One month down...9 to go.

Thu Sau Friday
Vietnamese Word of the Day:
Tam Biet: Goodbye

Today was my last day of class at the embassy. No more Vietnamese sessions. No more English Language Training. No more lectures on culture and history and economics and politics. I'm happy to me moving on and heading to my college, but it's also bittersweet. I've been living and working with the 9 other Fulbrighters everyday for the past month. We've really come together and supported one another, and its hard to believe that in 2 days we all scatter around the country and I move to my host town completely alone.

I've always considered myself a pretty capable and independent person--I did choose to sign up for this--but to be honest, I'm not really sure if I'm ready for the next 9 months.

Yesterday our English Language teacher gave us blurbs that last year's ETAs wrote about their difficulties over the course of the year. Basically they said that we may be robbed, we'll have no privacy, we'll be followed regularly, we'll have mold in our houses...and everywhere else, we will never be given a set schedule, we will likely have some sort of stomach issue, our host will probably insist on us working more than our contract stipulates, and we will be desperately lonely.

Seriously? You give that to me the day before I head out on my own? No wonder I had a panic attack...the "I'm stuck in a pit in the sand and its low tide now but I know what happens when the sun goes down" kind of panic attack.
But I've recovered.
Sort of.
Well, not really.
But I'm trying. I know the next 9 months are probably going to be the hardest of my life, but that may not be saying much. Let's face it: I've had it pretty cushy for the last 23 years. I guess everything is relative.

The good news is that I'm really excited to start teaching, and I am looking forward to overcoming the challenges. I also know that I'm going to learn a lot about myself. Hell, I already have. Why hasn't anyone ever sat me down and told me I'm an obscenely impatient control freak? That would have been useful information to have when moving to a developing country in Southeast Asia...

But I must say that while at the moment I feel quite scared and alone, I also feel very blessed. I have the most amazing family, and I also have some really wonderful friends. They've been supportive and loving, and "the pit in the sand panic attacks" would certainly be much more frequent without them. Props to them for dealing with me during my "adjustment period." When I get through this, it'll be because of them.

Wish me luck with my move!

Oh, and this is a picture of me teaching a lesson on New York City at the Embassy. I think I make a very cute teacher, so that's good news.