SEAGA stands for the Southeast Asian Geography Association and many of the students and faculty here (including me!) have been "slaves" to this organization for quite a long time. The bi-annual meeting of this organization was held this past week and hosted by Hanoi National University of Education where I am teaching and living. The conference ended Friday afternoon and if you listened carefully, you might have heard a collective sigh of relief from everyone here!
The conference was GREAT! Over 300 geographers from all over Southeast Asia attended---papers were given primarily in English, but they also had a Vietnamese Track for those academics who did not have a good command of the language. I presented a paper on Service-Learning in the geography curriculum and it was well received. I have been asked to write a paper for their journal. I keep reminding myself that I am retired!
Anyway--back to the "slave" analogy. Everyone has been working very hard to make this conference a success. HNUE had not hosted a large meeting of this type and they really pulled out all the stops to make it a smashing success. But I must give you some "behind the scenes" stories.
About a year ago, the geography department wanted to involve students as volunteers for the conference. They interviewed over 100 students who applied...and selected about 30. They had been meeting with these students twice a week for many, many weeks. Mostly the meetings were to practice English skills. When I arrived in September, I started working with them...doing games and activities to familiarize them with "foreigners". The following photos are of the group--they gave me flowers because it was teacher day!
These meetings were lots of fun...we laughed a great deal and everyone seemed to enjoy working together.
These kids really were the "glue" of the meetings. They were assigned to the delegates and guided them from their hotels to the university meeting site. They helped them find placed to eat. They took them shopping and were monitors on the field trips.
We managed to sneak away and take some photos while the meetings were going on. The photos can in no way convey the enthusiasm and spirit these kids brought to the meetings.
Ho Chi Minh statues, photos and other forms of imagery are found EVERYWHERE in Vietnam. Every classroom, every auditorium, every school entryway has some sort of photo or image of him. The large bust of "Uncle Ho" was taken out of the auditorium for the conference and I couldn't help having the students take a quick photo of me with him.
Last weekend I went shopping with Huong for conference essentials. Basically we spent over one million dong on toilet paper, hand towels and soap for the conference bathrooms. This is Huong and our purchases at the grocery store. I was relieved that they would deliver for free because we only had a motorbike for transportation that day!
Most Asian toilets do not have any "paper" products--so we had to provide this stuff for the six bathrooms and 20 "sitter" toilets in the conference building. Some of the student volunteers had to check the facilities every hour to make sure that the paper was still there! Anyway, it was the first time I think I have purchased that much toilet paper at one time! We laughed and had a great deal of fun --especially when we were in the check-out line at the grocery store. I have no idea what the people were thinking as they watched us haul all this stuff through the check out line.
So....last night it all ended. I went out to dinner with a couple of friends and we celebrated with lots of bir and ga (Beer and chicken). Working at this conference was a great experience --but not one I want to revisit anytime soon.
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