I Hope

As I have gotten older, I have learned that no matter how hard I try, I am never going to be able to repay my mother for everything that she did for me. The blood, sweat, and tears she put into nurturing the sick and troublesome, five-year-old me, the rebellious and lazy fifteen-year-old me, and the clumsy, and sometimes lost me now, are insurmountable. I know she had more trouble raising me than she was supposed to. I know her first five years of being a mother did not include taking me to the park, sitting down on a park bench, and having a family picnic in the sun. Most of it was watching me struggle on the white sheet of the hospital bed. That is why I have always felt obligated to be her perfect child, to be a daughter so good that no one would be able to say that she had not done a good job raising me. And it was an obligation that I was very happy to fulfill, because I honestly loved being in the mold that she put me in. [excerpt

Distancing Strategies, Exclusive Clusters and Other Ironies of my American Peers

Being able to study abroad is a huge privilege. I am very lucky to have been given that privilege twice. I was accepted to Gettysburg College two and a half years ago, and studied abroad in the United States. Now, I am studying abroad again in Copenhagen, Denmark with a program that connects many colleges and universities in the US. It has been a month now and I am having a good time. But my first few weeks in Copenhagen were not the same as my first few weeks in Gettysburg. Strangely enough, it was much more uncomfortable and harder to adjust. [excerpt

Work related rights of foreign migrant workers in Viet Nam

Viet Nam today is deeper integrating into the global economy. In 2012/2013 the new Labour Code and amended Trade Union Law were promulgated and enacted. Numerous implementation Decrees and Circulars were introduced and enacted accordingly, which directly relate to the lives and work of the workers including foreign migrant workers. This article aims at examining and discussing the issues on foreign migrant workers in the contemporary Viet Nam. It is shown that despite positive changes in the new policies and laws the Vietnamese authority bodies have remain ineffectively responded to the issue of foreign labour in the context of significant economic growth