CELTA training - halfway mark!
by mikka
Friday was our last day practicing on the volunteer Elementary-level students, and I'm really going to miss them; I didn't get a chance to take photos of every single student of the seventeen who were nice enough to let us practice on them, but working with all of them has been the high point of life in Vietnam so far, and even if the CELTA class itself is extremely challenging, I really, really enjoyed getting the chance to hang out with the students in a less rigid setting for a bit. For the last hour of class, everyone broke out their cameras or cell phones, and there was a mad flurry of photo-taking and peace-sign-flashing, along with cake and some random party games (have you ever seen a roomful of adults play musical chairs? They do not mess around). Anyway, goodbye practice students! Thank you for making my first two weeks of practice-teaching so much fun.
Anyway, I'm taking a slight break from the intense pace of constant studying/practice teaching, and am going on a daytrip somewhere south tomorrow to see ruins and caves and possibly a river; I'm sorry not to be posting more (I had it in my head that I was going to post a photo a day. A new photo! Every day! Hahaha) but I'm literally at school from around morning till night and am too tired to do anything except crawl into bed and watch iTunes episodes of Jericho, which I have gotten weirdly addicted to lately. Which probably doesn't make me sound quite as much like the intrepid jet-setting free spirit I wish I was, but oh, well. While I'm at it, I'm going to blame the fact that I look haggard and disheveled in all of these photos on the fact that I'm going on about fours of sleep and still not used to the heat and humidity here (though you'll notice the students all look bright and sparkly and are wearing jackets.)
So anyway, that's here, more or less; I haven't had the chance to just hang out in Hanoi as much as I would like, but I am trying to venture out at least a little every evening and explore the streets around my guesthouse; it was also my goal this week to stop relying on restaurants and try some of the street kitchens around here, which has been a lot of fun; I think I found my new favorite pho place yesterday morning around 6:30 am when the xe om guy randomly dropped me off a block away from my school - it's actually good enough to make me consider waking up ridiculously early more often.
Anyway; I will try to post more soon, though I think the photo-a-day thing may have to wait till I actually have the time to do things other than shower, which I think everyone can agree is a good thing.
Anyway, I'm taking a slight break from the intense pace of constant studying/practice teaching, and am going on a daytrip somewhere south tomorrow to see ruins and caves and possibly a river; I'm sorry not to be posting more (I had it in my head that I was going to post a photo a day. A new photo! Every day! Hahaha) but I'm literally at school from around morning till night and am too tired to do anything except crawl into bed and watch iTunes episodes of Jericho, which I have gotten weirdly addicted to lately. Which probably doesn't make me sound quite as much like the intrepid jet-setting free spirit I wish I was, but oh, well. While I'm at it, I'm going to blame the fact that I look haggard and disheveled in all of these photos on the fact that I'm going on about fours of sleep and still not used to the heat and humidity here (though you'll notice the students all look bright and sparkly and are wearing jackets.)
So anyway, that's here, more or less; I haven't had the chance to just hang out in Hanoi as much as I would like, but I am trying to venture out at least a little every evening and explore the streets around my guesthouse; it was also my goal this week to stop relying on restaurants and try some of the street kitchens around here, which has been a lot of fun; I think I found my new favorite pho place yesterday morning around 6:30 am when the xe om guy randomly dropped me off a block away from my school - it's actually good enough to make me consider waking up ridiculously early more often.
Anyway; I will try to post more soon, though I think the photo-a-day thing may have to wait till I actually have the time to do things other than shower, which I think everyone can agree is a good thing.
