Oh hello world! So sorry we’ve been a bit MIA, we’ve been finally settling in to the city in which we are going to be living for the next two months. NBD. Obviously, you and us have
So excited to finally be in Hanoi after 30+ hours of traveling!
a lot of catching up to do, but we won’t bombard you with 39,567,924 details right now, rather we’ll break up our sequence of events over the next several days. BUT until then…we’ll debrief you on life right now.
Currently, we are about an hour south of Hanoi, in the province properly known as Hung Yen. We knew we’d be teaching about an hour away from Hanoi, but that’s it. Nothing more, no details, no idea how many kids or even exactly when we’d start teaching. On Monday we learned we’d be teaching in 3 different public schools, 6 days a week (yeah, we’re working on changing that…). We also found out we’d be teaching separately (not that big of a deal, but we are accustomed to teaching together and thought we would be). Oh and when we arrived, we found out we’d be teaching at 2pm that very afternoon…………what… So we were practically thrown into a classroom of 30 very…energetic…1st graders who spoke minimal English and were told, “go,” Um, needless to say it was pretty stressful, but hey, somehow we pulled it off and they didn’t fire us so…cheers! They children are absolutely magnificent. They are so beautiful, polite and eager to learn, we couldn’t have asked for better students.
Our first day meeting the children at the local school
Also, our lives are awesome, haha, so we only have to work about 2, 2 ½ hours every day not including the time we spend preparing for class. Regardless, that leaves plenty of time for, anything. This morning we spent the our time exploring the town on a nice jog. We stumbled upon a very traditional market with fruits, meats and other foods we have never seen before much less pronounce. Did we mention Vietnamese is probably the hardest language on the planet? No seriously. There are six different tones so the same word can have six different meanings depending on where the accent is. Woof. We’ve barely been able to master, “hello”, “thank you” and “goodbye.” Oh, and “I’m full.”
Us at a traditional Vietnamese wrestling match between two villages in Northern Vietnam. These matches are part of their many customs and traditions during Tet (Lunar New Year)
Anyway, as we mentioned, we are JUST settling in. We have been moving from place to place for awhile so it’s nice to finally get acclimated to one location. Something we have to note is how incredibly kind and welcoming the people have been. This whole process would have been a lot more difficult and tiring if it weren’t for the kindness of strangers.
Sorry we can’t provide a more in-depth post right now. As we said, we’ll be getting more posts up in the upcoming days. (note: Monday was the first day we had internet since we’ve been here). We just wanted to get something up on our blog so you wouldn’t forget about us!
We miss ALL of our friends and family members! We cannot wait to share our experiences with you. If you can, please, please, please, add us on Skype, Whatsapp, Google chat, Viber, etc. We cannot express about much we enjoy hearing from you.
Love you all,
Angie & Matt
Enjoying some wine at JFK airport before we board the plane!
Angie:
Skype- Angie.m.duran
Gmail- aduran326@gmail.com
Matt:
Skype- bickerml
Gmail – matthewlbickert@gmail.com
A Twenty-Something Couple's Guide to the Galaxy 
have fun you guys!!
Thanks Ash, we will! Hope you are doing well.
I love your writing style. It is clear that you guys are enjoying the experience… Just by looking at your face. Great update. Keep it up.
Thank you! We will definitely be posting more soon!