Vietnam Ch 4
Christine
After an uneventful rest of the day on Monday, taking it easy after all the activity from the morning, I woke the next day feeling the pressure of how much work I had in front of me. I lay there thinking about lesson planning, my meeting with Christine, my online course I still had to complete, what I was going to eat that day, and so on.
It took a while for any motivation to come and get me out of bed. Even then, I grudgingly got dressed and gradually made my way up to the kitchen for some breakfast.
Back in my room, with a bowl of cereal and toast, I switched on my new laptop.
Clicking through the numerous tabs I’d left open, I noticed I had received an email on my Gmail account. It was from Mr Jerry, and he was notifying me of a change in my schedule…
I’d been given another class to take on Saturday!
“Shhhiiiiiiiiiiiiiittt!!!” Was my immediate reaction.
“Ahhh man!!! … That’s too much to deal with.” I said to myself, feeling my heart rate rise and a sickening feeling in my stomach.
“I don’t have a clue what I’m doing yet, I haven’t taken my first class, I have zero experience with this and suddenly I’ve got 4, 1 and a half hour classes to take in a single day…”
Shaking my head and contemplating my options, I thought to send a message to Mr Jerry outlining why I didn’t feel ready to take that added lesson. I started typing out my response. After finishing the email I was about to hit send, but then paused.
“If I do this and decline this lesson, what will they think of me?… I suspect they’ll think I’m pretty useless, which wouldn’t be a good start to my career at Shelton.”
Upon further contemplation, I recognised there could easily be negative consequences once I’d set that ball in motion. I therefore deleted the message, and with a rousing sense of motivation stirring in me, I thought:
“Fuck it. I can do this!”
And so, the next couple of hours were spent in determined concentration, in order to figure out this whole lesson planning malarkey.
The first thing I had to understand was: which lesson came under what name.
A sequence of letters and numbers were used to signify which specific class it was. So, for example, the class I had on Wednesday was:
SE.BA.S3-01, Lesson 9…
It looked complicated.
Looking through the numerous spreadsheets under each Story Central and Beyond program, I cross referenced them with the course maps. Eventually, after testing each piece of the puzzle, I managed to decipher the code:
SE.BA was a Senior Beyond A1+ class, which just referred to the program that they were taking, S3-01 was Stage 3 Part 1, and Lesson 9 was how far through Part 1 they were.
Feeling relieved to have reached that key understanding, I could then get on with the lesson plan. I brought up the right spreadsheets that I needed and could see what the class on Wednesday were supposed to have learned in the previous lesson. Below this was a guide for what they needed to be taught in their next lesson.
I looked through it and tried to familiarise myself with the content in the Beyond text book. Simple conversations were at the beginning: ‘How’s it going’, etc…
“This is American English as well then”, I thought.
Their topics included Money, Clothes, Nationalities and incorporated in each part was a hefty chunk of grammar, including, Superlatives, Prepositions and Opinion Adjectives.
There were some things in there that I had to refresh my memory on. Like what even is a preposition? Once I read the examples, of course I knew what it was: ‘the ball is under his foot’ – under being the preposition. But I hadn’t known the name for this, and quickly discovered there were many other examples of being caught out on my own language.
Even though I used English everyday of my life, I was starting to realise it’s a totally different thing being able to successfully explain it to people of another language – in my case, a group of young Vietnamese children.
The other thing I wondered was:
“How the hell am I going to explain this grammar without boring the shit out of them?”
I recalled what I’d seen from my class observations of Ligaya, Kelsie and Abi. They had seamlessly split their classes into parts and by looking at the example of a lesson plan, I could clearly see each part, then edit and fill in my own content by it.
The parts were: Warmer
Review
New Topic
Activity
Cooler
I could fill in the segments which involved going through the text book, but I didn’t have the ideas yet for fun class activities. It was therefore time to do some research.
Surfing through the web for class participation ideas I made a note of a few ones that I thought could be good. However, by this time my focused attention was waning and a break was well needed. Closing my trusty new laptop and stretching with a deep breath in and out, I felt a whole lot better and more confident about the week ahead.
I’d gained a more detailed picture of what the job entailed and the kind of content and materials used for teaching at Shelton. On top of that, I actually had the right equipment for the job, following my successful haggle with the lady from the computer store. Things were looking up.
I left my bedroom, took the elevator to the ground floor, said a brief “hello” to the receptionist, and went out through the glass front doors.
Later that day, after lunch, and a more relaxed time spent in my hotel room listening to music and scrolling through social media, I felt like going for a walk.
Outside The Queen Hotel, the sun was beginning to set; a fiery red orb hiding between clouds on it’s way down behind the mountains in the sea. I was eager to stroll along the harbour to enjoy the view.
I walked down an alley opposite my hotel that ran parallel to the road, one which I hadn’t explored yet. There were a few locals sat outside their conjoined houses on their little plastic chairs having a leisurely smoke and a chin wag. One woman was preparing her food stall for the evening, laying out all kinds of crustaceans, molluscs, and various little sea creatures unknown to me. This intriguing assortment of seafood was a common sight in Vietnam.
Beyond this the alley opened out into a market place with stalls set up. There were however, few produce on display and few people around. I supposed the morning would be the time when this area could be hustling and bustling with activity.
Rounding a corner a shrine stood out through an alcove. As the light was fading, not wanting to miss the sunset I chose to explore it another time, and continued down to the coast. A few paces further and I’d come out right by the huge structure that was Vincom Plaza.
“Nifty little route that,” I concluded to myself. I’d bypassed the traffic-congested main road and just in front of Vincom was the harbourside.
The gentle splish splosh of the water could be heard as it lapped at the sides of the small wooden fishing boats. The last few rays of sun streamed from across the ocean, caressed my face and calmed my self. I stood leaning on the stone barrier for a few moments, noticing my attention drift upon the glistening waves. I remained like this as the sun finally crept under the sea.
Coming back to my senses, I began to amble along the pavement to a road running parallel to the shore. I wondered all the way down, past the park to my left and was now in an area I hadn’t come across, neither through my walks to work nor in my search for a laptop.
A big black building loomed up in front of me. In huge white letters that filled the whole front side was written: Bảo Tàng, Quảng Ninh.
I knew the last part was the name of the area I was currently in. But, I didn’t know the first part, so I got out good ol’ Google Translate to check what it was… It said:
‘funeral bags’
“Nice try Google but I’m guessing that’s not it.”
Then I realised I was missing a couple of accents on the a’s. Once I’d figured out how to do that, the translation was a lot clearer…
Museum
What appeared next in the distance, continuing past the museum, was even more curious. There looked to be some sort of alien spaceship landed upon a wide open paved space, just in from the sea front:
On closer inspection, it was a conference building… albeit a highly irregularly shaped one.
I went right up to the entrance where there stood two official looking doormen monitoring the people coming in the building. Looking in through the glass windows I could only make out a room that had several people standing around a stall with, I guessed, was the company’s poster across the front.
Being curious and wanting to explore, I approached the doormen. I said hello, took out my phone and asked a question on my translater app. The men shared a quizzical look with each other but also a smile. I showed one of them the question in which I wrote “what event is on here”.
He took my phone, had a little chuckle, said something in Vietnamese to his buddy, then began slowly typing a reply. Once he’d finished he handed my phone back and I looked at the screen.
He’d written in Vietnamese and the English translation was…
Total gobbledygook.
Meanwhile a man was coming up the steps behind me. I saw as he walked up to the bouncers he pulled out a badge and they immediately let him through. It was therefore evident that I wasn’t allowed in.
I had to settle on not knowing what the convention was, but was happy for a bit of genial interaction with the two guards. I thanked them and wished them a goodnight.
After finding a local place to sit and eat (some fried rice and veges, with the traditional accompaniments of fresh herbs, tiny lemons/limes, garlic water and chilli sauce) I made my way back to The Queen Hotel.
The next morning I woke up early with the plan of meeting Christine.
Walking the same way in which I’d discovered the previous evening, the alley by the road, I marched along at a fast pace so that I would catch her before she’d finished selling her sticky rice.
Taking in the foreign sights, smells and sounds as they flashed by, I observed the market was much busier than before. The locals were chatting and hollering with customers, selling a vast variety of colourful fruit and veg, among other things which I couldn’t tell what they were. Mopeds were even driving through this narrow passage, brushing me as they passed, constantly beeping.
I came out the other side by Vincom, managed to cross the road without dying, and followed the road where I normally walked to work.
A while later, I was on the cusp of texting her to ask where she was, but then I spotted her. Perched on a tiny chair along the pavement, hiding almost, next to a small tree, was Christine.
She looked up to see me and I was greeted with a warm smile. I asked how her morning had been and she told me there were many people who had come for her sticky rice.
“How much is it?” I asked.
“It free”, she said with an even bigger smile blossoming on her face.
“I wan’ to show the peo-ple we can share absolutely every-thi, an’ it tot-ally chan’ the worl’ . We share an’ it very goo’ en-ergy, yes, we can share every-thi.”
Hearing this I felt so impressed and blown away by her vision and compassion.
“Wow Christine, that’s so generous… I agree, I think it’s true, sharing is very good energy.”
Then she pulled the thick blanket covers off from something hiding in a whicker basket in front of her. Underneath was revealed to be a rice cooker. She opened the lid and used her rice spatula to scoop out the still warm sticky rice into her makeshift paper packaging.
I gratefully accepted the rice and took this picture, which I think perfectly shows that moment of sharing created by Christine:
There were bamboo shoots and crushed peanuts within it. I was eager to try so I immediately took a big pinch and popped it in my mouth…
She had obviously perfected this dish, it was really tasty!! The rice itself was just the right amount of sticky, gooey, chewy-ness, and the shoots and nuts provided some crunch and flavour as well as nutrition.
As you can see from the picture she used paper to package her food. Before I could ask her she pre-emptively explained herself by stating that we used too much plastic, so she always used other materials instead.
I thought “Wow, this girl is really thoughtful. And so proactive. Most people have a lot to say about these things but don’t actually practice what they preach”.
Christine was clearly a woman of her word, as after telling me her philosophy the day before, there she was the next day, sat on the street, openly sharing her lovingly made food with the world.
I had never met anyone quite like this. I’d met a great many people on my travels, often very generous and down to earth, but this was on another level.
I wanted to know how she earned a living. She told me she had a job in digital design, (I’m not sure exactly what that involved) but she went on to say she’d saved up some money from taking contracts and she could get back into it if she needed to. But at the moment she allowed herself to be free to do what she wanted: to follow her vision of how life could be for human beings on this planet. As Ghandi said: “Be the change you want to see”. That’s exactly how she was living.
We chatted a little more as I devoured the sticky rice, then after Christine gave one last portion away to a local Vietnamese man, she invited me to her home. She packed up her things and I walked with her just 50 feet to the corner, where she led the way down a narrow, windy backstreet. There was a steep incline for a short stretch until we reached her house up on the left.
Christine opened the front gate to reveal a moped leaning outside the entrance to a three floor terraced house. Upon entering the wooden green front doors, Christine changed into her inside shoes (croc style) and I followed suit by taking off my shoes.
Right inside by the door stood a traditional Vietnamese shrine. The shrine was like a small wooden cupboard but with no door, so it was open to put things inside of it and in front of it. It had gold coloured plating across the top, and on the floor at the front was a tiny ornate table with decorated china bowls. Placed on these were various different food and drink offerings.
It was only then that I looked up and saw the room in front of me for the first time…
I was so surprised!
I guess I was expecting a simple design with basic furnishings, such as I had seen walking past the open houses that sold snacks at the front. But this was very different. Unknown to a passerby from the outside of the house, which looked just like the rest of the terraced houses, the interior was lavishly furnished and modernly designed.
My eye was drawn immediately to the modern and stylish spiral staircase, which, with the high ceilinged ground floor, wound up quite dramatically to the first floor. This reminded me of the type of staircase you see in a fancy hotel.
At the foot of the stairs was a slightly raised circular area. This was also in keeping with a fancy hotel due to the colourful stone tiling, and a pattern similar to that of a mandala, in the shape of a star.
Christine offered me a seat on the sofa while she went through to the kitchen to make some herbal tea. I sat down by a big bellied buddha ornament and a huge vase of fake flowers, admiring my surroundings.
Thankfully, at this moment I thought I’d better take some photos of this splendid home, so you can see its grandeur for yourself:
I thought to myself that Christine was raised in a lovely home. It reminded me of my family and upbringing; only in the sense that from the appearance of her home, it appeared she led a comfortable life, as my parents had provided for me.
The table in front of me was crowded with bottles, tubs and packets of all kinds of interesting looking nutritional foods. I felt sure this was Christine’s doing. And as she came back with tea, seeing me looking at it she began to tell me what each one was and detailed the benefits of them. Eating a healthy diet was a way in which Christine said we can change our energy, and this affects many aspects of our lives.
I asked about her family and she said she was currently living there with her Mum, while her Dad and brother lived in another town a couple of hours drive away. Christine went on to say she was looking after her Mum by helping her change her life. For example, she was trying to show her how to live not worrying so much about money.
I was enjoying the conversation with Christine as well as being in her home and sharing food and drink. This all made me feel more at ease, more settled in this foreign country. At least now I had a friend I could call on, just down the road from me.
After we’d finished the tea I thanked Christine for a lovely morning and I told her I’d cook something for her next time. She was happy to hear that and smiled and waved as I went out the door and down the steep, narrow backstreet.
I walked back home then spent a couple more hours zipping through the online teaching course, and getting to grips with the lesson plans. I also spoke with my girlfriend Hana over Facebook.
We exchanged stories of what had happened over the past few days. I told her all about the quest and success in my buying a laptop, my insightful class observation with Abi (Michael and the terrible teens), the fact I’d found an awesome vegan restaurant nearby, and my chance meeting with Christine.
Hana was quite shocked as I described how different the culture was. She related to how difficult it could be to live in Vietnam as it differed so much from her culture too. She thought I was doing really well. But after she told me what she’d been up to, I was more impressed with her.
She told me she was working 3 jobs!! (What a typical Japanese hard worker!)
I was amazed to hear this because the last time we spoke she was feeling very worried about finding a new job and new place to live, all by herself.
She had moved from our previous location, a shared house in Maketu in the north island, all the way down to Te Anau, the bottom of the south island.
A trip of over 1600kms!!
And she did this in the car I passed onto her, my trusty Subaru Outback – Sunny.
(I loved Sunny… so many good memories. And I was very happy to leave her with Hana, as I knew Sunny would look after her.)
On top of this remarkable journey, she’d found a lovely shared house and was working in a café, in a bed and breakfast and also creating her own massage business!! What a boss! I was so proud of her.
Moving on with the conversation, I started explaining to her that I had to leave the country on a visa run soon, but as I said this, I suddenly had an idea…
Me: “Hey, what if I fly to somewhere in the middle between here and New Zealand and we can meet up?…
Hana: “Really??!!
Me: Yeah!! The Tet holiday is for 2 weeks, so I’m not gunna be working. Probably there’s nothing to do here for me because apparently everyone leaves the city and goes back to their family homes.”
Hana: Yeahhhhh!! Let’s do it!!
Me: OK!! Let’s look at Google Maps.
And with a rush of excitement at the prospect of meeting up in just a couple of weeks time, we both eagerly searched for potential places to fly to.
I looked at flights on SkyScanner to North East Australia but it was over $1000NZ, which was too much for me. So we looked at places in South East Asia.
Me: “Papua New Guinea… maybe not…”
Hana: “Hey what about Bali?”
Me: “Yeah OK, Bali is nice.”
Hana: “Oh yeah, you went there before.”
Me: “Yeah… OK I’ll check the flights.”
As I thought about it, the idea of Bali made sense to me. It was somewhere that I knew (I went there 2 years ago with my ex girlfriend for 2 weeks), which meant I knew we could enjoy our time there. It had some beautiful beaches, a whole range of accommodation, as it’s popular to tourists, and therefore also a great many places to eat. I thought back to the fresh fruit smoothies and delicious vegetarian food on offer, sipping cheap beer overlooking an exotic turquoise sea. The ideal little getaway.
Me: “$648NZ (about £330)… … that’s still pretty expensive… It’s not that far from Vietnam.
Hana: Oh no, mine is $890NZ.
I sank into my chair feeling suddenly disheartened by the cost of it and the thought of how little money I had to spare. How could we make this work? I contemplated while Hana looked for alternative flights.
“… What if I ask Shelton for an advance?… I paid out for the laptop when they didn’t tell me I’d need one, and also the rent, I wasn’t told how much it was… I’ll send Mr Jerry a message.”
So with that, I wrote out a simple message asking Mr Jerry for an advance payment. Surprisingly he came back straight away with a form to fill in. Exactly the form I needed:
12 million Dong is equivalent to £380 so this would make all the difference as to whether I could meet up with Hana or not. I felt confident and passionate about using that Tet holiday time to see her, as it had already been a month and a half since we’d parted ways.
Another thing we had to figure out was how and when Hana could get time off work. She said it would be tricky, also not being confident in asking for time off after only starting the jobs recently.
“WE’RE GUNNA MAKE IT HAPPEN!!” I shouted, feeling optimistic.
We talked through how she could do it and she imagined she could have a maximum of 4 days off over those two weeks I was off. Well, that wasn’t very long, but 4 days with her was much better than 0 days. So I tried to reassure her she could do it.
“Just tell your managers the reason why you need the time off, then they’re bound to let you have it. If you say you haven’t seen me in 2months and are really missing me, they’re not gunna say no to that. Everyone loves a love story.”
After hearing that she perked up a bit, and before ending the call we wished each other luck, “Ganbatte!!”, and I prayed for the best outcome.
The next morning I went for a wonder. The day was cool and overcast, so I wore jeans and a jacket. My trusty, dark green, Kathmandu back pack, as always, was slung over my shoulder. Moseying along down the alley outside, I was happy to discover the market was in full flow.
A vast array of colourful fruits were spread along one side of the alley, while the other side had a range of clothing that was equally multi coloured.
Taking stock of all the fruits, I named the ones I could recognise. There were mangosteen, melons, dragon fruit, papayas, pineapples, lychees, to name a few, but many more which I couldn’t identify. And following on from the fruit, there came stacks and stacks of vegetables.
Of course, locals on mopeds were honking their way past me, skillfully driving all through the market narrowly missing people, but never seeming to make collisions.
Ha Long Bay Market
Walking beyond this though, came the most interesting part. Where as before I had walked by and the stalls were empty, now the place was full with people, all buying and selling an impressive smorgasbord of seafood.
I’d never seen anything quite like it. There wasn’t just a whole host of dead fish on display, but mostly there were fish being kept alive. The sellers all had varying sizes of coloured plastic buckets, which were filled with water and tightly packed with all sorts of fishes, just managing to stay alive. This was to keep their product as fresh as possible.
There were tons of small sea creatures for sale, the majority of which were things I’d never seen before. All kinds of crustacean, mollusk and general marine organism could be found here. Watch this short video of an old lady using a pick axe on some sort of shelled thing to dig out it’s occupier.
Ha Long Bay Fish Market
These other photos and videos give you a good taste of what it was really like:
Outside by the harbour
Some of it was quite hard to watch. One woman was chopping up the half dead fish with a cleaver, taking each one as it squirmed around on the plank, before thwacking the knife down and cutting it into pieces.
It also made me think: “I lead quite a sheltered life. I hardly ever see the reality of death and the killing of animals for food. Only ever on the occasional documentary.” So this felt a worthwhile experience.
If I’d wanted to, I could have bought an octopus, or a cuttlefish. I don’t know how they would have wrapped it up, I guess just in a plastic bag because that’s all they had.
Imagine that for a second; going home with a bag of water and a couple of cuttlefish, that were still alive!! Like winning a goldfish at a fairground, this was the Vietnamese equivalent 😀
I could have bought a tank and created my own aquarium! … …
probably better if they were eaten though… I didn’t have too much space in my hotel room.
After this fascinating fish market I spent a little while staring out to sea and watching the little wooden boats bob around on the water. Then I knew I had to make tracks back to my hotel room, as I still needed to finish my lesson plan for my first class later that day…
… I rocked up to the Centre at 7:15pm. My new white and green Shelton polo was already slightly damp from perspiration, due to the fast pace I kept walking the mile and a half journey from my hotel. I was also lugging my new laptop in my backpack with the Beyond A1 level books that I’d need for the lesson.
I was glad I had made it in good time. This was to be my first ever class teaching Vietnamese children, and I needed to be ready.
Entering the Centre I climbed the stairs to the first floor reception area. A couple of children were sat on the sofa to the left playing on their phones while the red lipped receptionist was sat behind the main desk, also on her phone.
We exchanged hello’s as she noticed me come in, then I asked her which room I was teaching in. “You in room upstair” she said directly, “Room four”. Then she returned to her phone.
Looking through the open door leading to room four, I could see widely striped coloured wall paper in a rainbow sequence along the back of the room. In the middle of this the word “Shelton” stood out in a cloud bubble. As I approached the door I could already see the light from the room was flickering rapidly, as though faulty. It was lucky I wasn’t epileptic. Not a good start.
The writing tablet chairs all faced towards the entrance, and as I entered the class three boys, all around fourteen years old, abruptly turned and looked at me in surprise. Two of them were playing a game on a computer at the front of the class, while the other one was sat at a desk, on his phone.
“Hello!” I said with a smile.
The smaller of the lads at the front, who looked more Chinese than Vietnamese, gave me an uncertain:
“He-llo”.
The other two, after staring questioningly for a moment, quickly returned to what they were doing. I put my laptop bag and backpack on a table by the side of the whiteboard and took out my things. Meanwhile two girls came into the class chattering and gossiping. They noticed me and suddenly paused.
“Hello” I said, turning to look at them.
They exchanged a look, as if to check how they should proceed. The girl on the right was bigger, with small eyes and chubby cheeks, giving her a piggy sort of look. The girl on the left had glasses and long black hair tied in a pony tail. They were slightly taller than the boys and looked maybe a year older.
Eventually the girl on the left, looking much less scared than her friend, offered a “He-llo” before jabbering on in rapid Vietnamese to her classmate.
I continued to prepare what I needed for the lesson. The main thing I had to do was setup my laptop and link it to the TV screen. There was a computer linked to the screen already and that was how the two boys were playing some online mini game.
“OK guys, I need to use this now, finish your game please.”
“Wai, wai” said the larger Vietnamese boy, wanting to keep playing.
“…OK”, I said “I’ll give you 10 seconds to finish.”
No reply from either. Then three more boys came strolling in, followed by two more girls. The usual reactions to me followed suit before they crashed down into their seats. The girls sat at the back and the boys at the front.
“Alright guys, time up” and with that I interrupted their game and turned it off.
With an “Ahhhh” of dismay, they relinquished the computer and returned to their seats. I disconnected the HDMI cable from the computer and plugged it into my laptop. But there was a problem. My display wasn’t appearing on the TV screen. After fiddling around for a couple of minutes trying to figure it out, I asked one of the students for help.
A scrawny looking boy with scruffy hair and glasses came to the front to see if he could fix it. Trying the same thing I was, he didn’t have any luck either. So I thanked him, told him to sit back down and decided we had to go on without it. It was time to start the lesson.
I wrote my name in big letters on the white board. Classic teacher introduction style.
“Ok let’s start the lesson now”, I said raising my voice over the rabble of the students, to which they quietened down.
“Hello everyone, my name is Giles and I am from England.” (Sounding like a contestant on Take Me Out.)
I proceeded to tell them, in simple form, a bit about myself. My hobbies are tennis, ( I mimed swinging a racquet), football, (kicking with my leg), and I like to play guitar (strumming on imaginary strings).
I began to feel more nervous after this brief introduction as I didn’t receive any feedback from the students. They were looking at me in an awkward silence, and I wasn’t sure how much they understood or whether they understood fine but were choosing not to interact.
So I asked if anyone else liked tennis, football or guitar…
Silence.
“No?…”OK, what’s your name?” Pointing at a boy slumped in his chair, sporting a Zoolander haircut, a silver necklace with a pendant… and a Real Madrid shirt.
“Ben” he said. I could already tell by his non-committal, cheeky demeanour that he was going to be difficult. I also expected him to say a Vietnamese name, so this took me by surprise. I’d forgotten they’d all been given English names.
“Ben, hello Ben… So, do you like football, Ben?”
“… … Yes.”
“Yes? You like football?” Trying to encourage him to say the rest of the sentence.
“Yes… … I. lie. fooball.”
“OK, good! Me too. I could guess from your shirt Ben.” I said, pointing at his shirt and pinching my own.
“Real Madrid!! Good team!”
Then I went around the room asking the students names, writing them on the side of the whiteboard and asking what they liked to do. Some didn’t speak up, others copied what their friend said and only a couple came up with new hobbies.
Once I had everyone’s name up, I split them into teams: girls vs boys. Then I asked for their team names. The boy who was playing the computer game to start with, now going by the name Alex, piped up with some word I couldn’t understand. After trying a few times to repeat it, I decided to offer him the board pen to write it up himself.
So he comes forward and writes it: “Benjima”
No idea what that was but I carried on regardless.
Asking the girls for a team name went exactly the same way. They were keen on some name by the way they shouted out straight away, but I had no idea what they were saying. So the more confident girl, Sarah, reluctantly gets up and writes three letters:
“BTS”
… I was still clueless.
“What’s BTS?” I asked.
After a a brief rabble in Vietnamese amongst themselves, Sarah said “Band”, and then the others copied and said “band, band.”
With that mystery solved it was time to review what they’d learned the previous lesson: Conversations and Money. I told them to get into pairs and practice their conversations. With an odd number of students, five boys and 4 girls, I paired up with the boy going by the name of Michael.
Michael was sat with one desk separation from all the others, and it was easy to see he was the outcast of the group. When he said his name as I wrote them up on the board, Alex had thrown a piece of paper at him, while Ben said something in Vietnamese making the other boys laugh.
Michael had doleful eyes, was a tad on the chunky side, and he was slumped in his chair either doodling absent mindedly, or staring out the window. I also got the sense that he felt dejected and depressed due to the segregation from his fellow students. He didn’t want to be there, that was for sure.
This reminded me of the boy from the last class observation with Abi, who was also called Michael (not sure if this was a coincidence…). Maybe he too was put in a class beyond his level of English and ability. In that case the work went over his head, so he soon gave up. I sympathised with the current class’s Michael and wanted to make an effort to encourage him.
“OK then, Michael, you go first”, I said stepping up to his desk.
He kept his head down avoiding eye contact, trying to be invisible so that maybe I would move on.
“OK, I’ll go first.”, and I proceeded to have a very slow and very short conversation whilst having to point at the book to guide him.
I praised him after we’d tried a couple of times and he’d managed a few words here and there, but then I had to move onto the others. I was distinctly aware and anxious that I hadn’t heard much, if any, English conversation while practicing with Michael.
Looking around at the rest of the class it was as I feared, no one was speaking English.
“I can’t hear much English!… “C’mon, take it in turns to try all the different questions and answers.”
Some of the conversations from the text book made me cringe. One’s such as:
“Hey Beth! How’s it going?”, “I’m good thanks, How’re you?”, and
“Are you from around here?” “No, I’m from Seoul. How about you?”
“Ugh… So American” I thought.
Going around the desks and listening to them gave me a chance to see each one’s level. Generally, the level was lower than I expected for this syllabus. All of them struggled in pronounciation and most showed difficulty with these most basic of sentences.
Keeping in their pairs I asked them to give each other examples of the terms in which they talk about money: “How much is a bottle of coke?” – “2 dollars and 50 cents”. They seemed to lose concentration even more quickly with this exercise. Maybe because the American style money wasn’t relatable to them… or maybe they were just getting restless after a long day, seeing as the time was almost 8pm.
I wanted to move swiftly onto the main part of the lesson. I just had one last thing before I could do that – checking their homework.
“Who has done their homework from last lesson?”
… Silence.
“No-one?”
Their lack of expression and reluctance to look at me made it clear that they hadn’t.
So I went through the homework reading out the paragraph and calling on the students to answer what would fill in the blank. Sarah and Harry (the Chinese looking boy) were the top answerers, while the others mumbled along.
Then we were onto the main part of the lesson! A new topic. Weather and Country.
I was annoyed the TV wasn’t working because I’d planned to show them a world weather map. Then I could show them in real life what weather was doing over which country. Failing this, I went straight to writing up the vocab on the board for them to write down in their exercise books. Words such as: hot, cold, sunny, cloudy, raining, snowing etc.
I drew little pictures next to the words and also used my “excellent charades skills” to act the word out. They were responding a bit more compared to working in their pairs, but still I felt I wasn’t doing a great job getting through to them. I banked on the game that I’d planned to engage them fully. And this classic game was…
Pictionary!!
For anyone reading who doesn’t know how Pictionary works, firstly, you should be ashamed of yourself, and secondly… well I’ll just tell you what happened.
– I invited Ellie from Team BTS, and Messi from Team Benjima to come to the front of the classroom. (That’s right, some teacher before me had obviously thought it was funny to give him Lionel Messi’s surname as his first English name. This made me chuckle, as he didn’t even look like Lionel Messi)
Then, I pointed at two words in the book to the two players, making sure the rest of the class couldn’t see. Checking they both understood the words I gave them a count down of 3,2,1 GO!
By this point, I’ve finally got everyone’s attention back since my classic introduction to the class. This was just what I wanted to see. All of them engaged in a fun activity that they can also learn from.
They rushed to draw a picture representing the word (sunny mountain) on the whiteboard for their team to guess. Messi was scribbling something miniscule which no-one could possibly identify, while Ellie was actually doing a pretty good job. Sarah soon shouted out the answer, prompting a little celebrational exclamation from Team BTS, and a dampened moan from Team Benjima. Finally, I had some positive feedback.
The game continued until everyone had had a go. Michael was very reluctant to get involved, not wanting to draw attention to himself. The others whined as I invited him to play, but I coaxed him into it, and he gave it a go.
I could see Ben was half involved. He wanted to win with his team, but he didn’t know the vocab, so he tried finding the answer in his book. I stopped him from cheating though.
After the Pictionary I began to go over some of their common mistakes, when a couple of the girls got up and started walking to the door. A few of the boys also looked round at the clock and also got up to leave the room.
“Wait, what are you doing?” I asked.
“fiy mini'” said Ellie non-chalantly, and continued to open the door.
“Hey, no! Sit down!”, I said quite angrily.
They paused.
“Sit down please,” I said again more softly but with conviction, pointing them back to their desks. Slowly they returned to their seats with moody faces. I felt annoyed that they had interrupted me and my explanation.
“I will say when it’s time for a break.” I enforced, laying down the law.
Once I’d finished going over the vocab, I let them have their 5minute break. (A break which I’d, in fact, totally forgotten about.) The girls made a fast exit. Ben got out his phone and started playing a shooting game, Alex and Messi came behind him to watch.
The last stretch of the lesson was easier for me. I gave them a task to write a postcard to a friend. This meant they could quietly get on with their own project. Well, as quietly as a bunch of teenagers could be. I had to give a lot of suggestions to them all as they mostly sat there looking clueless. They didn’t know how to construct simple sentences.
Once I’d walked around the desks helping them individually, and they’d managed an odd couple of sentences, I wrapped up the lesson.
“Well done today everyone, and well done to the winners today, Team BTS!!”
The girls didn’t actually look that bothered that they’d won, only packing their things away quickly, keen to go home.
“Your homework for next lesson is Page 95, Exercise 3 and 4. Please have a go at it this time! OK guys, see you Saturday.”
Walking home after my first ever lesson teaching English to Vietnamese children, I felt quite shocked. I was buzzing, feeling the aftermath of the anxiety and concentration that I’d put into the lesson. It was such a new experience of being a teacher in a foreign country. I also felt really confused with how I develop a way of connecting and teaching these teenage Vietnamese children.
It played on my mind the lack of attention and effort I received from most of them throughout the class. I went over the highs and lows of the lesson as I walked along the dimly lit streets, the car and moped headlights blinding me as they passed. The game was half decent, and was the highlight, but the rest of it was hard work to get them to do anything.
It was stressful not feeling like I’d taken a good class, but I suppose I was quite hard on myself. I felt like a total amateur… but the truth is, I was. I just wished I could improve quickly.
The next morning I was sat in my hotel room, at the desk next to my bed, toiling over the lesson plans for Saturday. I had 4 lessons to take just on that day, each one lasting 1 and a half hours. That meant I needed 6 hours of material… I didn’t have many ideas for what games to employ, so I decided to see how I could utilise the ones I’d observed in Ligaya’s, Chelsea’s and Abi’s classes.
I would often be staring out the window next to my desk at the massive rock face, covered in green foliage. I felt glad to have such a sight to admire, taking a few moments away from focused concentration to day dream.
In one such day dream, I had the idea of inviting Christine for dinner.
I had all the ingredients to make another vege curry, and she said she’d like to try one of my curries, so it made sense to ask her round and repay her for her kindness.
Also, I felt a bit lonely spending the day cooped up in my room, and in a break away from my desk, wondering around the town by myself. (It can feel very isolating when you’re in a foreign country, with a vastly different culture and language barrier.)
So, later that day I was preparing the meal, when the lift in the middle of the kitchen dinged, and out popped Christine. She was wearing her thick yellow coat with a fluffy hood, which she normally wore, and black trousers. I welcomed her in and she smiled sheepishly.
Christine took this photo as I was just making the final touches to the dish. I plated up and we sat down at the table before tucking into the food…
It was a success!! Christine enjoyed it, and I was very happy with it too.
Over the course of the evening sharing food and conversation, I got the vibe she was actually a lot like my brother, James. Very gentle, very intelligent… And kinda stubborn. She had a way of speaking passionately and full of conviction in her philosophy for a better world.
I wondered if she was a bit lonely and asked if she had friends locally. She said she created a Facebook group where she shared her thoughts with people of a similar way of thinking. So she said she would invite me to the group when she got home.
Coming to the end of the evening, I felt like I wanted to give her a hug, but she seemed like she didn’t normally do that/was shy about it, so she shuffled into the lift wrapped up in her big yellow coat.
“Goo’nigh’ Giyel” she said, turning to push the button for the ground floor.
“Goodnight Christine” I said, as the doors closed between us.
Chapter 5 “Super Saturday” COMING SOON…ish
