Not gone yet

Every day, it feels as though my departure is looming. Ever since the calendar page turned to March, it was as though it said May. Everyone started talking to me about when I will leave and how soon I am leaving and what things they hope we can do before I leave and how they have to spend more time with me now that there's so little time left. Hardly a day goes by without some comment or conversation regarding my imminent departure. I think that's why my schedule suddenly got packed (though now it's balancing out again) and why I'm teaching first years now -- they want to squeeze every last bit of benefit out of me before I go. I want to shake people and say, "Hey! There are still three months left!" but I know that will slip by before we know it. I can still remember my first week here with perfect clarity, sitting in my room and wondering what had possessed me to want to come here, and feeling like ten months would be an eternity. And now I'm well past halfway and sliding down the downhill slope towards the end.

In addition to other people making me feel like I'm as good as gone (not in a bad way), the amount of time I'm spending preparing for what comes next makes me feel like goodbye is around the corner. The fun part of this preparation is planning where I want to go and for how long and how I will get there and where I will stay for my June travels. For now, the list includes Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, and Thailand. Less fun is looking for jobs. Mostly, this makes me question things. It makes me question what I really want to do, what I am really capable of doing, and, to some degree, what I expect of myself. It makes me question the relative importance of having a dream job (or at least an enjoyable one) versus just plain having a job.

Thursday, I taught Listening in the morning. Last week they had asked me to sing for them because it was women's day. I told them I was still hoarse, so I wasn't able to oblige. I didn't get off scotch free, though, as the students didn't even let me start the lesson before they requested the song I owed them. The listening track was about predictions for the future, so I thought an activity I used with a speaking class last semester when we were talking about future cities would be suitable for today's wrap up. I asked them what they would make if they could invent anything. Last time I did this activity, participation was a little stilted. This time, the students (though they are technically lower-level students) seemed to have a better grasp on the activity and offered a lot of imaginative inventions.

Only in Vietnam would you want "shoes that make you faster than a motorbike"

Trang asked me to join her for lunch, and asked me what I wanted to eat. I decided it was time to revert to my old answer: something new. Only this time the discussion happened in Vietnamese. It took her a while to come up with something, but it was worth the wait. We had cháo cá, fish porridge. It didn't sound too exciting when she proposed it to me, but it was delicious! Even better, we had a really nice, long, relaxed time together, the likes of which we haven't had for several weeks. Among several conversation topics and a smattering of Vietnamese notes, Trang re-mentioned that I look like Britney Spears. I still don't see it.

Fertilized quail eggs, broth, fish, herbs

At 630 I met up with Thy, Thao, and Nhu, three of my second year students. They are participating in an upcoming speaking competition and wanted to meet up so I could help them prepare. However, we spent maybe 20 minutes working on their presentation, but I wasn't about to complain. Our two hours together flew by. We went to a milk tea/bubble tea place and had drinks and fried chicken. Unfortunately our schedules don't work for a repeat next week, but we're already planning for next next week.

Today continued the trend of preemptive farewells, but I'll get to that later. I taught the first years about telepathy, and it was kind of a throwaway lesson. There seemed to be a lot of conflating of telepathy and fortune-telling, and to be honest it didn't seem worthwhile to tease the two apart. I can't really see this being critical to their English speaking futures, and the more important part was to get them to talk, which they did. I'm starting to learn how to teach my first years. They seem to understand me well enough, but they really need me to model activities for them. This is something I learned in training, but something I can get away with not doing with my older students. With my first years, I have to ask the question, and then show them how to structure their response. For example:

• Do you believe in telepathy?
• Yes, I believe in telepathy because...
• No, I don't believe in telepathy because...
• I'm not sure if I believe in telepathy because...

After discussing telepathy and intuition, we conducted an 'experiment'. Five pairs of students sat back to back. The five facing forward had to draw a picture and focus on what they were doing. Their partners had to try to 'receive' the picture and draw what they thought was being drawn. There were a few convergences. A pair of girls drew hearts, but I didn't need telepathy to know that one was going to happen before I even taught today.

Two apples

In the afternoon I attended a meeting of the English teachers to discuss the semester so far, regarding my activities and performance. The first twenty minutes or so were essentially an assortment of 'we love Adelina' speeches from all of the teachers I've worked with. They talked about changes they observed in the students and in the classroom atmosphere, and things they themselves had learned from me. One of the teachers said, "Adelina's position is an English teaching assistant, but in reality she is the teacher and we are her assistants." To hear their statements wasn't just heart warming, it was affirming. It showed me that I am having indeed having a positive impact. I don't know if there will be another meeting like this before I go, but I will carry their words with me for the rest of my time here and long after I leave.

Most of the English department

Mr. Tuan, with whom I teach on Friday mornings, had invited me out to eat after the meeting. I don't know if it was a calculated move, but after the meeting all of the other teachers decided that they wanted to go out. Had I not already committed to Mr. Tuan, I would have gone with them. You may ask, why didn't everyone just go out together? Well, Mr. Tuan is persona non grata in the department, so it was one or the other. I tried not to let everyone else's views taint our dinner, however. He took me out for sour soup and fish cooked in fish sauce, two dishes I've had many times, but this time it was catfish. Unfortunately, the place we went put up a poor showing. In my opinion, the best part of sour soup is the broth. Tonight, the sauce tasted like spicy water. The only exciting thing about the meal were some enormous shrimps. Enormous! I have never seen shrimp with legs as long as my forearm. I spent most of the meal in silence, as much because we didn't have a lot to talk about as because he took me to a restaurant where a ton of his friends were, so they kept coming over to chat with him.

Mega shrimp and legs

Mega shrimp does not fit in my bowl

Pudding

I started my day with Vietnamese lessons with Trang. After some time together, she confessed to me that before we met up she had been in a bad mood and had worried that it would affect our interaction. However, when she saw me and saw me smiling she felt relieved and she knew that everything would be fine.

After breakfast and over drinks she quizzed me on flashcards she had given me a few weeks ago, and then surprised me by giving me a written quiz for the flashcard vocabulary. I surprised myself for getting almost all of them right, tones, special characters, and all. Among the many other things I learned, I learned the funny literal meaning of the Vietnamese way of saying "I'll be there in five minutes": "I will have my face there in five minutes" (Tôi sẽ có mặt ở đó trong mười phút). Also, instead of 'taking' pictures, in Vietnamese you 'catch' them, so when people want you to take their picture they sometimes say 'catch me!'

After five and a half months, Vietnam is sinking in. I was remembering a particular dinner out from a long time ago, and I caught myself retrofitting my memory with chopsticks. Last night I handed something to someone in my dream, and I used both hands to do so (something very Vietnamese). More interestingly, I am also absorbing local ideas of beauty. Even though I am looking forward to getting some sun this weekend, I catch myself admiring fair skin. I'll see someone and think, "Oh, her skin is so light! She is so beautiful." Appended to that is a parenthetical 'here', as in, 'she is so beautiful here,' but that caveat isn't as strong as the rest of the reaction. More than anything it makes me think, if after five months in one country I can start to internalize local beauty ideals, how very very hard it must be to escape unseen manifestations of cultural bias acquired through a lifetime of exposure.

Last week I said that the USA quizzes looked more promising, but that the proof would be in the (grading) pudding. Well, today I finally got around to said grading. The class average was 7.1, a marked improvement from last week's 4.2 and even slightly better than the 6.9 yielded by the first week's cheating frenzy. Moreover, there was an all-time high of six perfect scores. However, there are still some issues that I'm not sure how to address. The last question on the quiz is always something like, 'What is something you find interesting about this region?' (originally it was was 'The state I find most interesting is _________ because:', but I kept getting answers that weren't about states so I tried to open up the question). As far as I'm concerned, this question is a gimme. Last week I even made it worth 3 out of the 10 total points, and explicitly explained that the more they wrote, the more points they would get. However, I still have students leaving this question completely blank. Why? Some of them are clever enough to rephrase the answer to another question into something that suits this question, and I'll accept that. There should be no reason for someone to leave that question blank if they successfully answered any other question on the quiz. One of my students seems to think that 'Abraham Lincoln' is a good guess to answer the question 'Who was Elvis Presley?' (previous quiz) and 'Who was Henry Ford?' (most recent quiz). Again, why?

In the evening I had the teacher's English club. The class gifted me with flowers and puppies glued into a basket (it makes more sense in the picture).

Basket o' puppy love

The theme was love stories, specifically, how they met their spouse, or another story if they weren't married. The stories ranged from interesting to sweet to a little strange. The first teacher talked about how his friends secretly found him a match using a matchmaker and introduced the two of them at a party, and despite the fact that some may object to that practice nowadays, they are still living happily ever after. The second told us how she met her husband on the ferry. The two of them had gone to high school together but never met, and then they both went to university in HCMC and met one weekend on the way home to Be Tre. One teacher told a love story he read in the newspaper, about a Vietnamese man and an American woman. He called the story 'Transnational Love' and told me he told the story because he hoped to 'communicate a message' to me. I hope the message is not the one I find most obvious. I taught them 'roses are red,...' and then we translated it into Vietnamese.

Hoa hồng thì đỏ
Hoa vi-ô-let thì xanh
Đượng thì ngọt
Và em cũng vậy!

If my internet had been working last night I would have recommended impressing someone with this, but now it'll have to wait until next year.

After the club I had a lot of lesson planning and prepping left to do. Most notable from this endeavor is that I came up with a solution to my quiz quandary. Today, the only question on the quiz, other than naming the region and the states, is "What is something you find interesting about this region?" We will see what happens.

2.15.12
The day started with my USA class and the weekly intrigue of the quiz. Writing the quiz (and the lesson plan around it) is a weekly exercise in plus or minus, trying to make it just above the students' level. I want them to do well, but I don't want it to be easy. This week's region was the Southwest, with an emphasis on Texas, and I prepared a powerpoint about the region, given that it is my own. Sadly, the projector refused to cooperate, and the photos I spent hours coaxing my sputtering internet to load went unseen. The upside of this was that it gave me more time to address recurring errors in last week's quiz and hammer in exactly what I expect from them on the quiz. Sometimes it feels like I am trying to make the whole experience foolproof. I have to remind myself that my assumptions and habits as an American-bred test-taker are not necessarily the same as my Vietnamese students', and that if I want them to do something (like write as much as possible), I need to tell them so. I am hoping that the open form of the latest quiz will give students a chance to show what they know, rather than reveal that they didn't internalize whatever ideas I selected to quiz them on, as was sometimes the case with previous quizzes.

In the afternoon I was invited to attend a mysterious event that was at one point described as a fashion show, later a competition, and later, a conference. I struggle to describe it now to you. It was like an academic beauty pageant with audience participation. There were some lectures, then a fashion show featuring the contestants (tourism students), then the contestants had to answer questions relating to different scenarios they might encounter as tour guides, then the audience had the chance to participate in addressing those scenarios, and it ended with students singing. Below, the last few minutes of the fashion show. If you want to watch the whole thing, here are Part 1, and Part 2. And, here's another singing video.

I sat in the back with some of my students, and they were excellent interpreters for the whole event. When it was opened up to audience participation they really really really wanted me to raise my hand and answer a question. I didn't really want to, but I figured it was my turn to put my money where my mouth is as far as in-class participation and volunteering (even though this was not a class and I was not a student). So I did it. I got a prize/gift for participating, and when I opened the box later I found three toothbrushes and two shampoo samples. Among the tourism scenarios presented there were:

• You take your tourists to the airport and then one realizes he/she forgot his/her bags at the hotel. What do you do?
• You are supposed to take your tourists to many different pagodas, but they think they all look the same and are not interested. What do you do?
• You are a male guide and your group is in Nha Trang (a beach destination) for several days. A female tourist asks you to teach her how to swim. What do you do?

During the event, one of the students decided to inform me of the origin and meaning of the name Ben Tre. I have been trying to find this out ever since I got here and no one ever knew, so I was delighted. He told me that Ben Tre used to be a part of Cambodia, and back then it was called (something like) Ben Se. Ben means 'fish' in Khmer, and they saw many fish here. To the Vietnamese, Se sounded like Tre, which means 'bamboo' in Vietnamese. Ben means port. So, many people think that Ben Tre is 'Bamboo Port', because there is a lot of bamboo, but that is because they don't know the whole story.

I had a Valentine's Day party for the English club and, after a short presentation about Valentine's Day, students made Valentines. At the end I gave out prizes for the top three cards.

Valentine factory

Showing off the finished products

The winning card, front and back, below:

 2.16.12
This morning I taught Listening 2. Overall, the lesson I was supposed to teach was too short, and this was exacerbated by the fact that one activity that I anticipated being challenging ended up being super easy for my students. So, to fill the time I ended up doing something I've been meaning to do for ages. I asked the students to make name cards and took their pictures with their names. After that I collected their name cards, wrote a word on each one, and tried to read off their names in order to give them back to them. Then we went outside and they had to get in alphabetical order based on the word I had written on each of their name cards. Again, they surprised my with how quickly and efficiently they completed the task, and when they were done and I said class was over they were shocked and maybe slightly disappointed. I think they thought that it was a setup for some grander activity. Not this time, but I'll keep it in mind as a way to set up groups in the future.

Minor chaos

One student takes charge

Order!

Now I'm headed to Hue, home of the former Imperial City, by way of Da Nang. I'll be back Sunday night.

As Long As You Love Me

I'm going on a short trip on Thursday, enabled by the fact that I'm done for the week by 9:35 on Thursday morning, so it already feels like the weekend is almost here. Since I'll be gone from Thursday to Sunday, I tried to get a head start on next week's lesson plans. This ended up taking less time than expected, because I have now reached the point where I can start recycling lesson plans (I'm teaching the second semester of Speaking 2 with the same book and syllabus I used last semester for Speaking 3, with different students.) Before I can get on that plane, though, I have to get to the other side of this Valentine-themed week. I don't know if it's at all related, but all of my students were particularly giggly today.

Today my Translation class worked more on the love song translations that they started last week. Even though I made the lesson plan, it was up to Trang to do most of the teacherly things like checking on student progress, given that I have no way of helping them find a more accurate Vietnamese translation. I felt a little de-teachered, but it also felt good to be able to work together rather than struggle alone. That lasted until break. Trang said that she was busy and scrambled away, and then only returned briefly and intermittently for the second half of class, during which the students were supposed to work together to edit the translation into something that would mesh well with the music of their songs. This had been Trang's idea, and I had made it clear to her that this was not something I could do on my own and she had agreed to be there. I realized that from now on I have to stick with lessons that I can carry out on my own, because I can't actually depend on her to be there. Despite a rough start to this activity, we managed to make some progress and the class didn't turn into a disaster.

Group work

As Long as You Love Me by The Backstreet Boys

As much as I love Vietnamese food, after eating more or less the same handful of things every day for several months, it has gotten a little tiring. The main issue is lunch, for which I don't have many options within walking distance. I've had rice and pork about three times a week since September.  My go-to rice and pork vendor sells other things too, like chicken, stuffed tofu, or unidentified fish, but of those the only one I enjoy is the chicken, though I get it less frequently than I do pork. Today, I was hoping to have some chicken, but I didn't see any on display. Rather than assume that it was not available, I decided to ask. It felt like a small victory, not because it was a challenging thing to ask, but because it would have been even easier for me to circumvent speaking by just pointing at any of the other proteins on display. There was no chicken, but I decided to get shrimp instead of my usual pork. I'd never had the shrimp before, and it turned out to be delicious! I am delighted to have a new lunch option.

It's time to provide some updates on my most recent visitors.  A few days after finding this awesome artwork conscripting caddis flies as goldsmiths, I found my own, less glamorous larvae. Recently I had been bemoaning the absence of adrenaline-stimulating spiders, and last night I was treated with a small (by Vietnam standards) but feisty friend.

Hello, hello

Thursday morning started with a semi-illicit trip to Trang's parents' house for bánh xèo. It seems that Trang has gotten tired of asking permission to do everything, and several higher-ups were in cahoots with this breach of protocol. Trang's husband came along to take Elliot on his motorcycle so that Elliot would not have to suffer the emasculation of sitting behind a woman. We arrived shortly before nine. By now the events feel routine, though no less enjoyable. We sat with Trang's dad for a while, chatting and drinking tea. He and his wife are the consummate team of hosts; he entertains in the front while she does all the cooking in the back.

Soon food was being brought out, and it was time to feast our senses. At first Elliot struggled with the requisite wrapping and rolling bánh xèo in lettuce and herbs, but everyone chipped in tips in between kind laughter, and he got the hang of it by the end. Trang's mom asked us how long we had been married. When we said we weren't, she emphatically asked us why not. Between courses we were serenaded by a husband-wife rendition of the Vietnamese translation of O Holy Night, which Trang's mom and dad had been rehearsing in preparation for our visit. The daughters joined in on the chorus. Next up were oranges, watermelon, and coconut juice. Elliot received a coffee because I had already told Trang about his dispreference for coconut and his affinity towards coffee. Nevertheless, Elliot was a good sport and tried some coconut juice, and to his surprise found that it was more tolerable -- perhaps even enjoyable -- than he previously thought. 

Singing over remnants of the meal

De rigueur group photo

As always, time to leave came all too soon, but we couldn't leave quite as soon as people wanted to. I went to my purse and discovered that the impish but adorable grandson had stowed some of his toys in there. After giving them back I went to put my shoes on. But I only had one shoe. My first thought went to the little grandson, but it was decided that it was the dogs' fault. It was funny at first, but when it began to look like I'd be leaving with borrowed shoes it got a little less cute. Luckily, Trang's mom found my shoe under some shrubbery right as I was resignedly mounting a motorbike to head back home. Hooray!

Where's my shoe?

In the afternoon we took the bus to the city center to do some eating and exploring. Elliot's appetite made it easy for us to try pretty much everything that needed trying while we were in that part of town. We kicked the eating tour off with bánh ướt at the place Trang took me on my first day in Ben Tre. Next Elliot tried a bánh mì, a traditional Vietnamese sandwich. Later he had a street snack of fried fish balls, fried quail eggs, and fried okra. He also enjoyed nước mía, sugarcane juice, when I gave up on the quest to find him peanut soymilk. In between all of this eating, we made a lap of the city center market, walked to the lake, went to the supermarket (which is more like a mall that contains a supermarket), and walked through several parks. We got the fried snacks outside of an elementary school that had just let out, and the swarms of children were just a few among the day's worth of people who chirped their hellos at Elliot everywhere we went. We sat to eat the snacks by the lake, and a family on a motorbike parked next to us so the father could chat with us in English. He asked me how many children I had and, when I said none, he informed me that next year I'd have one. It's not every day that you get married off and become a future parent by the words of strangers.

First stop: bánh ướt. Note the height of the table.

Fried goodies

Sugar cane juicer

Cutesy picture at the park

At the second park we waited for a while because we were going to meet Trang nearby for dinner. We watched people power walking laps at dusk, saw a little girl practicing tricks on her bike, and saw local couples canoodling in the shadows. Naturally, Elliot got another dose of hellos.

Second park

We passed through the night market on the way to meet Trang for bò lá lốt. When she arrived I discovered that when we go there we also eat nem nướng and bò đun. Bò lá lốt is the grilled leaf-wrapped beef, nem nướng is kind of like grilled meatballs made of pork (but in the north it is grilled spring rolls), and bò đun is grilled beef wrapped around a small piece of fat for added moisture. As I've mentioned before, you eat them by wrapping them in rice paper, accompanied by herbs, fruits (starfruit, cucumber, green banana, pineapple) and vermicelli. By the end of the meal, Elliot was a pro at wrapping his food.

Look at that tidy roll!

Several dried fish salesmen usually roam this area, and when we finished our main course Trang decided that we should try some. I've had it before (actually also on my first day in Ben Tre) and it's never my favorite but it's not bad and it's definitely worth trying. It's kind of like strongly fishy jerky with a spicy tamarind sauce. Though other kinds of fish and squid are sold, I learned last night that the one we have is made of (sting?) ray. We spent over an hour enjoying the meal and each other's company. I think it is good for Trang's English when I am around another native speaker. The mixed company keeps me from slowing down my English too much, and brings to mind idioms and turns of phrase that I wouldn't normally think of when I'm not around a native speaker.

To see a hilariously unexpected e-gift I received from a co-worker today, click here.

One of the boys

Tuesday morning started with a repeat of Wednesday night. Elliot liked the pho so much he wanted to have it again for breakfast, this time with sliced beef instead of meatballs. He concluded that he prefers the beef, but I'm still a bigger fan of meatball pho. Next, we paid a visit to Anh Thu, aka pajama mamma. On the way we bought some rambutan, as much to have something to share with her while we talked as to give Elliot the opportunity to try something new. In addition to our rambutan, she gifted us with two pineapples. It seems she has expanded her sales to pajamas and fruit, I suspect because her new husband (she got married on 11/11/11) is a fruit grower. I tried to ask if that was the case, and I think she confirmed my analysis. Elliot got to observe our halting dialogue, her patience, and my struggles. But also our friendship. On the way back we stopped for bánh bao chiên and bánh tiếu, two of my favorite snacks.

My original plan was for us to go to the city center in the afternoon, but we were invited to have a 'meal' at 330. (I put meal in quotation marks because I'm not quite sure what category a meal at that time fits into.) We got picked up and it was time for Elliot's first ride on a motorbike. He described it as rather hair-raising. I was just entertained to see him completely obscuring the driver in front of him. Trang kept saying he looked like an Indian dancer, though I'm not really sure what she meant by that. I saw four people on one bicycle, which seems like an even greater feat than four on a motorbike.

One of these things is not like the others...
Motorbikes seem perfectly reasonably sized until there's an Elliot sitting on one

When we arrived I discovered that our meal would take place at the fresh beer place. I am certain that Elliot was taken there because he is a man, and consequently needs to experience local drinking culture. To his surprise, the fresh beer (it must be consumed within 24 hours) was pretty tasty. I shocked everyone by saying that I think it is better than Heineken, which is considered the paragon of beers here. As I told Elliot, this meal would certainly fill him up. Courses included: green mango salad, fried rice, rice from the bottom of the pan (a crunchy dish that used to be for the poor and is now a specialty), make-it-yourself spring rolls with fish, and lastly blood clam rice porridge.

At this point Elliot has experienced rice in many of its forms: 'normal', crushed or broken, fried, bún noodles, pho noodles, pan-scrapings, paper, porridge, and perhaps a few others. During the meal there was a sudden rush of water from across the open-air restaurant. At first I thought someone was just hosing things down, but a clang and a crash revealed that a fish tank had failed. One lethargic fish lay unmoving on the pavement.

In the evening Elliot was the main attraction at the teachers' English club.

The meeting was cut short, though, so that we could attend the annual coconut fashion show. Whatever I was expecting, the students' creations were beyond anything I could have imagined. Four departments participated, and while some produced the more expected woven palm frond garments or grassy skirts, some went so far as to make aó dài with coconut husks, cocktail dresses, and menswear. It was quite impressive.

They even made that hat!

A lotus blossom

A lotus pod

My favorite

Elliot, though also impressed, seemed somewhat more entranced by a chalkboard outside covered in physics calculations.

Wednesday was a teaching day. In the afternoon I taught the first class of the new semester: Spotlight on the USA. I kicked things off with an idea I came up with when I was preparing evaluations at the end of last semester: Happy Teacher, Happy Student. I told the students what kind of classroom behavior makes me a happy teacher, and asked them to tell me what I can and should do to make them happy students. I will make a poster of this and put it up for every class. Then, I taught the students about American names and asked them to choose one for themselves. Now I have a class full of Kellys (4), Violets (3), and several Kaylas and Julias.

After that it was time for our guest speaker, Elliot. I encouraged them to ask him questions related to their readings about American holidays, sports, culture, leisure activities, and so on. I played illustrator and, occasionally, interpreter. Inspired by the earlier part of the lesson, my students bestowed Elliot with a Vietnamese name: Nam Tuấn Hải (something like Man Handsome Sea -- it's not really supposed to make sense).

When you kick the football through the goalposts, onto the American flag,
you score three points.

Elliot is taller than all but one of the students standing on the step behind him.

I had mentioned to Trang that Elliot was interested in trying hột vịt lộn, fertilized duck egg, and she came through with a surprise for both of us. It turns out that a woman next to her house prepares them in some unusual ways. We had breaded and deep fried eggs, as well as hard boiled ones in a peanut and tamarind sauce. Who knew there were so many different ways to make hột vịt lộn? Both were delicious, but we all agreed that the fried ones were the best.

Saucy

Fried

Inside the fried egg

English club turnout was pretty low, partly because some students have exams coming up and partly because there wasn't one last week, and people weren't sure whether there would be one this week. For a moment I was tempted to send people home, but then I remembered what a great opportunity this was for the few who had showed up. We sat in a circle, five students, me, Elliot, and the English teacher, so it was a great student-teacher ratio. We just chatted for a while. Topics that came up included how we differentiate between Indians from India and Indians/Native Americans, and what kind of accent a Vietnamese English student should aspire to have. Eventually I steered the conversation towards Christmas and after a while I got up to show some of a powerpoint I had prepared. We wrapped things up by singing a few Christmas carols.

Mr. Hoang, the teacher who attended the club, and Mr. Vu Hung invited us out for some drinks. Mostly, they wanted to shoot the breeze with Elliot, and I was an accessory. It was interesting for me because it is the kind of activity I, as a woman, would never be invited to; it was an insight into male social culture. Naturally, we also needed to eat. Beer snacks were raw peanuts, grilled chicken, cút lộn (fertilized quail egg), and grilled quail. I convinced Elliot to eat the quail head, but I don't think I managed to convince him that it was tasty. They want to hang out again, and plans are underway for a snake lunch on Friday. Here's hoping they follow through with those plans.

Leetle birdie

Over drinks, Mr. Hoang told me that he had learned something from me, and asked whether I knew what it was. I was expecting that he learned something about Christmas or American culture, but what he said was much more moving. He told me that if he had been in my shoes, he wouldn't have held English club for so few students, but he admired that I had. Most people would think that such a low turnout wouldn't make it worthwhile to have a lesson, but I had showed him a new way to look at it.