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!
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