What has happened in your life in the last 20 years? Maybe you’ve raised your kids, or maybe you've been the kid growing up. You may have had a couple of different jobs, lived in a few different towns, met a variety of people, and faced new challenges. Like a river carving rock, everything you’ve experienced and how you have responded is part of what has shaped you into the person you’ve become.
For Lee (an ELIC teacher) and his family, the river of experience that has shaped their lives runs through Vietnam. They have lived overseas for 21 years, spending the past 10 in this beautiful country in Southeast Asia. Like many Americans, when they first moved to Vietnam, Lee knew very little about the history apart from the Vietnam War, but after living there for a decade, he says, “We’ve fallen in love with it.”
While every family’s experience is different, Lee found that their home city in Vietnam was a wonderful place for their kids to explore as they got older.
For the last several years they were here, our kids were able to go basically anywhere they wanted in an enormous city at just about any time of day or night, and we never worried about them.
Deciding to raise a family in a foreign culture is a big commitment. But Lee says, “We enjoyed the third-culture aspect of raising kids overseas..” But they were not oblivious to the challenging nature of such a huge move.
We discussed our unique situation often, making sure our kids understood some of the challenges they were in for later. This seems to have prepared them well for the transition to their "home" culture, and it also freed them up to really enjoy Vietnam because they had a very clear understanding of where they fit in. Both of our kids are in college now, and they loved living in Vietnam. Our daughter even came back last year for our summer teaching program!
With all of the challenges that come with cross-cultural life and work, Lee says the biggest challenge in their lives at this point is missing their kids now that they are back in the States for college.
One of the most beautiful aspects of this work is the privilege of teachers having the opportunity to build cross-cultural communities with co-workers, students, and neighbors in our host countries. In Vietnam, this fits right into the welcoming, community-oriented culture.
On our campus, we had instant connections and friends from the very first day. It couldn't be helped, and we certainly welcomed it! It has also never been difficult to find neighbors who are eager to connect. My wife loves to bake, which has been a consistent connection point with neighbor girls. My son is a big basketball player—a sport that’s really taking off in Vietnam—which made him pretty popular in the neighborhood.
For Lee, the most rewarding part of living and teaching in Vietnam is this:
We are making a difference and living out what we are meant to do. There's nothing better. I can't imagine living anywhere else or doing anything else.