While working on a chapter about stereotypes with one of my classes, I was curious to find out what they honestly thought about Americans and our culture. Responses varied across the board: some were typical; some were interesting; and some were nicer than what I thought they would have said. Here’s just a small sampling of the ones I remember:

I recently accepted an invitation by a few of my students to go kite flying! I’ve never done it back home and I’ve wanted to do it ever since I’ve kept seeing kites randomly pop up everywhere. My students made it look so easy to get the kite off the ground but for some reason I just couldn’t get it up (and that’s not what she said). I learned that March is the best time to go kite flying since the wind is perfect; now that April has arrived I hardly see the kites anymore. Here are some photos from that day.

As a reward for their amazing work so far this semester, I invited another one of my classes over to my house for a pasta party (which is the only thing I pretty much know how to make). Parties like this are nonexistent in the US, but in Vietnam, it’s common for teachers and students to hang out outside the classroom. The night turned out to be a huge success! My students sang a couple songs in English, as showed in the video above. What really blew me away was when they all got together to tell me what an amazing teacher they think I am! This was when they presented me with this gift: This is the type of thing that’s going to make leaving in a few short weeks so difficult. How amazing are they?!

A few weeks ago, my housemate and I invited some students over to our place for a pasta party. I’ve mentioned in the past that the teacher and student relationship in Vietnam is much different than that of back home, and we heard from another English teacher that she loves to invite her students over for little get togethers. Our students have been doing such a great job with their school work that a little party seemed like a great way to reward them.

Recently, two of my fellow classmates and sorority sisters from Marist College and I were interviewed by a student writing an article on teaching abroad for his latest article in the Marist Minute. One line that stood out to me came from my friend Christine, who was quoted saying “You don’t realize how much language is part of your identity until it’s taken away from you.” Language can reveal many things about one’s identity: nationality, culture, level of education, socio-economic class, profession, etc. This made me think about the relationship between language and identity and how it affects my life here in Vietnam.

I teach at a couple private schools in the evening to help bring in some extra cash flow and one class requires me to prepare students for the International English Language Testing System (IELTS). The first chapter talked about the five stages of culture shock and I thought this would be a great post to share with everyone. I’ve definitely gone through these stages and I thought others could relate.

On a recent class trip to DaLat, one of the chaperons showed me Mac Cu (meaning shy), a plant that shrivels up when touched and pretends to die as a defense mechanism. As you can tell from the video, I couldn’t stop touching them!

I’m finally able to say I’ve been somewhere cool for work. With over 200 Vietnamese students, my housemate and I were invited to join our school for a large 5-day field trip to DaLat, Vietnam. I was a bit intimidated to be surrounded by so many people I didn’t know at first, but the students tried to make me comfortable. Every two seconds someone came up to me to just take a picture. I felt like a celebrity! For a homework assignment I asked my students that if they could pick one place in the whole world, where would they go and why. Most of them surprisingly said DaLat. I thought they would pick somewhere abroad, but many of them would rather stay in their country to places they’ve never been to. Here are some pictures from our trip.

I’ll admit, there are times in Vietnam when I get really frustrated. Sometimes when I try to order some food in Vietnamese, the waiter or waitress never know what I’m saying. When they finally understand what I’m attempting to say, they’ll pronounce in what appears to be the exact same way I just did. Other times I’ll just be walking along the street minding my own business and some random person has to obnoxiously yell “HELLO”. I get it, you’re not used to seeing someone like me and you want to speak English, but that’s not exactly the best way to go about becoming my friend. Also, people love to stare at me. As one of the other English teachers said, “This must be what it’s like to be a celebrity or prostitute.” As frustrated as I might get, I [...]

On the first day of class I had all my students assign American names for themselves, mostly because at the time I had a really hard time pronouncing their Vietnamese names. Here is a list of my favorite American names from some of my students: The Young King James Bond Tom & Jerry Mighty Bear Rabbit Rocky Pole Bear Mylie Lucky Star Destiny Zlatan Pisces Still working on what my Vietnamese name should be. I believe when the moment is right, it’ll come to me.