I am well into my posting here in Hanoi, Vietnam. The weather has finally started to warm up today. It was surprisingly cold for the last few weeks, although we did have some heat just before Tet. Tet is the Lunar New Year and it is a major event for the Vietnamese. Hanoi basically shut down for 10 days. And I mean shut down! Being that it isn’t a multi-cultural society like Canada, there are no other cultures to consider during this traditional holiday period. You don’t even find the odd corner store open, at least not for the first few days.

The daily traffic in Hanoi is pretty much solid motorcycles. We’re talking six lanes to eight lanes of them, going whatever way works best. And, of course, there is always the sidewalk if the road is too crowded. I have been loaned a pedal bike to get back and forth to work and I am very grateful for it, even though my life is in danger for about an hour and a half every day, at least I don’t have to take a bus.

Hanoi and Vietnam feel like a big teenager, not quite fitting into their new body yet. It has developed so fast. You see farmers working with water buffalo in fields beneath billboards for computers and airlines and cell phones.

The college I am working at, Hanoi Community College, is very progressive and eager to move forward. They have myself and another WUSC volunteer, Arlene Whitter, working with them and they treat us like gold. I have developed a workshop for the English teachers and I will be presenting it in Hai Binh, Hanoi, Saigon and another place down in the south (can’t remember the name). Arlene will be presenting also. We are very fortunate to get so many side trips.

Vietnam still has a way to go. I feel a sense of desperation from the college that support like WUSC won’t stick around long enough; won’t wait until they can stand on their own two feet before they let go. I wish I could reassure them that this would never happen. But who am I to make promises like that?

My name is Jan Beecher and I am from Nanaimo, British Columbia. I landed in Hanoi, Vietnam on January 9th. I have always wanted to work in a developing country. It has always seemed that it was something I had to do to complete myself as a person. And I have had the opportunity, or come close to doing something like this before, but it never worked out. Now, at 47 years old, I am here, doing what I need to do. I am a recent graduate of Creative Writing and Journalism from Vancouver Island University. I have two boys, 20 and 18 years old. The hardest part about going on this assignment has been leaving them, but I know that they will be fine.

Pre-departure training left me feeling prepared in so many ways, and now that I am here, I must say I am super glad we went through so much. I know about Uniterra and WUSC and that gave me pride in what I am doing, I knew to expect certain feelings from myself as I adjusted, and I learned to expect and respect reactions from this new culture as I interacted with them. People laugh at me sometimes here. I miss my family sometimes here. I get asked what I am doing in Hanoi all the time here. Thanks to pre-departure training I can at least dig inside my brain cell and sort some of this onslaught of experience into the “oh yeah, I knew that was gonna happen” file. Believe me, that has been a good thing.

Everything happened very fast, from finding out I was going to getting here. I think that was a great thing. It took work on my part but it took ten times as much work on the WUSC people’s part – THANK YOU!!

That’s it for now. More to come …