Goodbye class photo: Y1 B1201

Last day of class for my Young Leaders 1 class on Saturday afternoons. They were a really fun class to teach! All really dynamic, intelligent, and full of character! The boys are so wacky, that even taking a simple class photo together proved to be quite... challenging...

 

Don't step on the monster!!!

Little children are easy to amuse, and almost anything goes when it comes to playing games. You don't need fancy objects or a lot of preparation. You just need a fun down-to-earth attitude and some creativity. Some of my most unusual but exciting games come from very homey/organic roots. Growing up as a child in a Vietnamese household in Canada, my siblings and I would play many sorts of pretend games using only objects found in the house. My little brother and I used to use my mother's sanitary napkin plastic wraps as sleeping bags for our little trolls and action figure toys. When you think about it, kids are one of the most resourceful beings and their imagination is limitless.

That is why I have great fun with the starter kids classes. With the most humble of environments, you can create all sorts of games to embed your English lesson in. As long as the game is kinesthetic and there is an element of perceived challenge in there, the kids will go crazy.

In this recent kids Starters class, the lesson from their My First English Adventure book was to learn the names of some animals: dog, cat, bird, rabbit... The kids are around 5 or 6 years old. We put the flashcards in a line on the ground, spaced out evenly. The kids have to bring the creature, which is a pillow in the classroom, to the other side of the line, hopping on one foot above each card and saying out loud the corresponding animal. They have to make it all the way to the end, depose our little "creature" at the end of the line, and hop all the way back to the beginning while naming each flashcard. The levels got progressively harder as we would space out the flashcards more, and also add "monsters" in between. These monsters are really bad and the children must not step on them!!!

Simple plain game right? But a fun adventure of rescuing the 'princess' and defeating the monsters on a very delicate bridge, in the beautiful imaginary world of children!!!

Streetside service: Keymaking

One of the best things about Ho Chi Minh City is the plenitude of street-side vendors and servicemen ready to accommodate your every impromptu need or desire. Whether it be to quench your thirst, to fix a flat tire, or to bring home dinner which you hadn't had time to prepare, you can almost be sure to find the solution to your emergency situation straight from the road.

Having your keys copied is sure not lacking in this street commerce culture. You can find key-cutting stalls all over the city, principally in residential areas.

On the occasion below, I had to get 3 different keys copied as my housemate had lost his set. I drove up to a corner stall at an intersection near my house, and the worker aptly got to work, choosing the right key base, carving it with swift and ease, and proceeding to each different key as thoughtlessly as reciting the alphabet. The whole thing was done in a matter of a few minutes, and it cost a mere 35,000 VND, which is about $1.75.

The keys I had to get copied

 

Hello, I'm Sofia, and I'm a Nước Sâm addict.

Ever since my discovery of nước sâm , I've been a regular fan. It is hard not to come across a vendor on the sidewalks all over the city, and I often drink one of these instant cool-me-downs when I'm on the road in the scorching afternoon heat!

 

 

Eureka! Pedestrians on the street?!??

It is hard to imagine urban street life in Ho Chi Minh City as anything other than a chaotic, hustling and bustling motorbike mayhem. But in fact, there is a way to experience the city in a very, dare I say, peaceful atmosphere. I once got up at the break of dawn and at 5:30am went wandering towards downtown, and I was delighted to see that the city was already beaming with humble local activity. As the weather is drastically cooler in the wee hours of the morning, a lot of Vietnamese locals profit from this slim window of refreshing air to go out and do exercise. In other eye-opening words, they become pedestrians! Wow! What a rarity! I saw locals jogging everywhere in the main streets!

Food vendors and stall owners also start setting up shop as early as the rooster's first crow. They bring out the ubiquitous red and blue miniature plastic chairs, chop fresh ingredients, start brewing rich broths... Taxi vans are seen in relatively rare positions- parked, on roadsides, or conglomerated at the gas station, which serves as the parking lot de facto for taxi drivers living in the neighbourhood.

But I gotta say the best part about this peaceful morning venture was the street traffic- or lack thereof. Riding in the morning bare streets of Ho Chi Minh City was really invigorating! I sailed through to downtown in a breeze, plunging in fresh unrippled air and enjoying sidewalk sights of locals getting ready for yet another bustling day. 

Rise gradually, fall sharply...

One of the best ways to get teenagers to learn new language is to have them practice the target language in a competitive team game. As long as the game is exciting and suspenseful, students will be motivated to use the required language in order to beat their opponents. Older teenagers generally don't like to do work in English class, and getting them to orally practice with each other (in English!) can be a tough mission. So for this next lesson in our Upper-Intermediate Solutions book, I had to find a good way for them to practice the target language: rise gradually, rise sharply, fall gradually, fall sharply, stay the same, increase, decrease... in the context of statistics and graphs.

There are two teams, and each team sends a representative to the board. The teams are handed out a graph, and their goal is to get their representative to draw the graph as accurately as possible by explaining it to them orally. This is where the target language comes in... But of course, as it often happens in ESL classes, and even more so during suspenseful and fast-paced games, students always slip into Vietnamese... Calling for my authoritarian intervention to put them back in English place...

Overall though, the game worked fantastically and I was just left amazed at how closely some students were able to replicate the graphs with their speaking and listening skills!

Luncheon with xe om drivers

Several weeks ago, we hired our first crew of xe om drivers for our upcoming company. They are a quirky, humorous and cheery tight-knitted bunch who always look out for each other and their loved ones. We were speaking about the different packages that we were offering, and when we explained the food tour, they all pointed at Guong, the chubby man, and said that he'd be good for that tour. Guong gushed and chuckled to himself as we all cracked up. Later on, we were talking about living in Vietnam and the costs associated with the basic necessities. We just don't have enough money, was the general consensus, and Coi, a really fluent English-speaking driver who is also a father and former cyclo driver, said that even education was very expensive and that one required a lot of money in order to get their children into the good schools. No money, no honey, Coi expressed concedingly.

AC cleaning service

Several weeks ago, we decided that it was a good time to get our air-conditioner in our room serviced since my family was going to come soon to visit. The AC hadn't been properly working for months, which turned out to be a blessing in disguise for me because I wanted to live in a more energy-efficient way and also cut down on energy costs, yet my boyfriend Mike always used to blast on the AC as soon as he broke out a sweat. Which is not hard to do in a tropical city that soars around 30 degrees Celsius year-round.

A few days before my family came, we called the AC technicians to have a look at our AC as it was totally dysfunctional. We had just gotten it fixed once several months prior by another man, and had to buy a whole new part which proved to be really expensive, let alone set a lot of time aside for the back and forth and the late arrivals (and by late, I mean several hours late) of the technician. But when the AC's functionality still went into oblivion several weeks after the fix, so did our drive and motivation to get the machine fixed yet again. So to my delight, my boyfriend had to learn to cope with just the fan.

Just as Mike was starting to get used to using our modest fan to survive the heat in our bedroom and during sleep, it came time to get the house ready for my family's visit. The previous technician had promised me warranty on the part I had bought, but as all things Vietnamese, words have no insurance, and I was not able to reach the technician. I had no choice but to call technicians from a different company, who came promptly and exchanged the same problematic part again for the same sky-high price, which solved the problem (for the time being). I also requested to get our AC cleaned. Initially, Mike protested that he had already tried cleaning the AC before. But little did he know that his cleaning, which involved wiping out the dust from the front cover and the first layer underneath, was quite primitive. The technicians engaged in an arduous process, involving covering the whole AC unit with a huge plastic bag complete with a tube attached at the bottom, so that they could power-hose down the whole unit and let the dirty water run down to a pail. The hose had to be attached to the mechanical component of a toilet at the nearby bathroom. And they had to repeat this process 2 more times as we asked for servicing on other AC units in other bedrooms too.

The cleaning, as specialized and arduous as the process was, cost a mere 60,000 VND (about $3) per unit. My boyfriend does not mention anymore that he has cleaned the AC before. And for the time being, he gets to relish in the feel-so-good freezing cold air in our bedroom as long as my family stays here... But when my family leaves, I'm enforcing an AC-only-for-desperate-times policy and let's just say that for this particular situation I wouldn't mind if the machine breaks down again.

Happy Buddha Birthday!!!

Kính mừng Phật đản! Yesterday, on the first full moon of the 5th lunar month, Buddhists in Vietnam observed an important day which commemorates the birthday of Gautama Buddha, born roughly 2500 years ago. This day is typically known as Vesākha (sanskrit for the lunar month which falls around April or May) in the Buddhist world, spanning a multitude of countries across all of Asia, all of which have their own rendition of the name. Although commonly referred to as "Buddha's Birthday", this holy day actually commemorates the Birth, the Enlightenment (Nirvana), and the Passing (Parinirvana) of the Buddha.

Across Asia, Vesakha is celebrated in different ways and also on different days, following the lunar calendar of the tradition of the respective countries, but generally devotees make a visit to the temple and observe vegetarianism for the day. Right before his death, and upon seeing his faithful attendant Ananda weeping, Gautama Buddha advised not to lament his death, as just like his body, all things in the world must one day disintegrate, and to instead regard his teachings (known as the Dharma) as his teacher from then on. Therefore, tradition holds that the best way to celebrate Vesakha is not merely by making offerings to the Buddha at the temple, but by sincerely and wholeheartedly espousing the Buddha's teachings. That is to lead a noble life, develop the mind, and live in harmony and compassion with all human beings.

A couple of weeks ago, I started seeing the Buddhist flags adorning my alleyways, and subsequently all over the city in preparations for the holy day. The international Buddhist flag was designed in 1880 by Mr. J. R. de Silva and Colonel Henry S. Olcott, an American Buddhist who advanced Buddhist education and helped create about 400 Buddhist schools and colleges in Sri Lanka. In 1952, the flag was accepted as the International Buddhist flag by the World Buddhist Congress.

The 5 color bands of the flag represent the 5 colors of the aura that purportedly emanated from Buddha's body when he reached enlightenment under the Bodhi tree. The blue light is said to have radiated from the Buddha's hair, the yellow from his epidermis, the red from his flesh, the white from his bones and teeth, and the orange from his palms, heels and lips. Each color represents a certain facet of Buddhahood, and in the last band, all of the colors are conglomerated, symbolizing the universality of the Truth of Buddha's teaching. That is to say, regardless of race, nationality or religion, all human beings harness the potential of Buddhahood.