I have booked my first trip to the magical Halong Bay! A local friend of mine, An* who I had met through my pen friend booked a minibus for eight of us. There was a bit of a palaver over whether Connor was going to be able to come or not, because he was supposed to be working. However, as he was actually only volunteering he out his foot down and declared that he was going anyway! (Hanoi life). However, by the time all this was sorted we had already booked our hotel so Connor ended up in one down the road.
Today’s afternoon classes were painful! I had three and four year olds who spoke no English and were incredibly shy. I was supposed to be teaching them “Hello”, “Good Morning”, “Good Afternoon”, “Good evening” and “Goodbye” but they would not repeat anything I said, they just stared at me blankly. I didn’t even bother to move on to trying to get them to say “Good morning” as it was clearly beyond them. My boss was in the room watching, and she told the children in Vietnamese to repeat, but even then only a few of them did. So, I said “Hello!” and waved at them and then said “Goodbye!” and hid my face in my hands. They found this funny, and some of them copied what I was doing, but they still wouldn’t speak.
I then resorted to making a song up on the spot, that went “Good morning, good morning, Hello, Hello, Good morning, Good morning, Hello, Hello! Good evening, Good evening, Bye bye, Bye bye, Good evening, Good evening, Bye bye, Bye Bye!”
Again, they did not join in, but some of them copied my frantic waving of hello and goodbye which was an improvement!
I then changed to standing up and saying “bye bye”, before walking behind one of the walls in the classroom and hiding, and then coming back out and saying “Hello!” Again, they were amused- I was not! I then slowly encouraged/ dragged one of the kids to hide behind the wall with me, making him say “Hello” and “Bye Bye”. A few of the louder ones joined in with this, but all I had achieved was getting them to say “Hello” and “Bye Bye”!
With 15 minutes to go I just started singing songs that they would know and the “Goodbye Teacher” song, finishing my class 5 minutes early. I then had to repeat the class two more times, for the next hour. It was awful.
In my second class, I was singing heads, shoulders, knees and toes and one of the girls learnt right over on her chair to touch her toes and then head planted the floor as she over balanced. The teachers, especially my boss, found this hilarious!! My boss was still laughing twenty minutes later, as the kid sat on the other teacher’s knee, crying her eyes out, with a big red mark on her head! The other teachers sat talking about how funny this was and doing impressions of her! The class was not a success. It was added to my now very long list of “Thing’s You’d Never See In England”.
On Thursday I taught for four hours in the morning and then I was done for the day. (which is what makes the bad days worth while!) I met my girlfriends in town and went for a 2.5 hour Spa treatment that only cost £30!! I got a pedicure which I was much in need of after all the walking around I’ve done in the cray heat since my arrival. My feet were disgusting and needed a good pumice stone treatment! I then got my nails done and they cut off all the dead skin and cleaned all the inside, which, can I add, was at times quite painful! Then I was given a full body massage using oils which was amazing and no weird body slapping this time or neck snapping, just a lovely, nice, long massage. At one point I actually fell asleep. Then I had a facial with about four different treatments as well as the mist they spray on you, topped off with a head massage. It was awesome and I came out feeling super chilled! My friends amused that I had never pampered myself, or done my nails, or had a pedicure and didn’t know what I was meant to do! (I’m really not a pedicure kind of girl and I bite my nails…)
It is a good thing that I was so chilled, as five minutes later I found myself walking under a building just as some builders decided to throw rubble off, and was soon hailed with small shards of rubble and dust that all went in my eyes. I ended up shouting some extremities about Vietnam in frustration… oooops.
We enjoyed sitting by the lake until we were interrupted by a dad who wanted us to practise conversational English with his two children- a regular occurrence in Vietnam. They were really funny, incredibly shy and kept whispering to each other and looking really awkward while their dad sat grinning, thinking he was encouraging them. We made a hasty exit and headed for dinner in a very nice but very expensive restaurant. (When I say expensive, it was still only a third of the price of back home!) We didn’t dare tell my friend that we had eaten at 5 because we were starving and couldn’t wait until eight…and had then been bored waiting for her so walked to the ice cream parlour… In the end we still managed to share a large pizza between the three of us though!
