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| washing vegetables - this is my coworker who hosted the event |
So, I suddenly realized it has been a month since my last
post! I’m not really sure what happened – I think I was mostly being lazy . . .
Anyways, here are a few of the things that have been happening over the last
month.
Lunch with Students
About two weeks ago, my TESOL MA student and coworker at Hue University College of
Foreign Languages invited me to her house for lunch on Saturday. I arrived at her house in
the morning, and all the students were busy prepping everything for lunch –
washing and chopping all the vegetables and fruit, grilling the meat, and
preparing a veritable feast for lunch! The food was delicious, and it was nice
to see the MA students outside of class. Most of the students work and study at the same time, and they don't often have time to meet and prepare a big meal together, so it was a special treat for everyone involved. After lunch, we went our for Karaoke - one of the students had her two little kids with her, and they were so cute singing Vietnamese songs! The six-year-old girl didn't even have to look at the screen - she had all her songs memorized!
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| ready for lunch - yummy! |
The MA students were so sweet and so fun to work with. They sometimes email me questions about their research and ask for my advice, and since they're all teachers, they really appreciate the hard work I put into their MA Testing and Assessment course.
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| MA TESOL students |
Just this week, two other MA students invited me out to lunch. We went to the only famous vegetarian restaurant that I haven't been to in Hue (it's a little ways outside the city, so it's difficult for me to get there by bicycle). The restaurant was really lovely - the owner is an artist, so you could see lots of artwork and the owner's art studio inside the restaurant. The building was a beautiful, old-styled Vietnamese house, and there were lots of plants and a fish pond too. And, oh yeah, the food was pretty great too! Anyways, it was really sweet of them to think of me and take me out for lunch.
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| beautiful decorations at the vegetarian restaurant |
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| at the restaurant |
Hue Festival
Every two years, Hue holds an international festival, and it's been happening this week! There are tons of performances and groups from around the world- so far, I've seen the opening ceremony, with acts from around the world, a Japanese drumming group, an American country music group, Sri Lanka drummers and dancers, a Hungarian band with dancers, Mongolian performers with a contortionist, an Australian electric string ensemble, and a famous white guy who sings in Vietnamese. Plus, everything is really cheap - it cost around $15 to see the opening ceremony, and $5 to get into the citadel and see a variety of acts on the other evenings. Plus, the citadel is decorated with lots of lights and looks spectacular at night.
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| really, really energetic Japanese drum ensemble |
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American country band that did a cool fusion song
with the traditional Vietnamese performers on the left |
Needless to say, there are loads of tourists and visitors in the city right now. The whole city is celebrating with decorations and there are so many activities and things to see everyday. It's impossible to see everything, especially when you have to work during the day . . . But, it's a great time to be living in Hue and get a chance to experience the international festival!
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| Mongolian Band act that included an incredible contortionist |
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| happy samba music from Brazil |
Work
Other than all the socializing and festival, I've been really busy with work. My research class is finishing next week, so I can't wait to collect all the data and hurry to submit a 12,000 word paper by the beginning of June. I also have a lot of classes at the university, and it turns out that planning two international studies classes (U.S. government and politics, and Ethnic Communities in the U.S.) take a long time each week! Plus, I started teaching a private class. So, my schedule has been super busy! I'm definitely looking forward to having more free time when my metaphor class and international studies classes wrap up in the next few weeks.
Some exciting news I received during the month was that an article I submitted to TESOL Journal has been accepted for publication. It took about one year and one re-submission for it to be accepted, so this was a huge deal for me. It's still in the first editing stage, so don't expect to see it in print anytime soon, but great news nonetheless!
