Aug 2009

The only real adventure I had in Saigon was surviving the constant downpours that occured every hour. I went to Saigon for a few days just for the heck of it, and the first day turned out to be a collection of "Oh my god!'s" at the rain, the traffic and the 10 million people that inhabit the city. It's a nice city, well developed in infrastructure, lots of English business, many international visitors/expats, and generally just a city that is far different from other Vietnamese cities. But it also had a lot of street beggars/sellers (selling small things like chewing gum), severe lack of road rules (not unlike Vietnam), and a terrible overcrowding of buildings and people. Viewing the city coming down on the plane was incredible, just a huge collection of buildings in a built up area that expanded futher than I could see.

Day one, I hung out with Raphael wandering around the city, doing some shopping, in between the rain that prevented us from doing anything outside . In the night, we went to the only Brazilian restaurant in Saigon (they also have one in Hanoi) and ate a buffet of deliciously fresh cuts of meat, pork, beef and even lamb (which is so rare in Vietnam!!!). Not cheap, but lots of fun, and something a little different.

I also got my hair cut and coloured, plus a manicure and pedicure, and some funky nail art. All in all, costing me around $50, so I'm very happy.

While at Go2 bar in the tourist centre, I met a friend of Raphael's, a 5 year old Vietnamese boy named Quy. He works as a seller with his mother, selling predominantly chewing gum and other small cheap things, in a box he carries around. Quy has excellent English as he speaks every day to tourists, plus, he is very Brazilian! He knows the Brazilian "man-to-man" handshake, and can speak some Brazilian words. There are lots of players that visit this bar, and they all chat to him. He loves Raphael, and he is just gorgeous, but I feel sad that he is working the streets with tourists every night. The good thing is, is that his English will be fluent by the time he reaches his adult years.

Saigon is a great city for visiting, and has an abundance of services and imported products I can't find in Da Nang and Hanoi, but I could never live there, and I honestly think the traffic is deadly!!!

My other adventures have been at the three English centres that I work at. I have just started working at a fairly new centre, which is very modern and hi-tech. Each classroom has a widescreen flat tv on the wall, connected to Microsoft Windows and the internet. I can use the internet, play English games, and show pictures/documents while I'm teaching. I teach young ages (5-10 years), so I can be very interactive with the children while gaining their interest. Now the trick is to figure out how I can incorporate this new technology into my teaching. I haven't used any thing like this before, so I will have to be creative, and I guess the classroom is my oyster as I have many opportunities to be a better and up to date teacher.

Unfortunately, I don't have these resources at the other centres, which have plain classrooms with chairs and a whiteboard, so that's a lot more basic (but that's ok too).

I found an interesting You Tube video yesterday, about a Argentinian woman who teaches English in (I'm assuming) Argentina, using American sign language in her teaching. She talks about how the children's memory has improved just by learning basic hand movements to go with the word. It's a lot easier to teach "run", where the child can physically get up and run, than to teach "potato", which as no matching action. She has incorporated the sign language into teaching vegetables and I thought it was very interesting and effective.

That is all for now.
Love.
Cat.