A Word of Welcome...

On September 1, 2011 fifteen young people from a range of high schools around the U.S. arrived at Noi Ba International Airport in Ha Noi. Jet-lagged and overwhelmed, they spent the weekend getting oriented to their new home amid Independence Day revelry and celebration. Now one month later, they are members of host families, interns at various community organizations, students on a university campus and participant-observers in a foreign culture and society. Thus begins their year with School Year Abroad – Viet Nam.

This monthly blog will chronicle the students’ lives in Viet Nam outside the SYA classroom. A process of sharing and peer-editing in their English class will precede all posts thereby creating an individual and collective narrative. Travel-journalist Tom Miller said “The finest travel writing describes what's going on when nobody's looking.” May these young writers seek out and find their moments to see, with new eyes, what no one else sees. May they write their stories with sensitivity and passion. And may you, our readers, enjoy imagining their Viet Nam.

Becky Gordon
SYA English Teacher

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Discovery

It’s been two months now. Two months that we’ve been thrown in this country and two months that we said goodbye to our families and friends. But also two months that we’ve been visiting the most amazing places. We can call it immersion, discovery, or tourism; it’s all the same in the end. 

When we sit at a café, somewhere in Hoan Kiem, facing the lake, talking about our previous trips, or criticizing the tourists we see, we are, in fact, criticizing ourselves, because, what are we if we aren’t tourists? We can argue that we live in Hanoi, but what are two months compared to a life? We are like babies entering the world with virgin and innocent eyes waiting to discover this new world right in front of us.

We came back two weeks ago now from Sapa and Halong Bay, where we stayed for a week.  There, we discovered the pleasure to swim in the quiet cove of a lost island, to observe fish just caught from the ocean, choose one or two, and eat them two hours later on a boat flowing through the spots of land gushing from the water. In Sapa, we climbed all the way to the top of rice terraces, cutting fresh rice, helping people who live off their harvests. That made me realize how different our lives are: when I go to school in the morning, a kid my age will be digging in a field, just to provide for his family. And probably, miles from that mountain, on a tiny raft, in the middle of a beautiful bay, another kid, even younger, won’t take the time to admire the beauty of the place because he’ll be holding a fishing net above the water, to catch some fish he’ll sell to tourists like us.

We all came here for a reason, certainly different, but something motivated our choice. I decided to come because I wanted to discover a new part of the world; I wanted to see, to experience and to feel what I had only heard about. I’m not disappointed at all by what I’m discovering day after day. I’m impressed by the differences between our cultures, the gap between our worlds, and each time I think I know more about Vietnam, a hundred new things occur to me, present themselves to me , saying: you’ve got miles to go before you know this place. 
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