Dear Professor Kirby:
First of all, I just want to say that I’m very glad I am in your class English 100WB, Fall 2013. For your information, I am not a native English speaker, so I know that you will find my writing very flawed, but I am willing to spend time to improve it, so I would appreciate any help from you.
Next, I am going to introduce about myself. My name is Lan Nguyen, and I moved to the United States two years ago. It attracts me so much how America is different from my hometown, Vietnam. I lived in Hochiminh City – the biggest city in Southern Vietnam, and there were only two seasons there: the sunny season and the rainy season. In the sunny season, it is extremely hot and humid (can be up to 90 Fahrenheit degrees), and in the rainy season, it rains a lot throughout the six months of its season. Here in California, there are four seasons, Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter, and each season brings about their own typical traits: Spring is warm; Summer is with a couple of super-hot days; Autumn is full of yellow leaves falling; Winter is sort of cold. But in general, California weather is pretty cool during the year, compared with the tropical weather in Vietnam. Another difference between Vietnam and America is transportation. In Vietnam, people mainly ride a scooter while in America, almost everyone drives a car. If you have a chance to go to Vietnam, you will find how chaotic it is driving there. It is a bit scary when very often people disregarding their means of transportations, taxis, scooters, bicycles… driving in the same lane. That is why there are a lot of accidents in Vietnam. In America, streets and freeways are separated with different lanes, which is very organized and safer for drivers. The educational system in Vietnam is also different from that in America. Vietnamese students after passing the entrance exam to a university, they are arranged into certain classes and since then, they follow a fixed schedule from the school’s admin until they graduate. On the contrary, American students can pick their own schedule from a variety of given classes. That way, they can have a more flexible schedule for school and part-time jobs.
Though I really like America a lot, I still miss a few things about Vietnam. I miss a lot of Vietnamese foods that I just can hardly find in America, such as “Banh Trang Dap,” “Karaoke shops,” … “Banh Trang Dap” is a typical Vietnamese food that I used to eat a lot when I was in Hochiminh City. It is a rice cake served with some smelly fish sauce. I used to eat it a lot when I was there but I do not eat it often now because of its fishy smell and also because that food is hardly found over here. I also miss going to sing Karaoke with my friends. Karaoke is a very popular entertaining activity in Vietnam, and people usually go there to hang out, chill, or to socialize with other people. There is another thing that I miss about Vietnam is something called the street corner food court. As an American, you might find it strange about the street corner food court, but if you go to Vietnam, you can find it everywhere; from the countryside to the biggest city of Hochiminh, there are always tons of people there at the street corners eating, talking, giggling… It almost becomes a part of the Vietnamese culture. I myself went there all the time for lunch with my classmates during school’s breaks. Those times are gone since I moved to the United States, but they are still in my memory for the rest of my life.
I am a transfer student from De Anza College, majoring in accounting. I chose this major because I like to work with numbers, and accounting is also something more specific than other majors like business administration, international business, marketing… After graduating, I