The Year in Review...

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

Scapula schmapula

So, the motorbike incident. Here we go.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Take care, y'all.