Every day that goes by, I get more and settled in and comfortable here. I've had at least three teachers act surprised when I told them I've only been here a bit over a month, since all of them thought I'd been here for ages since I was so comfortable in the Teacher's Room and interacting with everybody. I've gotten to know a few of the road names in the area, so that always makes me feel good about myself, and helps me realize that I am living here long-term. Also helping with that is the fact that three or four new teachers have arrived, so I'm no longer "the new kid". Two of them (Jo from Manchester, and Zara from London) are really cool, and I I get along with them really well. We've already talked about living together, and plan on checking out some apartments and houses later this month.
Everything else is continuing along just the same. My private lessons are going very well, and Julie is still absolutely adorable. I've officially got a full load of courses that I'm teaching (2 on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and 4 on Saturdays and Sundays), so I'm busy, but it's nice that they're my classes, and I can run them however I want. Yay! I had my observation (by Rachel, the boss of the entire branch where I work - eep!). I had her observe my J3A's (my worst class, full of 15 boys and 3 girls - 8 or 9 of the boys have absolutely no desire to be there, one boy has a learning disability which means that he spends about 30% of class walking around the room and humming). I was a bit nervous, but overall it was really, really helpful, so I'm looking forward to incorporating some of her advice and tips into my lesson with them tomorrow.
I'm two weeks into my Vietnamese lessons and so far they're going pretty well. It's a very difficult language, and often I can't even hear the difference between what I'm saying and what the teacher is saying (damn tonal language!). After two weeks, I know numbers 1-99, and how to say What is your name, What is your phone number? Where are you from? (along with the names of about 20 different countries), and How old are you?. I've used Vietnamese...twice after starting the class. Once I was in a taxi, and told the driver the road, and he asked for the number and I was able to tell him. And another, I was at a bar with Zara and Jo, and a little girl came up trying to sell us gum and I asked her what her name was. I was pretty proud of myself. I'm not sure how long I'll be staying in Vietnamese class. I definitely would like to learn, but it's pretty demoralizing to never be able to say anything correctly, plus the class is on my day off.....the plan as of now is to stick around in the class until I feel like it's stopped being useful (which I don't see happening anytime soon).
In terms of other things I've been doing....
Lewis gave me my first scooter lesson the other day. Overall grade....2/10. For fear of Mom and Dad reading this and flipping out, if anyone wants to know just exactly how badly it went, feel free to ask me. (And don't worry, Mom and Dad - it wasn't THAT bad). Also, don't worry, as I'm not taking another one until my health insurance goes through...
The other day Kim and I went to the War Remnants Museum (formerly named the The House for Displaying War Crimes of American Imperialism and the Puppet Government). It was a pretty intense experience (particularly the jars of fetuses that had birth defects from Agent Orange), and many of the photographs and descriptions of torture techniques. Kim and I finished up there around 10:30, and our first act after leaving was to go next door to the bar and have a beer. It was that kind of museum.....
Coming up on March 22 and 23, ILA is sponsoring a trip to Mui Ne. They're putting us up in a 4 star resort, paying for the bus to get us there and our meals while we're there (verdict's still out on whether they're paying for drinks, though that could be quite dangerous for them). The bus leaves at 6:30 on Monday morning, and gets back at 4pm on Tuesday, in time for us to teach our lessons Tuesday evening - however, realizing that would be awful, and not nearly enough time in gorgeous Mui Ne (I can't believe that the only two times I'm leaving the city are to go to the same place twice...), I've booked off of work on Tuesday, so plan on coming back Wednesday or Thursday evening. Should be very exciting!
I've gotta head in to plan some lessons, so I'm off! I'd love to hear updates from all of you on how/what you're doing!!
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