here, there, everywhere

One more from the beginning of September; I love how muggy and misty it gets at night here now that the weather is finally cooling, although my students are fond of warning me that it will become ungodly cold soon.

Little girls dressed up as fairies during the midsummer festival, in the park across the street from the citadel. There were lots of fairy wings, masks and funny wigs for reasons I didn't quite catch, and also about a million kids pedalling determindly around on various tiny bikes, vespas, cyclos (!) and cars, alongside skateboarding and rollerblading teenagers wearing rabbit ears and pink spiky wigs.
Some teenagers were better at rollerblading than others.

Step one: set fire to your lantern.

Each class I teach ends with an excursion (my school gives me about $1 a student to treat them to tea or ice cream); my Elementary Three class, which ended last Wednesday, marks the end of the first round of classes I've taught from the start (the first classes I taught were started by another teacher). I'm always sad on the last day, but I was especially sad to have this class end, as they are an incredibly sweet group and they worked incredibly hard. Most of the Elementary classes I've taught don't bother to speak a lot of English during our class party, but these guys kept it up the whole time. I was really lucky to have such a fun class, and I know I'll miss them a lot.

With this class over, my teaching schedule is finally going a bit easy on my brain - I teach three Intermediate One adult classes, and one Intermediate One teen class during the week, so more mental whiplash as I run from advanced to elementary classes back to back, at least till Sunday rolls around (during which I teach very, very low levels). So that's here - outside it is raining torrentially and I am being lazy after my very early morning of teaching, sitting around Iain's room waiting for him to get home from work and watching youtubed Top Model episodes. I'm finally moving to my own place this week, so more on that later, hopefully.

From the short drive over the Red River towards Bat Trang, two Saturdays ago.



Not pictured: a group of giggling Vietnamese women who had also stopped to take some photos, and who kept taking pictures of Iain.

Bac Trang is a village about 20 minutes drive out of Hanoi that's famous for pottery, though none of these pictures are particularly pottery related. We tried to drive out twice in the last two Saturdays (the only day Iain and I have off all week long), but were rained out midway there on the first attempt by a torrential tropical storm (see: earlier photos of motorbike drivers huddled under the overpass.) At any rate, we made it back next week and wandered around aimless a bit, though we didn't do anything particularly pottery-centric; it was incredibly nice to get out of the city if even for just a few hours - these six day work weeks are definitely kicking my butt more than I'd like, though hopefully I'll be getting some more travelling in during November (after election day, which I fully intend to spend sitting in front of the godawful CNN channel we get out here).

The awesome students of my (all-women!) Pre-Intermediate III class, which ended two weeks ago. On their first day, I was midway through my standard 1st day of class intro spiel + getting-to-know-you activities when one of them (I forget who) interrupted to ask who I was, and I had to explain that I was actually the teacher, and not just a particularly motivated fellow student.)

I am sorry, as ever, for the radio silence this last month; the excuse this time is that I'm well into my second month of homelessness, thanks to some plans falling through. My battery is dying on my laptop (typing, fast, in Iain's kitchen, where I've been living these last couple of weeks. The whole house, not the kitchen) so in lieu of my own apologetic incoherence, you can read about me on my friend Ben's blog, which you should look at anyway since he actually writes about living in Hanoi and all that, instead of just sporadically resurfacing to apologize for not resurfacing sooner. If you skim around enough, there's a photo of my many exhuast pipe burns as well (I'm on my 4th!)