Vietnam! (Food) -Nina

This post documents a large portion of the food that we ate in Vietnam. There was more. A lot more. But these are the most memorable things. The first section is all fruit, since we (namely, Cam's mom) prioritized that. Vietnamese fruit is delicious and there is so much more of it than in America! Cam's mom spent the majority of our time there putting plates of fruit in front of us. Just to put things in perspective, Cam's mom speaks very little English, and we speak no Vietnamese. But, by the end of the trip, the only phrases we learned were "eat more," "I'm full," and "thank you." 

Vietnam! (Not food) -Nina

Although you probably can get a good idea of what our trip to Vietnam was like from Abby's last post, I also have a bunch of pictures to share! Hopefully there won't be too much overlap. When we were there, we allocated that I would take pictures of food, and she would take pictures of scenery, but I couldn't help myself and also took some pictures around the city. Don't worry though, there is a whole post of food pictures coming up! 

Vietnam Part One - Abby

At the end of SI, Nina and I split up for a bit.  Nina left Summer Institute a few days early to fly back to the US for her sister's wedding.  I spent a few extra days in Lincang, and then flew to Xi'an with a one day layover in Kunming.  Nina and I met up again in Ho Chi Minh City where we stayed with her friend Cam and her family.  The trip was amazing - we hung out with Cam and her parents, saw some great sites, ate some delicious food and recovered - me from Summer Institute and moving all my stuff to Xi'an, Nina from spending 72 hours traveling back and forth between Asia and the US in under a week.  Here are some pictures from the first half of our trip:

some long overdue SI photos - Abby

Nina and I are in Xi'an, getting ready to begin teaching!  Our trip to Vietnam was awesome and we will post many photos soon, but first I want to share some pictures from Summer Institute.

72 hours in planes and airports, all in 1 weekend! --Nina

Abby and I are currently in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), staying with Cam's family. We are having a wonderful time, and Cam and her parents are great hosts. In the next week, Abby and I promise to post pictures of the sights and food from our trip! But, I wanted to share pictures from my last days in Lincang and my voyage to America and back last weekend for my sister's wedding. Here are some of my students and me on my last day. I received lots of adorable presents, like bracelets and pens, and many pictures were taken. On their last day of class, my students took their final exam. I'm still waiting to hear about how well they did from Yongyi, who very generously graded the tests after I left a little early. Hopefully we improved the class average from a 40% on their diagnostic to at least passing! 

Summer Institute in a Nutshell! - Abby

Ok, first of all I have to apologize for being the worst blogger ever! Summer Institute has been seriously hectic and I haven't been very patient about dealing with our internet issues, but from here on I vow to be a better blogger.

So much has happened in the last four weeks that I hardly know where to start. Our first week here we attended class every day where we learned about all sorts of teacherly things - how to write lesson plans, how to write assessments, strategies for tracking students behavior both as a group and individually, strategies for tracking students academically both as a group and individually, etc. Then we got assigned our class and curriculum and had a weekend to begin writing lesson plans and making posters and getting ready to teach. For the past three weeks, we've been teaching one class per day, and then continuing with our other classes until about 5:30 pm - and then grading and lesson planning frantically while hoping that the little print shop around the corner doesn't decide to close early again.

Goodbye Lincang --Nina

I am leaving Lincang and Summer Institute on Wednesday to head home for my sister's wedding! I am only leaving a couple days before everyone else, so I shouldn't miss too much. I'm very very very excited. 

More pictures --Nina

Here are some more pictures of my class! Whenever I say "we," I'm referring to me and my co-teacher, Yongyi. We actually never teach together at the same time, but we share the same students, so we collaborated on the room decorations. However, all of these pictures are of things that I personally made.

My class! --Nina

Hello! I'm sorry again for the delay! This time I have some good excuses. (Like, for some reason all of my old blog posts are disappearing, which makes me wary of posting more. And, the internet is so slow that it takes 5 minutes to upload a single picture.) I was hoping to make this a post full of pictures of my cute students and my classroom with its beautiful decorations. Unfortunately, I could only upload two pictures for now. I'll try again this weekend. Hopefully the internet will be stronger.