Sunday, May 1, 2011

Greetings from Vietnamese students

Hello!
Welcome to Vietnam! ^^

How exciting to know that our journey will start very soon! And this time tomorrow some of you will have already arrived in Hanoi. On this very first entry, we would like to firstly send you the warmest welcome to Hanoi – Vietnam and secondly, we want to take this opportunity to initiate an online “get – to – know –all” activity from which GIEU participants will get some information about one another. Before moving to the detailed introduction from the Vietnamese side, we would like to briefly introduce you to Hanoi University in general and the Faculty of International Studies in particular.

Hanoi University (HANU for short), formerly Hanoi University of Foreign Studies was established in 1959 and located at Nguyen Trai road, Thanh Xuan District, Hanoi (about 10 kilometers away from the city center). The Hanoi University of Foreign Studies as in its name provided only courses on foreign languages and foreign languages teaching. However since September 15, 2006 the name of the university was changed to its current name: HANU. Significantly, from that time on, the university has opened new educational programs namely Accounting, Finance and Banking, Computer Science, Tourism, Business Administration and International Studies. The special thing of those programs is that students will study them in English. Thus, it can be said that entering Hanoi University, students who choose the specialized programs get dual benefits: both good English competency (we actually after our first year get an IELTS certificate from the university) and specialized knowledge.


Objectively speaking, HANU is not the number one university in Vietnam but students graduating from HANU are often remarked as active, flexible and possess good English skills and the rate of students who get employed after graduation is quite high in comparison with other universities in Hanoi. Also it is quite interesting to tell you that the female population at HANU outnumbers male one. About 90% of HANU students are girls and the rate is similar with regard to HANU staff :D

As you might already know, four of us are International Studies (IS) students among which 2 are from class IS 07 (Pham Trang and Huyen) while the other 2 are from class IS 08 (Hoang Trang and Huy Anh). Ah, this is just for fun, out of 54 students of class IS 07, there are only 3 boys, together with only 5 boys among 48 students of IS 08 :D. Some of you might be curious about our major. As a final year student who is almost done with the faculty, I just want to share with you my personal understanding of what IS is about. Basically, students will study about 2 main branches within IS namely Development and International relations. In Development, we study about poverty, environment, economics, etc. while in the latter, we study about international relations and Vietnam’s foreign relations. Students graduating from IS faculty work in various fields but the ideal job for us is to work for a non – governmental organization (NGO).

For more information on the university and the faculty, we would love to share with you more when we meet in person. Now, we will introduce ourselves to you all one by one :D

I am Pham Trang and I am one of the two final year students mentioned above. I am going to graduate in June, after coming back from GIEU. I am living in Hanoi with my family. I am very glad to be part of GIEU 2011 as for me, this will be the last trip of my student’s life and hence I would like to make it the most unforgettable and rewarding. I am quite an easy going and simple person, I like meeting new people and learning about their hobbies and discussing with them about future plans. I love music and dancing. I listen to music every day and when I have free time I go dancing. I hope during and after GIEU, we will become good friends and learn a lot from each other. Oh I can’t wait to see you all! :X:X:X:X










Hi all, I am Huyen, a last year student living in Hanoi. About myself, I am an adventurous person. I love exploring new things and that’s why I want to travel often and try to keep my life occupied with new experiences. Sharing the feeling of a last year student with Trang, I feel so happy and lucky to join GIEU as it would make my student life more memorable. I believe after this one month, what we bring back are not only a big change in appearance with sun burnt hair and dark buffalo skin :-p, but also tons of new things learnt along the journey and many good friendships as well. Eagerly counting down to the day we meet \m/












Hi then, I am Hoang Trang, a third year student of FIS. It’s quite interesting that we four are all Hanoian. I hope that it will make us easier to show you guys amazing places or fantastic experiences when you all come to this city. About me, I love foods, together with cooking, eating and taking pictures of different food. I feel relax when making cake or trying a new recipe since I can experience the taste of creativity, even when sometimes those too-much-creativities could come to totally strange flavours and finally come to their seats as garbage (so sad :-( ). It seems that I said too much about food but I am now so excited to show you the map of Hanoi food when we meet each other. I am also sooooooo eager to meet you guys, enjoy our one-month trip and have many funs together during the trip and later. Oh my god it is so amazing!!!!!







Nice to meet you, my name is Huy Anh. I am the last and only one Vietnamese guy participated in GIEU 2011. I am interested in topic such as politics, social and environment issues. Like all other young Vietnamese, I am so passionate in traveling, getting know new people, experiencing different ways of life. I am looking to GIEU for new experience of interacting with people coming from different culture. I love to dance (but I am not a good dancer :-( ), listen to guitar solo, piano solo and some instrumental music, especially the soundtrack from my favorite movies. I also love to read book, which it brings me to another world out of my current life. My favorite authors are Conan Doyle on fiction and Jared Diamond on non-fiction book.

My favorite quote:
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage and the strength to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.
- Reinhold Niebuhr -








From left to right: Huy Anh, Huyen, Pham Trang and Hoang Trang


Modelling UN Summit - discussing about North Korea's Nuclear Weapons Program


Volunteering for Habitat for Humanity project in Ke Sat - Hai Duong province

1 comment:

  1. You will have a great trip with experience and funs. I'll check this blog everyday so please keep it posted, pictures and a few words :)
    I wish I could join GIEU again and cant wait to see all of you in HANU campus this Friday.

    ReplyDelete