Mizzou-What is in it for you

Quite often people asked me: “So what brings you to Mizzou, the middle of nowhere?” I honestly could not find a solid answer at the time I got accepted to the university. The only thing I knew, and fortunately I would find myself in love with, was the beauty of six columns, the symbol of the University, in a photograph.

However, after four years studying here, I never had a thought of regret about my choice. Mizzou is a wonderful place to study and to live. It has witnessed my growing, my failure and success, and my up and down moments during the last four years. I do not know what specifically brought me here, but I can list a numerous reasons why I am so in love with this place.

Among those reasons, having a strong Vietnamese community is the best thing. The Vietnamese Student Association at Mizzou currently has around 70 members. Having a supportive Vietnamese community here gives you the feelings of home-away-from-home. Here we celebrate almost every traditional Vietnamese holiday such as Mid-Autumn festival, Christmas, and New Year. As many other students, I am so thankful for the thoughtful guidance and great support from many Vietnamese people here.

At Mizzou, we not only help each other in life, but also do our best to introduce the beautiful and rich Vietnamese culture and history to international friends. The VSA has always actively participated in annual events such as the International Welcome party and International Night, making our community more visible on campus. There were awesome moments when I taught international friends how to pronounce some Vietnamese words, and when someone told me: “I love your group performances. They are so impressive, and the custom was so colorful.” Participating in those activities make me realized how beautiful my country is, and how much I am proud of being a Vietnamese.

In addition, Columbia is a peaceful, friendly, and safe town. It is not rare to receive smiles from strangers on the street. Columbia people are very kind and friendly. There are an exciting mix of local restaurants, coffee shops, and galleries. One more bonus point, the cost of living here is moderately low compared to the average United States’ living costs. This is an ideal town for me; however, if you love the atmosphere of big cities, then this may be a boring place.

Well, it seems like an advertising piece for Mizzou. But honestly I am totally in love with this place. The MIZ-ZOU spirit is in me, and being a part of the Mizzou family is awesome. I am going to graduate this May, and still have at least three more months to live here, but the idea of leaving Mizzou one day is so hard to accept. 

The great things about studying at Mizzou

 Hien Nguyen is a graduate student, majoring in Economics. He has been studying and living in Columbia for four years and enjoying this college town a lot. In this post, Hien will share with us his opinion about Columbia.

As a graduate student in Economics at Mizzou for four years, I would like to share my thought and experience about studying and living in Columbia Missouri:
  
Mizzou has a wonderfully big and beautiful campus. Mizzou is located in the center of the college town, which makes it easier to focus on academic matters. J Mizzou also has excellent facilities and supply resources for your studying and research.  In addition, the Midwest people are friendly, simple, good and caring. People here are generally much warmer than people in big cities like New York City. Therefore this is a good place to learn American culture from the heart. 

Unless someone has great ambitions and is determined to go big name schools such as  Stanford, Harvard, most other schools have similar standard. Don’t be misled by ranking! And honestly, going for top schools is not easy.  You may be so busy, stressed and burnt out. The best school is the school that is most suitable to you, not the school with the best ranking.

·       The living expense and tuition here are affordable. Compared to other schools in U.S, Mizzou has a reasonable tuition fee. The living expense is low. The gas price in Columbia Missouri is about lowest in the US. The car insurance is very low. The rent for a two bedroom apartments is about $600, compared to $700 for a one bedroom apartment in Connecticut.

     If you want to have fun, there are many interesting events also. Check out stufftoto.missouri.edu. A Broadway show in New York City may cost $120 but about $20 in Columbia. There are ballets, concerts and cultured things that you can enjoy just about the same in this college town JThere are great opportunities for physical activities. Mizzou’s gym is among the top in the US. Free soccer field and free running tracks. Free yoga and meditation sessions on campus. The MKT is excellent to bike and run and hike. Basically you can bike for hours on the same trail if you’d like. There are also several fishing lakes if you like this meditative hobby. 

·       If you ask the questions “What can I learn in the US to make a positive difference in the Vietnamese communities?” ,then here is the answer: Mizzou and Columbia can provide great opportunities for you to learn from. There is a vibrant civic community here from various student grassroots organizations to houses for the homeless and recovery programs for the alcoholic and drug addict. There are many opportunities to volunteer and learn from.  From cultural standpoint, Columbia Missouri embraces diversity of cultures. There are communities for different beliefs of the Jews, the Buddhist, the Muslim, the Christian, the Hindu, the Universalist, the Vietnamese the Indian and so on. Opportunities are there to challenge our assumptions and be open-minded to the vast humanity. 

·       There is a large Vietnamese community at Mizzou. So there is help from the Vietnamese community and opportunities to do good things together.

My experience has been wonderful so far and I would like to thank this place.

Hien Nguyen
MA student in Economics, May 2014

Beautiful Mizzou campus

                                                                                                                               By Trang Duong

It was a beautiful Sunday afternoon when the autumn has just arrived. I was staying home all the morning working on homework and assignments.  Some of the sunny lights found their ways travel through the window of my living room as if inviting me: “ It’s beautiful outside. Get out of your room and enjoy it”.

Putting all the works aside, I decided to take a walk around campus. I never get bored of walking around campus even though I have done it hundreds of times. However, today the campus was incredibly beautiful. Trees started decorating themselves with yellow and red leaves. The sky was perfectly blue. The weather cannot be better for a walk.  As I was walking, a peaceful and relaxed feeling fulfilled my heart, removing all the worries and stress.

All of a sudden, I want to seize all of those beautiful places into a safe part of my heart. There are also many other places on this campus that I have not discovered. I decided to make a small project before my graduation: “ Exploring all beautiful places on Mizzou campus, taking pictures and writing about them”.

Here are some of the photos of Mizzou campus during the Fall. Beautiful, isn’t it?

The Six Column. This is the symbol of Mizzou.
Picture from September VI contest.

Those pictures are collected from the VI photo contests. Fall in Mizzou is beautiful

Pictures from VI contest

 Those photos were taken by anh Huy. He is a Mizzou alumni, and is famous among VSA for his beautiful pictures.

If you have a favorite place on Mizzou campus, please take a picture along with your thoughts to us at lifeatmizzou@gmail.com 

We can't wait to see yours.

Vietnam Corner

                                                                                                           By: Ninh Pham

                                                                                                 Vietnamcorner.wordpress.com

Hello again my dear readers. By now, you probably are so excited to know more about The Vietnam Institute, which I affectionately abbreviated as TVI in all of my posts and tags. What was just a pleasant surprise became an important milestone for the opening of let’s say a Vietnam Corner on MU campus.

In 2004, Professor Joe Hobbs from the Geography Department in the Mizzou School of Arts and Sciences, came to Vietnam for a presentation of caves and how people relating to them. As part of the generation growing up during the Vietnam War*, he had all the misconceptions of Vietnam being a land of battlefields with agressive people. That cannot be further from the truth. He came back, teamed up with other professors who were interested in Vietnam to set up a Vietnam Initiative Group, then The Vietnam Institute was born in 2008.

However, most of information on how TVI was set up and what we are doing, you can always read here. Let’s take a grand tour of the institute, where Vietnamese students can feel at home.

On the wall, there is of course a map of Vietnam. Professor Hobbs bought it in Hanoi and got it laminated. Of course, Paracel Islands (quần đảo Hoàng Sa) and Spratly Islands (quần đảo Trường Sa) ** are included.

Laminated map of Vietnam hanging on the wall in
The Vietnam Institute.
Photo credit: Ninh Pham

          There is no shortage of pictures that remind us              of Hanoi:

A framed picture of vendors paddling on Thanh Nien street.
On their right is Truc Bach Lake and on their left is West Lake,
 where PDA is a common scene during the evening. So often in Hanoi,
people would see flower vendors paddling through streets,
selling seasonal flowers. Photo credit: Ninh Pham

Or life back in Vietnam:

Pictures of Vietnam: rice fields in the north, traffic jam
pretty much everywhere, Ha Long Bay, school girls in ao dai
(traditional Vietnamese dress) and farmers’ market.

There are small versions of Vietnamese traditional music instruments such as this "guitar" (For lack of an English name for it)

Vietnamese Guitar

                                Or this "drum"

Dong Son drum

You might find this funny:

“The guy” in the left is called “Chú Tễu” who usually does the opening act
 for a show in musical theatre in the north of Vietnam.
The one on the right shows you how traditional
Vietnamese women looked like during the old days.

My boss found this fish net in Hoi An when he was there during 2008 flood

Dr. Joseph Hobbs claim this net to be 30 years old

There are clothes that are often borrowed by Vietnamese students for one of those international events on campus

Costumes from the North
 of Vietnam

We also have books about Vietnam,
 in both Vietnamese and English

So come on and hangout with us.

*Vietnam War (1955 – 1975): Vietnamese people call this Revolutionary war against Americans. Most people in Vietnam don’t think about this war anymore.

** The two disputed islands in the South China Sea (East Sea).

First days

Vietnamese students association is a close-nit community. Some would go extra miles to help new-comers to adapt to a new life in Columbia easier. One student (now alumni) shared her experience in the two following pictures.

First Pumpkin

This post is written by Quyen Nguyen, first year graduate stu dent in Public Affairs. Quyen has been in Mizzou for three months and she spent her first Halloween in the U.S. carving her first pumpkin ever.

“I find it quite surprising when realizing my fanciest thing to do in Halloween was not dressing up to turn myself into a cookie, Zelda or a lady bug. I did enjoy see people in costume however. Carving some pumpkins is all I want for Halloween. (Well visiting a haunted house is never on the list. Never!)

Since we don’t really have the pumpkin carving tradition in Asia, my chance to fully experience the atmosphere had finally come here at Mizzou. With my two Chinese folks who shared the same excitement of having the first pumpkin babies ever, we headed to the MU Student Center quite early, only to find a lot of people already lining up to get the carving tools. We happened to meet some friends and a cute Vietnamese kid who was posing among a big bunch of pumpkins. Everyone was just excited for this festive night.

Choosing the smallest pumpkin, I joined my friends in a table and started cutting the top. Here comes the funniest part. Some people couldn’t pull off the cap so we kind of teamed up to help. Imagine you would hear a some “come on we can do it” or “oh be gentle I want the head to look nice”. It was just hilarious!

After scraping off all the seeds and pulp, the main part of carving a pumpkin was there for the one who is very bad at drawing – me! Not having a sample sheet and being aware of a possible small disaster I might make to the pumpkin face, I decided to play it safe by sketching the most basic style. My baby turned out to be cool. I was proud, even though I also have to admit I felt extremely humble when looking at a guy beside with his carving which had a shape of a tower with lots of small details.

It was definitely a fun night for everyone. Lots of workout and attempts were made to have the most precise cuts. My Chinese friend was so happy that he decided to leave his bike overnight at school and catch a bus to bring his baby home.

One thing for sure, Jack definitely had a lot of choices for a place to warm his soul along the way that night.”

Source: http://vietnamcorner.wordpress.com/

Vietnamese Restaurants in Columbia

                                                                                         By: Ninh Pham

                                                                                    http://vietnamcorner.wordpress.com/

The wonderful mother of my roommate visited us lately and got me think about online reviews. She always checks out reviews of hotels, restaurants, etc. whenever she wants to go somewhere. That is when I decided on the topic of one of my blog entries: Reviews of Vietnamese restaurants in Columbia, downtown Columbia to be exact: Saigon Bistro and (more or less Vietnamese) Chinese Wok Express.

Now, for disclaimer, I am not affiliated with those two restaurants. I know through friends that Saigon Bistro is owned by a Vietnamese American professor at MU, Henry Nguyen whom I never met. I have no idea who owns Chinese Wok Express.

Judging by their names, Saigon Bistro sounds more Vietnamese than Chinese Wok Express but names don’t really reflect the quality of food they serve or how authentic the food is. Several online reviews gave more generous comments for Chinese Wok Express, especially for their pho (Vietnamese signature noodle), like this reviewer on Urban Spoon:

I’ve had one dish here, the Pho Tai (aka #9), and I had it two days in a row. If you want Pho in Columbia this is the only place to go.

Well, two days in a row is a bit hard core. She/he might turn into a Vietnamese in no time as we (can) eat pho three times a day: breakfast, lunch and dinner, well even supper. Yes, many of us love pho, thank you very much!

Hieu Nguyen, who came to Missouri 10 months ago, though pho in Chinese Wok Express, even though is not as good as pho in Vietnam, but it is close enough. Other food that served with broth such as bun bo Hue (Hue vermicelli with beef) are “absolutely the best in Como.” This might sound ironic to some people as the name of the restaurant has a “Chinese” in it.

Now we have to understand that Hieu is still very fresh and if I can make any assumption here, he still very much remembers and misses Vietnamese food at home. Having said that, many other old-timers share the same opinions. Thong Thai, who finished his master’s in architecture at MU last semester, was so sure that the owner of Saigon Bistro, who he knows, can cook pho very well. However, the fact that they don’t have the exact required ingredients is a bit of a disadvantage.

What Saigon Bistro lacks in the “pho department”, it compensates with let’s just say “non-broth” food. Huy Nguyen, a PhD student in Environmental Engineering at MU, said his favorite in Saigon Bistro is Vietnamese sandwich with pork (banh my kep thit). Speaking of which, it cost only a quarter to have banh my in Vietnam and here we have to pay at least $7. Spring rolls (goi cuon), dish with grill porks are recommended by Hieu Nguyen at Saigon Bistro.

For Mai Vu, who is famous among Vietnamese community for her cooking, Saigon Bistro and Chinese Wok Express are too Americanized. Mai is from the north of Vietnam and for her food in those too restaurants are more similar to Southern Vietnamese cuisine.

Speaking of the vibe of both restaurants, Saigon Bistro, which is nicely decorated, is more of a date-type dinner kind of place while Chinese Wok Express is more relaxed, lunch type of thing, Hieu Nguyen said.  (Culture note: Lunch for Vietnamese is more of a friend thing, while if you’re invited to a dinner, that can be considered a date. But it’s good to be invited to eat anywhere anyway, right?).

Overall, Thong Thai gave Saigon Bistro an 8 on the scale of 10. Thong has been to many Vietnamese restaurants across the U.S. including Houston, St. Louis, Kansas and California. The blogger forgot to ask him to rate Chinese Wok Express.

Have you eaten at either of these restaurants? What do you think?