Whirlwind introduction to Ben Tre

Good afternoon all, and welcome to another edition of Jefferson's days in Vietnam. 

Sorry for the late posting, was way too tired to give this post the detail it deserved. 

So I figure now would be a good time to give you some basic facts about Ben Tre College. Ben Tre College is a two-year college, colleges in Vietnam provide a degree that is less competitive than the four-year degree offered at universities. 

The Vietnamese educational system is built around the entrance exams; the higher you score on the entrance exams the better the school you can get into. So, imagine the SATs, but if the SATs were literally the only thing colleges care about. Yeah, stressful. Students at Ben Tre College, or any college in Vietnam, have had lower entrance examination scores so they cannot attend universities. Not the most prestigious institution in Vietnam, then, but still one that I am excited to be a part of.

My plan was originally that I would be getting situated this week, then observing classes next week and finally teaching the week after that. However, I really didn't want to spend two weeks in a row not teaching, so I asked that we do both the orientation and the observation this week. As a result, I will now be teaching class starting next week. Yay!

The center of campus

Students playing soccer in the yard

Every afternoon students play volleyball, soccer, badminton and this shuttlecock game where you juggle it for as long as possible. This all happens right outside my room.

My home! I'm living in the College's guest house, the second and third floor are student housing and the bottom is offices and my room.

On Tuesday I woke up with a basically free schedule in the morning, so I went shopping with Mr. Hoang. The supermarket we went to is only four years old, and it is a very nice grocery store with a fair amount of Western food. At the very least, I won't be starving. I found Pepperidge Farm cookies there and immediately stocked up. Comfort food = win 

The grocery store

We ate lunch at the food court, and I insisted on paying for Mr. Hoang. To my surprise, he agreed easily and we had a very nice lunch. 

The food court in the mall

After eating at the food court I headed back to my room to finish unpacking and to work on editing my friend's Fulbright application. Both Mr. Vu and Mr. Luan came by separately in the afternoon to give me gifts of fruit to welcome me to Ben Tre College, and I went to get coffee with Mr. Vu. Then we went to play soccer. 

We went to a soccer stadium just a block down the road from the college, nice 5 v. 5 synthetic fields. About 12 different Ben Tre teachers would be playing soccer from all different departments, the plan was for the English faculty to play the faculty of the other departments. Despite being out of shape and out of practice, I think I did pretty well for myself. I scored two goals, and the English faculty won a close game over the rest of Ben Tre faculty. I felt really good after the game, and (knock on wood) my knee and ankle both felt fine, so hopefully I can play some more on Thursday as well!  

The field where we played

That evening I went with Mr. Hoang to his house, and talked with a group of English students that he tutors privately. The students were all high school aged, very smart and very polite. It was my first real sort of experience as to what people expect of me here in Ben Tre. I was told that I should just answer any questions the students had, and so I wandered in basically unprepared. However, this led to what would become a common experience for me over the past few days. 

I stand at the front of the class, and introduce myself. I ask if the students have any questions for me. They have one, maybe two. Then i just get a lot of blank faces. I look to my fellow teacher for support, and he/she smiles at me, waiting for me to keep going. Uh-oh. 

I improvised and started asking the students each questions about where they wanted to travel, what they like to do, etc. In this way I was able to keep them talking for about an hour. Once I got them talking, I actually quite enjoyed talking with them. They were very experienced students with a good grasp of the English language and some really interesting hobbies. I wasn't feeling great about it, but as it turned out later this was a very good experience to have. 

The students tried to get my cell phone number, and one of them in particular was very pushy. However, I said that I would give them my email address only, and if they wanted to go meet, then they could email me. When I was in Cairo I gave out my phone number pretty liberally, and I ended up being sporadically called by people who I didn't know and who only spoke Arabic. Wanting to avoid that experience, I simply gave them my email. Mr. Hoang agreed with my decision.

I gave Mr. Hoang a present of some fruit and cookies, and said that if I had time I would return to speak with his students. In the morning I would be meeting with the board of rectors, the men in charge of the school, so I was quite nervous. I tried to get enough sleep but had to pause to kill a cockroach, so I again failed to get to sleep at a reasonable time. Oh well. 

My neighbor, feral cats roam outside the building at night. Reminds me of the SigEp house in Chicago

The next morning I woke up early and went over to see the board of rectors. I was quite nervous to be speaking to the whole board, especially since part of my speech was going to be in Vietnamese. I gave a short speech in Vietnamese greeting the board of rectors and introducing myself. Then I switched to English and told them I was very happy to be at Ben Tre College and that I planned to conduct myself enthusiastically and professionally while at Ben Tre. 

I gave the rector a fan that was handed out in the commencement packets from my graduation from the University of Chicago. The fan is a large print of the seal of the University of Chicago, which is why I decided to give that to him. I think he liked it, and Mr. Hoang told me after the meeting that I made a very good impression.  

With the board of rectors and the heads of the department at Ben Tre College

After seeing the board of rectors, I went off to observe Mrs. Thu teach a class. Along the way we were told that the schedule had changed, and that as a result I should wait with Mr. Hoang until she was available. No problem, we went into the teacher's room to wait. While I was waiting, Mrs. Hoang (no relation) came in and started talking with us. She suggested that while I was waiting I should come by and introduce myself to her students. You can probably see where this is going.

I agreed and walked upstairs, then headed into her classroom. She sat down at one of the desks and smiled at me. The class was almost entirely girls, as most of my classes are going to be, so I definitely heard a pronounced increase of giggling when I walked in. 

I introduced myself and asked if they had any questions. A couple of brave souls had questions, then silence. I stared out onto a sea of silent smiling faces, all waiting for me to do something. 

I quickly improvised a lesson about things that they liked. I wrote a list of things that I like on the board, and then asked them to discuss with their neighbor what they liked doing. Then I asked for suggestions of what they liked, and started writing them on the board. I had no idea what their level was, so it was definitely a basic lesson that they handled fairly easily. However, it got them talking to each other and it was a way to introduce myself.

One of the things I wrote on the board was "listening to music" and Mrs Hoang suggested that I sing a song for them, preferably a Vietnamese song. I declined immediately, as the only song I know is a Vietnamese love song that I only remember half the words to. She then suggested that I sing an American song, and I declined that offer as well. Then she suggested that I teach them an American song, an easy one, preferably a and I actually liked that suggestion. 

After a few moments of thought I decided to teach them "The Hokey-Pokey", because it is a simple song with an accompanying dance. The students, who might have been getting a little bored, were instructed to stand up and I took them all through the dance. After about ten minutes I successfully took them through a basic run of the song. 

Total teaching time: 20 minutes

Who needs lesson plans?

Anyways, with the stress of meeting with the rectors and the surprise lesson I taught, it was quite nice to simply observe the lesson taught by Mrs. Thu. She taught a very good listening lesson, and at the end she asked me to introduce myself to the class. I stayed at the back of the class, where I had been observing, and fielded any questions they had. If they were expecting me to do more, then too damn bad. 

After finishing observing class, we headed off to lunch. Mr. Hoang explained to me that my 8:00 am starts were actually quite late by Vietnamese time. Everyone got up around 6:30 or 7:00, and then headed over to school. Work went until 11:00, at which point everyone goes to lunch until noon. The point is to get a full four hours of work and lunch done before the noon sun hits. At that point, everyone goes inside and stays there until 2:00. In the afternoon it starts to cool down a bit and people reemerge to work from 2:00-5:00. Having been out there when the noon sun starts to beat down, I can totally understand. The heat here is punishing.

We went to lunch at a very nice restaurant near a man-made lake. The restaurant's architecture is all bungalows, very open with incredible amounts of shade, and the relaxing atmosphere was just what I needed. 

Seeing this does a lot to alleviate my stress

The restaurant

The beautiful Mr. Hoang, my constant companion

The lunch was amazing, grilled fish wrapped in rice paper and washed down with Tiger beer. The highlight was eating heo rừng, or wild pig (lit. "forest pig"). While the meat was recognizably pork and it had the same consistency, the flavor was very different. It was less rich and more flavorful, an interesting powerful savoriness that left a pleasant feeling in your stomach. I couldn't get enough of it. 

Doing work

After lunch the rain started pouring again. We had taken a motorbike to the restaurant and neither of us had ponchos, so Mr. Hoang and I just decided to wait out the rain. This particular restaurant had hammocks that they hang up occasionally, which Mr. Hoang requested. We lay there for twenty minutes in the hammocks, listening to the rain.

I feel quite spoiled over here sometimes.

After lunch I went back home and napped for a while, before Mr. Tuan summoned me and asked me to  come to his class to discuss the class we would teach. As you can probably imagine, I was dreading being told to stand at the front of the class again, so I approached his room nervously. However, Mr. Tuan simply wanted to inform me that he would be teaching the class, and we went over the planned syllabus for the next class. Mr. Tuan also invited me to play badminton with him later in the day, and I agreed.

Wednesday afternoon I decided to finally take the bike off the rack and head into the city. So, you remember the insanity of Vietnamese traffic that I described earlier? A crazy complicated mess of weaving motorbikes, honking horns and buses that absolutely do not care about your safety? That's what I would be joining. Wheeee!

My takeaways from Vietnamese traffic participation:

1. Always pay attention to everything, everywhere. Especially when you are new

2. Don't make any sudden or unexpected moves.

3. Follow the flow of traffic, and do what the locals do

4. Pray

After a surprisingly easy bike ride with no near-death misses and only one near-accident miss (sorry Mom! but I'm okay, you can breathe again!) I returned to campus to play badminton with Mr. Tuan.

I haven't played badminton in ages, so it wasn't surprising that I was pretty terrible. It was surprising, though, how much of a workout it can is. Sprinting all over the court gets your heart rate up pretty fast. And Mr. Tuan is a baller at badminton

Don't let his mild manner surprise you, Mr. Tuan is an animal on the court.

This whole time, I have been told several different times that I was going to be teaching this class or the other class, when do I want to do this activity, can I do this or that, when can I meet with etc. People have been telling me bits of information, and then asking me for decisions about when to do things that

I was warned that developing a schedule in Vietnam requires a bit more discussion than is typically the case in an American institution. As a result, I have been very relaxed about my schedule changing. People keep anxiously assuring me that I will get my schedule soon in an attempt to placate my non-existent frustration. I am honestly not all that concerned. I was warned this might happen, and as long as I get my schedule some reasonable amount of time before I am expected to go out and teach, I'm feeling okay.

On the way home Mr. Hoang gave me a gift of some coconuts. My fridge now looks like this:

Vietnamese hospitality. My fridge is full of dragon fruit, rambutans, guavas, sapodilla and coconuts. I bought none of these. All gifts. 

Wednesday night I got dinner at a rice place and chatted with the woman there semi-proficiently for a while. My Vietnamese is definitely progressing fast over here. Came back home, killed a cockroach, went to bed. 

On Thursday I woke up early to observe Mr. Bao Duy's class. The class went well, and I'm feeling confident about teaching the students next week. Then I went to meet the fourth vice-rector who was unable to attend the meeting on Wednesday. I was also taken to various departments where I met and tried to speak Vietnamese with several different department heads. In the afternoon I played soccer again (three goals this time!) and then worked on the lesson plan with Ms. Y.

So yeah, fun-filled couple of days! And best of all, as of this posting, there have been zero cockroaches to kill today. Progress!

Going into Ho Chi Minh city tomorrow to hang with a fellow ETA Lindsay, will let you know how the day goes tomorrow!

Peace,

Jefferson