Spring

Winter has ended.  It lasted one week.

Last night a group of coworkers went out to a British themed pub for a farewell party.  The music played louder than anywhere in the USA.  The irony is that it was not good music, it was dance music, except, this was not a dance club.  The purpose for playing the music so loudly is to attract customers.Pat and I plan to visit for lunch tomorrow as they carry steak and hamburgers.

Merry Christmas

Oh, the weather outside is frightful.......frightfully hot that is!

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We spent Christmas eve day with a coworker of mine, Lydia.  She has a very nice two bedroom flat by the river.  I will probably move there when my current lease is up.  She took us to a vegetarian restaurant and as much as I love meat, Arin and I agreed it was the best meal we have had so far.  The three course meal cost less than one dollar.

Of course Christmas in Vietnam is a regular school day. Even though there are decorations everywhere, including some manger scenes, it is mostly for commercial reasons. There are some Christians in town as evidenced by the Catholic cathedral.

My comedy routine on adverbs

A common thread in English teaching textbooks is that instead of sticking to grammar, they want to teach within themes.  The prior theme was birds. Today, there was a whole section on throwing clay pots. I see the use of bird vocabulary, but seriously, with all there is to learn in a one's second language, do I really want to waste 2 weeks on ceramics vocabulary!  Then, to top it off, all of a sudden the students are asked to use adverbs to describe the actions.  Mind you, there has not been a single mention of adverbs before this, so I have to spend hours designing adverbs lessons all by myself.  One of the adverbs was "gradually".  How in the world do you teach "gradually" to a third grader, let alone, one who is learning English.  If you have any ideas, post them here.  Anyway, I ended up just demonstrating these adverbs: quickly, angrily, gracefully etc., by drinking out of my water bottle in each of those styles.  An example: for angrily, I threw my bottle on the floor and stomped on it after taking my drink.  Those kids were laughing their heads off and when I offered them the chance to demonstrate the adverbs, they jumped at it. By the way, they never did learn gradually because in order to demo that, I would have had to make them stare at me for half and hour as I drank the whole bottle.

"It's expensive" The words we use to describe anything costing over 30 Dong

I wanted to try the Korean restaurant in our building, so I asked my coworkers about it.  I was told, "It is good but it is expensive!"  Well, it was expensive; it was 65,000 dong.  65,000 dong is $2.95.  Can you imagine!  It is very interesting how your point of view changes.  I do not know how I will be able to pay American prices where I return to the states.  To put this in perspective, the place where most of my coworkers and I eat lunch has a menu price of 25,000 Dong.  This includes meat, rice, soup, vegetables, salad and ice tea.  The American dollar is worth 22,000 Dong, so this meal is $1.14. Once in awhile  I decide go to buy a pastry or a smoothie, and find that they cost about the same, so I do not buy them because I can get a whole meal for the same price.

I found out that the smoothies are mostly condensed milk so I no longer drink them anyway.  However the cake is too good to pass up.  It is so light and fluffy as is the icing.  I usually get a slice of berry cake which the baker calls blueberry cake, but it is actually raspberry cake.  I have not corrected him yet.  The English spoken her is British English and for all I know, the British may have switched up the berry names.  Well I am off to watch Star Wars II ....

VinCom mall

Vin Com mall is a very modern four story mall.  We took the bus there and found it be closer than Co.op mart where we usually shop.  Also, it is on the direct bus line which stops in front of our house.  The 4th floor is an ice skating rink and the 3rd floor is a food court where we had Thai food.  Of course it was very delicious.  We have been considering the fact that maybe we should have gone to Thailand instead of Vietnam since Vietnam has been somewhat of a disappointment both culturally and food-wise.  The pluses of living here are that I like my school a lot even though it is more work than most schools, and there is nowhere in the world where one can find children as cute as these Vietnamese kids.

Winter

I actually had to wear a sleeved shirt for about 2 hours in the morning because the temperature was in the low 70"s.  This day is considered to be the height of winter.

I just went down to the theater to check on Star Wars.  As of 8 am, the theater has not yet opened.

I saw Star Wars at 11 am.  It was ok.  I really can't think of anything else to say about it.  Arin will watch episodes 1/6 then see it again.

Teaching. What's the matter with you

I am finally getting into the swing of things.  We teach only one page of the book per hour, so I spend massive amounts of time writing curriculum.  We also play 2 to 3 games each class.  One of the teachers gave me a booklet with 109 games, so I have that. The only problem is that some kids can not handle such an open activity, and get too wild.   Of course, as soon as that happens, the game is shut down immediately.

Yesterday I was teaching the phrase, What is the matter with you, along with all the ways it can be said, and the accompanying body language. The kids laughed for at least 3 minutes straight and then began copying me.

Black Friday

I haven't been able to post for awhile because my blog switched to the Vietnamese language, but I am back to English.

 My friend Leslie asked me to elaborate on the architeture and culture here. Frankly, I am disappointed.  Other than the tolerance for trash, life in Bien Hoa is not much different than life in the United States.  Since most of Bien Hoa was built in the last decade or so, most of the buildings are very modern.  The building which houses my school and apartment is only 3 years old.  Other than the wall papered walls, it looks just like a modern American high rise, complete with laminate and tiled flooring.  The state of the art movie theater which occupies the 6th floor will be showing Star Wars episode 7 tomorrow.   I will go there as soon as I get up and will post my review before most of you see it.

As far as culture,frankly, I am disappointed.  I was expecting traditional clothing but everyone here wears drab clothing.  Most of the women wear pants, except for us English teachers who mostly wear skirts.  The men wear neutral colored short sleeve button down shirts. The only bright clothes are those worn at preschools where I have seen pink or yellow brightly colored shorts and skirts.  The employees of Vietcom bank wear traditional green long sleeve dresses over white leggins, but it is just too hot to wear the traditional clothes outside. As in Mexico, t'shirts and shorts aren't often worn in public

Oddly enough, most restaurants serve only one item.  You figure out which pho and which sandwich you like, then you go there. Every day I have been looking at this restaurant across from my building named Banh mi, which means sandwich. Pat, Arin and I went there yesterday looking forward to the menu choices but soon discovered that they only make...you got it,one sandwich.  Fortunately it is delicious and costs only 80cents.  Though this restaurant has indoor seating, there is no kitchen or refrigeration.  Like most restaurants, the kitchen consists of an outdoor cart.  Most cart restaurants have outdoor seating only, and the funny thing is that their preferred seating is little short plastic children's tables which are about 18 inches off the ground, accompanied by12 inch plastic stools like the kind that American's use as a step stool.  I end up eating with my knees up to my chin.

I haven't seen any special music or dance, anything like that.  Believe it or not, one of the first  things I saw when I came in November was a 30' Christmas tree and a sign advertising Black Friday sales....

Building my food network

The biggest thrill of coming to a new country is building up my food network. First, it's the juice.  Last night, I was introduced to what has to be the best won ton soup in town, possible in all of Vietnam, and it is right outside my door.  I had been hearing about this noodle place but no one wanted to take me there.  Finally, a former teacher came for a visit and wanted to go. They will definitely be seeing me again. 

Today I tried to have breakfast at the restaurant near our old hotel.  They serve three choices for breakfast:, pork chops with rice, an egg sandwich and of course, a bowl of noodles. They wouldn´t serve me for some reason, so I walked down the street and stumbled upon a lady making omelets.  I signaled that I wanted one but ended up with a cold cut sandwich instead.  Well, it was delicious.  Tomorrow I will try to order the eggs using Vietnamese.  Fried eggs ( op la`) is one of the first words we learned, because we had them every day we stayed at the  hotel.

Beds in Vietnam

It is very common for people to sleep on the floor on straw mats, so you can imagine how uncomfortable the regular mattresses are.  The mattress in the hotel was so hard that my leg actually fell asleep, which I consider to be very dangerous.  I have tried so many things on my bed, but the best thing I have found is a pool floatie, which is what I used in Mexico. After a month of searching, I finally found one!!!!!!  If you are traveling at all, I suggest packing one in your suitcase.  It will now become an essential item in my suitcase.

Busses in Bien Hoa

We took the bus home from Co.op Mart which is our usual shopping center.  It was a very pleasant ride and they actually made a complete stop when they picked us up rather than a California stop as they do in Saigon.  It cost 25 cents.

Starting on the next set of work visa steps

I have been employed for about 2 weeks and today had my health check at the hospital. It was so efficient I could not believe it.  I went from one station to another like I was at Ellis Island.  Pat and I were commenting about how much slower it would have been in the USA.  First of all, there would be a 45 minute wait to just get started.  Each station would have been another 30 minute wait and filling a  prescription  would have been a 24 hour wait rather than 2.4 minutes.  Luckily all is well with my health.  Note. Pat's prescription was wrong.

The receptionist just knocked on the door wanting my passport to prepare the permanent resident card.  The next step after that is get a local police check.  I forget what is next but I am sure there will be something.

Of course the health check was in Saigon as is everything. so I had to pay for my own cab to Saigon, rather than the school paying.  The driver did not know how to get to Bien Hoa so took the wrong exit ramp off the highway.  So guess what he did to correct himself?  He drove right back up the ramp in reverse and against traffic. A gal on a motorcycle was following us all the way up, except that she was driving forward.  Lucky me, I got to pay an extra $200,000 VDN for his round about route.

Note |I found out that one of the teachers has been here 3 years without a work visa, so I a wondering why I am going through all this bother..

The climate is so hot here that......

Sheet sets are sold as follows:  fitted sheet, 1 pillow sham, 1 rolled pillow sham only.  What is missing????

First day of teaching

This is one of the few posts which is actually written on the correct day.  Today I will have my first class of students.  I worked on the lesson plans yesterday out by the pool.  Midway through my planning, my pen ran out so I ran upstairs to the school in my bathing suit.  In all my teaching I have never said that I went to school in  my bathing suit.  I hope this is not the last time.  Maybe one day I will be running up from the beach!  All week I have been observing classrooms and have not seen a huge discipline problem.  I do not know why there was such a big focus on it during induction.  Compared to American students who hit us, yell at us, swear at us and throw things at us, these children are angels.

I am back from my lesson.  Earlier, I ran into the director for the center and he wrote a lesson plan for me.  The problem was that once in the classroom, I could not find the needed items on the computer, so I had to adlib.   There are some discipline problems, the worst being students hitting and  pushing each other.  I had to nip that in the bud; next I will be dealing with the talking.