Day 2 of training: learn to teach!

On Tuesday I woke up very early to go to the gym, which was predictably rough. I also met Tyler, our last ETA, so the gang is all here today! 

Today was all about teacher training, and it was today that I think the full enormity of what I am doing hit me. I have taught before, but I have never done a lesson plan or a formal curriculum, so I am a little terrified at the prospect. However, I am just going to put my nose to the grindstone and learn as much as I can as quickly as I can.

We covered basic concepts of TEFL training today such as letting students drive the classroom, the importance of grounding instruction in the students' real-world experience and how to schedule a lesson effectively. An overarching theme was getting students to speak comfortably, to create an atmosphere where they felt comfortable sharing and making mistakes.

We watched several instructional videos that showed teachers implementing lesson plans for smaller classes of 12-15 students, and then we were asked to try and figure out how we could configure these plans differently for larger classes of up to 60 students, which we might very well be dealing with.

This is a lot for me to take in, but our teacher Andrew is very good so I am optimistic about the rest of classes. I will keep you posted as my education progresses.

At this point, I should probably mention another daily hazard/fact of life in Vietnam: the rain. It is currently monsoon season in Vietnam, so I was expecting a certain degree of rain. However, the rain here is not only heavy, it is also thoroughly unpredictable. Coming from Boston I am used to sporadic rain showers and unpredictable weather, but Boston has nothing on Hanoi. The sky will be perfectly clear, then the heavens will open up and an entire lake will come splashing down from the sky, then the weather will be perfect again. It takes some getting used to.

This is what the rain looks like in Vietnam. I see a lot of it.

After training we all went out to dinner again

Quan tried to illustrate the Vietnamese name for each family member. It got quite complicated. 

Dinner together!

After dinner Trevor and I went to find ultimate frisbee, as Trevor played ultimate throughout college. After a taxi ride and much fruitless poking around we were not able to find the fields. Trevor and I made the best of it, throwing for a while before heading back home. We would later discover that we were in the right area and were almost on top of the fields. *sigh*. We'll go there next week.

On the way back we stopped at a Ga Nuong (Grilled Chicken) place that Trevor recommended. The chicken was delicious, and the alleyway was a beautiful little slice of Hanoi life. Motorcycles would purr by occasionally, tourists and locals alike devoured this amazingly grilled chicken as a full moon shone done over all of us. The earlier heat had evaporated, and a cool breeze occasionally blew through. It was a beautiful, completely grounded yet strangely transcendent moment.

Then we were absolutely ripped off and charged 150,000 VND each for the meal. Ah Hanoi, the city that keeps giving and taking and giving and taking and giving...

Peace,

Jefferson