A standout in several ways

DANANG, Vietnam - Among the dozens of children in the cafeteria at Phan Thanh elementary school, Alex Huff is hard to miss. Blond-haired, blue-eyed and towering over his classmates, his legs are so long that his knees nearly touch his chest as he sits at a plastic table slurping up beef noodle soup and milk.

In a city that was home to one of the largest U.S. air bases of the Vietnam War, in a school where the portrait of the late communist leader Ho Chi Minh hangs on the wall, 11-year-old Alex is a symbol of how even the deepest wounds can heal. But it goes farther than that.

His Vietnamese is so good that he recently astonished the country by placing second in a national storytelling competition that is as prestigious here as the National Spelling Bee in America. He is believed to be the first foreigner to do it.

Since kindergarten, Alex has been the lone Westerner surrounded by a sea of Vietnamese children. His parents, Bob and Kathleen Huff, moved here more than five years ago from DeQueen, Ark., to work with disabled children. With no international school in the area, they enrolled their son in a kindergarten where no English was spoken.

"When we first started, I was just thinking an hour or two a day. But when we actually showed up, they said, "Pick him up at the end of the day,' " Kathleen Huff recalls. "He just looked straight ahead, and he had one tear go down his face and he said, "I can do it.' And I said, "Okay.' "

The other kids, who had rarely seen a Westerner, liked to stare as he labored over his lessons, or to rush up and touch his skin. Then he discovered that in Vietnam, too, they play tag and hide-and-seek, and he made friends.

But Vietnamese is devilishly hard to master. Although its alphabet is Romanized, it has six distinct tones, each of which can change the meaning of a word. The tones are what give the language its singsong musicality.

"I just kept getting better and better," Alex said. "By the fourth year, I was probably pretty much completely fluent."

Now "they see a Western boy and they try to speak English to me and then when I answer in Vietnamese, they're really shocked. But then they figure: "Oh, I thought you were Western. But why did you dye your hair yellow?' "

Americans started arriving in Vietnam in the 1990s as the country sought, like China, to open up to market forces without abandoning communist one-party rule. Some, like the Huffs, came to work with children. Others came to do business.

About 2,700 Americans live in Vietnam, mostly in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, the former Saigon, which offer international schools. Danang in central Vietnam, 470 miles south of Hanoi, doesn't have that option. So Alex's three-story school next to an old Buddhist temple is an open-air affair with no air conditioning to fight the heat and humidity.

"I don't really know what people play in America anymore," Alex says, holding hands with one of his closest buddies, whose head reaches just above Alex's elbow. "When I go back to America, it's kind of like reverse culture shock."

But some of his friends are in touch with the outside world. Le Nguyen Van Anh's smile broadens as she chirps that Mickey Mouse is her favorite cartoon and Britney Spears is the coolest singer because "she's beautiful and she has interesting moves."

Anh and Alex have been close friends from the start and earned high enough grades to go to the school of their choice next year. Anh was the top student, while Alex wowed the judges at the storytelling competition with a tale about a leper who became accepted in her village after the people there understood it wasn't ghosts that had nibbled away her fingers and toes.

"I think he's talented, especially when he tells stories. He's much better than the Vietnamese students," said Dang Van Tien, whose daughter is in Alex's class. "After his graduation, Alex can go to the United States and teach Vietnamese. He can bring the nations closer together."

Alex's father, Bob Huff, says that's part of the reason the family moved here. He headed an Army helicopter crew in Vietnam in 1969-70 and says while he has buried a lot of bad memories, he has never forgotten the children.

"There's always casualties of war, and a lot of casualties are in the minds of people for years afterward," he said. "We like to be accepted for who we are and for what we're trying to do, not memories of a war. We're very happy that it has come to this point, to where an American child can compete equally with the Vietnamese children. It says something for Vietnam's capabilities to get beyond."

The couple say their son will eventually go to an international high school to move away from rote learning and more toward critical thinking.

As for Alex, he thinks he might one day work with disabled people. Or, he says with a smile: "I think maybe I want to be the ambassador to Vietnam."

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