floor offices near our place had opened both their front and side sliding doors, apparently so that the waves that were being kicked up by passing motorbikes could flow through their place more easily. (Reason #75 why tile is a good idea and carpet a very bad idea in Vietnam.)

Our language teacher was stranded at our place for an extra hour or so, reluctant (with good reason) to venture out on her motorbike in all the water. Steven couldn't restrain himself and had to go out and take a few pictures. He made sure to wash his feet and soak his Chacos in bleach water when he returned.

We've put together a video for you to get at least a little taste of what a Vietnam rainstorm is like. And yes, we were assured by our other language teacher the following day that storms/mini-floods like that are a common occurrence here during the summer. Anyone got an extra couple pairs of hip waders they'd like to ship to Hanoi...?

Quick note about the video: You might want to turn your sound down a bit before you play it. For some reason the volume came out really loud.

Funny Things

2008-04-17T07:22:00.000-07:00

In case you had any doubts, we're here to tell you that Vietnamese culture is rather different from Western culture. History, economics, religion, climate—there’s a whole lot that goes into creating a culture. Occasionally the cultural differences might scare us or irritate us, but for the most part we’re able to appreciate the differences.

But every once in a while there are things that are just plain funny to our American sensibilities. Often, hilarity ensues when—for one reason or another—an attempt is made to imitate Western culture (often by advertising a product with half-baked English.) Take, for instance, the microwave oven we saw for sale in the supermarket this weekend. Big, bold letters proclaimed that the main selling feature of this oven was its cutting-edge “Disinfest baby Function with Light Microwave.” Sure enough, where less-advanced microwaves might have preset buttons for “baked potato” or “popcorn” this oven had a button labeled (quite disturbingly) “Baby.” We didn’t stick around for the in-store demonstration.

Another cultural difference we occasionally get good chuckles from is the extreme over-use of creepy mannequins in Hanoi. Whereas most American department stores since the 1980s have tended to take a ‘less-is-more’ attitude toward the use of creepy mannequins, any store in Vietnam even remotely related to clothing must have at least two of the marginally humanoid things sitting on the sidewalk out front of the shop. The calendar "Narsty Mannequins of the East" will be forthcoming in 2009.

Then, of course, there’s the food and drink. There is plenty of Vietnamese food that’s absolutely delicious, and healthy to boot. There’s also a sizable share of Vietnamese food that would make a health inspector's hair stand on end—fermented this and deep-fried-head-of-that. Yikes. Then there’s a whole genre of food that isn’t delicious and isn’t disgusting, but is merely…interesting. Take the Bird’s Nest beverage we found in Quy Nhon. Why anyone would look at a bird’s nest and decide to make a beverage out of it is simply beyond the realm of our comprehension. This particular drink tasted a lot like chunky sugar water. Unfortunately they printed the ingredients in English so we could tell that the chunks were, in fact, White Fungus. (Sometimes it’s good not to know.)

The final funny thing for this entry has nothing to do with Vietnamese culture and everything to do with the fact that I (Steven) am quickly becoming an old man. This past weekend I joined a friend of mine who had been asking me for quite a while to play basketball with him and a few others on Sunday afternoons. Naturally, being “the tall one,” I got matched up against the one other large fellow who had played ball for Willamette University a few years ago.

On the very first play of the game, Big Guy got the ball out near the 3 point line and I dutifully ran out to guard him, trying to recall the training I’d received as a one-time JV starter for the Rochester High School Warriors. He fired off a lightning pass which to everyone's surprise I successfully blocked--with the tip of my right thumb (not at all the recommended technique.) After shrieking and leaping about with my hand stuffed under my armpit for a few moments we resumed the game, but after a few minutes I could tell something wasn’t quite right. With Joelle’s help, I got to a clinic for some X-rays and, sure enough, had a little T-shaped fracture at the end of my thumb. Everything had stayed where it was supposed to, so they just splinted me up and said to come back in three weeks for more X-rays. Overall a positive first experience with medical care outside the US. At least they didn’t try to disinfest me with their light microwave.

Quy Nhon visit

2008-04-12T08:16:00.000-07:00

UPDATE: Since this post was originally written, we've learned from our organization that Quy Nhon will indeed be our home next year. Woohoo!

We recently returned from a trip to Quy Nhon (pronounced “queen yawn”) a smallish port city about two thirds of the way down to Saigon. It is a potential placement (i.e. permanent home) for us starting next fall, so our organization paid for us to go down, check out the city and university, meet our potential teammates who work there already, and get a feel for the place. There were a number of things that were noteworthy about the place.

For one thing, people take their nap time very seriously. Most people in Quy Nhon follow a strict regimen of early to rise, late to bed with a big old nap in between. It’s not that people are lazy (far from it) it’s just that it’s so dang hot during the afternoon that no one in their right mind would be outside. At dawn, the streets, parks and beaches are packed with people walking, jogging, playing volleyball and generally enjoying themselves. The first university classes start at 6:30 AM (and I used to complain about having an 8:00 class…) and most everyone is where they need to be by 7:00 or 8:00. Because they get up so early, lunch starts around 10:00 or 10:30 AM. By noon, the city looks like a ghost town—the streets are deserted and most of the shops close down as people head home to sleep through the heat of the day. But once the sun drops toward the hills in the west, life starts up again and the beaches are packed with locals playing soccer, swimming or just enjoying each other’s company. It’s a much different world from the 9 to 5 lifestyle and we enjoyed it.

We also noticed that we, as foreigners, stuck out even more in Quy Nhon than we do in Hanoi. Even though it’s a decent sized city (250,000) foreigners simply don’t travel there very often. It’s off of the main highway, and the city of Nha Trang (a few hours to the south) has much more developed tourist facilities. We observed a few English classes at Quy Nhon University and spent some time hanging out with students outside of class time. At all times we felt like we were the most exciting thing that had happened in years—students crowded around, eager to ask questions and get to know us. A little exhausting, perhaps, but we certainly felt welcomed.

Finally, there is the obvious fact that Quy Nhon is a lot smaller and less crowded than Hanoi. With about 1/20^th the population of Hanoi, it’s the first place in Vietnam that we’ve felt comfortable enough to venture out and start exploring on bicycles. Its size also makes it easy to get out of town quickly—there’s a beautiful road that heads down the coast to several quiet beaches, and the rice paddies and hills of central Vietnam are right next door as well.

All in all, we loved the city, enjoyed meeting the students and our potential future teammates, and were a little sad to leave when it was all over. Depending on how everything shakes out, we may be on our way back there to stay come September.

Museum exhibits

2008-03-29T05:24:00.000-07:00

Click here if you'd like to see the complete photo album of this trip...

Today we visited the Vietnamese Museum of Ethnology here in Hanoi, after being invited to take a tour with a Vietnamese girl that Joelle had met a couple of weeks previous. She's a first year university student and was looking both for a chance to practice her English as well as an opportunity to hang out with some really fun foreigners (us).

We met her and her cousin near our apartment this morning and so it was that I (Steven) proceeded to take my first motorbike ride in Hanoi. (Joelle's first ride was a couple of weeks ago, as she's much braver than I). I rode on the back of the cousin's bike, with a helmet that felt as if it was both crushing my head and choking the life out of me at the same time. It really was rather fun, since Saturday morning traffic is nothing compared to weekday traffic. And we've been getting 'acclimatized' to Vietnamese traffic over the past month, so that close encounters with honking buses no longer faze us as they used to.

The museum was quite fun; it consisted of both some typical indoor exhibits with artifacts from various ethnic groups in Vietnam as well as an outdoor section with pretty authentic-looking houses built by members of the different groups (there are 54 distinct ethnic groups in Vietnam, according to our friend/tour guide who showed us around.)

During the tour we couldn't help feeling as if we ourselves were part of a museum exhibit, due to the large number of Vietnamese who openly stared at us and followed us from place to place, forming something of a paparazzi entourage. At one point, a college-aged girl walked up to Joelle--possibly mistaking her for Angelina Jolie--and asked to have her picture taken with her. This emboldened her male friend, who also had his picture taken with Joelle, which in turn drove a group of three more girls to jump in on the photo op. Steven--whom no one mistook for Brad Pitt, mysteriously enough--stood back and took pictures of the people taking pictures of Joelle.

A few minutes later we were approached by a smiling Vietnamese woman who explained that she was an English teacher for a class of university students who were at the museum on a field trip and wouldn't we please join them for a small party in fifteen minutes. We tried to explain that we really weren't famous, and were in fact quite normal people but she would have none of it, so we hung out and talked with her class for a few minutes. The small party never really materialized, but we did get to chat, walk on stilts and have our picture taken with them.

We wrapped up our adventure with a nice lunch at the cousin's house. As we were getting ready to climb on the back of the Honda motorbikes for our trip home, the cousin said to me in his somewhat broken English, "In Vietnam, Honda has slogan: I love Vietnam. I hope soon you can say 'I love Vietnam' too."

Language Lessons and Mexican Food

2008-03-13T07:21:00.000-07:00

This entry is primarily about our language study. Unfortunately language lessons don't make for very interesting pictures...and yet a blog entry without pictures is like a burrito without guacamole: far below its real potential. So I've just tossed in a few random, unrelated pictures from our life here in Vietnam. They have little or nothing to do with language study, so don't get confused.

Our blog posts to date have, admittedly, been about things of a rather silly nature (swan boats and wardrobes and such). Fearing that some like our friend Erek might begin to believe that we've got too much time on our hands here in Hanoi it's time to let you know some of the less silly things that we've been up to.

Our primary purpose in being here has been to learn as much Vietnamese as we can in four and a half months. So far we've had ten lessons and have learned somewhere in the vicinity of 22o different words which (we're told) is pretty good. For many, the term "language class" probably conjures up images of sitting in a stuffy high school classroom with 30 other drowsy teenagers listening to a teacher explain irregular verb conjugation and such. That's not the case with us, fortunately.

Officially we are students at the Hanoi University Vietnamese Language Center. What that boils down to in reality is two very nice ladies--one a mother of two and a former Russian teacher, the other a student getting her masters in economics--who take turns coming over to our apartment for three hours of language instruction each day.

A typical day of instruction has us involved in six or seven different activities. We learn new nouns and verbs by pulling out pictures of various objects and actions. Our instructor will say (in Vietnamese, of course) "This is a dog. This is a dog. This is a cat. This is a cat. Where is the dog?" And Joelle and I--like the linguistic infants that we are--will do the only thing we can which is point to the one we think is the dog. We proceed like this until we have a table full of pictures of various animals and can at least semi-accurately point to the ones our teacher calls out. Our lessons also involve playing with dolls, Pictionary-style games, counting and eating M&Ms, and a fair bit of laughter. We record key parts of each activity so that we can go back and review them on our own.

All in all it's been a more enjoyable, less painful process than we had thought it would be. Our first 100 hours of instruction involve no speaking at all on our part which can be a bit frustrating at times but which will (it is hoped) help us in the long run, since we'll be better able to distinguish and mimic some of the trickier sounds and tones of Vietnamese.

But no matter how good our Vietnamese gets, we will probably never be able to order quality Mexican food in Hanoi because it simply doesn't exist. But by shopping at three different stores and the veggie lady down the alley (and walking a total of about three miles in the process) we were able to find enough ingredients to whip up a fair approximation of fajitas-minus-sour-cream. We leave you now with a picture that has nothing to do with language study, but which warms my heart nonetheless.

Swan Boats in Love

2008-03-08T06:47:00.000-08:00

One of the more endearing things we've observed about Vietnam so far has been the large number of giant swan love boats. Let me explain.

Hanoi is a city full of lakes. Walk more than five blocks in any direction and you're likely to run into one. Granted, it may be surrounded by apartment buildings and have bits of trash and dead fish floating in it, but it's nice in that it breaks up the city a bit and gives a convenient place to go exercise or just hang out.

One particularly scenic lake is just down our alleyway and across the main avenue. (Our lake is especially cool in that it has a zoo on the far side.) The common denominator in all of the truly cool lakes in Hanoi is this: giant swan paddle boats. These aren't your everyday, run-of-the mill paddle boats. No, they are giant swan paddle boats and therefore they are romantic.

It was explained to me on one of our first days in Hanoi that a truly heartfelt gesture of love for my sweetheart would be to take her out for a paddle in one of the swan boats. And though we haven't quite gotten to that point yet, we've enjoyed watching them on several of the lakes around town.

Most days, perhaps a third to a half of the available giant swan boats are being pedaled around our neighborhood lake by lovestruck couples but today was different. Not only was it a Saturday, it was International Women's Day (an apparently worldwide holiday that I didn't realize existed until earlier this week). On International Women's Day--much like on Valentine's Day in the US--it is a man's solemn duty to do something over-the-top romantic for his sweetheart. So today, to the surprise of no one, every single swan boat was in use and there was a line-up of folks waiting on the dock for their turn to pedal/paddle their very own Fowl of Love.

We took a walk down by the lake this afternoon and decided that this was a phenomenon that simply had to be recorded for posterity. Steven took some time-lapse movies of the swans from various locations around the lake, as well as a few still shots and regular video. The compilation video below should give you a fairly good idea of just what this little piece of Vietnamese culture is all about.

Birthday party in the 'burbs

2008-03-04T17:57:00.000-08:00

The transition for us from living in Nooksack (population approximately 850) to Hanoi (population 3 million plus) has been a bit of a system shock to us, so this past weekend we were glad to escape for a while from the hustle and bustle of central Hanoi.

Saturday morning we hopped in a taxi with our country director David and his family and headed toward the other side of the Red River into what you might call the Hanoian suburbs. Our destination was the house of a family that David and his wife have known for several years--Vietnamese mother, American father and two kiddos. They were celebrating their eldest daughter's 8th birthday party and David and family were nice enough to invite us along as they thought (correctly) that we might need some time out of the big city.

It was the first time in almost a week that we had seen a house with an actual lawn, surrounded not by miles of concrete but by small neighborhoods interspersed with fields, orchards and pagodas. The party was attended by people from the US, Holland, Germany, Burma, South Africa and (of course) Vietnam--a fairly international crew.

Our activities included a group walk/run down the road to some guava orchards in the floodplain of the Red River, as well as numerous silly games.

The main attraction, however, was a virtually indestructible pinata, made by the dad and his daughter out of papier-mache and bamboo strips. Even after all of the kids and all the adults had taken their swings at it, the thing still needed to be ripped apart by hand to get to the goodies. (Pinatas are not really a Vietnamese cultural phenomenon, in case you were wondering.)

All-in-all it was a good chance for us to be introduced to life (a little bit) outside the big city and to begin to get more of an understanding for the country we find ourselves living in.

The Cyclo, The Spray Paint and the Wardrobe

2008-02-28T20:09:00.000-08:00

Sounds a bit like a C.S. Lewis classic, doesn't it? This is kind of a long entry, but worth it (I hope). It was our first real Vietnamese cultural experience...

It all started with the wardrobe. Our apartment was furnished when we moved in—sort of. We had a bamboo table with some bamboo chairs, some other bamboo chairs and a bamboo couch, some bamboo shelves and a bed that feels like it’s made out of granite. In other words, most everything we would need to survive, if not thrive. What the apartment was lacking, however, was any sort of place to put our clothes. I take that back; we do have a tiny built-in cubbyhole that smells like it’s had wet rags stored in it since the 1970s. We elected not to store any of our clothes in there.

Since we didn’t feel like living out of our suitcases for the next six months and since we’d been given some start-up funds by our organization for occasions like this, we decided to get ourselves something to keep our clothes in. With the help of Shelly, our country director’s wife (who speaks Vietnamese), we headed down to “Furniture Street,” about three blocks from our apartment.

When I say “Furniture Street” (not to be confused with “Bamboo Wicker Furniture Street,” which is in an entirely different part of the city) you might well imagine a street with a few good-sized furniture shops on it. You would be wrong. Rather, furniture street is a virtually unbroken string of tiny furniture shops that runs, near as we can tell, the entire width of the city of Hanoi. People make, sell and buy furniture all along Furniture Street, and sometimes even partially into the roadway of Furniture Street. It's also been dubbed “Crazy Street” because it has no sidewalk and though it is only about as wide as a single “U.S.” lane of traffic, it inexplicably carries more scooters and buses than virtually any other street we’ve seen in Hanoi.

With Shelly’s help, we found our way to a relatively inexpensive shop on Furniture Street and chatted with the owner for a while. He offered us a cheaply made but reasonable-sized wardrobe for about $65. We took it, and the fun began.

The question after purchasing the wardrobe then became: How on earth would we get it to our second floor apartment four blocks away? The owner answered matter-of-factly, “Cyclo.” A cyclo (pronounced SEE-clo), for those unfamiliar with Vietnamese culture, is a modified bicycle. Kind of a reverse tricycle, actually, with one wheel in the rear and two wheels up front, with room in the front to carry tourists, vegetables and—apparently—wardrobes. The fact that it would have never in a million years have crossed my mind to try and move a wardrobe with a tricycle didn’t slow the process down a bit. The furniture shop owner got on his cellphone and a few minutes later our cyclo driver pulled up. He and the shop owner hefted the six foot tall wardrobe onto the cyclo, tied it down, and we headed off, walking alongside our driver.

The cyclo driver pushed his heavily-laden trike along Crazy Street and ran with it down a steep drop onto the side street that we live on. Things were going swimmingly for the first two blocks until we reached Obstacle Number One. Our side street is called a pho, which means something like ‘alleyway,’ and which is not to be confused with “pho” which means ‘noodly breakfast soup.’

In any case, our pho is not the narrowest of streets in Hanoi, but it’s pretty dang tight and is made tighter by the fact that there are several cement poles in the middle of it. While trying to negotiate his way around one of these poles our cyclo driver made a slight misjudgment and bashed the top corner of our wardrobe into the pole, gouging the side and partially separating the top piece from the rest of the wardrobe. Whoops.

Without missing a beat, our driver parked his cyclo in the middle of the ally, rummaged around in his belongings for a bit, pulled out a can of dark brown spray paint and proceeded to ‘repair’ the gouge on the spot with a quick shot of paint. Voila, problem solved. (It was pretty clear that he’d been through this routine before.)

We reached the front gate of our apartment building, whereupon the driver parked it again, pulled out his screwdriver, and re-tightened the top section of the wardrobe which had been loosened in the crash. Good as new.

Steven and the driver then picked up the wardrobe and began to carry it into the building. Soon they were confronted with Obstacle Number Two: the tight spiral staircase that climbs up to our second floor apartment. It was at this point that Shelly, our translator, had to leave to pick up her son from school and it was at this point that things began to break down even more. The cyclo driver looked at the staircase, made some “tsk, tsk” sounds, said something in Vietnamese and started to disassemble the wardrobe. He pulled the doors off to make it lighter and—as we later discovered—to keep them from getting gouged all to heck. Then he and Steven lifted the wardrobe again and started up the stairs.

At the first hairpin up the stairs, things got ugly. The wardrobe jammed tight between the wall and the railing and would go no further. The driver—who was lifting it from the top—started motioning and saying a lot of words in Vietnamese to Steven, who was lifting from the bottom. He could have been saying “push it,” “turn it,” “move back,” “I quit,” “why don’t you let your wife do it,” or any number of more colorful sayings—it didn’t matter, though, because Steven couldn’t understand a word of it. Though the wardrobe was clearly stuck, Steven just kept lifting and pushing, for lack of any better ideas.

Finally, the driver decided to take matters into his own hands. He handed the top end of the wardrobe off to Joelle and somehow contorted himself around it and down the stairway to take the bottom end from Steven. A few vigorous jerks of the head and more Vietnamese words made it clear that Steven should go elsewhere. So he clambered his way up the railing of the spiral staircase to help Joelle at the top end of the wardrobe. After another minute of lifting and gouging, the wardrobe somehow came free and squeezed around the hairpin. From there it was a straight shot into the apartment, thankfully.

After setting the wardrobe down in our apartment, the driver—looking somewhat sweatier and less congenial that he had initially—gave the wardrobe a few more shots of fix-it-all spray paint and left without saying a whole lot further. For our part we laughed and decided a couple of things: 1) It would be good to learn some Vietnamese if we’re planning on living here and 2) Though we’ll be moving elsewhere in six months, the wardrobe isn’t coming with us.

Vietnam first impressions

2008-02-25T16:58:00.000-08:00

Well here we are. Our heads are still spinning a bit, but we're beginning to get settled in. If you'd like to see our entire online photo album with pictures from the last few days, go here.

And now a quick run-down of the details for you, in case you're interested:

We took off from LAX at 10:20 PM for a marathon 15 hour flight to Hong Kong. We got to watch in very slow motion on the little map as our plane flew north all the way to Alaska (we waved as we flew over Washington), curved over the north Pacific, and came sailing down over Japan, Korea and finally into Hong Kong. "Fun" is about the last word we would use to describe that part of the trip.

Hong Kong airport was quiet when we got there, so Steven took a nap in the corner while waiting for the connection to Vietnam. It came soon enough and, after our 15 hour trip, the 2 hour hop to Vietnam flew by. We were greeted at the airport by David, our country director, who loaded us into a taxi for the drive into town.

First impressions of Vietnam consisted of the smell--a hard-to-define mix of diesel, food, humid air and a few other things. We also marveled at all the scooters--some carrying entire trees, some carrying cages full of pigs, some just carrying people--that make up the majority of traffic here. Our driver laid on his horn and drove through the crowds of mopeds as they parted before him, Red Sea-style.

We got settled in to our apartment for a little while, then went right out to lunch with a number of folks from our team here in Vietnam. They were all great people, though neither of us remember much from lunch since we were only partially conscious. Right after lunch, a couple from our team around our age took us out on the town. Though Joelle had been to Vietnam before, Steven had a chance to experience his first Vietnam bus ride and first Vietnamese coffee. By the time we were done with our first tour, we were both ready to collapse. It had been around 48 hours since our last good night's sleep. We stumbled back home and crashed. Of course it still took Steven another 2 hours to actually fall asleep, thanks to the Vietnamese coffee.

Though we're still getting tired around 8 PM and getting up around 4 AM, we're slowly adjusting. Yesterday Susan, our Personnel Director, showed us around town a bit more and explained how language school would work for us. We start lessons tomorrow, which should be dang interesting. We'll let you know how it goes.

There's so much more to tell, but it'll have to wait. We leave you now with this fantastic time lapse video of Hanoi traffic on a lazy Sunday afternoon:

Chillin in Cali

2008-02-21T20:05:00.000-08:00

Hi, and welcome to the blog if you've never been here before! Chances are good you heard about this through our newsletter or in an email, and we're glad you've stopped by.

Right now we're in cloudy southern California--the weather was gorgeous when we left Seattle on Tuesday, but by the time we landed in Ontario, CA it looked like the Pacific Northwest again. Bleak, rainy, with a lot of freeways and 70s era strip malls. Kind of like a supersize helping of Tacoma.

The last few days have consisted of visiting some friends in the area, meeting up with the staff and other teachers from our organization at the airport, eating a lot of food, and sitting through a great deal of good but slightly overwhelming information. Orientation has been scrunched into basically two days for us which is great in the sense that we get to head to Asia quickly, but our heads are brim full of organizational info right about now.

We have one more day of orientation tomorrow and then it's off to LAX for our overnight flight to Hong Kong. We leave a little after 10:00 PM California time and get in around 5:40 AM Hong Kong time. I think it's around a 15 hour flight. Bleah.

One big praise: When we arrived in CA two days ago, our organization still hadn't received our passports with our Vietnam visas back from the consulate. The consulate got our passports in late January, right before Tet--the Vietnamese New Year. And unlike us stodgy Americans who take just one day off of work for New Years, the Vietnamese take around two weeks off, so they didn't so much as look at our passports until mid-February. Considering the fact that our flight was already booked, we were starting to get a wee bit nervous that our passports were sitting in an office in downtown San Franciso. They showed up this morning, though, with a little over a day to spare. So it looks like we're goin'.

In other news, Steven bought a beard/nosehair trimmer on a great sale at Ross yesterday. Seeing as how neither he nor Joelle currently have a beard you can guess which attachment was used the most.

Anyway, there'll be more to come soon (I'm sure) so keep checking back. We love you all and will be in touch!

Missing you already...

2007-11-19T22:18:00.000-08:00

What are we going to miss? That’s a question Joelle and I have been asking ourselves (and each other) since we were accepted to go teach in Vietnam. We love this place, we love the people around us…why on EARTH would we pick up and move across the ocean for several years?

To be honest, there will be a lot to miss. Like Isaiah, for instance. Quite possibly the cutest, most intelligent toddler in history, Isaiah came into this world about two and a half years ago and moved from Colorado into our neck of the woods (along with his mother Rachel--Joelle’s older sister--and dad Seth) shortly thereafter. It’s been a joy to watch him grow from infant to crawler to the running, laughing, accordion-playing toddler that he is today. The fact that Rachel’s got a second little one on the way this spring doesn’t make our leaving any easier.

Then there’s this wonderful, blessed place called Whatcom county. I had a free afternoon this last weekend and decided to head for the hills. A 30 minute drive took me to a vast playground of mountains, rivers, forests, and waterfalls. A 30 minute drive the other direction would have taken me to saltwater and glorious sunsets. Vietnam, we’re told is a gorgeous place (and we believe it) but there’s something about this northwest corner of the Northwest that just can’t be found anywhere else.

The list of things we’ll miss goes on: Mexican food, our family, good friends, our church, quiet coffee shops with free wireless…

And it’s at that point that we need to stop and remind ourselves why we go. We go because we are called, and the One who calls us is greater than anything we would ever have to leave behind. We go for His glory, and that His name would be honored. That is why, difficult though it will be, we still choose to go.

Waiting...

2007-07-13T15:14:00.000-07:00

The U2 song "40" repeats a refrain that Joelle and I have been able to relate to these last few weeks.

How long.....to sing this song?
How long.....to sing this song?

For Joelle and I, the "song" we've been singing for a while has been the reality of living life in the U.S. while knowing that we're meant--eventually--to be elsewhere.

A few weeks ago we finally finished our application to head overseas and teach English in Vietnam. It was a bit of a harrowing process, lasting a total of about eight months from starting our applications to finally getting everything turned in.

Now we wait just a little longer, while the organization we've applied with decides what they want to do with us. A strange feeling, having one's future in the hands of another person. But familiar somehow, nonetheless...