Hi, everyone

Hi. This is my blog about living in Vietnam, as you might have gathered. In it I will be writing about pretty much any experience I have over there that I think is worth writing about. Since I'll be traveling alone to a foreign country with almost no knowledge of the language and living there for four months while attempting to teach, I'm guessing I'll have a few of those. Experiences worth writing about, I mean.

I actually have a few goals for this blog, which is a few more goals than I usually have for anything. First of all, I'm required by the course to keep a journal of experiences, so the blog will hopefully fulfill that requirement, thus enabling me to pass the course. Secondly, I want to keep everyone up-to-date on what I'm doing, and this seems a much simpler way to keep people informed than sending out emails every week or posting Facebook notes. Of course, in order for this to work, people need to know the blog exists. I'll try to advertise at every opportunity, but I'm still going to need help spreading the word.

My third goal for the blog is to keep in touch with people and answer any questions they might have, so please, post as many comments as you'd like. Maybe we can even get a few conversations going. Finally, I'll probably use the blog as something of a photo depository, so don't be surprised if many of the entries are nothing but pictures (I'll try to provide captions, to give you an idea of the context).

Oh yeah, and my last goal: to make you all feel like you're going on this trip with me. My greatest hope is that people will read this blog because it's actually interesting, so I'll certainly try to make it so. If the blog is half as exciting as the actual experiences will be, I think I'll have been successful.

Two weeks to departure!