For the past month, I have been meeting with Logan remotely. We talked about whether the introduction of other media in the lesson was valuable, and I said I thought it was. I think watching movies and reality television is the closest thing one can get to a culture other than actively and directly participating. We then made plans to watch our next movie: Mùa Len Trâu (The Buffalo Boy). It is a coming of age story about the too common struggle in the rural area to live during flood season. We have yet to set a date to watch the movie, but I am looking forward to it.
Next we continue with our routine of speaking practices where we speak only in Vietnamese with a few English words thrown in for when I don’t know it’s Vietnamese equivalent. For the words that I was not familiar with, I quickly write them down during the conversation in English then we go over it afterwards. Our conversation focused mostly on the topic of past experiences living in Vietnam especially pertaining to the rural areas.
I talked mostly about my mother’s quê — which can be roughly translated to hometown or village but does not really have an English equivalent — in the Tánh Linh District of the Bình Thuận Province by the city of Phan Thiết. The village is very small stretching only about 1,174 km² according to my mother. It has a cemetery and a stretch for the open air market. It is also overlooking the Là Ngà river. The village is known for its proximity to Tượng Đức Mẹ trên núi Tà Pao — also known by its shorten form as tượng Đức Mẹ Tà Pao (Our Lady of Tà Pao Statue). In French, the statue is known as Notre Dame de Ta Pao, and it is an important location for Catholics practitioners. I’m not entirely sure of the history behind the statue but I know that it is one of many major gathering spots for Catholics to pilgrimage to in the south. Before, when I was about 5 or 6, it was just a bare, crumbling mountain with uneven stairs leading to the statue, but with the increase in tourism, the district had allocated money to fixing up the area.
Another thing that we talked about was my keeping of a diary journal that I write entirely in Vietnamese. In it, I mostly write about my days and the things I did, then I send it off to my partner who makes corrections and comments before our next weekly meeting. I think this practice is especially helpful for me to familiarize myself with formulating thoughts and ideas in my target language as well as improve the application of my writing and comprehension skills. Additionally, the corrections allow me to understand where I fall short of expectation on my understanding of the grammar and word structure. An example of this is that while I am very comfortable with the spoken language, the southern dialect does not make very noticeable difference between the ‘d’ and ‘gi’ sound, which then shows in my writing and is commented on by my language partner.
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