Sitting on the other side of the teacher’s desk
Our volunteering has seen out the end of the week brilliantly. Brian, the dentist from Brighton, sadly leaves for Hong Kong on Sunday and so on his last lesson on Friday, all the students gave little speeches and Brian had a cake made up. Then time for some pictures. I didn’t have my camera though, so I’m relying on the graces of Facebook and the proactivity of Brian or the students in the class to put them up, so that I can then half-inch them and put them on this website. This was in our evening class, where we teach around 20 something young adults between four teachers. The fourth teacher being an American named Eric, he has commited to a whopping 3 month stay at the school- unpaid- to help out. He teaches history back home and seems very passionate about education, it’s great to have a real teacher about to give us all pointers.
All the teachers went out for a bite to eat together last night, predicably, this turned into drinks and a quick preview of the better bars in town. We were planning on going to the mudbaths today, for something like 50,000 VND (woah there, it’s about 1 pound and 50 well-earned pence) you can lounge about in a mud bath and then clamber into a boiling hot pool. Some locals we met last night warned us not to go at midday though, unless we wanted to get the interestingly rare ‘mudburn.’
We didn’t end up going in the end, Lauren has been a bit dehydrated and therefore feeling a little under the weather so we’ve put it off until tomorrow or next week.
There’s meant to be two more 3-monther’s coming sometime soon, although Kim doesn’t know when, and Lauren and I are going to try and stay on for at least 1 more week to make sure the kids aren’t left in the lurch.
As a totally off-topic note, there is a mentally ill man outside standing on the oppostie side of the street screaming in what sounds like significant (psychological) pain. He has been outside before and he doesn’t seem to do anything other than shout incoherently from time to time, the locals are largely ignoring it with the exception of a few kids in the cyber cafe we’re in looking over when the shouts get particulaly loud. This is awful sad, I wonder if Vietnam has anything to offer or help this guy out. I’m guna bet the answer to that isn’t a great one.
Always end on a smile…
Tags: Travel, vietnam
mikeloken
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