Today was another mostly uneventful day. I was teaching teachers and in the first class I had been asked to prepare images of works of art to have them compare and discuss. Before I started showing them the pictures I asked if any of them liked art. "Oh yes!" I got an enthusiastic reply from the front row. When I asked him what kind of art he liked, his reply was: "I like martial arts, like kung fu and tai kwon do." ... Not the reply I was expecting.
I teach another class in the afternoon, but by noon I still didn't know what teacher I was teaching with or what, if anything, I was expected to prepare. The thing about my Friday classes is that there are three different groups but I only teach two groups each Friday, so I rotate groups every week. I think the other teachers must rotate, too, because I am have yet to teach with the same teacher. Anyway, this meant that I didn't even know who to ask about what was expected of me. Luckily, I taught with Trang in the morning (after earlier in the week being told that I would teach with her, then being told that I wouldn't, and yesterday being told that in fact I would), and when I told her about my concerns regarding the afternoon class, she started making phone calls. At about 1:15 I got a phone call from the teacher I would be working with saying that she wanted to meet at two. To discuss the activities for the class that I was supposed to start teaching at two. Oookay. Two o'clock rolled around and when we met she had one activity sheet for me. Oh boy. By the teacher magic that lives up my metaphorical sleeves, I was able to extend the sheet into an hour-long lesson. Cue sigh of relief.
I have a confession to make: I watched more TV today. The other day I was looking for slow, easy songs to use for listening activities in my English class and I recalled the Whitney Houston song, 'I Will Always Love You,' from the movie 'The Bodyguard.' I was too young to see the movie when it came out, but not too young to play that song over and over on my tape player. Today, by some cosmic coincidence, the movie was showing on HBO, though I only caught the last 20 minutes or so. Later, 'The Truman Show' was on. I caught most of this one. Maybe I'll end up watching all of those movies that I should have seen at some point or another but never got around to. I am currently justifying my movie-watching with the fact that reading the Vietnamese subtitles is actually really helpful. It reinforces vocabulary and grammatical structures, and it is very exciting when I can identify how the individual Vietnamese words translate back into the English that I heard.
In the evening I took a walk for bánh ướt. The woman sells a few different things, but I only ever buy the bánh ướt (I'm pretty sure everything else is some variant on the evil fruit salad). By now she recognizes me, and waves me on if she's out of bánh ướt, as was the case a few nights ago, or smilingly greets me, as was the case tonight.
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| Auntie bánh ướt |
On the way back I was keeping one eye on the traffic zooming past me in the dark and another on the signage around me, attempting to mentally practice pronunciation. Suddenly, to my surprise, a tone marker moved. It turned out it was a gecko.
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| Not xoá, just xoa+gecko |
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