A Hodgepodge of Weekly Events

This is going to be very incoherent. Just a warning.

Maybe I should discuss teaching first. As many of you know, this was my first week acting as a teacher's assistant. It's been a fantastic experience so far. My role involves a lot of general classroom supervision (answering questions, controlling behavior, guiding discussion), but perhaps the most important part of my job is the Dialogue Journal. The Dialogue Journal is much like a traditional journal, only instead of the students writing to themselves, they are writing to me, and I write back. It's like a private conversation between myself and each of my students. It's a fantastic idea (not mine), and seems to be working brilliantly so far.

I also spend the week organizing some sort of activity for Friday, over which I have complete control. I took a risk by starting out this Friday with a very high concept game, in which the students interview crime suspects (fellow classmates) and try to find holes in each one's alibi. The crime was my own murder, of course. I was very worried that I wouldn't be able to get the various concepts across (suspects, alibi, proving innocence, etc.), but I was surprised at how quickly they caught on. The game went over really well. After it had finished, I was suddenly struck by the thought that I had more or less taught a class, on my own, for an hour. And the kids had enjoyed it. That was a huge confidence boost.

The kids are too much fun. One class activity had them in groups, drawing their own four panel cartoons. The subject matter of the cartoons was a bit alarming. One cartoon was about a two-timing lover who is brutally assaulted by his girlfriends when they discover his infidelity. Drawn in cute stick-figures, of course. Another was a parody of Titanic (I think) in which Jack pushes Rose off the boat because she demands expensive gifts. One particularly creative cartoon involved the Grim Reaper's son, who goes against his father's wishes and becomes an angel . . . so he can chase hot angel chicks. The students also wrote stories. One involved a family vacation in Hawaii. Ending with death in a tsunami.

All told, I think the first week went really well.

In other news, I have officially become the frequenter of a restaurant. It takes probably less than a minute to walk there from the hotel: just down the alley and across the street. Though if you didn't know it was a restaurant, it might be hard to tell. It's bascially a little space under a tarp with some tables and chairs, and a wide stove out front. They serve food of the quality you'd expect from a sit-down restaurant in the US, only it arrives within minutes, and costs about US$1. It's also probably a lot healthier, and the people are a lot friendlier. There are some things about Vietnam that I miss already, and I'm not even close to leaving yet.

When you frequent a restaurant it is only a matter of time before you meet someone else who frequents the same place, and this is what happened to me. I finally struck up a conversation last night with a woman who I'd seen eating there a couple times before. It turns out she is from Tasmania, and is teaching at the Australian International School here. But here's the exciting part: she runs a local English Club that meets weekly right in the area. And she invited me to their English Club party on Saturday. Apparently a lot of kids my age are in the club, and most of them speak English really well. This is exciting for me; it seems like a great opportunity to meet some friends. We'll see how it goes.

The last bit of news is about my job search. Throughout the week I've been looking for part-time work teaching English in the area. Not for the money, just as a means of branching out and meeting some people my age (most language school students are around my age). And for teaching experience. I've been using www.saigonesl.com to locate specifically "Backpacker Schools," which are schools that will hire anyone who can speak English, regardless of education. And I did locate a school nearby--one of several. I figured it wouldn't hurt to try it out. So after finishing up at AIS I gave my driver the address of the school.

It started raining along the way. I don't know if I've mentioned this, but it's currently monsoon season over here. Every day, at around 2 o'clock in the afternoon, it will rain for a couple hours. Or, at least, it's supposed to rain at 2 o'clock in the afternoon. The schedule has been a bit off lately. At any rate, it started to rain a little after noon. Nothing much changes when it rains; everyone just puts on a rain poncho and continues about their business. No one uses umbrellas. I'm not sure why, but I haven't seen a single one.

I had a rain poncho on this particular occasion, but if there is one thing that rain ponchos seem disinclined to do, it is protect you from the rain. I arrived at the school thoroughly soaked. Of course the school was also closed. I asked someone sitting out front, having lunch. They said the school would open in three hours. My driver seemed to understand this. He took me back home. I got off the bike and paid him. I held up three fingers.

"In three hours, right?" I said.

He nodded. "Three."

He arrived at three o'clock. About two hours later. I was taking a nap at the time. At about 3:20, I received a sharp knock on the door, from the maid. I realized in almost the exact instant that I awoke what had happened. I also realized it was more or less my fault; I had assumed he'd understood what I meant when I held up 3 fingers, a very poorly chosen gesture in hindsight. I frantically put my still-wet clothes back on (I had laid them out to dry), tied my tie in an effort to look presentable, and ran out meet him. I apologized profusely for making him wait. He didn't seem to mind too much.

And so we went off to the school again. I was worried that we would arrive before the school opened; the man in front of the building had, after all, told me at around 1 o'clock that the school would open in three hours. But we didn't leave until around 3:30, and there was a lot of traffic on the way. When we arrived, the school was open.

I presented myself to the front desk. "Hi," I said. "I'd like to be an English teacher."

Unfortunately, no one at the front desk of the English language school seemed to know English. We struggled for about fifteen minutes. The woman kept requesting some sort of document, but I couldn't understand what exactly what she was saying. My deep fear, of course, was that they were requesting a diploma. It had been a fairly dormant fear for the past few days; I had thoroughly convinced myself that, since it was a Backpacker School, they would be so delighted to see me walk in the front door that they would hire me on the spot, no questions asked. But now this fear awakened. And then she said it. That word. "Diploma."

I asked her, very slowly, if it would be alright for me to work without a diploma. She looked at me a moment, and left. This was distressing. Then she came back with a white guy. That was reassuring. The white guy and I talked for a while about the school, and I learned that the campus in District 1 was in fact much smaller than the other campuses, and taught mostly young children. But I would be given an interview if I brought a resume and photocopies of my passport and visa. I thanked him and left.

So this particular school didn't work out for me. Transportation out of District 1 every day (to get to a different campus) would get expensive, and as much as I like children, the main goal of this part-time work venture is to meet people my age. Still, it was a good learning experience and all that. Now I know generally the sort of thing to expect.

Here's to Week #2.