The end of the video sounds more like what I was hearing at the beginning. It went on and on and on. I had to use my iPod to drown out the two cats who managed to sound like babies crossed with cats crossed with Donald Duck. This second video is harder to hear, but it has more of the weird sounds.
Monday morning I taught Speaking. The day's topic was learning styles, and the students took a quiz to find out what their learning style was. I took it with them and was surprised when the results revealed that I was not just a visual learner but also a haptic (kinesthetic) learner. To be fair, my scores in each category were within five points of each other, but auditory was the lowest. As we tallied the class's results, I wished that this chapter in the textbook had been one of the first. It would have been an ideal exercise at the beginning of the year. It would have helped me teach better, and students could have put the relevant study tips to good use earlier on. Seeing that most of my students were auditory learners, I wondered whether they'd become this way after a lifetime of lecture-heavy education, or if it just happened to be that way.
Today I had my Vietnamese lesson. It got off to a rough start, mostly because Trang kept trying to just talk to me and I had no idea what she was saying. However, it ended up being a very interesting conversation (mostly in English), even if it wasn't the best lesson. We talked about our favorite Greek myths, and I corrected her pronunciation of Zeus, whom she was calling Juice. Eventually we got back to the whole Vietnamese lesson part of it. Tidbits include the fun to say "bóng bóng" (bubble) and "đạo tin lành" (Protestantism, literally religion of good news). We discussed the many terms for family members, and when we got to mợ, an uncle-in-law on your mom's side, it became the fourth item of the multi-toned 'mơ's I have gathered, so I decided to finish the set. Behold the perils of tone:
- mỡ - greasy
- mở - open
- mơ - dream
- mợ - uncle-in-law
- mờ - dim
- mớ - sleep talking
Trang and I went to the milk tea place for our lesson. The first time I went, I made it my goal to try as many flavors as possible. I certainly haven't tried all of the options yet, but I think I will have soon tried enough to confidently settle into a couple of favorites. The milk tea comes with an assortment of tapioca balls. My favorite kind is filled with passion fruit juice and bursts when you bite it. Today, I experienced a kind of tapioca I had not previously experienced in any of my visits. It was crunchy. Some sage or perhaps just curious part of my faculties decided to take it out of my mouth and look at it. It was not tapioca. It was a big, dead fly. I have intentionally eaten larvae here in Vietnam, and they were delicious, but it is another thing entirely to find an unexpected protein additive in your tea. I can't decide if this makes it better or worse, but I was actually enjoying the flavor of the impostor tapioca before I took it out of my mouth and found out what it was.
And on that note, let me close by telling you that there are only 50 days left until the official end of my term as a Fulbrighter. Whoa.
Okay! no flies in my milk tea, please!yikes...
ReplyDeleteI guess that comes from the 7 second rule....a little dirt don't hurt nobody. On my lonesome tonite, as your dad is whisked away to orlando on business. talked with tiafavoRita....you might send her an email hello! and I will get her reading your blogs again. Beautiful Easter here, with late afternoon picnic with Barnesies, Kuchs, and Taylors among others. Your dad took photos of course. I went on a yoga retreat afternoon in the hill country with Kaye, which was lovely...while your dad took a ride and the house was viewed by numerous interested parties. I pray it sells before the end of the month. take care.