Don’t know why some photos are sideways and one upside down. This is how people in Hanoi catch their rest .. on a park bench, at school after lunch, on their motorbikes, in a hammock slung across the sidewalk or in the front seat of their taxicab … don’t know where that last photo went!
I have been staying after school to help score the tests the students take at the completion of each unit. One of the teachers kept asking why I kept asking for things to do, and I said I wanted to help. So, they asked me to lead the morning devotional tomorrow, based on one of the students’ memorization verses from Proberbs 11, and Pastor Thai, who on Monday began telling the story of Joseph and his brothers, asked me to finish the story at next Monday’s devotional hour. I wondered how I would handle the portion about Joseph and Potafer’s wife? Then I said I was leaving for the day before they asked me to do somethig else.
For the last two days I have been able to take small groups of advanced students aside for an hour of conversation. I do this with five different groups, for an hour each. I encourage the students to talk about themselves, their families and so forth, and I tell them about mine. It is surprising how many of them do not know what their fathers do for work, though several fathers are doctors or pastors, and several mothers are dentists or business women. I spend an hour each morning with the Bluebird class, 3-5 year olds, who have almost no English, except for one little guy who is a quick study and alresdy has some words. Working with them, and trying to hold their attention, is like pulling teeth or, better said, herding cats. Nguyen Anh, their teacher, usually just plays with them and does not do a lot of English training, but she and I are working out a way to give these children some understanding and basic vocabulary. They are all so cute that, as my mom used to say, I could eat them up with a little salt.
The Eagle class (advanced students) numbers twenty and six more new students are scheduled to join the Eagles in the next few weeks. It’s strenuous work for the teachers who are always running around to answer one student’s questions or another’s. I rarely have time to sit down except to eat lunch, perhaps making up in part for not being able to do my usual two-mile morning run. Some teachers have calculated that they walk over two kilometers just around the classroom, and I believe it!
The first day I was here Pastor Thai asked if I would read one of the lessons at church the following Sunday ( and preach the sermon. What he apparently meant was to connect the reading – I chose Ephesians 4:1-16 – to my mission to the school) To prepare, I had taken some notes and written down some thoughts and just prayed I would deliver a decent message.
5 August, as I was about to leave the hotel for church, it had begun raining, so I popped open my trusty little don’t-leave-your-Hanoi-hotel-room-without-it umbrella, the one mother bought in London in 1962 – of necessity in the London weather – and took off walking. As I stepped out of the door of the hotel the rain stopped, but by the time I was admitted to the school/church building it began to pour torrents. Once again it had cleared as I walked home. And what of the service? It was scheduled to begin at 8:00, as on every Sunday, but the downpour delayed many congregants and we did not start until after 8:45. This was a communion Sunday and the liturgy is just enough different that I had to apply myself to pay attention. I am so used to the American Anglican liturgy that I barely think about the responses. Today I had to give heed and that gave me a new perspective. (Hold your applause) I believe my testimony, which in fact did replace the sermon, went OK. I have never worked with a translator before and just got on with my talk without waiting for Michelle, a small, truly lovely young Vietnamese woman who acted both as a LEM for the communion service and as the service leader. When Pastor Thai, sitting in the front row, gestured toward Michelle, I realized I needed to pause occasionally to let her catch up. She did a remarkable translation for those attendees who had little English. She was also in charge of the overhead projector, holding the clicker in her hand throughout the service. Fellowship hour consisted of crustless tuna sandwiches and basketfuls of landchi (phonetic), a fruit resembling a lychee, with a very hard rind, about the size of a large marble, and nearly impossible to peel. They have to be peeled before eating and have a sweet flesh surrounding a firm black pea-sized seed. Indeed, they resemble their name: dragon’s eyes, looking for all the world like naked eyeballs.
August 9: I actually wrote this two days ago but the WiFi is so unreliable that I could not stay on line long enough to send it.
Good morning friends, today is Tuesday August 7. Apologies for not having written much, because the WiFi at the hotel is very sporadic and I do not have much time to write while at the school, where the connection is more reliable.
I have now finished my first full day of classes and find things much easier than I at first anticipated. My advanced Eagle class is comprised of 27 students from 7 – 12 years old, chosen for their level of English ability, and six teachers. The school uses a heavily King James Bible-based curriculum which I would love to have TFCA’s ESOL classes use – though it is very expensive – its exercises, ALL in English, are separate books for social studies, math, science, Englsh, Bible studies and vocabulary building. The students work largely independently, with teachers only available to answer questions. Each student office (cubby hole) has one of those small flag holders with two flags. Students raise one if they need teacher help and the other if they want permission to leave their seats to go to the loo or the “scoring station”. That is the place in the classroom where they take their workbooks to “self-check” the accuracy of their work against a Key book. Then a teacher reviews and if he/she finds there are still errors, sends the students back to recheck and correct their work. A teacher must sign off on a unit before the student may go to the next one. On Monday the 6th I was given two of the Centre’s grey and dark blue uniform shirts, which all staff and students wear. It is the “rule” that they be worn tucked into skirts or trousers, but the students, being children, need constant reminders. Before class begins each morning the students are called to order, to stand straight with their arms at their sides, not fidget and not talk. Then there are prayers. After this the students are led in the memorization of two Bible verses, Proverbs 11 right now. They read multiple times through printed versions (even I find the KJV difficult language, as I am sure the students also do). Then they are told to put the papers away and recite the day’s two verses from memory. Students are not relewsed for lunch at noon until they can recite the verses from memory in front of a “supervisor” (teacher). If the students have permission to leave their desks they are to push their chairs fully in. I am amazed at these children, who are learning English and the Bible at a furious pace. They begin the day by saying: “good morning teachers, good morning classmates, have a good day.”
The hotel’s eighth floor restaurant has a great buffet, sufficient to hold me until lunch and beyond, so I have taken to eating just two meals a day. The school has five floors and when it serves lunch students come to the second floor kitchen and carry their food trays back to their classrooms where they eat. Sometimes teachers go with them and sometimes they eat at a low table in the kitchen, where Hoa prepares bountiful quantities of sticky rice, soup, wok-sauteed veggies and meat. I had pretty much mastered chop sticks at home long ago … good thing because except for scoops for the soup, chop sticks are the only available utensils. I didn’t know whether to laugh or be insulted when staff recommended I eat in the kitchen, which I actually prefer, because they worried about this old lady climbing the 25 steep and winding stairs between each floor. (My classroom is on the third floor.)
What I have not mastered is the VND, the Vietnamese currency, and last weekend I was taken for a ride because of that. Many staff had recommended I visit the old quarter, the original walled part of the city, so Saturday I walked the six miles to see it. As usual, it was very humid, so I decided to hail a Grab Bike, a motorcycle taxi service, for the return to the hotel. One sees them and their green-jacketed and -helmeted drivers everywhere on the roads, generally with passengers, but I found an unoccupied driver. Fortunately I had taken a business card from the hotel and I showed it to him because he could not figure out how to get to the hotel using my paper map. He put the hotel address in his handle-bar-mounted GPS, told me the ride would cost 65 VND, a little less than $3, and away we went. When we got to the hotel, it was clearly obvious to him that I am a foreigner. When I pulled out a few bills I realized much later that I had actually paid him 650 VND, but he offered no change and did not demur. At that point I did mot realize my mistake, but he is probably still telling how he got away sith ten times the price he asked.
As expected, the weather here is very Washington, D.C.- summer-like except that the similar humidity seems much wetter. That makes wearing the heavy school shirt a challenge.
Break time for staff and students comes at 1000 and is nothing short of
chaos, as students, freed from classroom discipline, are running noisily all round or playing games on the floor.
Monday was the opening ceremony, another barely controlled chaos. The evening began with a procession of flags, the Vietnamese, two church flags from Vietnam and the diocese of Singapore ( which oversees the church in Vietnam), and the school flag. This was followed by a generic pledge to the flags, to an unnamed (but understood to be our own) country, a pledge to the school and one to the Bible. The Eagle students did in unison a mistake-free recitation of Proverbs 8:1-14, proving thr value of memorizing Scripture. Four students gave their testimonies about God and about their school experiences, all in pretty good English. They then sang a song with gestures, followed by a Skit depicting the story of the Prodigal Son. Other lower level classes did small presentations and then it was over. Throughout the students could not sit still, talked all the time or just fidgeted.
When I first arrived Rebecca Yan, one of the teachers, told me had heard about me from a Korean woman on an airplane. Impossible as that sounds, I was later able to determine that her husband, Paul, was sitting on the flight with Christine Buchholz and her mother. When Christine learned that Paul is a pastor of a church near Hanoi she mentioned me and my mission to a church school. At the opening ceremony Paul came up and introduced himself, having deduced that I was the person Christine had been talking about. The ABBA English Centre is also attended by four of their five chicldren …. truly it is a Small world.
Lunch hour and nap time are over at 1:00. Even the 12-year old Eagle students take naps, on mats spread out in the church space. Then students return to the classroom and I have to go back to work . BTW, all the students and staff are assigned English names, many from them from the Bible, so remembering them is easier than I think remembering Vietnamese names would be.
Dear Friends – I arrived safely as scheduled in the evening of 29 July. Passport control was interminable, but I breezed through customs with no questions. I was met by Sam Vu, son of my sponser (who was out of town conducting a funeral) and was taken to my hotel. I am on the 6th floor overlooking a busy little park/playground abutting a large pond. On Monday my host picked me up on his motorcycle such as hundreds here ride and we went off to the school. The first week was getting me settled, learning the ropes and becoming familiar with the setup.
I came prepared with my own set of teaching materials which will not be of much use. The curriculum here is vastly different than the one I was prepared to use, but I am making progress in learning the new one. It takes about ten minutes to walk from the hotel to the school and for thr most part when needed my little collapsible umbrella has been sufficient to stave off the almost daily rain.
We had a staff retreat last Wednesday which was really just an outdoor excursion and excuse for fellowship and getting to know one another. I am acclimating to the food, not hard to do, and the hotel generously provides all the bottled water I can use. My room is quite comfortable, if basic, with a queen bed, big bathroom and a nice shower the water of which nearly scalded me the first time I turned it on. The hotel provides a decent breakfast buffet and the school provides lunch.
We will have just under fifty students and nine teachers. Last night was a parent orientation and Monday is the opening session for students. I am prepped and ready get started.
At home I usually jog a couple of miles in the early morning, and I brought my shorts and running shoes, but have only used the shoes for the trek to the school. Things get started early and, unlike cooler mornings at home, the humidity and heat are already oppressive by 7:00a.m.
Don’t know why some photos are sideways and one upside down. This is how people in Hanoi catch their rest .. on a park bench, at school after lunch, on their motorbikes, in a hammock slung across the sidewalk or in the front seat of their taxicab … don’t know where that last photo went!
