I went for a meeting today with my boss from the Teach Abroad program and she gave me information about my school. Me and Steven will be teaching at the same school. My contract has changed since I signed it, and I will now be teaching Kindergarten and Primary, but I won’t have any irregular hours, in fact I will teach Monday- Friday 8.30-11.00am, then 1.45pm until 4.00pm. My school is only half an hour’s walk from my house so I can stay at the school (where lunch is provided) and plan my other lessons or go home (where lunch is also provided!) and have a sleep. This sounds good to me. We even have our own office, and I have my own desk! I feel important!
It is a private, prestigious school and we are encouraged not to have time off, any we do take off is un-paid. However, because of this we are getting $600 dollars a month, plus $50 a month travel expenses, which is plenty. If we walk every day we still get the $50. This is a great salary, much higher than the other teachers, I was expecting to be on $400 a month.
I tried a fruit called the equivalent of “melon milk” today, given to me by my boss, and it was really nice! A bit like melon, but not as strong. (I forgot to mention that in Mai Chau I also tried Dragon Fruit, which tastes like a weaker form of kiwi, and doesn’t leave the funny after taste. It was delicious.) I am going to go to the local market and buy myself lots of fruit, I have been craving it since I arrived!
At 3pm we went to the school, it was a half hour walk and easy to get to, other than one main road which I have no idea how I am going to cross on my own, it has about five junctions all joined together… Also my new shoes gave me massive blisters so by the time I arrived at the school I was in agony…
At the school we met loads of people, they have a governor, a president, and about five vice presidents, some of whom spoke English and some of whom didn’t. Out of the two contacts I have for the school, one spoke very good English, the other was reasonable but she had a very strong Vietnamese accent so was hard to understand at times…
We then went to the Kindergarten school and this really baffled me, I was handed all kinds of books, which looked nice and easy to use, as well as a timetable and an overview of what I should be teaching. However, the resources and page numbers do not match the weekly overview of what I should be doing, and I haven’t made sense of my time table yet! I also have to remember to sign out every day, and I am based in three schools, with a separate time table for each, and different modules, with different course books. So far I have only been given the timetable for one school and it doesn’t make sense. I don’t really know what I am supposed to be teaching on Monday morning or what resources I should use…. Again, this would be regular occurrence during my two years teaching in Hanoi!
I am going in tomorrow to sing songs with the children and meet the pre-school children, We work one Saturday every month for two hours to meet with the new students. Tomorrow is just one hour to sing with them. So I need to be singing B-I-N-G-O, If you’re happy and you know it, Old Mac.donald etc. I was surprised how many English Nursery rhymes I heard playing! The school is well equipped and looks nice. The teachers are also really friendly; I have been told that it takes a while to adjust to their teaching style and way of working. We shall see what happens on Monday morning…
Half way round the tour of the school the Vice President noticed my ankles were bleeding from the blisters I had and took me to get plasters which I was very grateful for, and Que (my program organiser) ordered us a taxi home! I am going to walk to the school in trainers from now on and swap to my other shoes when I arrive. The sweaty heat really doesn’t help…
In the evening I joined with the volunteers to go and watch the football match between the male volunteers and the Vietnamese boys. It was good because I got to meet the volunteer teachers who live down the road from us, they are younger and more willing than the older people in my house to do the “tourist” stuff, especially because they are new and so like me, also haven’t done much of it yet. This is great. I am going into Hanoi centre with them tomorrow to buy a new phone and to get some Western food! The food here is nice, but its meat, rice, vegetables for lunch and the same for dinner seven days a week, so it gets very boring! In the evening we are going on a night out which means I can get to know them better, and Carly from my house is coming too, so I am looking forward to it.
