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

Language Lessons and Mexican Food

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.