Background info

Damn, that was a lot of packing. It took a long time, and thanks to my mother for helping me out, but I think I am ready to go to Vietnam tomorrow.

I'm going to Vietnam tomorrow. AAAAAAHHHGHG!!!

Anyways, minor freakouts aside, I am going to spend most of tomorrow in an airplane heading over to Asia. Given that I have no actual travel stories to tell you yet, I figure now is a good time to tell you specifically what I will be doing in Vietnam.

As a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant I will be teaching or assisting English language classes; I will be teaching college-age students who already have advanced English skills so I will not be teaching beginners. I am expected to spend 16 hours a week teaching and 14 hours a week doing lesson planning, grading, and other cultural activities. It's a relatively light schedule so the expectation is that I will be involved in other aspects of the community. For instance, I hope to eventually teach my students how to play ultimate frisbee.

I will be teaching at Ben Tre College in Ben Tre province one hour south of Ho Chi Minh city. Ben Tre is crisscrossed by rivers large and small in the middle of the Mekong Delta. Ben Tre is very agricultural, but Ben Tre has been developing fast since the first bridge between Ben Tre and the mainland was built in 2009. Ben Tre College was founded in 2004 and has a faculty of 258 teachers and 4,000 students. I am the second Fulbright ETA to go to Ben Tre, the first was Adelina Solis who went last year and she has been incredibly helpful as I prepare to head out.

Before I head to Ben Tre I will be spending a one month orientation in Hanoi with all my fellow Fulbrighters. After that all of us head our separate ways to various towns around the country.   

Well I don't want to drone on and on about the details but that is the general idea of what I will be doing and where. If you want more information, check out the links below

Time for me to try and catch some sleep, lot of traveling tomorrow!

Later,

Jefferson

Fulbright Program: http://us.fulbrightonline.org/

Ben Tre province: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Tre_province

Ben Tre College: http://www.cdbt.edu.vn/item.aspx?l=1&z=28 (only in Vietnamese, unfortunately. Google Chrome can translate decently)