Why Vietnam? A Presentation for School Year Abroad

Three Years Later......

Three years ago today, I was hiking through the highlands of northern Vietnam, reflecting on my then nearly 7 month journey.  with only 2 and a half short months left, I realized how quickly the year had gone by, and how close I was to returning home.  I find myself in that position again, as my sophomore year at George Washington University is nearing the end.  At that point I'll be halfway done with my undergraduate degree (fingers crossed....).

For some reason, this blog has remained relevant since my departure from Vietnam still attracting several thousand hits each month and I realized that there has been no update on my life or of the other 14 SYA Vietnam students.  Just as it was an exceptional group in 2011-12, that remains true today.  Together we attend some of the top schools in the country, and I continue to be impressed by the feats my classmates are attaining.  Though we have not had an official reunion, I have been fortunate enough to reunite with 8 members of the group, and those meetings have been some the highlights of my year.  So as I reflect on not only Vietnam but also college, I thought it would only be fitting to update anyone that still looks at this blog on the whereabouts of infamous SYA 15.

(In alphabetical order - not picking favorites)      

Perrine Aronson

From Facebook

Since shipping out of Hanoi in spring 2012, Perrine has kept on the move.  After two years in Missouri at Saint Louis University, she decided the American Heartland was not for her, and returned to her native Europe to attend school in Italy.  As travel is in her blood, I was not surprised when she told me she was uprooting and leaving America behind. 

Maddy Blais

Dinner in Manhattan - Spring 2013 

After finishing up High School in New York City, Maddy left the Big Apple behind for the quieter, calmer life at Kenyon College in rural Ohio.  She, like Perrine, found that the Midwestern lifestyle was not for her, and transferred east for sophomore year at Boston College.  In Boston, she’s an International Studies major; focusing in Islamic societies last I heard. Clearly she’s come a long way since her days of getting various skin infections from constantly petting stray dogs in Vietnam.    

Nathan Cluss

Nate with his art - from Facebook

Once senior year was over, Nathan moved north from his native Virginia to set up shop in Philly.  During his past few years at Drexel, Nate has honed his artistic craft as a master artist.  Back in Vietnam I thought his photography was amazing, but then I saw some of his Philadelphia street art and was extremely impressed.  I would certainly recommend checking it out. 

Elliott Crofton

Fall in DC

As a fellow Washingtonian (DC), Elliott attends American University, where he too studies International Relations.  Apart from planned meet-ups, we’ve only ran into each other once on the DC metro, but we’ve still got two and a half more years.  Elliott attends American with his boyfriend Nick, who I’ve had the chance to meet several times, and I can tell they are enjoying their time in Tenleytown (that's where American U is).

Anna Leah Eisner

The Californians

Trading in her flip-flops and t-shirts for snow boots and parkas, Anna Leah moved from the warm beaches of Malibu to Massachusetts to attend Boston University.  Apart from her studies, Anna Leah also hosts a radio show on campus, and takes in all Boston has to offer.  We’ve made it a routine to meet up at least once each summer, seeing how we are only about an hour apart.  I hope to one day soon travel up to Boston, seeing how such a large contingent of the group are based in the area.

Nan McMillan

Brunch in Charlottesville 

Though she’s from Boston, and went to school in California, Nan has finally settled in Virginia, where attends University of Virginia in Charlottesville.  She has kept up her amazing singing, and now preforms with one of the a capella groups on campus.  Last year, I had traveled down to Charlottesville to visit Sarah, and while we were trying to figure out how to contact Nan, we went to see a movie.  While I was standing in line to get my ticket, I heard someone call my name, to my surprise, Nan was standing right there with some of her UVA crew.

McKenzie Nagle

Exploring the sea - from Facebook

Just as I left California for college, McKenzie moved in.  He now calls Pitzer College in Los Angeles home.  I have yet to meet up with him, but I do follow his numerous adventures online, as he pings from once place in the world to another.  In the few years since we left Vietnam, he has returned twice to Vietnam (as far as I’m aware), much to the delight of his host family and the other millions of Hanoians he has befriended.  

Woo Nguyen

From Facebook

As a Bay Area native, Woo stayed local for college, attending University of San Francisco.  Over the past few years he has developed his filmmaking, and now shoots for the University’s basketball team. 

Anna Oakes

Just a few months ago over Thanksgiving break I met up with Anna in Manhattan, where she told me about her time at Wesleyan University.  In addition to rigorous academics, she also travels around the country with Wesleyan’s Ultimate Frisbee team, a sport she picked up on the fields of the UN International School in Hanoi.  Anna has also been a driving force to establish a SYA reunion, as of yet not much progress has been made, but she continues to fight the good fight nevertheless.

Abby Ripoli

 

The Santa Barbara Squad

     Trading in her Chicago accent for the much more stylish Southern Drawl, Abby crossed the Mason-Dixon to attend school at Auburn University in Alabama.  Quickly embracing the south, she picked up her southern belle qualities and a fierce hatred of the Alabama Crimson Tide.  I’ve been lucky enough to reunite twice with Abby since ‘Nam.  Once to accompany me to Prom in Santa Barbara, and again this past November in Mississippi to watch Auburn upset Ole Miss in a game for the ages.  Both times going well out of her way to get to the various spots around the country I found myself in, and for that I am very grateful.
  

Jaya Sahihi

Grand New York reunion 2013 (Isn't that the same picture from before? Yes. Deal with it.)

Also attending Wesleyan with Anna, Jaya rounds out the SYA Connecticut contingent.  As mentioned earlier, I was able to meet up in New York with Jaya, Maddy and Anna in spring 2013.  There she told me about her trip she had taken a few months earlier to Vietnam, where she visited the old SYA building and some of our local hangouts around the neighborhood.  She admitted that the empty SYA building was pretty depressing, but had a great time back in Hanoi overall.

Julia Shumlin

From Facebook

Julia decided to stay in her home of Vermont for school, where she goes to Middlebury College.  Since returning from Vietnam Julia has been back once, where she spent about a month in Hanoi with McKenzie, volunteering and traveling around the country. 

Sarah Weiner

Washington DC - Summer 2013

The adventure has been never ending for Sarah since her Vietnam days.  This past year, she embarked on a journey to Asia that took her back to Vietnam for a few weeks where she visited with her host family who had relocated to Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon).  From there she spent the rest of the semester trekking through the Nepalese Himalayas and participating in home-stays in Kathmandu.  She now is in her first year at Bard College in New York state. 

Luke Williams

Luke with his nimble fighter plane - from Facebook

Luke began his college career at Howard University in Washington, DC, but has since decided that it wasn't for him, and moved back north to his home and native land, Massachusetts, where he now attends college in Springfield.  Luke has continued with his passion of engineering, and as a result has been selected for internships with NASA and Cornell University.  Surprisingly, I have not seen Luke since Hanoi, as we seem to have a habit of just missing each other.  Until our reunion my plan is to wait patiently for him to return to DC. 

   

I am a Traveler

Tourists don’t know where they’ve been; travelers don’t know where they’re going.

 – Paul Theroux

          Paul Theroux is both one of the great travelers and one of the great travel writers of our time. He is well known for both his works of travel and adventure fiction, such as The Mosquito Coast (1981), and for his non-fiction based on his own travel adventures, such as The Great Railway Bazar (1975). I believe that he thinks of himself as a traveler, and not as a tourist. “Tourists don’t know where they’ve been” because they do not, for one reason or another, experience the places that they have visited. There are many ways that tourists can visit a place and not experience it. Some may only stay at large, generic hotels and have similar experiences wherever they visit; some may travel in large groups and consequently do not meet local people; and, some may spend so much money that they are economically separated from the places they visit and do not experience local culture. On the other hand, “travelers don’t know where they’re going” because they are often so immersed in the cultures and the experiences of the places that they are visiting, that they do not know what is coming next. They live in the moment and are willing to let whatever is happening now dictate what will happen next.


          I came to Vietnam not knowing what to expect, and I wanted it that way. Too many people go on vacations to ‘fun’ and developed places, and that was not something that I was interested in. The life of the ‘traveler’ has far more appeal to me than the life of the ‘tourist’. I have lived in Vietnam for nine months now, and I have taken full advantage of my time here and the experiences that were available to me.  I chose Theroux’s quote because it defines the type of experience that I want to have when traveling. I don't want to go to a non-stimulating place like Hawaii or southern Spain and sit on a beach. I want to go somewhere off the beaten path and meet the people that live there. When I came to Vietnam, all I knew ahead of time was that I was going to be here for a year, and that I had to go to school on the weekdays, but other than that it was an open book. I didn’t know where I was going. This is the message Theroux conveys: that a traveler doesn't need an itinerary, but instead chooses to deal with things as they come, and make the most of it.


          For me, the most compelling part of an adventure is not knowing what’s around the next corner, and my time in Vietnam has certainly been an adventure. One of my first and most humorous experiences in Vietnam was getting hopelessly lost in a cab on the way to a soccer field deep in a crowded neighborhood. At that point in the year, about seven days in, I couldn't speak any Vietnamese, and the driver spoke no English. Eventually after a long and trying process, we found my destination. But, as awkward and difficult as the drive may have been at the time, it makes a great story and it built character and resilience in me. That's another great part about traveling, if all I did was sit in my room and not make the effort to go to the fields, I would have missed out on an opportunity to learn and expose myself to solving problems. Arriving at those fields made possible another adventure - refereeing soccer in a foreign country and with players who spoke a foreign language. I could have said to myself that these barriers would make refereeing too difficult as it is hard enough without the language problems, but again I would have missed out on the amazing cultural experiences that refereeing soccer provided me. I definitely had no idea where I was going next when I was refereeing soccer (other than quickly to someplace with air conditioning!).


          I was fortunate to have a host family with lots of relatives who lived in many different places around Northern Vietnam, and we often traveled to meet them. One day during the Tet Holiday, without notice I was woken up by my family at five am, put into a waiting car, and was off to meet family relatives in Thang Hoa, a small city about two hours south of Hanoi. Although the unexpected wakeup wasn't too pleasant at the time, it’s moments like this that only a traveler experiences. I was off to meet a large group of people I had never met or heard of before. Questions raced through my mind: would they like me? How awkward is this going to be? Will anyone understand anything I can say in Vietnamese? Of course it turned out like every other family experience I’ve had here: with incredible hospitality and friendliness. Of all the many family members I met, the person who stands out the most is my mom’s uncle. He was a colonel in the North Vietnamese Army. He fought against both the French and Americans in the two Indochina wars. He was very old, but with the help of my dad, who translated for us, he told me some war stories from the opposite perspective that most Americans would hear. I had no idea I would meet this fascinating man; until I did.


          I think that most people who travel are not willing to get outside their comfort zone. They avoid the risk of making some potentially embarrassing mistakes, and yet in the process, they also avoid the possibility of meeting new people and experiencing their cultures. These people are tourists. It is more difficult, but I know better than to allow myself to feel comfortable all the time when traveling. Getting out of my comfort zone and exposing myself to new things is healthy; it makes my life interesting; and, ultimately, can be incredibly rewarding. Theroux says, “travelers don't know where they are going”, and I am a traveler. I came to Vietnam not knowing what was going to happen to me here. I just strapped in and enjoyed the ride.

SYA-VN '12 - Partners in Crime

          Nearly equal in importance to the life-long bonds formed with my host family here in Hanoi, were those formed with my fellow SYA-VN students. To be a high school student living away from my family, 8000 miles from home, in the most extreme of foreign cultures, would simply have not been possible for me were it not for the love and support of my fellow students. There were just fifteen of us the first semester living in a foreign capital city with well over 6,000,000 inhabitants - and during the second semester, our numbers dropped even lower, with just seven of us remaining - Island America (+france) - at the start of the second term. Even though it is now time to part and go our separate ways across the globe, I'm sure the intensity (some say trauma...) of this amazing experience will make us lifelong friends who circle back to see each other from time to time. We've become brothers and sisters in arms and I'm sure that years from now it will take just one look or comment between any two of us to bring it all back.

          It is now my great pleasure to introduce the final class of School Year Abroad, Vietnam:  (we're not a dying breed, sadly we are now extinct)

Full-Year Students:

Luke Williams

            Although Luke may currently reside in Massachusetts, he grew up on the sunny coast of Southern California (a fact that he makes sure to remind us of constantly). He was one of three seniors in the SYA class, though he was the sole senior during the second semester. He is the sportsman of the group, and is an experienced football player. But seeing how American football isn’t really embraced anywhere outside of the US, he was more then willing to pick up Soccer, Frisbee, Rugby, anything that required running really. During the year I was able to watch the entire process of the college apps process. After being accepted to several schools of his choice, he has decided on Howard University in Washington D.C.

Anna Oakes

            A New Yorker through and through, Anna lives on Manhattan Island, and attends the famous Brearly School. She was originally only signed on for one semester, but had a change of heart midway through the first semester and joined our valiant group of full-year students. She is known (and infamous) in class for her expertise in fact checking and compulsive use of Wikipedia. She and I are also the only ones who live in the Thanh Xuan district, and often carpool to and from school and other events such as Saturday Frisbee. Although she is a New Yorker, she is half Swiss, and is fluent in German.

Elliott Crofton

            Raised in the land of heat and oil, Elliott spent the first 15 years of his life in a Saudi Aramco compound. He is American, and spends his summers in Arizona where his family is from. He currently attends the prestigious Phillips Andover Academy in Northern Massachusetts, just a few minutes away from where my dad grew up.  Known for being very eccentric and enthusiastic, he can often be seen hanging out with Anna and/or Perrine.

Perrine Aronson

            Hailing from the south of France, Perrine is the only SYAer from out of the US, though she has US citizenship. Her father is American and mother French. She is here as a post grad, and is taking a gap year before heading off to Saint Louis University next fall. She has the most abroad experience of our group, living for various amounts of time in a number of countries. Though she doesn't take many classes, she is still a lot of fun to have around, and she often entertains us with her “outrageous accent” (Monty Python reference).

Sarah Wiener

            A Virginia native, Sarah was raised in Charlottesville. She is no novice in travel, and has traveled to many cool places. Armed with her camera, she is a force to be reckoned with, and is one of the most talented photographers I know. When faced with a new or unknown situation in ‘Nam, Sarah will usually be the one to lead the charge. She is very dedicated to her internship at the Hanoi Peace Village, a center that provides care to children suffering from the effects of Agent Orange, and spends a few afternoons a week there playing with the children, and has really made a difference in their lives.

Abby Ripoli

           SYA VN’s only Mid-westerner, Abby calls Chicago home. She attends Lake Forest Academy in Illinois. Her love of Glee paved the way for the implementation of a weekly Glee night at our teachers’ Chuck and Becky’s apartment. She is also known for her fear of sharks, and made sure to educate us about shark safety while in Hoi An. Abby was a great friend to me during the course of year, and I really enjoyed spending time with her. One of her most memorable experiences was the great haircut fiasco of 2012, I won’t go into details but those who lived through it know what I'm talking about…. On a serious note, she was very supportive around the time I had to return home for my uncle’s funeral, and I am grateful to her for that.

Semester students:

Anna Leah Eisner

            Born and raised in Malibu, CA, Anna Leah is the second closest SYAer to me (if we’re counting Nan), living only an hour down the coast. She very much enjoyed her time in Vietnam and living with her host family, who she became very close to. Along with Nan and I, we formed the SB-Ojai-Malibu SoCal SYA triangle. Anna Leah was an awesome friend, and we both share a love of the Doors, and would discuss their music frequently. I’m very happy that we only a short drive away from each other, and look forward to many a SYA California reunion.

Maddy Blais

           Although  technically not a New Yorker, Maddy, resident of Westchester, is still given the title. She packs a lot of sass, but is otherwise harmless. Though best known as being the camera operator during most of the blooper scenes that were filmed over the course of the semester, she still got an A for effort. During her time in VN she would often be seen with Nan and Julia, who would roam the campus seeking out and devouring any and all fruit in their path.

Nan McMillian

            Nan has basically reversed Luke’s cross-country move. A native of Boston, she lives and attends school at Thatcher School in Ojai, CA. She wins the title of closest SYAer to me, only a brief drive into the mountains. Though she may now be a bitter rival to my sister’s new school Cate, she’s still pretty cool. Known around the class for her love of fruit and peanut butter, that would sometimes get her into trouble.

Nathan Cluss

           A senior from Winchester, Virginia, Nate was a super chill guy. He became very close to his host brother, and they would often skate together at Lenin Park, a local skate park. When not with his brother, he would often hang out with Perrine, Elliott and Anna. He was also a very talented photographer, and kept his own blog during his time here. Nate was my go-to cameraman for my movies. Pretty much every scene with me in was filmed by him - except for the bloopers, which usually somehow involved Maddy :)

Hy-Long (Woo) Nguyen

            Woo is a native of the SF Bay Area, growing up in Cupertino. His family is Vietnamese, and he still has many relatives in both the north and south of VN. He was the third senior in the group, and was the only one who knew any Vietnamese before hand, though he was most familiar with the southern accent. He is a very talented dancer, and preformed for us on several different occasions during the semester.

Julia Shumlin

            A Vermonter, Julia now attends ‘miss Porter’s school for girls’ in Connecticut. She was a great addition to our SYA team, and was the only one to have visited Hanoi before. An interesting fact about Julia is that her uncle is actually the governor of Vermont. I didn't believe her at first and though she was just making fun of how small it is, but I looked it up and it is indeed true.

Jaya Sahihi

            Along with Anna, Jaya is also a native of NYC, coming from the borough of Brooklyn. An interesting connection with her is that she attends the same school as our teacher’s (Chuck) nephew. She was the primary enforcer of environmental control, and was known to protest the use of paper packets in APES, and plastic bags at lunch.

Mackenzie Nagle

            Mackenzie has lived in Charlottesville, Virginia; NYC; and now attends school at St. Georges in Rhode Island. He was quite an adventurer, and an absolute whirlwind of energy. By the time he left VN, I'm fairly sure that he knew over half the city’s residents. He plans on returning to Hanoi in just a few weeks, to spend the summer with his host family and return to his internship at Nestle. 

...where my heart is

            As I start to think about what I will remember most over this past year, many things come to mind. I will remember the incredible group of students that I had the privilege of working with, and the amazing teachers. I will remember the chaotic streets of Hanoi, with their unmistakable noises, smells and feel. But the thing I will remember most is my loving host family, who cared for me like I was one of their own.

            Throughout the year, they have supported me and made me feel welcome in a place that was very intimidating at first. The first memory that I have of them was during the host family reception (introduction). I was so nervous thinking of what they would be like - has anyone seen The Simpsons episode where Bart is a foreign exchange student in France?! - but when my family came to greet me, they had a gigantic bouquet of flowers for me and warm smiles that immediately put me at ease. From that exact moment, I could tell that they were awesome. I will remember our meals together, and talking about the day. After a while I started to get a little tired of eating rice and drinking tea, and they understood. They knew that adjusting to a different culture is a difficult task, because they both had first hand experience. For their University years, they both studied far from home in the Soviet Union - my host father spent 6 years there earning a doctorate - so they were well aware of the challenges I was facing. I will remember cooking western food with my family, and teaching them how to prepare it. We cooked pancakes, hamburgers, chicken cutlets, and burritos. They really enjoyed it (or at least they pretended to!!).

            My father has lived quite a life to say the least. He is currently the Dean of Investment Economics at Vietnam National University. As you might imagine, he is a very busy man, but always has made the time to do things with me. He was born in Hanoi, but during the war was forced to move to a village outside the city of Thanh Hoa, which I visited during the Tet holiday. It was a quiet, peaceful little place. It was mostly populated by farmers, but nowadays there are more service industry jobs such as shopkeepers and auto jobs.  After leaving the village, he came to Hanoi to study. Around this time, he was drafted into the army. The war with the Americans had just finished, so he was sent to fight in Cambodia to fight the Khmer Rouge, which was infamous for being a very ugly war. He doesn't really like to talk about his time in the military too much, so I don't push the issue. He was a very talented student, and as I mentioned before, was selected by the government to go and study in the Soviet Union. He studied economics for many years there, and returned to Vietnam to earn a doctorate and begin teaching as a professor. Back then, only the top students were sent abroad by the government. And when I say “abroad”, I mean USSR, because the rest of the world wasn't too friendly with Vietnam at the time. After years of hard work, he was appointed as the Dean of Investment Economics. He prides himself on the fact that he reached this position without being a member of the Communist Party of Vietnam. Nearly everyone with a position of power in the government is a party member, but not him. He isn’t so much anti-communist, but rather believes that the current system in place isn’t strong enough to facilitate Vietnam’s current economic growth. Some of my favorite memories with my host dad have been sitting with him after dinner, drinking tea and discussing Vietnam. He told me about how different the country was just a few years ago, and the incredible amount of economic and social growth that have been taking place. Talking to him about America has also been very insightful. He admires the American system, and hopes that Vietnam may one day be as successful. He holds no grudge against Americans after the war, and this is a sentiment shared by most all of the Vietnamese people I have met (including the older generation that fought against us). My host father and my whole family want to come to America to visit. I hope they will one day soon.

            My mom, Huong, has been so great to me this year. She is a loving and caring mother, and she took every opportunity to nurture me and make me feel welcome in my new home (starting with the flowers on day 1!). She spent her early childhood in a town called Phu Tho, a place I have visited twice, located about 40 miles northwest of Hanoi, along the route to Sapa. She, like my dad, was also born in Ha Noi, but was forced out of the city during the war. Hanoi was carpet bombed as late as 1972 during the war years with America, but she, like my dad, doesn't like to talk much about this time in her life. She must have experienced horrible things during those years. Her father was a very important professor, who actually spent a lot of time in the Soviet Union. She too was selected to travel to the Soviet Union for higher education, but she wasn't there for a doctorate. My host mother works for the government. Her job is at the NOIP (National Office of Intellectual Property) where she deals with patents and trademarks. She found out about SYA through her job, where two of the other host moms (Mackenzie’s and Nathan’s) work. She has been so accommodating with me, and as I said earlier, even lets me cook some western food for them. One of my favorite cooking memories was when I made pancakes with her. She had never had them before, and I’m no expert, so our results were pretty funny. I was able to figure out the correct mixture, but forgot to put something on the skillet to make sure the cakes wouldn't stick. Whoops. So the first few were a little messed up, but we soon discovered that putting a little bit of butter down first made all the difference. At the beginning of the year, when I was starting to really miss food from home, she took me to the supermarkets that stocked western food, and once she found out what I liked, she made regular trips to buy my favorites to help me not miss home too much.

            My sister in Hanoi, Linh, is 16 years old like me. She goes to a private school here in HN, and plans on traveling abroad for college. She is essentially fluent in English, and was told a few months back by an English school that there was nothing more they could teach her. She also speaks and is learning German. She often has been called in to duty as the family translator when my parents and I can't understand what someone is saying, which has been very helpful. Aside from school, she is an incredibly gifted pianist - prodigy level - and I can often hear her playing after dinner while I work, which is very relaxing. When my real family came to visit, my dad said that this would be his favorite thing if he lived here - a free concert piano performance every evening. My host sister is a very intelligent student, a diligent hard worker, and she has been a great sister to me.

            It is a special family that opens their home up to a student from another part of the world, and there are many reasons my host family is one of them.  Not only do both my parents have first hand experience living abroad, but they also know how it feels to have one of their own children living far from home. I have a second sister in my family who is currently at graduate school in Munich, Germany, so they are well aware how strange it can be adjusting to a foreign culture. I have a great memory of the evening that all five members of my family were able to go out when my sister was visiting from Germany. We went, appropriately enough, to a German Night at the Hanoi Opera House. It was such a blast, and we all had such a great time. I feel very grateful that I had a host family that was willing to do fun things like this with me. They are very sad that SYA VN has been discontinued, as they were looking forward to hosting more kids in the future.

            It would be difficult to overstate the importance of family and the remembrance of one's ancestors to the Vietnamese. Confucian ethics are pervasive in society values here and suffice to say that when you have a great host family, you also have a great (and incredibly extensive) extended family. Most all Vietnamese holidays are centered on getting together with family and observing traditions. I was lucky to be able to meet so many family members over the course of this year - and let me tell you, there are a lot of them - in many different places. Traveling with my family to remote areas of the country was always an adventure and having the opportunity to meet such a diverse group of people was a gift - especially when I was able to get to know someone better either with my limited Vietnamese, or with the assistance of a helpful family translator. Without exception, our relatives went out of their way to meet me and to welcome me as a family member into their homes, and I will always remember that. Whether it was meeting a little cousin for the first time, or listening to a war story told by my great uncle, there was never a dull moment with them. The dinners were loud, really LOUD, and I had absolutely no idea what 90% of the conversations were about, but it was all right by me.

            I will miss my new family very much when I leave Vietnam. They will always have a special place in my heart, and I will never forget their kindness. I hope I have honored them by being a great son. I will never forget them, and I hope they will always remember me.