Ilene is winding up the semester here, which means that her students have been presenting their final projects. She does a lot of presenting herself, usually working seven days a week to touch as many audiences as possible.On Sunday last week she had an all-day workshop for the faculty and administrators at her university, followed by newspaper and TV interviews, followed by a banquet. On Monday, she presented "book donation" to the university library. (Fulbright gives grantees a budget with which they choose and purchase books for the host university.) By the end of the day Monday, all of the flowers visible in these photos and more were wilting in our apartment, which happens a lot.
Almost as cheap and plentiful as tropical flowers here are big plastic banners, so just about every room she steps into has a big sign introducing her. There's almost always a bust of Uncle Ho off her shoulder like in these photos, too.
The top picture shows her moderately crowded American literature class of about 45 students. That's the one that meets at 6:30 a.m. The bottom picture is her intercultural communications class of 90 students. Pretty difficult learning environment, as you can see. What I love about that picture (and several more added to the "misc." slideshow) is how it shows the main difference between Vietnamese and American college students. American students almost never drop the posture of being too cool for school. Vietnamese students give everything they've got, though I'm sure having Ilene for a teacher has something to do with it.
-Robert
