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
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.
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