Ball Pythons and Private Lessons

A few weeks ago, ILA had a petting zoo for the kids in summer school. They brought a bunch of small animals (snakes, rabbits, lizards, gerbils, etc.) to the fifth floor of ILA and all of the summer school classes got 15 minutes to go see all of the animals. I'm sticking in a picture of one of my favorite students, Jackson, holding the Ball Python. Jackson used to drive me crazy until I went on the field trip with the class to the zoo (the real zoo, not just the petting zoo), and he was cracking me up the whole time - wouldn't let go of my hand, kept trying to teach me Vietnamese, and sharing his snacks with me.

He and I got off on a bad foot at the beginning of the class. I told all of the students to make nametags with what they wanted me to call them, whether it was their English name, or their Vietnamese name. Usually when students pick English names, they choose characters out of their textbooks (I have a bunch of Andys and Pollys), a complete white trash trailer name (Cindy, Daisy, etc.), or something random (Catfish, Panda, TV, Balloon, Dragon Sky).

When I saw that this kid had chosen Jackson, and I was excited to have a cool, different name. I called him Jackson a few times during the first class, and he started to get mad. He turned over his nametag I saw that the other side said Michael. He insisted that I call him Michael Jackson (incidentally, my second student who wanted me to call him Michael Jackson). I refused. At the zoo, I called him by his Vietnamese name, and about an hour into it while he was holding my hand, he looked up at me and said "Call me Jackson". Hurray for minor teaching victories!

Another tidbit from the petting zoo...one of the TAs posted a picture on facebook of me holding the same snake. One of the teachers I work with posted the comment trouser snake?, and the TA responded It is "Ball Python". Hurray for American innuendos that go over the head of foreigners!

The other new thing in my life is that I've picked up another private lesson. The woman who does scheduling at ILA asked if I wanted it, and I decided to take it. She gave me the name of a woman to call, and the woman said that they were lessons for her manager, who wanted to work on pronunciation and some grammar. She gave me the address of the company, but said she wasn't working that day and gave me the number of the guy's wife. At this point I'm starting to get really nervous about why they won't give me his number. I assumed that it was because his English was so bad that he wouldn't be able to understand anything or arrange a time for me to come meet him. After setting up a time with his wife, she told me his name was Hoàn and gave me his number. I texted him to confirm the time of the meeting, and he called me (his English was actually pretty decent, which was a nice suprise). I headed over to his office (Khai Hoan Land Office) and the receptionist led me to his office. He hands me his card, and he is the Khai Hoan - Chairman and General Director of a 250+ employee company. Zoinks!

He's a really nice guy - he's studied English for a long time, but never gets a chance to practice. He has a translator for everything, but he told me that he doesn't really like his translator, and wants to get rid of him and do all of his business himself. A serious fellow - I quickly realized that this wouldn't be the kind of private lesson where I could go in unprepared and just wing it... He asked me if I liked Vietnam, and if I'd had any sort of problems since I arrived. I told him I hadn't, and said he was glad, but if I had any problems with anything (police, the government, or anything) to let him know and he'd help me out. A useful contact to have....

Vietnamese lessons are still going well. This past week we did ability (can and can't) and the present continuous. The more I learn, the more it all makes sense (duh), and I've gotten a few basic sentence structures so that I'm able to form my own sentences, rather than just the ones that we're taught in class. The only problem now is that I'll say something in Vietnamese, and the person I'm talking to will answer me in Vietnamese and I'll sit there like an idiot for a few seconds trying to figure out what they've said (I don't even know why I try - I really only know about 50 vocabulary words), then have to tell them that I don't understand. Oops.

In Thursday's class we had to interview two Vietnamese people (in Vietnamese, obviously) who worked at ILA, asking them questions about their daily schedules (what are your work hours; when is your lunch hour; when do you watch TV; how many days a week do you work, go for coffee, work out, go shopping, etc). It was pretty cool that I was able to actually have a "conversation" in Vietnamese and that they could understand me. (Not to mention that one of the people I interviewed was one of my TA's, and the other guy in class also interviewed her, and she said that my Vietnamese was better than his. Boo ya!)

Anyways, think that's just about it, really...

Henry, Larri, and the trip North

A few developments since I last wrote. My friend Henry is here visiting, and it's wonderful for more than just the fact that he brought me Firefly sweet tea vodka. It's been weird having somebody from home here, and showing him around and taking him to all of my favorite restaurants really has made me realize that this city is feeling more and more like home to me every day. Henry arrived on a Wednesday night, and things were pretty uneventful (what with him getting over the jet lag and getting used to everything here) until Sunday.

On Sunday, I took the day off of work and we went to champagne brunch at the Intercontinental Hotel to celebrate/mourn Tara's leaving. The brunch consists of all you can drink champagne and all you can eat brunch (complete with roast beef and yorkshire pudding). After an afternoon of drinking champagne, followed by an evening at the Blue Gecko filled with more drinking and darts, I decided it was time to call it a night (it was, incidentally, only about 7pm).

Henry and I came home, and while unlocking the gate, I looked down and there was a tiny stray kitten sitting on the stoop. I've wanted a cat my whole life, and on this particular day, not thinking completely clearly, I picked it up, took it inside, poured it a dish of milk, and, again, not thinking clearly, adamantly demanded that I'd keep it.
The entire time, Henry was telling me what an awful idea it was, and when Spencer showed up about half an hour later, he agreed, and the two of them together tried to talk me out of keeping it. Spencer made the mistake of calling Zara to have her talk some sense into me. He either didn't know, or had forgotten, what an animal-lover Zara is, so when she came home and saw the kitten, she fell in love with it too. We decided to keep it until we could find it a home.

The next morning, Spencer, Henry and I left for the airport for our flight up to Hanoi. We arrived that afternoon and spent the rest of the day walking around the lake and exploring the city a bit. I really liked Hanoi. It's much prettier than Ho Chi Minh City. There are lakes and parks everywhere, and it's cleaner as well. For some reason that I can't explain, though, I still prefer HCMC - I feel like it has more character, as far as cities go. That evening, we booked ourselves a three day, two night trip to Ha Long Bay. I don't really remember much from our time in Hanoi - a lot of time was spent watching World Cup matches, making lots of "that's what she said" jokes (very few of which were actually funny), and drinking bia hoi (beer of the day - fresh-brewed beer that tastes suspiciously like Natty Light, but only costs about ten cents a glass). We also saw a few sites (the Prison where John McCain was a POW, and Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum, where he was embalmed - in a word...creepy).



We woke up early to take the three-hour van ride to Ha Long Bay. It was pretty uneventful, though Spencer and I spent the time sharing my ipod and listening to Bill Bryson's memoir, The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, and periodically cracking up. The ride went pretty quickly, and we got dropped off at the port and made our way to the junk boat we'd be on for the next few days. We got settled in our rooms, had lunch, and went up to the top of the ship to look around and catch some sun. Ha Long Bay is gorgeous; it's about 1600 square kilometers, and consists of almost 2000 limestone islets, some of which are really big, and some that are pretty small. Our ship sailed around for a few hours and we stopped at the Surprise Cave, which was a huge cave with tons of stalactites and stalagmites and shapes that were supposed to resemble animals, though I could never really see what any of them were supposed to be (at one point I think I offended our tour guide by guessing that one shape was a monkey. Turns out it was the Buddha). Of course, we all left our cameras on the boat and have no photos of the cave, but suffice it to say, it was really cool. After the cave, we had about 45 minutes of kayaking around. I'd never been kayaking before, and Spencer was kind enough not to get mad at me (at least, not visibly) when I completely sucked at it. We got back that evening and anchored the boat and went for a swim. Henry, Spencer, and a Kiwi named Rob that we made friends with all jumped from the top level of the boat, but I wussed out and climbed in off of the back. We swam for a bit, had dinner, and the four of us (Henry, Spencer, Rob, and me) spent the evening playing euchre and drinking games.

The next morning, we were woken up earlier than we would've liked (thank you, bottle of Johnny Walker) and ushered onto a boat to take us to Cat Ba Island. We hadn't really paid attention to the itinerary, so we were unsure what we were doing on the island, but as soon as we got there, they told us we were going on a hike. We were all pretty confident in our climbing, so even when things got steep and we only had on our flip flops, we weren't too concerned. It was when we got closer to the top, and things got even steeper (at times it was pretty much a vertical climb up rocks) and muddier that we were a bit concerned. It was pretty miserable towards the end, but once we got up, the view was spectacular. We climbed an old, rickety viewing tower (in hindsight, probably not the best idea) and rested there for a while before the treacherous climb back down. Going down was much more slippery and muddy than the way up, and there were a few moments when we were cussing ourselves for only having brought flip flops. We made it through safe and sound, though, and have a few pictures as proof. After the hike, we went to lunch at a hotel on the island, and then went off to Monkey Island, where we sat on the beach for a few hours and saw a few monkeys (overall, Monkey Island was pretty unimpressive).

We headed back to the boat for the night and found that a lot of the older crowd that had been there the night before had been replaced by younger backpackers. We hung out with them all night, trying our hands at karaoke and various drinking games. The next day was more cruising around the islands and then back into Ha Long City, where we had lunch and all took the van back to Hanoi together.

That evening, Henry met up with a few of the people that were on the boat with us the second night, and Spencer and I, both being exhausted and unable to stand Vietnamese food after three days of fried seafood on the boat, went to a nice Italian restaurant.

We left for the airport the next day, and after a two hour flight delay, made it onto the plane and got back into HCMC safe and sound (though the landing scared the bajesus out of me).

Not much has been happening since then - getting readjusted at work is going well, though I'm still getting used to Saturdays and Sundays of eight teaching hours each. Henry went up the coast on a week and a half long trip, and has just gotten back for a few days before heading home. We also found the kitten a home with our cleaner's sister. She lives out in the countryside in a house with a yard. We had to give her away just a few days ago. It's been lonely around here without her, but she'll be much better cared for.