It’s been quite a while since I last blogged, so I apologize to anyone if there is such a person who actively looks out for my blog. Since the last blog post I have finished up my stay in Saigon and move to the official site in Quang Tri, where I just concluded my first week of teaching and building! I’ll start with Saigon since we were there for another week.
The last week of Saigon we began to do more classes about modern Vietnam in addition to survival Vietnamese class three hours a day. For me, these classes were extremely important for multiple reasons. First the survival Vietnamese has proven helpful in being at restaurants, which we frequent although our Vietnamese is poor. More importantly though, it made me appreciate how difficult learning a new language can be. I heavily struggled in class both with remembering the words and simply saying them right. One of the other members brought up an important point about our struggles which was, “Imagine how hard it will be for our students to learn English.” This struck home with me because we will be teaching English for 6 and a half weeks, and it will be important to be patient with the students and remember that learning the language can be hard before getting frustrated.
Saigon was not all work though. I got to do karaoke, go to an amazing cultural/acrobatic/dance show, continue eating delicious foods (including crocodile and octopus), and explore a Buddhist temple to name a few. By the time we left Saigon I felt very comfortable with the area, and I felt more prepared to interact with my Vietnamese roommate in Saigon.
The travel to Quang Tri was relatively uneventful outside of Grant losing a bag (Grant we are sorry for your loss), and we arrived at our guesthouse sweating due to the heat and humidity outside. I got to meet my roommate, Tuyen, who I am staying with in Quang Tri. I was pretty nervous at first and we were both quiet, but once we started talking about some shared interests like soccer the nerves died down. He is a great guy who loves soccer (he wanted to wake up at 2 am just to watch one of the Euro Cup matches) and he’s always laughing even if my jokes aren’t funny at all. Our latest running joke is that we’re both going to marry Taylor Swift (well we argue over who will actually, and Taylor if you read this I’m ready for marriage anytime).
Back to the important stuff, we started working! For those who did not know, we wake up at 5:45 to eat breakfast and go to a local school to build a new bathroom for the students for about 4 hours 5 days a week. I thought waking up early would be hard and the physical labor would be hard coming in. Plot twist…..there’s no plot twist it’s actually really hard. In the first week we made a lot of progress on the bathrooms, building the foundations and the walls for 4 of the toilets. Our worksite is a blessing because it is next to a building, so we are out of the sun for a majority of the morning. By the end of the week I couldn’t really feel my arms and two of my shirts have been died orange by the hundreds of bricks we carried to our site. I have learned that I am horribly out of shape, but I am enjoying seeing a tangible structure form. I’m also always happy for any small victories that I have like mixing concrete that doesn’t have the consistency of a very runny soup. Overall I’ve been enjoying the work despite it’s difficulty and I’m looking forward to see our finished product even though it has only been a week.
Now for the moment you’ve all been waiting for: am I capable of teaching a class? I would like to think the answer is yes. This week I got to meet my class of incoming 8th grade students. I was surprised initially with the level of English for many of the students (higher than I imagined it would be) but there is definitely a disparity in my class when it comes to English skills. For the most part I think the first week was a success. We learned some family vocab and played some games, learned English songs and sang Taylor Swift (it was listening practice I promise), and my students even through me a great surprise birthday party. I really enjoy teaching, although I find it difficult to maintain order in the class sometimes because the kids are young and we do not share a first language. Planning lessons is more stressful than I thought it would be, but I am still enjoying the job. I feel like I can really be helpful to the students especially when it comes to hearing English and talking in English. One thing I offer that my roommate does not is a genuine English accent (Tuyen is good at English too but does not have the natural accent). I’m looking forward to the lessons this week, so we can keep moving forward although I am not quite sure yet where that forward is.
In summary of this extremely long blog post (it feels long to write I don’t know if it took long to read) I have since begun my summer work. It is more difficult than I imagined and I am busier than I thought I would be, but I am sincerely enjoying the work. Hopefully I can survive construction work and continue to come up with ideas for teaching my students English!
The last week of Saigon we began to do more classes about modern Vietnam in addition to survival Vietnamese class three hours a day. For me, these classes were extremely important for multiple reasons. First the survival Vietnamese has proven helpful in being at restaurants, which we frequent although our Vietnamese is poor. More importantly though, it made me appreciate how difficult learning a new language can be. I heavily struggled in class both with remembering the words and simply saying them right. One of the other members brought up an important point about our struggles which was, “Imagine how hard it will be for our students to learn English.” This struck home with me because we will be teaching English for 6 and a half weeks, and it will be important to be patient with the students and remember that learning the language can be hard before getting frustrated.
Saigon was not all work though. I got to do karaoke, go to an amazing cultural/acrobatic/dance show, continue eating delicious foods (including crocodile and octopus), and explore a Buddhist temple to name a few. By the time we left Saigon I felt very comfortable with the area, and I felt more prepared to interact with my Vietnamese roommate in Saigon.
The travel to Quang Tri was relatively uneventful outside of Grant losing a bag (Grant we are sorry for your loss), and we arrived at our guesthouse sweating due to the heat and humidity outside. I got to meet my roommate, Tuyen, who I am staying with in Quang Tri. I was pretty nervous at first and we were both quiet, but once we started talking about some shared interests like soccer the nerves died down. He is a great guy who loves soccer (he wanted to wake up at 2 am just to watch one of the Euro Cup matches) and he’s always laughing even if my jokes aren’t funny at all. Our latest running joke is that we’re both going to marry Taylor Swift (well we argue over who will actually, and Taylor if you read this I’m ready for marriage anytime).
Back to the important stuff, we started working! For those who did not know, we wake up at 5:45 to eat breakfast and go to a local school to build a new bathroom for the students for about 4 hours 5 days a week. I thought waking up early would be hard and the physical labor would be hard coming in. Plot twist…..there’s no plot twist it’s actually really hard. In the first week we made a lot of progress on the bathrooms, building the foundations and the walls for 4 of the toilets. Our worksite is a blessing because it is next to a building, so we are out of the sun for a majority of the morning. By the end of the week I couldn’t really feel my arms and two of my shirts have been died orange by the hundreds of bricks we carried to our site. I have learned that I am horribly out of shape, but I am enjoying seeing a tangible structure form. I’m also always happy for any small victories that I have like mixing concrete that doesn’t have the consistency of a very runny soup. Overall I’ve been enjoying the work despite it’s difficulty and I’m looking forward to see our finished product even though it has only been a week.
Now for the moment you’ve all been waiting for: am I capable of teaching a class? I would like to think the answer is yes. This week I got to meet my class of incoming 8th grade students. I was surprised initially with the level of English for many of the students (higher than I imagined it would be) but there is definitely a disparity in my class when it comes to English skills. For the most part I think the first week was a success. We learned some family vocab and played some games, learned English songs and sang Taylor Swift (it was listening practice I promise), and my students even through me a great surprise birthday party. I really enjoy teaching, although I find it difficult to maintain order in the class sometimes because the kids are young and we do not share a first language. Planning lessons is more stressful than I thought it would be, but I am still enjoying the job. I feel like I can really be helpful to the students especially when it comes to hearing English and talking in English. One thing I offer that my roommate does not is a genuine English accent (Tuyen is good at English too but does not have the natural accent). I’m looking forward to the lessons this week, so we can keep moving forward although I am not quite sure yet where that forward is.
In summary of this extremely long blog post (it feels long to write I don’t know if it took long to read) I have since begun my summer work. It is more difficult than I imagined and I am busier than I thought I would be, but I am sincerely enjoying the work. Hopefully I can survive construction work and continue to come up with ideas for teaching my students English!