Yesterday at the party/ceremony, my dad's old friends asked me to come with them and spend a night over at their home village, which is about ten minutes or so away from my own. I, having my responsibility to the center, said no, and had to decline the offer. So here was how Monday ended up that day.
Two of my brothers spent the night over, as I had said before. They woke me up first at five and then at six to leave the room and get to their chores. Tired from all the waking up, I slept until seven. I was still tired that morning, my limbs still aching when I woke up. I decided to go look for breakfast, deciding that it probably was a good idea to eat breakfast before a long day of work. After freshening up in the bathroom, I took the opportunity to go and walk to the tea room of the bakery, my brothers instantly knowing what I was looking for. I walked out of the room with five pieces of fine french bread, munching away on towards my room. I got started on looking over my lesson plan for the primary students this morning, thinking over how I was going to teach them grammar that they have either seen before and forgotten or grammar that they won't see for a long long time. My were french bread and pastries satisfying for breakfast, especially the fact that they were homemade.
Upon opening the library and waiting a few moments, I realized that something was odd. Where is everyone? My brothers were in their house I supposed, my sisters in theirs' as well. I decided to walk down, wondering if something was up. I had learned that all except one of the primary school children had to go to the nearby hospital for a further health check-up. This led to a peculiar situation for me. I had spent hours working on today's lesson, only to find that there is only one person to teach? I adjusted. Man walked up with me, cast in his left arm from his fracture the other week, and his notebook and pencil in the other. I decided instead to focus on tutoring Man over all the basics again, seeing his memory level and helping him with whatever he needed thus far in the lessons. I must say that one on one tutoring has certainly made it easier for the students to understand, many of them able to grasp concepts within five minutes of tutoring, versus thirty minutes of class time. For the last half hour of the class, I decided to watch a short episode of a film series called Supernatural, dubbed in English with Vietnamese subtitles. The children were quite fond of the series, despite the horror aspect of it. It was a good opportunity I thought to allow Man to listen to spoken English, and try to explain it back to me. "Its difficult to understand," he said, "they speak too fast and their pronunciation is so weird." The differences in languages in regards to tone certainly makes it hard when it comes to understanding meaning. Vietnamese relies on tone in order to give meaning to words, while English relies on tone to stress emotion in words. This distinction is something I am currently working on to explain to the children. Hopefully I will work it out by this week.
Shortly after, Vinh, Dao's friend preparing to interview for a program to a Japanese University, called me out to hang out. I agreed, packing away my things and running on down to meet him. He drove me to one of his favorite restaurants, us both sitting by one of the nice fountains and enjoying some drinks. Vinh's desire to learn English is profound, him telling me that he self taught his way back to previous levels of English, after having spent over three years not speaking it. Now he was about to interview for a master's program at a Japanese University, an interview in English included in the application. He asked for us to talk naturally, rather then me fielding questions to him, which I agreed was the best way to learn a language. He told me about how much he enjoyed his passion, agricultural and environmental development, showing me some of his research papers and his experiences in the field. He told me that while having free time during his previous job, he would talk to tourists at Hoi An, the old town of Vietnam, and practice his English. "You have to take opportunities as they come and be creative with finding them," he told me, "I still need much more practice." I agreed with him, and we talked even more. I told him about my desire to go visit some classrooms in Vietnam, to understand what the classroom experience is like. He decided that he would get back to me later about an opportunity, telling me it would be a good way for me to figure out how I plan to help Vietnam in terms of education (to which I am glad that I have decided to minor in at Dartmouth!). When came about my lunchtime with the children at the center, the house Phung Vi to be the one to eat at for this week, I asked Vinh to take me back.
The children of the house were excited to see me come down, always asking me how many bowls I eat normally for lunch. "Ten thousand" I told them, jokingly. The little children are always curious about what I think of their food, wondering if I can eat it at all. "I eat all of this stuff normally at home, its great, Hue food is the best" I told them. The sun beamed down on the center, frying everything beneath it at this point. I marched on up to my room after, tired and ready for a nap.
During my next class with the below average students, I again was met with the same situation as in the morning. Only Loi was left, both Hien and Thuy busy with other business. It was still fine, though I had to move lesson plans down a day to make up for the tutoring. Loi was getting better, telling me that what plagues him is his lack of focus in the classroom. I went over all the previous lessons with him, testing him if he had memorized them. When I at last finished, I ran over to the Anh Dao house to help sister Bang, a junior at the Hue University of Science with writing a speech in English.
Boy did she need help. She told me that in school, there were so few opportunities to read and write in English. "They just focus only on grammar and vocabulary" she told me. I had known about that for a while, but was unsure of how to address it. Until later on this day after a discussion with Mr. Tam, the tutor for the Bakery apprentices of the center in English. Anyways, Bang was writing a speech about one of her passions - literature. The quality of writing is about, I'd say sixth grade level or so in English, many of the sentences in basic tenses. "I don't know many of these words in English, so I look them up in the dictionary and put them into the sentence, " she said, "in Vietnamese the sentences sound fine!" She teased me and pinched my cheeks as I corrected her paper, joking with me that I was being too harsh. Maybe I was, but eventually we finished up a fine example for her to present to her teacher. She thanked me for helping her and said she would call me again for her next three topics she has to right about. I agreed and headed off.
By now, it was five o'clock, and I had an hour to spare before having to head off to dinner with the Phung Vi house. I met Mr. Tam along the road and had a long, thoughtful conversation with him. He was perhaps the most knowledgeable person at the center that I had met, having had years of experience teaching in Vietnam and working within the education system. I told him my grand plans, my wish to better the education system of Vietnam concerning English teaching, and many other things. "That's all well and good, but you need to understand what you are dealing with here," he said, "there are many barriers in the way, and you need to understand how the system works." He told me how frustrating it has been for him, a fluent English speaker, to try to teach his own fellow peers, the teachers of Vietnam, to properly teach the language. "If I tell them to correct their mistakes, they will look down upon me, saying that I am wronging them, but if you, or someone from the outside comes, they will listen" he said. My goodness. What a life. I understand his frustration, the feeling of not being able to help his peers, despite having the noblest of intentions. "You know, what I will say is that it is getting better, each year, more and more people from the outside are coming to the big cities in Vietnam, helping with the teaching there" he told me. "I understand that, but I want to bring change that will benefit all of Vietnam, in a timely manner, one that doesn't cost too much money, and one that is efficient" I replied. Before I could finish my though, the time hit for us both to head off to our respective posts, his being his class with the apprentices, and me to have dinner. "Perhaps at another opportunity, we can speak further about this matter," he told me, to which I replied, "indeed, have a great a class!"
I ran down to dinner, the children setting up the tables and chairs. It was another fine meal, though the rice had been cooked rather soggy, leaving Phi, the rice cooker of the day, to receive various complaints. After finishing, I thanked the children for the meal, chatting for a little bit, and then heading on back towards my room. Before that trip over, I decided first to talk to Mrs. Hong about her trip, she having finally rested up for the day. There she was, cheery as always, and eager also to hear about my travels thus far, and my feelings about Vietnam. I told her about my surprise over meeting the Minister of Education, and my feelings over all the publicity so far about me. She told me that she agreed with me and loved my sense of responsibility and passion, but warned me not to talk too much about my parents' reasons for leaving Vietnam, particularly the one concerning freedoms. "You know Ben, it hurts me to hear that your parents left for that reason, as you can see now that Vietnam does have freedom, and Vietnam happily invites outsiders, including overseas Vietnamese, to come back home and see how much it has changed" she said. I agreed, apologizing and quickly speaking towards another subject. I stayed for about half an hour, talking to her, her daughter, her family friend who came over, and her husband about Hanoi and traveling in Vietnam. Mrs. Hong is from Hanoi, her husband from Hue. Her daughter, she hopes, will work in Hue after finishing up at the Hue Academy of Music, though her suspected lover lives in Hanoi. I at last, headed back to my room, greeted by a mob of children from the houses coming over to hang out with me.
What better than to show them more episodes of one of their favorite series. So I did just that, settling them all in, turning off all the lights, and sitting down with them, watching for about three hours or so, explaining to them in Vietnamese, anything they didn't understand from the English. Phi, one of the junior high students, told me exactly what I had expected, which was that the English pronunciation and tone was what made it difficult for him to understand the conversations in the videos. "I can hear the words, but can't make out their meanings in context clearly enough to understand" said Phe, one of Phi's classmates. There we were, all of us huddled around the laptop, watching until about nine thirty, their curfew. They all ran back, saying that they would be back the next day. I spent the rest of the night working, typing furiously away like I am now, and reading. So much to think about this Monday...
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