Highly amusing

Hi folks, check out this link. English is a fascinating language, mostly thanks to all the good folks who just don't quite get it right...

http://dudieinmalay.blogspot.com/2006/04/bad-english-part-ii.html

Fish music and school

The last week has not been quite as event-less as might be assumed, based on a complete lack of activity on my blog. And I was studying too, some of the time! I taught two classes for my tefl course that were observed. The practice teaching we do is divided between two schools. One of them is a government (public) school here in District 1 with kids maybe 9-12 years old or so. The second is an IT College pretty far from here, I think it is a two year college, most of the students are around 19. This week was the first I was in the college, and if I learned anything it is that teaching adults is, at least at first glance, a whole lot easier than teaching kids. They may lose interest if the class is boring but at least they didn’t start throwing things. It is interesting to see their level of English. Based on very unofficial and random exchanges, I think that most of the 12 year olds in the government school are better at actually using English than the college kids are. Since it is an IT school, English is not really their emphasis so I guess that is not surprising. Overall, I think my classes went slightly better, which is good I guess. This week our classes will be from actual textbooks, which will significantly reduce the preparation time required, I am looking forward to that!

And in ‘other things’ I did last week I should add, found the jazz club. Jazz is a good thing. Not to mention other kinds of music – there are a surprising number of cafes downtown which have live music for “free.” Not really free, they just charge three bucks for a glass of orange juice… but hey, it’s three bucks. So in one evening of wandering I heard a classic rock band that did some quite good renditions of Eagles classics, the Vietnamese version of ACDC (which was amusing just as a concept – it is not quite as unusual here in Saigon to see Vietnamese men with long hair as other places in Vietnam, but I have never seen five in one spot with actual headbanging heavymetal long hair…), and a band flowing seamlessly between John Denver songs and French folk. That was, naturally, the Napoleon Café.




Other than that, I got a hot pot with a giant fish in it. And I think that is all for the moment – I have to GO STUDY J

15 May School and completely unrelated trash theft

This weekend I went to a performance at 15 May School. I have heard of this place before, through the NGO grapevine I guess, but had never been there. This year is their 20th anniversary, and they will be putting on a 'circus' performance in May at the Caravelle Hotel (posh, think posh) in downtown Saigon. The performance yesterday was a sort of warm-up. The general atmosphere of the place reminded me uncannily of Casa Re'om, another school for street kids where I was in Mozambique many many moons ago.

Anyway, the performance included singing, goofy clown routines, hip hop dancing (that was my favorite), hula hoops, and a 'fashion show' to close it off. Mostly it was just about kids playing. They said the kids there range from about 5 to 16 or so. Their website is http://www.15mayschool.org/ and if anybody is in Saigon on 21 May you can go see the real show at the Caravelle...

And on what I am 'actually' doing here, I had my first solo class on Friday morning. And the official prognosis by the trainer who observed was ... 'adequate'. Not exactly a ringing endorsement! I, however, felt pretty much the same way so there was no argument about that. I'm not sure how this could be done better, but it does seem a bit silly sometimes. We spend loads of time understanding this 'basic lesson plan' into which you can plug any number of topics/dialogues/activities. There is no textbook you go by, and perhaps the most annoying thing for me is that we have to draw 'picture prompts' for some of the vocab, so I spend hours trying to come up with pictures that might actually be understandable, and maybe half an hour on the dialogue and activities. Well, it is something. Being a low maintenance person I am not prone to complaining, and since it is only a month there is no real problem. I get the feeling that you pay to get a certificate and the month is primarily just to allow people to adjust to the culture and pace of life here. Anyway, I don't really have much of any homework this weekend, so no reason to complain. We only teach two times next week, Thur and Fri. The beginning of the week we are working on grammar and phonology tests.
At this point I expect to be leaving Saigon the first week of May, probably spending a few days or a week in Hoi An (central Vietnam, I have a friend who lives there) and going up to Hanoi to look for work. I am typically indecisive about that. Tefl here has a lot of contacts with HCMC schools, less so with ones in Hanoi, but I'm sure I can find something. I'm not sure I have a really good reason for trying to work in Hanoi instead of here, other than that there are a few (like two or three) people there who will remember me, and that I know the map a bit better.. It is definitely smaller than Saigon, and, at least as I remember it, seems to have a slightly more relaxed feeling to it. maybe it is only that I have to ride bike across a major street every time I go anywere here.
Oh something funny happened yesterday, I went to a restaurant downtown to drink coffee and read a book, and parked my bike on the sidewalk out front (that is the parking lot for motorbikes and bikes, no room to actually walk on it, you have to do that on the road.) When I was ready to leave it had started raining pretty hard, so I just went for a walk and left my bike there. Well, no one stole my bike, but somebody took the trash out of the basket in front and put other trash in it... I had a 'bird's nest tea' can in there so I can tell which bike is mine, now I've got new trash. Go figure. Bike theft is allegedly common here, I haven't heard so much about trash theft!

Kungfu before breakfast

A collection of two inch figures on a two foot 'mountain' behind a fishpool in a pagoda with two huge khoi in it. I can't decide if these guys are supposed to be kungfu masters, or zen masters, or just a really bored monk felt like making them...




















This, of course, is the perfectly arranged bowl of pho with appropriate fixings. Iced coffee is optional. Notice all the cilantro floating on top, everybody say MMmmmm. !

I love hamburgers really?

It is a bit hard for me to believe that 110 people actually looked at this site since I started it. I don’t even know that many people. Of course, probably it is 5 people who have looked 110 times, but I will allow myself an ego trip, isn’t that what blogs are for?

So this week has been interesting in my Tefl course. Monday and Tuesday we met individually with students for one-on-one tutoring sessions. That went pretty well for me, not much different than what I do when I am trying to talk to someone in a café, except that I tried to avoid using the seventeen Vietnamese words I have remembered. Wednesday we observed one of our trainers doing two classes. Today, Thursday, we taught classes in teams of two, and tomorrow am we do our first individual classes. The kids in my class today were probably 11 or 12 years old. I would describe them as eager to be involved and severely prone to sudden extemporaneous and uncontrollable bursts of chanting. That was my week so far. We essentially have to prepare our own lessons using the Tefl format, so I’ve spent a ridiculous amount of time drawing pictures for purposes of demonstration. I am not a good picture drawer. I’m quite sure the kids could do better at that than I. I suppose I’ll get used to it. Actually I suppose that after the course is over I will get a job teaching from an actual textbook and not have to make the whole lesson up out of nothing. That might be a good thing.

Last Sunday was a quite good day. Beginning, of course, with a perfectly arranged bowl of pho (see photo.) In the afternoon I had arranged to meet Mr. Chen Vinh for a tour of ChợLon, an old part of Saigon which is primarily Chinese. Chen is Chinese-Vietnamese, and he was at a loss to understand how it could be that I actually studied Mandarin, in Shanghai, and want to teach English, but still decided to come back to Vietnam instead of China. In spite of that, we had a good afternoon mostly just walking around talking, interspersed with visits to a few pagodas, a shopping mall, and yet another coffee shop.

After this I met Mr. Tai and his son, in a park, to practice his English. This is the third time I met them, I think, and they invite me to their house for dinner. This is fascinating. After a longish bike ride out District 1 where I spend most of my time, we arrive at a little computer shop with a room behind (and above) it, this is home. One of the more amusing aspects of this little dinner was the food – they went out to Lotteria, a fast food chain, and got me a hamburger and fries. I am American, so shouldn’t I be eating hamburgers and fries?? We had fun trying to communicate, and I met numerous neighbors, aunts, brothers, etc.

Finally, if 110 people looked at all this aimless rambling, why did only three of you COMMENT? If you say anything I don’t like, it won’t show up, other than that it is a free-for-all. OK, I have to get some sleep so I can stay awake in class tomorrow, I’m supposed to be the teacher. Hmm.

Cheers ... (?)

Today's photos and "News"

First of all, the local teddy bear store. Only a few things on earth are truly universal, obviously large, pink, fuzzy bears make the list... Some of you may remember the large pink fuzzy dog that perched on my car for awhile, well maybe I should get one for my bike!




I did not drink a Coke or a Nestea, I did enjoy the tree though.

















'Uncle Ho' teaching a child in downtown Ho Chi Minh City in front of a very French building.



















This is one more fascinating tree at the same pagoda. Buddhist temple I mean, they call them pagodas here, even if they do not have a pagoda like this one.
























Finally, my favorite goofy news story of the day:

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2006-04/08/content_4398836.htm

I'd be "particularly aggressive" too if I looked like that!

The Breakfast of Champions

You can assume that when I am not posting anything I am busy studying. That will make both of us feel better. Actually, in reality, I don’t think this course will be particularly intense, but maybe I will change my mind later on. The TEFL office here in Saigon seems, well, a wee bit on the liberal side in terms of enthusiasm and a few bricks short of a load in terms of organization. I guess that is part of being a teacher, being flexible at the last minute! Having said that, I have no doubt that I will still learn a lot of useful things and that the trainers are doing far better than most organized people would.

In more important news of the week, I found my first xinh to mãng càu which made me smile. I’m not sure what that is in English, a soursop or sour apple I think?? On a more mundane note, there is my breakfast. Pho, or noodle soup, is the standard breakfast here. Think of it as the BREAKFAST OF VIETNAMESE CHAMPIONS. Well, and me, too. It comes with steamed sprouts, fresh mint, basil, lemon, and lots of other things that I don’t know the names of, but almost all of it is very good. There is something about getting up in the morning, riding my bike out of this alley I live on into the wildebeest herd of motorbikes that is Hai Ba Trung Street, falling off the wildebeest herd into another alley where there is a pho shop with live seafood tanks out front, coffee that stands up in your mouth, and of course pho. I was talking about pho wasn’t I? Well it makes me sweat early in the morning and the day goes better because of it. I will leave it at that.

My room, bicycle, and pink refrigerator are all working pretty well. I get lost almost every morning on the way to school. Half of the time because I haven’t figured out yet which streets are one way and in which direction. That is harder than it sounds because the one-way-ness of a street in Saigon is more of a suggestion than an actuality. Even when you are going the right direction people still come flying up at you from unexpected places, sometimes I think going to wrong way is actually easier. The other half of the time is because I am a push-over. Left turns here on big streets involve dodging (excruciatingly slowly, so as to avoid surprising anyone) objects oncoming in complete disregard for the health of my toes. If there is someone in front of me turning as well, I hide behind them. I think of them bug deflectors. If there is a bus or truck coming, I just go to the next block. That is when I get lost, and pushed over.

Hopefully I can get out this weekend and have some more good pictures. Until then I will stop rambling about nothing.

Rivers, Parks, Heroes and Rain

What "The March of the Penguins" forgot to mention.

Penguins like oranges. And grapes and apples and mangos. Not fish and definitely not cold feet.

Some other day

So welcome to my new room. This is exciting. I found a room close to the school where I will be studying through a xe om driver who knew some Scottish guy who knew some people who rent rooms ... here I am. I like it, mostly because I know that I don't have to move out in the next week. I have a front porch with a view of flowers and a tiny alley. You can't even drive a taxi to this place because the street is so small. Well, maybe you could if you paid extra, I didn't try that. I have 100 Mbps internet in my room for about 6.60 usd for the month:) And then, to top it all off, I have a PINK REFRIGERATOR (ok, that has not always been a dream of mine, but I am not theologically opposed to it) with a tropical fruit-eating Penguin on the door, which makes loads of sense when you stop and think about it. Umm... yeah... Well, that is my room and so far I like it very much. Other than rustling up a room, I got a bike today. Sort of borrowed it from someone I met who said if I bring it back in a month when I am done I will get my money back. Anyway, after putting some air in the tires I took it for a cruise, then a tire blew out and I got a new one put on, no problems since then. It is good to be mobile, I was riding down by the Saigon River and of course I rode it home tonight. Last night I walked, and got really sore feet, and so a got a bike. See, I really am a logical person. Other than that, oh yeah, why am I here?? My classes start tomorrow morning, so I should have useful stuff to do from here on out!