A week under our belts!

Well, we've been here a full week, we've done so much and learned so much. Doug and I are starting to feel a "sensory overload". Our schedule since we got here has been non-stop with cultural classes, homework assignments, getting to know our way around, learning where to eat and how to order the kind of food we want, and of course the famous lesson on how to cross the street. One of our team mates made a video of this lesson and posted it on his blog, you have to see it to understand what traffic is like here. This was taken on Thursday, July 30th - our first full day in Hanoi. The blog address is http://www.jlirowley.blogspot.com/. I can honestly say that it has gotten easier, you just have to step out and stay alert.

After a week of cultural training classes, the teachers are now in their TEFL training classes. Since I'm not teaching, I am not attending any of those - I'm quite happy to be done. But today I did have my first lesson to learn Vietnamese. Most of the lesson was on the proper pronouns to use when addressing someone, it all depends on your age, their age, their position and their gender. And of course there are the tones - 6 of them - that make the same word mean different things. This is NOT going to be easy! We also practiced tones and learned numbers.

Yesterday I went with another non-teaching spouse and the Vietnam Team Personnel Director to a market called Dan's. That store along with another called Western Canned Goods are the two stores in Hanoi to get some of the things from home. Things are expensive, but if you really need a taste of home, you can get it there. They had Ruffles potato chips and Orea cookies!

Doug and I now have cell phones that we can use in Asia. I went with another team mate - a young woman named Caroline from Galveston, Texas who will be teaching in Haiphong, Vietnam - to purchase them. Yes, we went alone......we were very lucky though, we found a salesman at the store who spoke pretty good English and he helped us out. We are quickly adding numbers for all that are here with us since these phones are good throughout Southeast Asia.

Tomorrow I'm going on another learning/shopping excursion with the Personnel Director, Susan Lucasse. She is taking us to a store called The Big C - it's kind of like a Wal Mart in Hanoi. I'm hoping to find a new small camera. We are not taking a lot of pictures right now because we don't have a small camera, ours was lost on the flight from Denver to LosAngeles - we are trying to find out if it was found on the plane.

I guess that's all for now - Doug is in class right now and I'm going to practice all the new words I learned this morning!