Princess for a day

Who am I kidding? I feel like a princess most days.
This morning Trang and I were supposed to meet for bò kho, and we did, but we did so much more than that. Bò kho is rather like a beef stew, served with rice noodles but also mini-baguettes. It was, unsurprisingly, good. Ms. Trang, however, felt that it was too salty, and started discussing it with the cook. I felt like I had fallen into some language alternate reality. I probably understood one word in each sentence, but context and that one word were enough for me to know exactly what was going on. It didn't feel like an accomplishment; it felt more like a fluke, but it still felt good.

Bò kho

As I said, I thought we'd be going straight back after breakfast, but Trang invited me to go get our hair washed. But before that we needed to go to the market because several weeks ago I expressed an interest in getting clothes made by a tailor, and she had decided that today was the day for us to get fabric. So many choices, but eventually I did choose. Next was the hair washing, but not. On the way we saw a motorcycle parked on the sidewalk with some cages strapped to it. The cages were full of hamsters. Trang's son has always begged her for a pet, but she is not a fan of dogs or cats, so she had never acquiesced. Today, there must have been something in the air, because after much discussing with the seller, cuddling with the hamsters, and hemming and hawing and she decided to buy one. And because he insisted that a single hamster would be lonely, she bought two. Next, in my opinion, comes the best part. How did we transport our newly purchased hamsters? The same way everything from iced coffee to fabric is transported, in a plastic shopping bag. Except that, as I mentioned before, we weren't going home just yet.

Who could resist?

Safe and sound in a plastic bag on my lap on a motorcycle

When we arrived at the hair place, they told us we'd have to wait about 30 minutes, so we decided to get a drink in the meantime. Luckily, Trang had also stopped for a to-go snack on the way to the salon. So, I was treated to an intriguing and refreshing tamarind and peanut beverage, accompanied by thin crackers sandwiching a combination of shredded coconut and some kind of sugar cane derivative.

Me dà: tamarind with ice

Unnamed snack, apparently usually only for children

After our always-relaxing hair washing, the morning of pampering finally drew to a close, and we went home. Her son decided that I should name the hamsters, so now he is the proud owner of Blackfoot and Patches.

In the evening I invited Ms. Trang over for home-cooked pasta with tomato sauce. Being the insecure cook that I am, I'm not sure if she liked it. While I was cooking, what may or may not have been a giant flying earwig awkwardly fluttered and flopped around. I find it amusing (?) that my most recent bug identification confirmation Google searches have involved the word 'giant.' I was unsatisfied with the outcome of my cooking, but if nothing else we always enjoy each other's company.

One bonus to Trang's visit is that one of my biggest headaches might soon be fixed. Ever since I arrived, a drain in the floor has belched water, soap suds, silt, and general muck all over my bathroom floor. At first it was a minor thing so I didn't say anything, but it has only gotten worse. In the last few weeks, so much water has been coming out that it floods my room as well. After several complaints the plumber cleared some pipes outside of trash, which has cut down on the undefined grime and vegetable bits coating my floors, but it hasn't stopped the water. However, when Trang came over and saw the puddly state of things, she decided that it was unacceptable, and will talk to the rector herself tomorrow. (This is a big deal because usually issues must be passed up through the professional hierarchy grapevine.) I know that when Trang decides things, those things happen, so I'm hoping that I'll have dry floors again soon.

Stuff

Some overlooked details:
When I was in Ho Chi Minh, talking to other ETAs revealed a magical secret. In American body language, we have one gesture that means no, no thanks, not interested, and another gesture that means so-so, kind of, maybe. In Vietnamese body language, the latter gesture means no, far more than the former. When dealing with lottery ticket salespeople/beggars in the past I would say no and shake my head but they were persistent and insistent. I started using the new gesture, and all of a sudden they started backing off immediately. I see the gesture everywhere, too. Sometimes it is vertical, more like a weird wave or a lightbulb-screwing-in gesture, but now I know what it means. Now I know that when I ask if you sell something you're not saying 'sort of', you're saying 'no'.
Yesterday, I got my Vietnamese lesson from my students. They had showed up for my office hours, and I guess decided to stick around to play audience to my Vietnamese lesson. However, while Ms. Nga helped Morena, the students got conscripted to become my teachers. This actually worked out quite well, because it meant I got personalized attention from not one but four native speakers, and I could work at my own pace and ask my random questions without feeling like I was interrupting things. It was nice.

This morning I met with Mr. Hung Vu for coffee. He is working on a linguistics masters thesis and wanted to record me, a native speaker, reading an English text so that he can use it to compare against his elicitations from his students. Afterward he invited me to lunch (at the perfectly Vietnamese lunch hour of 10:45am). I asked him about his thesis work, and it was really nice to have an academic conversation, especially in a field I am particularly interested in. He is testing the effectiveness of a method he has developed that he thinks will improve his students' reading comprehension and reading speed.

Today in class my students asked for an encore of my song. I was half-tempted, but I used Morena's absence as an excuse to decline the invitation. 

"How beautiful you are!"

Few things make you want to say "only in Vietnam" more than having a late night of karaoke rehearsal. Tonight was the big show, an interdepartmental karaoke contest, and Morena and I were to be the English department's secret weapon. Our weaponhood relied partly on our satisfactorily learning a Vietnamese song, and largely on exploiting our status as campus celebrities (or maybe just novelties). Rehearsal started about two weeks ago, but later it turned out that the song we had chosen was not on the disc that would be used during the competition. So we had to start all over again. Last night we sang again and again, mixing in a few dance moves. Today it was the moment of truth. Lest you underestimate the scale of this event, let me tell you that it started at 630, and by the time all thirteen participating departments were done singing their four songs, it was almost five hours later.

Note the disco ball. It was definitely made use of tonight.

We sang Anh Em Ta Về, a song about people coming together. Click on the link to read the lyrics; don't bother with a Google translation; it's pretty abysmal.Without further ado, I now present my moment in the limelight:

Like I've said, life in Vietnam makes me feel like a superstar almost every day. Just walking in to the auditorium, I was garnering gasps and waves from all of my students (and comments of "How beautiful you are!"). Morena was a little self-conscious, but I guess I don't mind being a spectacle. At least not when that's the whole point, anyway. Even better was having my solo drowned out by a round of cheers, and being bum-rushed with glittery flowers during the musical interlude. The icing on the cake was scoring 93, a more than respectable score. I later found out that our combined machine- and human-judge score was 90.75, not bad at all.

Afterward, Morena and I were reflecting that neither of us would probably ever have done something like this in our home countries. But before I came to Vietnam I planned to check my pride and dignity at the door, and it has let me step out of my comfort zone in the most rewarding of ways.

After our performance, we went out for a quick dinner. On the way, Ms. Trang told me that she realized today that her confidence and fluency in English have significantly increased in the last few months. Today, while teaching, she had to explain a literary example of a metaphor, and she was able to do so smoothly and without hesitation. She credited this development to our extensive conversations. It really meant a lot to me because lately I have been questioning my impact. I know I am appreciated here, but it is so hard to know whether I am really making a difference. Some of my third year students are training to be secondary school English teachers, and a few weeks ago they started student-teaching. Ms. Trang told me that students that she tutors, who are students at the secondary school and consequently students of my students, were praising their teachers (my students) for their English skills. They say that they speak English more beautifully, clearly, and fluently than past student-teachers. Ms. Trang says she is curious to hear from the actual teachers at the secondary school, because in the past they have always only complained about the English level of the student-teachers. The last cherry on my praise sundae is that my students who are student-teachers have been coming to me for advice. Not only do they ask me for help pronouncing the material they will teach; they ask me for suggestions for warm up activities. This means that they think my teaching style is effective and worth emulating. And all of this makes me feel validated.

From the Khmer Festival in Tra Vinh

Crossing over

When I set out on Friday afternoon, I had no idea what an amazing weekend would be in store for me.

Morena and I set out for Tra Vinh on Friday afternoon. It is the neighboring province to the south, and the home of Violet, a fellow ETA. Two teachers offered to take us to the bus station to catch the bus to the ferry that would take us over into Tra Vinh. However, when we got to the bus station, the teachers got into an argument. Would this bus take us to the right place? Meanwhile, the bus driver was vigorously motioning for me and Morena to get on. It was decided that it was in fact the wrong bus, and we went to a bus stop on the side of the road instead. I still don't know why we couldn't catch that other bus at the bus station but, after 10 or 15 minutes of waiting, the bus came by and we got on, with only the slightest bit of trepidation on my part.

The bus we didn't take.

The hour-long bus ride took us over six rivers, past an unexpected cornfield, and honking past schoolgirls in white aó dài on bicycles looking like a graceful flock of sheep. Eventually, the bus came to its final stop and the bus driver signaled to us to go 'that way' to find the ferry. He said something including the word for the number two, and we had the sudden fear that we'd have to walk two kilometers to get to the ferry, but it was just around the bend. We arrived at the ferry just in time for sunset, and I said goodbye to self-control, taking a picture of every shift of light and water.

It was unreal.

On the Tra Vinh side of the river, Morena and I decided to eat while we waited for Violet and her friends to come pick us up. One place's sign listed bánh canh, the thick udon-like rice noodles, among other options and that struck my fancy. However, when I approached the cook to order, our conversation went like this:

- Bánh canh?
- Hủ tiếu. (Another dish served there)
- Bánh canh?
- Hủ tiếu?
- Bánh canh.

At first I thought they didn't have what I wanted, but eventually it turned out that for some reason she just didn't want to serve it to me. My insistence paid off and she begrudgingly pulled a handful of bánh canh noodles from under the hủ tiếu. I ate my piping hot soup in the sauna-like night, and I wondered how and why people eat soup in a country with this climate. Violet and some of her students arrived just as we were finishing, and soon we were zipping through winding country roads, lit only by our headlights and the waxing gibbous above. Even in the darkness, I could see that it was a beautiful trajectory. Dense fronds of water coconut gave way to dark expanses that could only be rice fields gave way to homes with open doors and illuminated statues of the Virgin Mary gave way to city lights. It was almost enough to convince me of the allure of motorcycling -- except for the tooth-rattling potholes. We made it to Tra Vinh University's main campus (there are four) in about 40 minutes. The whole journey was beautiful.

We had a second dinner with Violet, and enjoyed her preferred bánh ướt spot. It's a dish I often eat here, but I have to admit that hers is way better. She also ordered us some fried shrimp cakes and longan juice that were yummy new additions. We spent some time relaxing by the river before heading back to campus for a night in. I tried not to give in to the green-eyed monster over Violet's comparatively luxurious lodging. 

Bánh ướt in the upper left and longan juice on the right

Shrimp cakes

Saturday morning we indulged ourselves and slept in before adventuring around town. We visited a Khmer pagoda -- Tra Vinh is home to many Khmer people, and the province has over 100 Khmer pagodas. It wasn't just one building, it was a whole enormous complex of buildings, statues, and monk residences. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.

Near the entrance

Ruins

Giant sleeping buddha

Monk laundry

Our next stop was a Cao Dai temple. Cao Dai is a syncretistic religion established in the early 1900s. Most intriguing to me is that Victor Hugo is one of their three official saints. We were the only people around, other than someone sounding a gong from one of the two towers, and we climbed to the top of the other tower and got great views. Again, I'll let the pictures do the talking because if I did the talking, I'd be saying the words awesome and unique over and over again.

Inside, from the second level

Next level, looking out

From the top

Look who I found!

That afternoon Morena and I had agreed to participate in an ETA v. students soccer game. We thought it would be a casual game, but when the time came there was a ref and a real field, though the field was a ponding expanse of uneven wet sand. Splashing through water and kicking up sand just made for an even more dramatic game. We lost 1-0, but the game was called due to rain, so I like to think we might have made a comeback.

Sunday started bright and early at 630am, with a good bit of personal challenge. We were going to picnic with some of Violet's students at 730, and I agreed to go with her to the market beforehand to get some fruit. So we went. On bicycles. Turning left, over a bridge, around a roundabout, stopping at stoplights, and narrowly avoiding a few buses. I was proud of myself. I just had to keep myself from convincing myself that even though I could bike in traffic in Tra Vinh I can't do it in Ben Tre. I can and I will.

The picnic took us to Ba Om pond, a picturesque area of town. Legend has it that it was created during an ancient battle of the sexes competition to see whether men or women could dig a pond fastest. The women won, and it is named after their leader. We spent several hours grilling, chatting, singing, dancing, playing games, and taking pictures. Finally, a good two hours after we arrived, we got to eat, too.

A big, boisterous, precocious group

Malay apples, product of our trip to the market and a new fruit for me.

Just as we started packing up, we heard music in the distance. A procession was circling the pond on its way to the nearby Khmer temple. With the tinny music, it felt like we were following a spiritual ice cream truck. When we got to the temple, which was established in the 800s, they circled it three times. It was a beautiful and serendipitous experience.

On the temple grounds

In the evening, it was time for us to be in the spotlight. Violet's university was hosting a Khmer festival, featuring student singing and dancing performances. We helped with hair and makeup and then got in our aó dài because we (Violet, three Canadians also working at her University, and now me and Morena) would all be singing a song in Khmer. Nevermind that our rehearsal constituted of singing the song once, and we were expected to memorize Khmer words transliterated into Vietnamese orthography. My method was to remember the tune, the last word of each line, and to smile a lot. I think it worked out well enough. My camera battery died so no pictures of us singing until I can get some from someone else.

Getting ready

Student performers

We headed back home this morning and got to see the verdant sights that I missed on our nocturnal arrival. On the bus home I was listening to Dengue Fever, a Cambodian band whose music I like. Though the singing in Khmer felt like a relevant end-note to the weekend, its upbeat nature felt like music to start an adventure, not close one. But then I remembered, as long as I'm in Vietnam, every day is another adventure.

Fish tales

"Millipedes can be easily distinguished from the somewhat similar and related centipedes, which move rapidly, and have a single pair of legs for each body segment." - Wikipedia

Perhaps this particular Wikipedia contributor was trying to be funny. When you are chasing (or being chased by, as might more aptly describe this situation) a giant centipede, I don't think counting legs per segment is easy, nor is it anyone's priority. But let me start this story from the beginning.

A few days ago, Morena told me that she thought she might have a rat or a mouse, because she kept hearing these sort of scuttling, scratching noises at night. I hear so many noises at night, I didn't put much stock in her fears. Tonight we were in her room having dinner and watching TV. In the show we were watching, one of the main characters was afraid of rats, and jumped onto the table, screaming, when a rat escaped its cage during a biology experiment. A few minutes later, Morena muted the TV because she thought she'd heard the suspicious sounds again, but I heard nothing. Then, a few minutes after that, I heard it too. Morena looked around and all of a sudden she was screaming and jumping on the bed, much like the guy on TV had done a few moments ago. She claimed she had seen a giant centipede, and spread her hands to indicate the size at a scale that belonged in a fisherman's story of the one that got away. But it was nowhere to be found. I wondered if it had been a shadow, or at least a smaller bug, and a primed imagination. We spent the next ten minutes rearranging furniture, sweeping under things, and generally whacking everything in sight in hopes of causing the centipede to reveal itself. When nothing happened, I left, but told Morena she could come get me if it reappeared and she needed help. About five minutes later, there was a frantic knock at the door. It had reappeared, but it had also disappeared again. Five more minutes of pacing and whacking and watching. Nothing. I left again. No more than a minute later, Morena was at my door again. "It touched me! It came up behind me!" This time I stayed in the room, and Morena waited outside. By now, she had sprayed so much 'organic bug spray' in her room that I felt like wherever it was, it was probably dead. It didn't come out. Something about my presence seemed to keep keeping the elusive creature at bay. So we switched. Morena went inside; I stood right outside the door. Thirty seconds later she was scrambling to open the door. And then I heard it. It sounded like there was a small dog on the other side of the wall dividing the living room area and the bedroom. And then it appeared. And it was huge. Huge like the width of my thumb. Huge like ten inches long. Morena hadn't been spinning tall tales. Lucky for us, the (very swiftly moving) centipede wriggled its way to the corner where the refrigerator stood. Whichever way it came out, one of us would get it. I sprayed it with what little was left in Morena's can of bug spray, and it rounded the corner. It got to the door and I whacked it with a broom like the centipede was a piñata full of candy. To no avail. "Open the door!" I opened Morena's door and this giant creature, unfazed by a bug bomb's worth of spray, unfazed by physical onslaught, sped off into the dark wilderness just outside our dorm.

I only wish I could have gotten a picture. If you're really looking to inspire some nightmares, it looked something like this.

In other news, I'll be in Tra Vinh this weekend visiting Violet, my fellow ETA and (evil?) twin. 

A woman is a kitchen

My students are very quiet. Cupping my hands to my ears, raising my eyebrows, and leaning forward until I am nearly falling off of my teacher-stage have a negligible effect. I wouldn't be surprised if they spent their entire first year of school writing the phrase 'inside voices' over and over and over again. Of course, as soon as we're on break they're perfectly capable of creating a din. Today, a downpour began in the middle of class, and all hope was lost; I almost wanted to end class early. But of course I did not. We made it through, mostly with me shouting over the rain. The one consolation was that whatever forces control the weather seem to respect the Vietnamese notion of teachers' high status: the rain stopped just long enough for me to my room, and returned with a vengeance as soon as I was under an awning. 

I have mixed feelings about students blatantly translating for each other. On one hand, it undermines the English-only environment. On the other hand, when it is clear that no amount of slowing down, repeating, and rephrasing on my part will get the student to understand, having a student translate means that the student I am trying to talk to will at least understand the question and have a chance of formulating a reply. But, it means that that same student can continue to get by without learning to understand spoken English.

I try to always remember how extremely limited my Vietnamese is, and that most people would say I have a gift for language-learning to begin with. So I try not to judge too harshly, or not to judge at all, really. But sometimes I despair about the English education here. When I teach my FCE class and think about the fact that one high school English teacher in the entire province was able to pass the test that, granted, is probably quite difficult, I don't understand how they can provide a useful English education to today's students. These teachers graduated from colleges like Ben Tre and many have been teaching for over 10 years. How? What have their students learned? When only six of almost 30 English faculty members will speak to me in English I wonder, how do the others teach? How much is an issue of confidence and how much is a true lack of ability? When I talk to my students, sometimes I am heartened, and sometimes I am disheartened. At the end of this year, many of them will graduate and go on to become teachers. Yet, many of them still struggle to produce grammatically correct sentences in any tense or mood other than the present. And whether or not they realize that they have problems with this is a whole other question. It's one thing to be able to make yourself understood, to use language merely for communication, but when you are going to become an English teacher, being able to 'get by' becomes insufficient. To paraphrase something that Trang said to me once, we as individual teachers have a huge impact on the English of the Vietnamese. The quality of our English affects that of our students, who will become English teachers, and will affect the English of their students, and so on. Especially with the mentality that the teacher is just below the king, any imperfections in our own English will get passed down through the generations unless or until some other equally respected source can catch and correct those errors.

Tonight I had a long talk with Trang that wandered its way into gender roles and gender equality. In the old days there was a proverb that said "a woman is a kitchen;" that was her place, her duty, and her value. But now couples share domestic duties. In Trang's case, it is actually her husband, who is retired, who does most of the housework and the cooking. In the old days, if you had one son that was enough to say you had children, but if you had ten daughters that counted as none. Trang was very surprised to hear that I went to a women's college because there is no such thing in Vietnam. She said gender-based educational segregation was an artifact from the olden days, where men and women weren't allowed to touch and one didn't meet one's spouse until the wedding day. But now things are different. While these attitudes have changed, that doesn't mean they're not lingering under the surface, and while Trang and other modern women find the old ways antiquated and restrictive, what to me seem like modern manifestations of those same attitudes go unchallenged.  Trang mentioned that Vietnam didn't have and didn't need special programs (like women's colleges) to increase women's participation in education or in the workforce. However, when I shared the fact that, at least in the US, women are underrepresented in fields like science and engineering, she countered with the fact that some jobs just weren't suitable for women. Women shouldn't be electrical engineers because climbing telephone poles is too difficult for women. Women are not encouraged to pursue engineering degrees because they will not be able to get jobs. The best they can hope for is a desk job (aka secretarial position) with an engineering company.

My crowning achievement: cooking dinner. And not just in the defrosting or instant noodling sense.

Just wish I'd had some parmesan cheese...

Mango for dessert and dinner was good.



If you want to see more of my trials and tribulations in the land of translation, keep reading.
The first sentence of a two-sentence paragraph went from this:

The process of project implementation "Handbook to protect Vam Ho Bird  Ground" is a very significant work, in order to attract attention of other departments and organizations at all levels and people to Vam Ho Bird; Awards involvement, the connection between local businesses and organizations within and outside the country, conservation of rare birds in the bird, to conserve natural resources and the biodiversity of the province, close closely with economic development - social, as well as limiting the impact of climate change.

To this:

The development of the  "Handbook to protect Vam Ho Bird  Ground" is a very significant work, that will serve to attract the attention of other people, departments, and organizations to the Vam Ho Bird Ground. We can establish connections between local businesses and local and foreign organizations to work together for conservation. Our conservation efforts are focused on the conservation of rare birds, natural resources, and the biodiversity of the province. We work to limit the environmental impact of economic development and the impact of climate change.

Does it mean what they meant to mean? I don't know, but at least it means something.

Mo' Mo

The last two days have been full of a flurry of festivities. Between Ben Tre's first Halloween and Morena's birthday the smiles were non-stop.

10.31.11

Can't tell what we're supposed to be? We're a pair of chopsticks! Last night was the English Club Halloween Party, and even though officially I was in charge, I had a pretty minimal idea of what was going on at any given time. Students were supposed to help me make preparations, but what really happened was that the students took over. I had no problem with that, except when the teachers attending the event came to me asking what the plan was or where the supplies were, and I couldn't really answer.

The party started with a surprise birthday party for Morena, which I am proud to say I managed to keep a surprise up until about five seconds before we arrived, at which point some suspicious student behavior caused her to suspect that something was afoot. Similarly to my birthday, the students brought out a cake which was lovingly force fed and smeared across Morena's face. To my surprise, I was also included in the hand-feeding and frosting facial, though to a lesser degree.

The Halloween part of the party started with a Halloween movie and many technical difficulties. I had had my misgivings about showing a full-length film, but it had been Morena's idea and in the interest of being a team player I didn't want to dismiss it. However, about 45 minutes into the movie, one of the teachers came an asked if we could stop it there and proceed to the rest of the activities. I guess the movie's mystery wasn't mysterious enough to overcome everyone's eagerness to get to the next part: the costume fashion show.

Flower and 'worm', which I'm 90% sure meant caterpillar

The whole cast

I had suspected that the costumes would be quite impressive, and I was not disappointed. There was a witch on broomstick, a pretty scary ghost, a flower being chased by a caterpillar, and a pair of mummies. I think the last two were my favorites. Next was a mask-making contest. Originally I had wanted everyone at the party to participate in the contest, but because of budget constraints there were only enough supplies for students to work in groups and make a total of three masks. Ultimately, I just hope the students had fun; sometimes it was hard to tell.

The final three masks

More thrilling than the movie, or than the costume runway set to Thriller, was my bike ride. Morena and I went out for snacks after the club, and for some reason I proposed that we take our bikes. As soon as I opened my mouth I regretted it, but didn't. I think that's my general relationship to bike riding right now: I want to do it, but it's so much easier to not do it, but I want to do it. And Morena is good for accountability. Anyway, last night I had my first off-campus bike ride. And I'm still here to tell the tale. The near-nonexistence of traffic was certainly helpful. I realized that I've gotten to the point where riding around an empty campus is too easy but riding in the street is still challenging, but the only way that's going to change is if I do more of the latter. As Trang said to me today, if you don't go outside for fear of breaking your legs, your legs might as well be broken.

After my derring-do, Morena and I capped off the night by watching Bridget Jones's Diary in French. I'm not sure what proportion of my understanding of the dialogue is due to my French comprehension and how much is due to how many times I've seen the movie. As part of my (pre)birthday concession to Morena, I tried to chat with her in French. She laughed and told me I have an Italian accent when I speak French. Better Italian than American, I posed. She agreed.


11.1.11

Today was Morena's birthday. We went out to the by now 'usual' feast of a lunch. New dishes included crispy rice cakes with a ground meat and tomato sauce (not a traditional Vietnamese dish) and the usual hotpot soup, but with squid this time. This might be my favorite version of hotpot soup, if only because it does not include any bones or beaks or feet.

Crispy rice, meat sauce, and a peek of shrimp salad

Served

Hotpot soup

Served

Later, we had a special treat. I have heard rave reviews about 'getting your hair washed'. This afternoon, I got to experience it. Getting your hair washed is the least of your experience. You lay down on a bed with your head in a sink. First, you get a face massage, after which your face is covered in icy strips of cucumber. Then, the hair washing and scalp massaging begins. By the time you get rinsed and de-cucumbered, it's been almost an hour of pampering, and your skin feels like new. At a wallet-friendly 25,000 VND, a girl could get used to this.

Tonight we were supposed to have the teacher's English club. Instead, the classroom had been transformed into a Karaoke room. After the Happy Birthday singing and the cake cutting, we spent the rest of the two hours snacking on fruit and candy and taking turns serenading each other. I worked up the nerve to participate by singing 500 Miles by Peter, Paul, and Mary. My hands were shaking but I made it through the song with my ego intact. Later I was encouraged to sing Killing Me Softly. I should have quit while I was ahead. At the end of the evening a chacha song was played, and a teacher requested me as her dance partner while other teachers sang. Lucky for me I'm quick on my feet and after a bumbling 30 seconds I kept up with her for the rest of the song.

Mr. Dinh Tuan and Ms. Trang

Chacha time