Pre-departure post…kind of
Posted by Jan Beecher on January 29th, 2010
Hi this is my pre-departure post because I didn’t have access earlier.
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 …
