Saying goodbye to my class.....

Building the towers

Last week I had to say goodbye to one of my classes. This class is one that I have had for over a year now. They are high level juniors (9-11 year olds with pretty good English). The course had come to an end and as I'm not working for five weeks the class will be handed to a new year. It feels quite sad but it will be good for them to get a new teacher with new ideas.

 

For an end of course party I bought pizza and put you tube on one of the interactive whiteboards.

 

 



Adding the sweets

We also played a pretty cool game which involves building a tower. They have to build a tower out of 10 sheets of A4 paper and some sticky tape that can hold sweets a certain height above the ground. I've played this before with other classes and the find it quite fun.

 

Once they've designed the tower I put sweets into it one at a time until it falls over. However many sweets get put in the tower before it falls the students get to keep. As I've played this before I know a good amount of sweets is 40 and I built a tower with 50 once.

 

My student with all his sweets in the tower

This time I underestimated one of my kids who may well be the next Christopher Wren as he built a tower that managed to hold 150 sweets. Not even the older kids managed this. I had to call it a day at 150 sweets because he'd cleaned me out. It was great fun though.

 

I will miss this class but promised I'd get them a souvenir from England. I might be able to find something in poundland over Christmas.

 

 

 

The towers under construction

I've only got one more week to work now then I'm going on a 10 day holiday to a couple of places in Vietnam. I thin k its going to be Nha Trang and Mui Ne as well as a couple of other little stops.

 

Yesterday was 18 months since I left England. It doesn't feel like that long. It's also only three weeks now until I fly back to England. I'm looking forward to a nice long Christmas break. Below is a Video of one of the towers being filled up by my students.

 

 

 

 

 

 

My Motorbike

Here is a picture of my motorbike. I've been riding it every day now for the past 5 months and its great fun! Not bad for $200.

 

It's a Honda wave and its red. I've no idea about any of its other specs and frankly don't care. I'm not sure how fast it goes for two reasons, firstly the speedo doesn't work and secondly getting the opportunities to drive faster than 30mph in the city are few and far between. It cost $3.50 to fill it up which lasts me about 10 days (35 cents a day). It's great fun driving around the city and parking your bike outside restaurant for free.

 

My motorbike

 

It's been pretty good to me so far. It did get a puncture a month or so back, I took it to some lady on the street to fix it. After overcharging me for a new innnertube she ending up not putting the brakes back properly which resulted in her doing more damage to the bike. This meant I had to get new back bits for my brakes from another chap just over the road from her. Though charades he suggested I should walk out the road and do harm to her for her incompetence (I didn't) This fiasco set me back about $20 - a lot cheaper than the highwayman at Renault Megane.

 

Not much else has happened as I've been doing lots of hours this week. I saw an albino Vietnamese chap which was good. Next week is my last week of teaching before my nice end of year break. Holiday planning is still in progress and now only one month until I fly to England!!!

Kids on bikes

 

In a lot of places in Vietnam there are dangerous things that we would never consider doing in the west but are pretty normal for most people here, there are lots of examples and you see all the time but today I thought I'd so a special edition of the blog called 'kids on bikes'.

 

I've got some good photos of kids being put on bikes that would probably make front page news in England. Sorry for the quality of some of the photos but I had to take them whilst on the back of a bike which was moving, which is itself pretty dangerous.

 

 

The first picture is the familiar 'foursome', this is a whole family on the bike. It's surprisingly common to see four people on a bike. I have seen five before but this is quite rare. Notice the lack on space means the kid in the middle has to stand up and of course there are no helmets for the kids.

 

Positives are they're only using one bike which is good for the environment.

 

 

 

 

Front seat kid with hoody helmet

The second picture is the front seat kid. This one does not have a traditional helmet but has instead gone for an all on one jacket with hood.

 

Lot of families build a high chair in the front of the bike for the kids which is very clever and more comfortable for the child.

 

The kids do look like they enjoy the front seat view around the city.

I don't do helmets

This is probably my personal favourite photo. This guy just doesn't do helmets. Not for him nor the family. 

 

He's got that look on his face that he doesn't really care what people think either. The kid here is in the traditional front seat position and looks quite comfortable.

The lady is also in the traditional side saddle position due to wearing a skirt. Also very common to see this and quite sensible.

 

 



Small child

The final picture is of a very small baby being carried on the bike. Due to wriggling around alot he's kept in the middle to keep him safe. Again no helmet but a white hoody.

 

Sorry for the poor quality on this one but they were driving quit fast and we couldn't catch them up.

 

I have seen better ones but its all about timing and having a camera available to get a picture. I've seen three dogs on a bike before which was pretty cool. We watched them get on the bike, they all knew where to sit as they'd just been for a walk and were loving it. My mate as also seen a lady breast feeding on the back on the bike which is pretty unique.

 

Only three more weeks of work, then two weeks holiday and then back to England for three weeks.



 

 

 



Halloween poster competition

The finished poster

The Halloween poster competition has been taking place over the past few weeks. Each of the junior classes had to make a Halloween poster where prizes would be awarded to the best three. As this was my second year in the competition I wanted to win a prize which I sadly failed to do last year.

My class are a bit older than the other junior classes which I hoped would give me the edge of the other teachers. I thought my poster was pretty good, It was a big house with ghosts in the windows and a big spire with a clock on it and lots of pumpkins in the graveyard in front of the house but sadly, for a second year running, I didn't win a prize.

Making the poster

The kids were, in most cases, pretty good and helpful. Some of them were intent on just mucking about and not helping which did try my patients during the project management process. I think I'm just going to have to come to terms with the fact that I'm not very creative.

We also had the haunted house this past week which was pretty good. It basically a big room made up to look like a haunted house which has loads of teachers dressed up with the sole purpose of terrifying the kids. It was pretty cooI and very creative.

 

My class with my teaching assistant

I covered one class of 10 / 11 year olds at the weekend who were really scared and just grabbed me the whole way round. When I took one class to the haunted house, one young kid had come out so scared that he puked all over the floor. I think the objective to scare the kid was a success in that case.

Nearly Halloween

Some traffic police taking a well deserved rest

I'm coming to the end of my teaching e-commerce. Next week will be my last week at ERC until at January so I will have some more free time. As I've said before I will be working at only one of my schools after next week until 26th November when I stop work and have a 6 week holiday in Asia and England.

 

As I've been working not much exciting stuff has been happening. Halloween in upon us and we have a Halloween party soon. We also have the traditional poster competition at the school which I'd like to do well in this year.

 

Balls on the back of a bike

Also a few more of my mates are leaving in the next few weeks so there will be a few leaving parties to attend.

 

Quite sad saying goodbye to people but it kind of goes with the job. Some of them are going home and others are looking to go and work in Europe and South America, it all sounds quite exciting and something I could do in the future.

 

I'll make sure I get some pictures of my Halloween posters that my kids make and put them on the blog.

 

 

Crazy Traffic Videos

Thought I'd upload a few videos that I took recently whilst travelling on the back of a motorbike. They show how crazy the traffic is in the city.  These were taken around the time of the mid autumn festival so shows the city at its most manic.

 

 

Currently my lectures finish at 5:30pm and its rush hour. Rush hour is always pretty mental. Most people use motorbikes so although its bumper to bumper and slow the traffic still moves. There are a lot of 'amber gamblers' in HCMC on motorbikes but usually it works ok as people anticipate this, however when cars try it its a different story as they get stuck in the junctions dude to not being quick enough and work as a road block of all the motorbikes. Usually at this point its gridlocked and one of the traffic police has to come along and sort it out. This usually involves waving a stick and blowing a whistle but it does seem to work.

 

 

Driving around the city when its busy is still an amazing experience. You see so much crazy stuff. The city is so alive and fun. I'm talking about riding with a few makes from HCMC to Dalat in the hills in November, then to Mui Ne and maybe Nha Trang over 5 days which would be awesome. It's still not confirmed but there is a good chance it will happen.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mid Autumn Festival

 

 

 

Shop selling lanterns

One of the big festivals in Vietnam is the mid Autumn festival. This took place on 30th September this year. Its a Chinese holiday and quite important to Vietnamese people.

 

There is quite a big build up to the event (about a month) and they sell things called 'mooncakes' all over this time. There quite expensive and not very tasty. Saying not very tasty is a bit of an understatement because the ones I had were nasty. They put anything into them, meat, veg, egg, cake mix and other unidentifiable flavours. I had one which was ok and taste like a cake until I got to the middle where I bit into an egg.

 

 

The reason for the event is explained below courtesy of wikipedia:-

 

'The Vietnamese version of the holiday recounts the legend of Cuội, whose wife accidentally urinated on a sacred banyan tree. Soon after desecrating the tree, Cuội sat on one of the tree branches and the sacred tree began to grow and continued until it finally reached the moon, leaving him stranded there. Every year, during the Mid-Autumn Festival, children light lanterns and participate in a procession to show Cuội the way back to Earth.'.

 

Kids with lanterns going down the street.

 

The good thing about this event is the lanterns. They are pretty cool. I bought some where where two of the characters from the TV programme 'mokey magic' from back in the 70s, there pretty cool. They are made of paper and come with candles. I lit one (pigsy) and it caught on fire but managed to blow it out before it took my bedroom with it. They shall be for decorative purposes only from now on.

 

 

 

 

Busy traffic

 

I went on a cruise around the streets to China town with a friend, the roads were very busy and I've got some great video footage for a later blog. We saw lots of lanterns and some street processions (see the video). One thing is the Vietnamese know how to celebrate. It was a great experience and a great evening.