Millionaires and teapots

This morning Morena and I went to breakfast with Hồng and the gang. Since we didn't meet up until 730, the cơm tấm place was already closed. We kept walking until we arrived at a still-open place that served cháo lòng. I'd had cháo (rice porridge) before, once in Hanoi with heart meat and once here with duck, and I'd liked both so I was game for this option. Well, cháo lòng is kind of different. It is made with pork intestines and the ever-popular congealed blood cubes. I thought it was fine, flavor-wise, but my intestines were not quite as convinced.

Close-up

Henceforth (at least for the foreseeable future), I will no longer teach in the mornings. Instead of teaching from 7:50 to 11:15 I will teach from 1:35 to 5:00. Today was my first day with this new schedule, and it felt odd. Usually, if I have the morning off I also have the whole day off, so I had to keep reminding myself that I did have to be somewhere at a certain time.

Classes today were fine, but uneventful. In the listening class they learned about international charities like WWF and Amnesty International, so I prepared an activity where seven groups designed a charity and four students were millionaires. The individual millionaires told us how they got rich; the groups had to explain who they served and how, and at the end the millionaires distributed their money to the charities as they saw fit. I'll be taking the highest-earning charity out for coffee/beverages.

The millionaires allocate their funds

When Morena and I were returning from dinner we saw an ice cream truck parked outside of the school. We got in line, debating whether we wanted one. The next thing we knew, the student in front of us turned around, two cones in hand, and handed one to each of us. I don't know who she was or whether she understood us or whether she was just being kind.

Complimentary ice cream for the teacher

Earlier in the afternoon, there had been some confusion since I had been told that, come October, I would no longer be participating in the student English club, but it was suddenly no longer on Morena's schedule either. A call to Trang cleared things up, and it turns out that I will still be teaching the English club, after all. Last month they were worried about giving me too much work and that's why they were going to assign it to Morena, but this week they are worried about giving her too much work, so it has been shuffled back to me. I had been looking forward to having the night off, but I am much happier to do the English club; it is my favorite activity with my students.

This week the freshmen have arrived, so the number of students in the club more than doubled. I counted almost 90 in the room, and there were more standing outside the door. Because of the confusion, we didn't have much prepared, but I don't think anything I might have prepared would have worked with our newly expanded group. We filled the time with more songs and games. One of the songs we sang was The Itsy-Bitsy Spider and, in trying to explain 'spider' to the new students I resorted to drawing. I received an unexpectedly resounding round of applause for my drawing. Later, we sang On Top of Spaghetti, and I received even more applause because I knew the Vietnamese terms for meatball and tomato and spaghetti. Talk about an ego boost. It'll be a challenge to engage this many students, especially since they run the gamut of ability level, but I think it'll be fun. Whether or not I'll have a voice on Thursdays is another matter.

So many students!

I feel like I have to show it, since I wrote about it.

I am a teacher, a teapot, and I am standing on a lawn chair. Pure professionalism.

Look at all of my teapots! I won't tell you how long it took to get them all
pouring in the same direction.

As I was writing this post I received an email from one of my students:

All have 20 beautiful angels,10 angels is playing, 9 angels is sleeping and 1 angel is reading this message.hj.Good night.:)--cheerful.

 Good night.