Guest Lectures in the Dragon Room

Today we had the first of five weekly guest lectures in the afternoon in the Dragon Room at Thanh Noi Hotel. Today's topic was "College Life in Hue" and Dean Phuoc of the College of Foreign Languages presented a great talk on many aspects of student life in Hue. The talk was very well attended not only by our 12 Riverside students but also by about 35 Vietnamese students taking intensive English classes this summer at the college. In the lecture we had some great discussion, especially after one student asked about how VN people felt about WTO. Dr. Phuoc gave a critical perspective from a developing nation that I think few had considered coming from the US. We always tend to think Vietnam's an ascending dragon, ready to flood our markets with its' garments and other manufactures as our companies move production facilities to places like the Phu Bai Industrial Zone, a place built on top of what was once an American base...blacktop has many many uses, how ironic. But in fact, globalization also means a lot of marginally competitive VN enterprises get swamped by competition from imports.

My ulterior motive for the talks succeeded beautifully - introducing and separating our 12 students into the larger contingent of English-speaking VN students from Hue. After the talk, Dr. Phuoc took off and as Hong-Anh and I left the hotel for dinner, we saw the students engaged in conversation. Darren Schemmer headed out with one student on his bike, surely on his way to a cafe. And I don't think Miguel Barrangan noticed at first, but his audience of rapt listeners were all women. I particularly like the expression of the girl on the right who looks pretty put out that I caught them in the act of pursuing him. Miguel didn't seem to mind the attention, however.