Not much has changed...

since last time I updated. I went into ILA today to plan some lessons and ended up doing little to no lesson planning. I made photocopies of the things I'm supposed to cover and brought the text books home, under the guise of working from home, but I'm pretty sure that's quickly going to degenerate into watching movies, reading, and napping - followed by panic Tuesday afternoon a few hours before my lesson. Ah well, hopefully I'll be able to pull something together today or tomorrow.

I really haven't done a whole lot, apart from sitting in my room gearing up to teach. I've made friends with the lady that has the fruit stand on the alley my street is off of. She's located right across from the lady I buy my banh mi from some mornings. The other day I was buying pineapple from the fruit stand lady, and the banh mi lady was talking to her (they're friends, or possibly related), and the banh mi lady recognized me, and gestured and asked if I wanted a banh mi. In my two visits to each of them, I've become a regular with both!

I've been doing a bit more exploring with the new teachers - mostly discovering new restaurants (last night we went to a really good Indian restaurant). This morning Marleen and I went to Pho 24 before going into school - it's basically fast food pho, but really good, cheap, and there's one right across the street from ILA.

Anyways, I'm off to hopefully plan at least one of my lessons that I have coming up (read: take a nap)....I'll try to lead a more interesting life here so that I have more to write about...

Day of exploration

I had a day off from my training today, which was a nice break. Even though I haven't had to spend too much time at the school, it's been exhausting. I'm definitely not looking forward to Saturdays and Sundays

I was planning to use today to go to a few gyms I'm thinking about joining and check them out, but decided instead to spend the morning lying in bed and being lazy. Around noon, Freya (one of the other new teachers) texted and asked if I wanted to go shopping with her at the Ben Thanh Market. Ben Thanh is a really big market, half of which is fabric, clothes, tshirts, bags, etc., and the other half is food. She and I met up with Marleen and walked to the market (about a 20 minute walk, including a few harrowing street crossings). The market was large, crowded, and overwhelming. Freya brought her own bag because she'd heard that the owners of the stalls give customers different color bags to indicate different things (if they bargain, if they can be scammed, etc.) to other stall owners. It ended up being a non-issue, since we didn't buy anything. On our way out, we passed through the food half of the market, which began with delicious-smelling and looking pho, spring rolls, rice, and other unidentifiable meats, and then ended up in the other part of the market where the stands were selling fresh produce and other things. After passing by a stand with brains, intestines, and other things that I don't know or want to know what they were, we decided to head to District 1 to go shopping.

A long, winding walk later (we didn't really know where we were going), we ended up at Diamond Plaza (a big shopping center). By that time, we realized that we were quite hungry, so we went to a nearby local eatery by the name of KFC. I must say...there's something about KFCs outside of the USA. In the two days I was in Morocco, we ate at KFC twice, and then when I was in Barcelona with Adam, we ate at the KFC directly across from the Sagrada Familia. I never eat KFC at home, but for some reason, I just can't get enough of it when I'm abroad. We looked around the four-story shopping center, then started heading back to meet up with Pulkit. Diamond Plaza is right by the Palace, the Notre Dame Cathedral, and the post office (which is really famous for being an old, French colonial building). Even though I was tired, I tried to make the most of the outing by snapping low-quality pictures of the back of the cathedral and post office to add to my low-quality picture of Ben Thanh.

Afterwards we went to a cafe and I got a mango smoothie (absolutely delicious). On the way home we stopped at the store and I bought shampoo (up until now, I'd been using a bar of soap and conditioner) and the biggest thing of toothpaste I've bought in the past few years, so I guess I really will be staying here the entire length of my contract, if for nothing else than finishing the toothpaste...

Not much time to write, but I just wanted to post a few pictures. I've just moved into the guest house where I'll be staying for the next month. I'm in this room until Feb 2nd, when I'll move into another room (hopefully one with a balcony with a slightly better view.....)


View of the bathroom


Shower (it's a bit hard to see, but the height of the showerhead makes it appropriate only for midgets, children under 5, people who shower while sitting, or people who only want to shower certain parts of their body...)


The lovely picture that I get to look at while I'm in my shower


View of the room


View from the other direction


My lovely balcony

Settling in

So I'm starting to settle in to life here. I'm getting used to the constant honking and crossing the street is slightly less scary now. I'm starting to eat more street vendor food, and so far my stomach hasn't punished me for it (knock on wood...). One of the other teachers showed me a really good noodle place down an alley near ILA, and I've recently become addicted to a doner kebab stand right down the street from my hotel (15,000 dong - 80 cents), where the bread that they put it in has a coconut flavor to it...very, very delicious!

I've been here long enough that I've started to notice a few things that are a bit annoying. The first is the complete lack of sidewalks. There are sidewalks, but they're always constantly full of motorbikes, street vendors, people sitting at tables eating, people just sitting, cars, etc... It makes it impossible to walk anywhere on the sidewalk, so I'm constantly weaving between the sidewalk and walking in the street (which inevitably leads to motorbikes and cars honking at me). The other problem is that all of the curbs between the road and the sidewalk are angled (not at right angles like we have in the US) so that motorbikes can drive from any part of the road onto the sidewalk to park. Especially walking around town in flip flops, I can already tell that it's only going to be a matter of time before I twist or sprain my ankle...

The second thing that annoys me are the street vendors with carts that sell dried squid. You can tell when one of these carts is approaching because a disgusting, indescribable smell is just everywhere within a 30 foot radius of it. Hopefully it's something I can get used to, since they're EVERYWHERE, and it may even be something that I work up the courage to try before I leave....

Third thing on the annoying list is how hot it is! I'm quite tired of walking out of a building, and be dripping sweat within two minutes...It's been about 90+ and humid every day that I've been here...almost makes me wish for the rainy season, though I know that as soon as it comes, I'll be eating my words...

Even with all of my petty complaints, I am really, really enjoying things here. The people are really, really nice, and I'm starting to get used to and deal with constantly being approached on the street with sunglasses or flyers for spas or restaurants (the Vietnamese do a weird thing where they hold their hand up, palm facing upward/outward, and shake their hand to mean no - or I don't know, or I'm busy, or anything negative, really...). Since I'm currently living on the main backpacker street, there are tons of these people trying to get tourists to buy their things, so doing this shows that I live here, and after doing that, they immediately stop pestering (as opposed to before, when they would follow me down the street for a little bit). I am, however, taking advantage of some of the...ahem...slightly less-than-legal goods that they sell in some of the stores here. Today I bought 9 DVDs (one of which was Paul Blart Mall Cop, which I hate myself for a little bit) for less than 50 cents each, so that should keep me entertained for the next week while I'm not teaching.

I got my tentative teaching schedule today (it'll be finalized by tomorrow), and luckily I got the Tuesday/Thursday schedule that I was hoping for! Pretty much all teachers work on Saturday and Sunday (when about 5000 of the 6000 students who attend our center have lessons), and then they work either Tuesday/Thursday, or Monday/Wednesday/Friday. For a TR schedule, there are two classes in the evening on Tuesday and two on Thursday, and then four classes on Saturday and four more on Sunday (working out to be two 12-hour days in a row, which is exhausting, but there are more days off to make up for it...). If the schedule is MWF, then it's typically two classes the evenings of MWandF, and then only three classes each on Saturday and Sunday. I'm particularly glad I got the TR schedule, because it means that i can keep hanging out with Lewis, Tara, and Jane (who all have TR schedules). Plus, 3 days off a week....not too bad. I'm not set to start until next Tuesday, though that may change. I'll know for sure tomorrow what I'm teaching - I met with the academic manager, and she thought it was a bit much to start me out with 4 classes on Saturday and Sunday, so she might cut me down to 3 at the beginning to ease me in. At this point, my students are Juniors and Seniors (which means between the ages of 6 and 15), and varying levels of English within those groups.

Other than that, I've found a temporary guest house (basically a hotel) to live in for the next month...anything to get me out of this one that I'm in now! My room is pretty big, and I have a little balcony. I'm moving in tomorrow and will be there for at least a month, at which point I'll either decide to stay there longer, or look for an apartment or a house. When I get a bit more settled in, I'll take some pictures to put up.

That's about it from this side of the world...hope you're all doing well - I'd love to hear from you!!!

Induction

I just got back from my first day of induction (training) at ILA. First impression is that I love, love, love the school! It's huge - located in a 9 story building, there are about 100 teachers for roughly 6000 students. We started with a quick tour of the building (focusing on the cafe on the 9th floor, and the teacher's lounge), then had two one-hour observations. The kids in the classes I observed (one class was 7-8 year olds, the other was 11-13 year olds) were all really, really well-behaved (especially compared to many of my Spanish students...), though nearly impossible to understand, so I've definitely got my work cut out for me. The nice thing is that for each children's class, there's a Vietnamese teaching assistant who's there to keep classroom control (yell at kids in Vietnamese if they're not behaving), help demonstrate things, explain things in Vietnamese if the concept is too difficult for the students, grade homework, and generally help out in the classroom. Should definitely make things easier. One of the more amusing teaching techniques that I saw was from an Irish teacher named Thomas who, whenever he overheard a student speaking in Vietnamese, would draw a mustache on them with a dry erase marker. Seeing little Vietnamese kids with a thin, blue fu manchu or goatee was one of the highlights of my day. After observation and a lunch break, we had the EHR Induction when we signed our contract (I'm officially under contract to work through February 1, 2011 - eek!), and went over tons of paper work for getting a bank account and a tax ID number. Conclusion: Vietnamese bureaucracy is not very fun. Each form had to be filled out exactly correctly (nothing scribbled out, or out of place), two times. Each time had to be an original, so it wasn't possible to fill it out just once and make a photocopy. Such a hassle! - But, it's done now, and I'm on my way to officially being a resident of Vietnam....

The other semi-noteworthy event of today was that I figured out (and solved the problem of) why I couldn't access facebook on my internet. Apparently the Vietnamese government decided to block it...why, I'm not entirely sure (something-or-other to do with Communism...), but I've got it all sorted now and should be good to go.

Yesterday's exciting experiences consisted of two visits to street vendors. At the first, I bought a coconut...they're kept in a cooler, and when you buy one, the vendor cuts the top off, and puts a straw in, and you just drink the coconut milk out of it. It was pretty refreshing, which was nice since it was over 90 degrees out and humid. I got lunch that day from a second street vendor in an alley near my hotel. I got another banh xeo (the pancake thing), which was, if I may say myself, quite adventurous since I had no idea what was inside. Turns out that there was shrimp and an unidentifiable meat (I think pork? - hopefully not dog) inside. I was a bit let down when I opened up a corner of it and saw a shrimp inside, and even more upset/creeped out when I realized that the shrimp wasn't peeled, and still had the tail on it. I peeled the first one and it tasted fine. By the time I got to the second shrimp, I realized that most people just ate the entire thing, so I gave it a go, and it wasn't as bad as I thought (plus peeling the first shrimp was a bit of a hassle), so I just went for it. Surprisingly...not as bad as I thought it'd be. I'd say it was my best meal here so far, and it only cost me 15,000 dong (about 80 cents) - I'm going to have to start going to street vendors more often!

In other news, I'm still very amused by the fact that the currency here is the dong. I asked Lewis how long it was before the novelty of that wore off, and he said that it still hadn't for him (7 months in), and that when it did, it would be time for him to leave Vietnam.

That's pretty much it from here...I'm going to try to squeeze a quick nap in before grabbing dinner with Tara, Lewis, Jane, and the gang (though...come to think of it, that is pretty much the entire gang...)

First Day

So I just figured out that my hotel has wireless, so I'm celebrating with another post! My first day went fairly well. I started out staying in the hotel room and watching TV (there are about 10 English-language channels), and then went out for breakfast and a quick walk around. I got a SIM card for my phone and came back to my hotel to nap and read when Lewis called me and asked me if I wanted to join him, Tara and Jane for lunch. He tried to give me directions, but I couldn't follow what he was saying (cause I don't really know my way around here), so he swung by and picked me up. I had enchiladas (I know, really taking advantage of the amazing food here...), which were a bit disappointing (though honestly, what did I expect?...)

Lewis and Jane were going to the driving range after lunch, so Tara and I tagged along to watch (I hit one ball. After one complete miss -my 'practice swing'-, and one hitting just the top of the ball and sending it rolling about 6 inches forward and having to chase it down. I'm pleased to say that I'm quite the golfer, as my ball made it to the 50 yard marker). The high point of the afternoon came when Lewis managed to hit the golf cart that was driving around.

After the driving range, we went to the post office, which is apparently a huge tourist attraction because it was an old French colonial building. While riding along on the back of Lewis's scooter, I really started to notice the absurd things that people were carrying on their scooters. Because most people don't have cars, they're forced to carry things with them on their scooters - either carrying them, strapping them on the back, or having their passenger carry them. Yesterday I saw curtain rods; four big bags of ice, which were quickly melting; a bubbling, foaming something or other in a styrofoam cooler; and two lanterns. I'm keeping my eyes peeled for particularly bizarre things, and will be sure to at least write about them, if not get a picture...

We went from the post office to join Laura and Sarah (other teachers, some of Lewis's friends) that were going for drinks at the Sheraton Hotel bar (on the 23rd floor). We were there for happy hour, which coincided with sunset, so there was a gorgeous view of the city (which was, incidentally, quite smoggy).

After overpriced drinks ($10 for 2 cocktails - an outrage!), we went for dinner at a place near my hotel and I got bánh xèo with chicken. A bánh xèo is like a savory crepe filled with bean sprouts and meat of some sort, that ends up looking a bit like an omelette. They give you mint to put inside, lettuce to wrap it in, and chili fish sauce to dip it in (which was too hot and too fishy for me, so I skipped that step). Anyways, had a wonderful time, and now need to get going with my day today...

Made it!

So I've made it safe and sound. I slept the entire way on both flights (11 hours from Seattle to Seoul, and 5 hours from there to Saigon) thanks to a sleeping pill from mom (thanks, Mom!) and got in around 10.30pm. After dealing with my visa (a smooth process, I was able to get it right from the airport) and getting my luggage, it was about 11.30. The school sent a teacher (Lewis from Scotland) to pick me up at the airport and he helped me get a cab to the hotel where I'm staying for at least the first week (and probably until I find a house to move into). We dropped off my luggage, then went to satisfy my craving for a beer at a bar around the corner. We met up with ten or so teachers from the school there, and they were all really cool...it made me look forward to starting teaching and meeting more. They said that the Center that I'm teaching at has about 100 teachers, and if they're anything like the people I met, it's gonna be totally awesome!

It's difficult not knowing the language - I feel bad walking in somewhere and asking something for English, but what can you do?...... I still have delusions of learning Vietnamese, but it's pretty difficult, and from what I've heard from the other teachers, nobody understands them anyways when they try to speak it. But I think it's still worth a try (at least to get down the basics of it).

As for first impressions of the place.......busy, busy, busy! So much traffic, and I don't know how people do it, but they somehow have a system worked out where people can go as fast as they want, in whichever lane they please, and not get into an accident. It's crazy trying to cross streets as there is never a break in the traffic, but Lewis advised me that the best way is to just close your eyes and walk at a steady pace. It's worked so far (for the two times that I crossed the street during my walk around the area this morning), but I'm still trying to limit how often I cross - hopefully everything that I need in the next few days will be on the same side of the street as my hotel....

Anyways, I'm off to do more exploring and hopefully avoid the traffic while doing so.....I'd love to hear from people, so please please please send me emails!

Pre-departure

So I'm leaving tomorrow...It hasn't fully set in yet, mostly because I don't want to think about how long the flights are going to be. I'm a mix of excited and nervous, but mostly just want to get there. Anyways, not a lot to say as of now, but I'll try to write one or two posts over the next year to give a few updates...

(Picture of Mt Rainier from the airport)