Hi everyone,

Thank you for your responses. Good that today we have two responses. That makes the explanation richer and more meaningful.

Before going to the correction and explanation, let me address an English issue.

Brother Phan Anh Tai , an admin of VNBIZ, has just posted on VNBIZ a recent news article (below) about Intel’s job tests in Vietnam last year. Basically, Intel had 2,000 candidates, “the best and brightest from five of Vietnam’s top universities.” And only 40 made the final cut in English.

40 out of 2,000 of the best and the brightest! We have a national problem, brothers and sisters.

Now, you know why I spend time so much time on English on Dot Chuoi Non. With this Daily English Challenge program, I am working my way slowly to identify the weaknesses in our English education and performance, and find ways to strengthen them.

So, when you work on these daily challenges here, you not only refine your own English but also work with me in figuring out problems in, and solutions for, our current English-teaching system and methodology. Thanks a million for walking with me on this road, guys and gals.

Here is the first part of the Intel news article:

Vietnam: Foreign companies struggle to find skilled professionals
May 17, 2009

By John Ruwitch

Hanoi – About a year ago, 2 000 of the best and brightest from five of Vietnam’s top universities were invited to take a lengthy multiple-choice exam for a shot at a job at Intel.

The giant computer chip maker had broken ground on its biggest factory in Vietnam’s commercial hub, Ho Chi Minh City, and the $1 billion (R8.5bn at current exchange rate) assembly and test facility, which expected to start operations this year, needed good engineers.

It was more than just another big project. The Intel investment would put Vietnam on the global technology map and help a rising star in the manufacturing world advance up the value chain.

But the results from Intel’s test cast a spotlight on one of Vietnam’s biggest barriers to achieving that dream: its inadequate and inflexible higher education system.

A fraction of the students passed the written exam, covering physics, electrical engineering, maths and other topics. Then they were given an English test, and just 40 made the final cut.

.

Now, let’s go to Loan’s writing.

Coming to DakLak province , BMT city. We have many to visit, there are beauiful and famous waterfall such as: Draysap,Trinh nu, Gia long, Thuy Tien,..
There are many old pagoda,emple, and communal house…
And now, let we go to visit khai doan pagoda first.
Khai Doan pagoda(Khai Doan tu) is in the heart of BMT city an area of 3500 square meters
The name of the pagoda was formed by both the first two words of Emperor Khai Dinh name’s and Doan Huy sultana’s
It was built in 1951 and the sanctum was built 1953, the lady whose great merit of developing the pagoda was Doan Huy sultana.
It was built by clever constructors of Hue ancient capital, so its achitecture consisted of Hue garden house style.
The main gate is on Quang Trung street, especially, there cupris statue of Shikia Mouni in the heart and the cupris bell is put on the left of the sanctum.
Khai Doan pagoda is an attracted tourist place along side a historical , cultural vestige of Dak Lak province generally and BMT particularly.
I hope that, this place will be interesting and ideal destination of yours.
Looking forwards to seeing your soon!

.

Here is my edited version.

Welcome to Daklak Province, Buon Ma Thuot City. We have many places to visit. There are famous beautiful waterfalls, such as Draysap, Trinh Nu, and Thuy Tien. There are many old pagoda, temples and communal houses.

Anh now, let’s go to visit Khai Doan Pagoda first. Khai Doan Pagoda (Khải Đoan Tự) is in the heart of BMT, in an area of 3,500 square meters. The name of the pagoda was formed by the first two words in the names of Emperor Khai Dinh and his wife, Queen Doan Huy. It was built in 1951 and the sanctum was built in 1953. The lady whose great service brought the pagoda to life was Queen Doan Huy. Skillful artisans from the ancient capital of Hue did the construction, so its architecture has the Hue garden house style.

The main gate is on Quang Trung street. In the sanctum, the black-copper statue of Sakya Muni stands in the middle and a black-copper bell is on the left.

Khai Doan Pagoda is a great tourist attraction, among other historical and cultural landmarks of Daklak generally and BMT particularly.

I hope that this place would be an interesting and ideal destination for you.

Looking forward to seeing you soon.

.

Let’s cover a number of points.

1. Be careful with your commas and periods. Each independent clause should be ended with a period (to become a full sentence itself). Do not connect two independent clauses by a comma. If you want to connect two (or more) independent clauses use “and” or similar words.

2. There is too much use of passive voice here. Try to stay away from passive voice as much as you can.

3. “Sultana” is a female member of a sultan family. A sultan is a Muslim leader. The wife of a king is a queen (even if in Vietnamese we say Hoang Thai Hau Doan Huy).

4. Daklak Province, Buon Ma Thuot City, Khai Doan Pagoda: Province, City and Pagoda must be capitalized, because they are part of the names when written this way. And we don’t put the word “the” before a name.

But, we write: the province of Daklak, the city of Buon Ma Thuot, the padoga of Khai Doan.

5. No one in the world, except perhaps a handful of metallurgists, knows what “cupric” is. Just use “black copper.”

6. “Sakya Muni” (or Shakya Muni) is the current word for Thích Ca Mâu Ni.

.

Now, let’s go to Đức Minh’s writing. My first impression is that this is a very good piece of writing–clear and easy to understand. Superb! It has too few errors to talk about. Only a couple of very minor mistakes. No fun to talk about a good piece of writing. 😦

Here is my edited version. The corrected parts are in boldface and there are only a couple of little ones, so it is hard to see!
.

Now, we’re on Nguyen Thi Minh Khai – one of the main streets of the downtown area. It’s long and covered with many trees.

Look! Do you see the place on the right which has a lot of big trees? It’s Tao Dan Park. My friends and I sometimes go for a walk around this park to enjoy the nature. Tao Dan Park is a good shelter for many kinds of birds and insects. In the morning, many people often come here to do exercises. But in the evening, it becomes an interesting and romantic place for loving couples.

Well, going ahead, you will see the small and quiet street on the right. It’s called Huyen Tran Cong Chua. Huyen Tran is the name of a princess who lived during the Tran dynasty in the history of Vietnam. As you see, there are many sports shops along this road. Those shops sell many kinds of sports clothes and sports equipment.

Now, we’re at the crossroads. And I am making a right turn onto Nam Ky Khoi Nghia. Going ahead on this street, you will see an icon of Vietnamese independence. Guess what?

It’s over there, on the right, the big building with many Vietnamese flags. Vietnamese people call it “Dinh Thong Nhat”. In English, it’s called Reunification Palace. Dinh Thong Nhat is formerly known as Dinh Doc Lap or Independence Palace. It was designed by architect Ngo Viet Thu as the home and workplace of the President of South Vietnam during the Vietnam War. Many historical events happened here, and the biggest one happened on April 30th, 1975. That was the moment when North Vietnamese Army entered Dinh Doc Lap, which ended victoriously Ho Chi Minh City’s campaign and the campaign for full liberation of the whole South Vietnam. Nowadays, Vietnamese people see it as a historical place.

In front of Dinh Doc Lap is Le Duan Street. On this street, you will also see Han Thuyen Park, Duc Ba Church, Diamond Plaza, Sai Gon Tower, some beautiful hotels and many interesting places. I think this area is the heart of the downtown.

But, first of all, would you like to enjoy some delicious coffee at Han Thuyen Park? Then, we will discover many interesting places that I have just told you. How’s that idea?

.

All right, let’s talk about a couple of words.

* “The street is long and covered with many trees”: Nothing is wrong with this, grammatically. However, people may have the image of a street covered with broken trees after a storm. It may be better written as: “The street is long and has tall trees on both sides,” or “The street is long and covered with a canopy of green foliage from the two rows of huge trees on both sides.” (But I don’t think we have this on Nguyen Thi Minh Khai though) 🙂

* “Terminate” may mean “to kill off”, like “I will terminate you if you don’t stop saying that” 🙂 Have you watched the movie “Terminator” by Arnold Schwarzenegger? It is better to use “end” here.
.

GRAMMAR HINT

* Generally, a countable noun must have THE, A, AN, or a NUMBER in front of it, or an S if it is plural,

Examples:

Let’s go into this furniture store and pick up a table. Ok, how about two tables instead?

People are crazy at times!

I like these chairs but don’t like the table.

• Generally, an uncountable noun goes by itself, or sometimes has THE in front.
Examples”

Life is wonderful.

The life of a teacher is tough. (Note: Now “life” goes with “a teacher” and it becomes definite, so we need the definite article THE).

You are as sweet as sugar. (If you keep saying this to a girl, you have a great chance of winning her heart, even if she is sư tử Hà Đông) :-).
.

TODAY’S CHALLENGE

You have a pen pal in Australia. His name is Nick. And he has just sent you this email: “Dear XXX, this Vietnamese friend of mine has just given me the statue of a little boy on the running horse, and he told me the name of the little boy is THU DONG THIN VUONG or something like that. Who is he? Looks like a three-year old kid riding a war horse. Can you tell me about him?”

OK, guys. Have fun!

And have a great day!

Hoanh

Hi everyone,

Thanks, Loan, for the good piece. Your writing is very good, as you can see the minor corrections when comparing it with my version below.

I will have Loan’s writing here. And then my version, basically just correcting Loan’s mistakes, which are minor in general.

Loan’s version

Hi everyone !

I’m very glad when I tell you about my on Sunday

On Sunday, I often get up late, at 7 o’clock. I brush my teeths, wash my face .
After I have breakfast with my family.my mother is very good cooker. Following, I help my mother do the homeworks,go to the market and repair to have lunch.
After have lunch with my family, I take a nap about 1h.
In the afternoon, I usually go out in order to shopping, eating and drink with my friends.
At 5 o’clock, I go for a walk around in the park.
After have dinner. I usually go to the cinema with my sister and brother. Sometime, I go out with my family.at that time , I feel comfortable .the film is finished, I return at home.i go to bed at half past ten.
Have a wonderful Sunday!

.

My version

Hi everyone,

I’m glad to tell you about my Sundays.

On Sundays, I often get up late, at 7 o’clock. I brush my teeth and wash my face. After that, I have breakfast with my family. My mother is a very good cook. Then, I help my mother do chores, go to the market with her, and then help her prepare the lunch.

After having lunch with my family, I take a nap for about an hour.

In the afternoon, I usually go out shopping, eating, and having some soft drinks with my friends. At 5 o’clock, I go for a walk around in the park.

After dinner, I usually go to the cinema with my sister and brother. Sometimes, I go out with my family. I feel very comfortable going out with the entire family. When the film is finished, I return home. I go to bed at half past ten.

Have a wonderful Sunday!

OK, let me explain some words.

• Please look at the commas and periods carefully.

• Paragraphs: Breaking the writing out into paragraphs will make it easier to read.

• “A cooker” is a cooking machine, like an electric rice cooker. A cook is a person who does the cooking. A chef is a cook.

* “Homework” is for what you have to do at home for school. Works around the house are “house chores,” or “household chores,” or simply “chores.”

• “I usually go out to shop, eat, and drink” can be written as “I usually go out shopping, eating, and drinking.”

• But “drink” or “drinking” usually means drinking alcohol to Westerners. So it is better just to say “I go out to shop and eat,” or “I go out shopping, eating, and having some soft drinks.”

• If we say “I help mother go to the market” it will sound like the mother can’t walk.

• “After I have dinner” can be lightened as “After having dinner” or simply “After dinner.”

TODAY’S CHALLENGE

If you have not had this experience already, you may soon—a foreign tourist you have just met becomes your friend, and you want to show him the town.

So you take him on your motorcycle (or both of you take a taxi), going through several main streets of the town, to show him interesting places.

Of course, you have to explain to him a little about each place.

So, can you write down what you tell him as a tour guide?

Example:

“I am making a right turn onto Tran Hung Dao. This is the main street of downtown. This old building here, on our left, used to be a cinema, but it has been empty for several years. I heard that some investor is going to turn it into a hotel soon.

And that Buddhist temple over there, it is called Chua Buu Hoang and is the oldest temple in our city. It was built in the 17 century and has beautiful old statues inside.

And this bridge is called Uyen Nhu brige. It is the name of the daughter of the man who built the bridge in the 17th century. He was a very high ranking government official.”

All right, everyone. That is an example of you playing tour guide.

Could you do that? Just imagine you have a visiting foreign friend. What will you tell him on a tour of the city?

Have a great day!

Hoanh

Hi everyone,

Thanks, nucuoithienthan, for the response. You’re my hero, little brother. I couldn’t do that when I was at your age. You are doing very well.

I have edited nucuoithienthan’s writing as below, just correcting the mistakes and making it sound right. No fancy work. If you compare the two pieces, the answer will be clear to you. No need for any explanation. However, if anyone has a question, please feel free to ask.

There are five people in my family–my father, my mother, my brother, my little sister and me. One of us is most pampered by my parents. It is my little sister Ngoc Han, because she is the only girl in my family. Now she is six years old. I am eight years older. she is really a very beautiful girl with ocean blue eyes, a straight nose, and long shimmering black hair. My mother likes to fondle her hair.

Ngoc Han always smiles. Everyone loves her. She likes to read and listen to fairy tales, such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and Prince Frog. My mother often tells her a fairy tale before she sleeps.

Ngoc Han likes to eat sweets, so she has only one upper incisor left. She has a passion for piano. She began playing piano when she was 3 years old. Now she can play more than 100 pieces of music. She also likes singing and sings very well. My father said that when Ngoc Han reaches 15, he would send her to a music college to learn. He always hopes his little and tender Ngoc Han will be a famous singer. I do too. Everyone in my family does.

GRAMMAR HINT: How do know you which noun is countable and which is uncountable?

Answer: Look it up in the dictionary 🙂

Ex: Look up the word “time” at http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/time.

“Time” has many different meanings; each meaning is a “different word” (for our current purposes). Generally, the meaning starts with “a” or “one” in the dictionary is a countable noun; the meaning starts with “the” is an uncountable noun.

So, depending on what meaning you want to use for the word “time”, it can be either countable or uncountable.

TODAY’S CHALLENGE

OK, you guys. What do you usually do on Sundays? Sleeping until 5pm? Swimming? Visiting with friends? Going to the coffee shop? Working with the computer? On what?

Please tell us what you usually do on Sundays.

Come on, guys! Shoot!

Have a great day, everyone. 🙂

Hoanh

Hi everyone,

Thank you for participating very well in yesterday’s translation. Everyone is very good. It was hard for me to pick one over the others. It hurts my heart. I may have a heart attack eventually if I keep doing this.

At the end I decided to pick two–chị Kiêm Yến’s and Đức Minh’s writings. Viên Hy’s is very good, good enough for posting, but I don’t want to annoy the readers by posting too many. And JEa’s is also right there. JEa should be a little tighter in language when translating, though.

I did only a couple of very minor changes in Kiêm Yến’s and Đức Minh’s translations before posting. Hope you have already seen today. Thanks, Yến and Đức Minh. And, of course, Viên Hy and jEa too.

Nothing much to discuss on the translation exercise. You guys can just compare the original and the translations, and you will see all the points.

“Secondary performance”: I translate it as “Làm việc kiểu hạng hai.” Everyone misunderstood this term. But it probably is my fault. Had I written “second-class performance” or “second-rank performance”, it might have been clearer.

“At the individual level”: This is similar to what we hear often in economics–“at the micro level”–which means to look at things from the point of view of an average person, and not from the (higher) point of view of leader who looks at groups of people. Translating it as “góc độ cá nhân” in this context is good.

For Yen’s question: “Today we are in a much more exciting time.” “A time” here means “(một) thời đại” or “(một) thời kỳ.” In Vietnamese language, we don’t think about “một” here, but in English, the “a” is required–it is a countable noun in this meaning.

TODAY’s CHALLENGE

OK, every one, here it is, a couple of easy challenges for today for you to choose (or to do all, if you’d like to :-)). Write in whatever way you want, with you own words and your own level of writing. Make it easy on yourself.

1. Tell me about your most favorite female singer.

or

2. Do you have a niece, nephew, little brother or little sister? If yes, please write about him/her. I would love to hear.

That’s it. It seems you guys tend to shy away from writing English. But, that is the KEY. And it is much easier than you think. After several exercises, you will find it easy. Just do it. See the guy below?

Have a great day!

Hoanh 🙂

Hi everyone,

Wish everyone a good working week. We had some interesting talk over the weekend with Vien Hy, Be Rom, Loan, Quang on the subject of English challenge. Great discussion!

But…

You guys did not have an answer for the easy Saturday challenge! Come on, guys! Don’t let me down. I know you can do better than that. I probably know about your ability more than you do. Have faith in yourself. And, shoot!

Anyway, I have an interesting challenge today. Yesterday I ran into an article I had written three years ago in English, entitled “The Task of this Generation.” I was planning to translate it into Vietnamese to use as a Trà Đàm article for Đọt Chuối Non, but then I thought: “Why translate it? Why not use it as an English challenge (so I don’t have to do the translation myself)?” 🙂

So, here it is, the challenge for today. Below is my (long) English article to be translated into Vietnamese. I will select the best translation among your responses, edit it a little if necessary, and then post it to ĐCN as a Trà Đàm article (as I have done that with danh ngon translations by Wasabi and Vallikie and chị Kiêm Yến).

Because this is a long article, you can do that in more than one day. Each day, just post the part you finish.

This article may be harder than the previous articles to translate. You may have to work harder.

But, whoever finds this article hard to translate, please keep in mind that you should still work on any of last week’s challenges. Keep working and post them when you’re done. Don’t slow down. Don’t stop.

Practice makes perfect! Go! Go! Go!

Have a great day!

Hoanh
_______________

The Task of this Generation

Some months ago, sister Huyen mentioned in this forum something like “Our father’s generation was so exciting. They walked Truong Son to fight for the country. Today is so boring. We wish we could have a time like our father’s time.” Then many months later, I read Dang Thuy Tran Diaries. As my heart was put on fire by Dang Thuy Tram’s words, I remembered Huyen’s message. Following a generation that lived with death everyday probably makes us feel overshadowed. Tough! And it is even tougher when we look at the individual level. Hard for us to feel motivated if we can’t find great meaning in our life.

But let me tell you this. If we look carefully, today we are in a much more exciting time than our father’s generation, and our task is equall, if not more important and more difficult than the task of our fathers. Today, the first time in our history we have peace, advanced technology, advanced knowledge, and global connection to move our country toward greatness. This has never before happened in our history.

For thousands of years, we were just a little country in a little unknown corner of the world with China (and later France) as the center of our world. Today, we have independence, we have peace, we have the ability to sit in any corner of the land and gather information and knowledge from anywhere in the world. And we have a network of Vietnamese spreading all over the world to move things at the global level.

Our nation has never had that chance. This is the chance for us to get out of our own shadow of a poor and heroic nation to become a powerful and prominent nation. In other words, we are in a war against poverty and backwardness and a race toward greatness. How exciting would that be!

Today, we don’t have to look at China or France as the center of the world. We look at ourselves as the potential center of the world. Why? Because in the old days the world was too big for us to fathom. Today, we are in the little global village and it is not such a big ambition for any villager to dream of becoming a village chief some day.

We live in an era abound with great opportunities. Great opportunities bring with them great challenges. And the greatest challenge of all is our Self. Peaceful life brings with it inertia and the false sense of security. It is much easier to be on guard when we have to sleep with death each night. But when things seem to be so peaceful, that is when our inertia creeps in and lulls us into a long sleep.

In war, we can’t be corrupted, because that would mean death. In peace, corruption may become a part of our life if we don’t guard against it. In war, secondary performance means death. In peace, both the best and the worst survive. In war, we know our mistake the minute or the next day. In peace, today’s mistake may show its consequences 10 years later. So today we are easily blindsided by the false sense of security and by mistake’s slow speed of presenting its own consequences.

If we see all this–the first time in our history we have great opportunities and great challenges to become a great nation in the community of nations–then we will realize that we are in a very exciting time, with a struggle that is equally if not more important than our fathers’ fighting for independence.

That is the task of this generation. Are we up to it? Are we keeping the flame of idealism burning in our heart? Are we looking forward with great vision? Are we keeping ourselves clean from corruption? Are we standing up straight to defend the truth and justice? Are we opening our mind to the most difficult issues of the nation? Are we doing our small part to bring our nation to greatness? As our fathers have told themselves “We fight to victory or to death,” are we telling ourselves, “We fight to victory until dead”?

I am thankful that I am allowed to live during this most exciting time of our nation. I hope that we of this generation will be faithful to ourselves to take on the great task of completing our father’s job–Keeping ourselves clean and patriotic, and turning our country into a great nation of the world.

Are we up to the task?

Have a great day!

Hoanh

5/14/2006

Hi everyone,

Thanks, Chế Lan Hương, for the posting. You melt my heart. I lived in Nha Trang as a child and, of all cities of Vietnam, Nha Trang still captures my fondest memories.

My family was in Thành, right outside Cửa Tây. If you go through Thành, from Nha Trang, into Cửa Đông, out of Cửa Tây, the fírst home you see on the right side of the road was the first home we lived when our family moved from Pleiku to Khánh Hòa.

I attended primary school in Hà Dừa, then 6th and 7th grades in what is now L‎ý Tự Trọng High School in Nha Trang. It was called Võ Tánh then. While at Võ Tánh, I stayed with a friend of my parents, on the ground of Department of Health, facing Tân Quang Theater. Wonder if the theater is still there. I can tell you about truckloads of memories I have of that town. Oh, nostalgia!

Anyway, Lan Hương’s writing is superb. What can I say! Just one or two minor typos. You guys are so amazing. I am glad I have run into all of you. It is a great pleasure to discover so many talented friends.

Well, let me just be picky and pick some very small points in Lan Huong’s writing to discuss:

“Nha Trang is a center of politics, economy, culture, science and technology, and tourism of Khanh Hoa Province.” We say “a center” when we mean that it is only one center among many other similar centers. But Nha Trang is not just a center of Khanh Hoa. It is THE center of Khanh Hoa—the biggest, the best. So, we should say, “Nha Trang is the center of politics…”

“The difficult beaches differentiates…” Obviously, this is a typo. Should be “differentiate.”

“It is an ideal place for organizing a lot of major national and international events such as Sea festival, Miss Viet Nam, Miss Universe, Miss World, etc.”

. No need for “a lot of”.
. “Hold” sounds much better than “organize”. Why? Because “hold” has only one syllable and people use it everyday.

So, let’s change it to: “It is an ideal place to hold major national and international events, such as Sea Festival, Miss Vietnam, Miss Universe, Miss World, etc.”

Please note:
The comma after “events” and before “such as”.
“Sea Festival”: Probably both words should be capitalized as the proper name of the festival.

Let’s hope that other friends will chip in and share more about other cities. I would love to hear about YOUR cities. This is more than English practice. I’d like to know more about you, how you feel about yourselves and people and things around you. We want to know each other more. Please share. Don’t be so shy.

TODAY’s CHALLENGE

For today’s challenge, please write about ONE THING in your city that you like most.

I know it’s hard to pick one when you like so many. 🙂 But let’s stay with one, to have some focus.

You can incorporate this new challenge into yesterday’s challenge about your city.

Have fun. And, have a wonderful weekend. 🙂

Hoanh

Hi everyone,

Thank you for being so enthusiastic! You are the best! You guys are much better than I expected. I was nowhere close to where you are now when I was at your age. You guys have just given me a tremendous boost.

Let’s get more friends involved in this English challenge program. We will do our country a big favor by promoting English.

In addition to the challenges that I have in this Daily English challenge section, don’t forget other things, such as the wonderful lyrics of the songs that chị Huỳnh Huệ posts. They can be used as translation exercises. Or other ĐCN postings that you would like to translate. Be free. We don’t really have rules here, other than the rule against offensive postings.

Today I have just placed 3 links below the “Thử thách Anh ngữ” link (in the right column of our homepage). They are for Webster Dictionary and Thesaurus, Tự Điển Ngoại Ngữ tiếng Việt, and Grammar exercises. These are to aid you in your study.

For yesterday exercise, I will pick out just some points to discuss.

“There are many trees and grasses there.” Grass is a non-countable noun. Change to something like “There are trees and there is grass.” Very simple, but rhythmic.

“My friend living in Đà Nẵng.” Not wrong grammatically, but unclear. It can be changed to something like “My friend from Da Nang who has arrived here three days ago on a visit.”

“My grand mother was fell down” should be changed to “my grandmother fell down.”

“Fortunately , the doctor said that she had been fine , but she must have been rest in bed for one months” should be changed to “Fortunately, the doctor said [that] she would be fine but she must be on bed rest for a month.”

“Not problem” should be changed to “No problem.”

“Not importance” should be changed to “not important.”

“My life looks like monotonous”:

To look + adjective: to describe the look. Ex: She looks so gorgeous with that ao dai. Or, the house looks much bigger in the sunset. Or, you look great today. Or, my life looks monotonous. But in the context here, “My life may look monotonous” sounds better.

To look like + noun : to compare. Ex: He looks like a monkey. She looks like a difficult princess.

That’s it. Let’s use these challenges to get to know each other more and more.

Now, here is the happy challenge for today:

Please tell me about the city where you live. I would like to know more about your city.

You tell me about your city and I will tell you about my city (Washington DC). Oh, if you have a couple of interesting pictures of your city, you can send them to me and I will place them in your post. I am at tdhoanh@gmail.com.

Have a great day!

Hoanh