Lisa finishing up!

Sorry its been so long since I last posted. I have been very busy finishing up my time in Hanoi (I can't believe it's already over) and traveling to Ha Long Bay (pictures near the end).

So first, I'm going to recount my experiences teaching at a gifted high school in Hanoi. The president of my NGO, Oanh (pronounced Wang) has a son in his freshman year at this school, and is close with his teacher. When the teacher found out about me, she asked if I would be willing to come in to give a few talks every week on topics related to America. The first lesson was on the American education system, because many of the students are very interested in studying at a university in the states.

For the first class I brought along Lauren and Jenny with me, to have some help and also because all of us were interested in a new volunteer experience. When we arrived at the classroom, the children were ecstatic to see us, to say the least. After all standing in unison when we entered, they immediately began whispering and giggling and pointing at us, and then quickly took out their cell phones to take pictures of us.

I had prepared a power point on American school, which hooked up to a TV that served as a projector. We started with a quiz on the U.S., and it was very quickly apparent that the children had impressive english skills, and I found that even if I spoke at my normal, fast pace, that they could follow everything I was saying. It was so fun to tell them an interesting fact, because the entire class would literally OOOO and AHHH every time. When I asked them how old they thought I was (their guess was 19) and I told them i was 23, the whole class broke out in disbelieving howls.

Throughout the class we took turns explaining how our grade school system worked, and spent the most time talking about colleges in America, since over half of the class raised their hands when I asked who was thinking about applying to school in the states. We talked about topics we knew most about, so Lauren, who went to a catholic school, covered the differences between public and private school. Jenny talked about her high school in New Jersey and her prom, which was accompanied by a lovely picture from her own prom that I was able to locate. The whole presentation was filled with pictures - thanks to my mom who scanned me a bunch from home. I put in pictures of graduation, swim team, and many other big events associated with school in the US. The kids loved the pictures, especially the one of me when I was five on my first day of school.

At the end of our lecture (nearly two hours), the kids were allowed to ask questions. They all had a lot of very specific questions about the SAT/ACT and top schools. It was very obvious that many of them were pressured by their parents to succeed in the classroom and on these tests so that they may attend a prestigious school in the US. Other children, who seemed interested on their own accord, were more concerned with scholarships, because college in the states could never be a reality for them without significant funding. I also gave my e-mail address to them so that they could ask me more specific questions, which quite a few of them took me up on. It's great to help them, and funny to read their e-mails. One of the girls wants to go to Stanford, so I told her about my brother, who is trying to help her out (although she is looking for a magic formula to get it, which unfortunately doesn't really exist).

The next week I gave the talk on my own about American culture. This was a fun one because I was able to compare and contrast all the differences between Vietnam and the US, and in the process I could also learn more about Vietnamese culture by asking them to elaborate on certain topics. It was also great because I spend a lot of my timing thinking about all the little differences, so it was nice to be able to discuss them in detail to a very rapt audience. However, by the end of the talk I had almost completely lost my voice. Because all the kids liked our first lesson, the teacher asked if she could add another 25 kids, bringing the total children in the classroom to 55. About 70% of the children can easily understand me, but the others who cannot whisper quite loudly as I try to talk over them. After talking for almost 2 hours straight this results in seriously strained vocals.

Our final week Jenny joined me in talking about famous places in America. Simply because of the nature of the talk, we ran out of things to talk about around 20 minutes before the 2 hour mark. Usually this is filled with questions from the children, but I guess our talk didn't stimulate them as much as usual. Jenny and I got pretty desperate and resorted to a few lame games of hang man, a complicated clapping game, and finally, me giving into singing a song for the class after being begged by a few students. The end of the class was great though, because they had bought us gifts to thank us for coming in to teach them. They bought Jenny black and pink shoelaces, had us deliver a funny Asian notebook to Lauren, and gave me a "Loving Cup", which is a mug that changes colors when it is filled with hot water.

Our first lesson. A student e-mailed me this picture taken on her phone. They love the peace sign here, and everywhere else in Asia. It's actually quite addicting, I find myself doing the peace sign way too much in pictures.

The classroom during a break. Every high school student wears a white and blue jacket, and the design is different based on which school you attend.

My gift!

Last Friday was my last day at my NGO CSIP. They ordered a traditional Vietnamese meal for me, which consisted of Vietnamese salad, spring rolls, rice noodles, and a chili sauce.

The spread.

Huong with the sauce.

My dish.
Huong napping after our big meal.

We had a photoshoot later in the day.

Everyone :-)

At the end of the day, we all sat around the couch and they all said such nice things about having me there. They also unveiled their master plan to have me return to Vietnam: having my honeymoon on a nearby beach town and inviting all of them to come along on the vacation. I promised I would try my best to make it happen. The president ended by telling me they all loved me so much, and then they gave me a journal made by disabled children, filled with notes from them wishing me well and thanking for me my time there. At the end it was pretty hard not to cry, but I had my own little speech telling them how inspiring their work was and how lucky I felt to be apart of it. I also gave them some chocolates.

They also took a lot of their own pictures, and one of them took this hilarious picture of me and Huong. I am grinning so much that it looks like my cheeks will split because they are all saying such nice things, and Huong is sitting next to me, with this huge pout on her face. Hopefully I can get it from them soon.

Huong gave me her own gift. She wrote me the cutest note asking me not to forget her, and she also bought me an owl necklace AND she bought Matt a gift too, a man bracelet of sorts. She also wanted to get gifts for my parents and brother, but she said she didn't know what to buy. I had a huge card for her and some gifts as my own as well. We met up again last night, where we took turns reading Harry Potter to each other, which of course inspired us to actually watch the movie. We ate dinner with her mom and sister, and it was really sad to say goodbye to all of them :-(.

Below im posting some last minute pictures I took of our dorm before leaving, in case you were curious.

View across the street.
Our road.

The dorm.
Road leading past our dorm. The dorm is to the right of where the picture cuts off.
Our bedroom. All of our clothes hanging to dry.
Meal room.
The board in our dorm saying bye to us!

A few other random pictures:

Motorbikes carry EVERYTHING here. I never go a day without seeing ten hilarious things attached to a bike. I really wish I was able to take pictures of all of them and make a picture book out of it.

Store on the street selling this picture with no other than B Spears featured in the middle.
Ho Chi Minh's massive mausoleum.
The view I have from the back of Huong's motorbike when she drives me halfway home every evening.

From Sunday to Tuesday this week, we went on a trip to Halong Bay and Cat Ba Island. Halong bay is the most beautiful place I've ever been, everyone should see it once in their life. We went on a tour that took us to Halong from Hanoi (about 4 hours by bus) and then took us to a boat, where we were provided with lunch, cruised through the amazing rock islands, and finally went swimming and then kayaking. We slept on the boat, and then arranged to be transferred to Cat Ba island, where we stayed in Bungalow huts on our private beach. Below are a bunch of pictures to try to capture some of the beauty of the area, but really it is impossible to show just how amazing the scenery is until you are the middle of the bay, swimming around the huge rock pillars in clear seagreen water!



Above are all various pics I took of the bay. Below are pics from kayaking.

Jenny, my kayak partner!
Cove we found.
Floating village - these houses were in the middle of nowhere, so crazy.
More of the village.
Cave we got off at.

Our boat.top of the boat.

Our second day/night at Cat Ba island, about 40 minutes from Halong bay:

Our beach. It was enclosed by rocks on either side, so only the part I'm facing with camera opened up into the ocean.
Our resort behind the beach.Lighting candles on the beach at night.

Nam Dinh with MSD

Two weekends ago, I was lucky enough to be invited by the NGO staff that I work with to one of their project sites! I was really excited to get this opportunity because it would give me the chance to actually see what the organization does in terms of their environmental goals. As I mentioned before, my NGO focuses in behavior change and organizing local people to address particular environmental issues they face. In Nam Dinh, a province southeast of Hanoi, in a tiny little town called Thinh Long, they conduct the "Safe Dyke project" which addresses how the people of the town can recognize damage to the dyke that protects their community from the ocean, which they are right next to. In 2005, the dyke broke and the entire town was under water forcing the community to move. This was devastating to many families, since the salt-water flooded their vegetable farms, some of which were funded by loans from the bank that the people still had to repay. The breach in the sea dyke pushed people into huge debt, which was difficult to come out from.

So with that said, Sunday morning I got up super early to meet Ms. Ly, a staff member who runs the project in Thinh Long, and visits every month to hold community meetings. Also coming with us were Hai, an engineer and lecturer at Water Resources University in Hanoi, and two student volunteers, Linh and Chi. The drive was about 3 hours, though I have to say it would be more like two and a half if the last bit before the town had decent roads. I was really tired and fell asleep on the way there but from what I saw the entire way to Nam Dinh was rice paddies and small towns, but when we got closer and closer, I noticed that there were a lot of really big catholic churches, which seemed odd to me. It looked so strange in a background of of all flat land with rice fields. I asked Ly about it, who told me that in Nam Dinh about 60 percent of the population is Christian. These cathedrals were all so gothic and mysterious looking. Here's a picture from the guesthouse of one in the distance.

Anyway, we pulled into the town of Thinh Long and rested for a little while at the small hotel until going to lunch, which was delicious. All weekend we had a series of beef, fish, and pork dishes, cooked by us in the middle of the table on a hot pan, a popular way to eat here. The staff didn't speak too much English or go too much out of their way to translate their conversations for me, which was too bad, so I just relaxed and tried to be patient. Here's another picture taken from the guesthouse.

After lunch we went to the town meeting hall to set up and people from the town slowly started showing up. At first it was basically all old men, which made me wonder if they were the only ones allowed as leaders, but then lots of old women showed up too. The men and women roughly sat on two different sides of the room with their friends, not sticking too much to sitting with family. I suppose in a small town like that everyone feels like one family, because everyone talked to everyone, and there was even a small kid running around climbing into everyones laps and I couldn't tell which one was his Grandmother. Later on I asked why the only people in attendance were older men and women and the volunteers told me that younger people couldn't skip school or work for the meetings every month. Here's some pics of the meeting hall when we first arrived.

When the room was full and chairs everyone sat down, there were a few performances by some singers/actors, who seemed to be singing very tradtional old music and wore these crazy ancient looking costumes. I couldnt understand the details of what they were saying but it was about the sea dyke and their responsibility to the environment. For the most part the audience was respectful but it didn't seem to be rude to just talk to your neighbor, because it didn't stay very quiet during this series of performances.  During the speeches in between everyone was very attentive though. After a few more speakers, Ly and the others broke the room up into about 5 groups, and everyone went through a list of questions about various issues regarding the sea dyke and how the people felt the project was progressing, or what was standing in the way. Again it was difficult for me to follow everything and the volunteers were busy, so i mainly sat in the back taking pictures and smiling at this cute little boy. Here is a picture of the performance, a short video clip of one of the small group discussions, and

Afterwards, Hai told me about a problem in the town that many of the attendees were concerned about. At the river mouth there's a company that keeps digging up the river bottom, for clay and earth, and the land around the river keeps sinking in, which has decreased the amount of land. I tried asking more questions about this, and I guess since the company is owned by the government there's not a clear way to stop it from happening. It connects to the dyke safety some how but the translations were getting more and more difficult so I'm not sure, sorry!
We were invited to dinner by one of the men in the town, which consisted of this huge guy talking and everyone laughing and telling me how funny he is. The man made me take three shots of rice whiskey with him, which I thought was hilarious, and then he proceeded to tell us all that he is the "whisky king." Here are some of the men we ate with. One of them wanted to talk to me the entire day, because he knew English from being trained a long time ago during the war, when he would have to talk to captured Americans.

We went to bed fairly early, and the next morning got up to see a few different pagodas and churches, which were really cool. It was pretty funny watching Linh take constant pictures of Chi posing everywhere, and they wanted me in their pictures a lot too. At one temple they talked to a fortune teller who told them if they'd meet any new love interests soon.

All in all, I wish I could have done more to help out during this whole trip, but not knowing Vietnamese pretty much limited that. It was soooo great to get a feel for the small town they work in and how they run these meetings to get people thinking. A lot of the people, for example, voiced a strong desire to educate the children about the environment and maintaining the sea dyke.
Also on our way out, we drove along the water edge and I saw the dyke for myself. I couldn't believe how close all the farms were to the water, or the amount of trash that is washed up on the dykes. It seems absurd, but goes along with the rest if the country with not having reliable places to put trash. I just think it's sad because it would be a nice place to hang out by the water if it wasn't so dirty, but they have no reason to hang out by the water unless they're fisherman, which there are a lot of. Here are some pics of the ocean and dyke, the fishing boats on the beach, and some pictures of the center of town where we stopped to get the famous rice of Thinh Long.

Hopefully this was a decent recap of the trip, but I'm sorry if I wasn't very articulate! In a few days I will add more pictures and write a little more about my last few weeks as a volunteer!