Miss Clara

So, I'm sick of playing catch up, as you can probably tell from my lack of updates. Here's what you need to know: my course ended; I moved into a house with two other women from my program; they're great; I went on interviews for different schools; I was hired by two different schools; thus, I have a full time job and a part time job.

Everything else is filler.

Actually, no. Everything else is detail, which is a lot more interesting. However, I don't feel like going into all the details. Ask me if you'd like to know something specific.

What I really want to talk about: my jobs--but not really. Just one of them.


1. I am an English language teacher for an English language school. (Redundant.) I teach three classes on Sundays and sometimes substitute weekday evenings. I have a class of six to eight year olds, a class of eight to twelve year olds (roughly), and a class of four year olds. All of them are a handful. But they're a lot of fun and despite the fact that each class is two hours long, except the four year olds, which is an hour and a half, it goes by really quickly. Teaching younger kids was not my first choice, but they're so eager and funny and I love them. I thought this was going to be a lot harder than it actually is. Don't get me wrong--teaching is difficult, just ask any teacher you know. The thing is--I love it. It might be hard and some days are certainly better than others, but it's also a lot of fun. I feel energized after I've taught a class, which is exciting. When the kids are having fun AND enjoying learning, I feel like I'm on top of the world.


2. My other job--the one I really want to talk about--is crazy. Capital C-R-A-Z-Y. CRAZY. (Get it yet?) I am the English language teacher at an international elementary school. It's Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. and I mostly teach pre-3 with a few fourth and fifth graders.


How I got the job: I interviewed for an English teaching job at a high school. Then I got a call about a week later and was asked if I'd be interested in working at the elementary school instead. I went in to interview again and was told that the job was going to be helping the kids with their English because all the classes are taught in English and it would only be part time. Then I met with a series of people the same day who all asked me questions--very few of them about the job or my experience. Then I was hired. Full time.


Basically, a job opened suddenly at this school and the guy who'd initially interviewed me for the high school position liked me, so he offered me the job. That's it. He liked me and now I have a full time job. CRAZY. But also AWESOME.


The really CRAZY part: there's no curriculum at my school. I don't have a textbook. The regular classroom teachers don't have a curriculum and have very few textbooks. It's not just crazy, it's unbelievable.


There are eleven kids in the pre-3 class--we just got a new student today. One of the kids doesn't speak a word of English and she's a preschooler, so she can't even read in her own language. This horrifies me. I have no idea what she's doing in an international school. What it comes down to is that this school is here to make money and parents with money want their kids to go to an international school. It's more prestigious or something. However, I don't think parents are aware--or maybe they just don't care?--that we don't have a curriculum. I don't know.


There are three other teachers in the international school. They all teach subjects whereas I just teach English. The guys are great. I feel lucky to be working with such an honest, caring group of teachers. We're all in the same boat--none of us have much of anything and none of us are qualified--as in have teaching degrees or backgrounds in education other than teaching English here--so we're definitely here to help each other and to give our kids the best education that we possibly can. I feel particularly lucky to be working with the pre-third grade teacher because we get along so well and have a lot of the same ideas and understanding of what we're here to do.


Despite the fact that I have nothing to work with, I adore this job. I never have more than six kids at a time; I work with some great people; and the kids are awesome. I'm having a lot of fun. The kids are adorable and they're always so eager to tell me things. I hear, "Miss Clara! Miss Clara!" all day long.


I never thought I'd enjoy being an elementary school teacher but here I am and it's amazing. Each day is different and I feel like I'm making a difference. How cool is that?

I've been at the school for a week now and we're actually talking to the head of the English Language Development (ELD) at the high school in order to start building a curriculum, which is amazing. Hopefully, things will start moving forward and we can start giving these kids what they need in order to learn and thrive.


(P.S.--Another crazy thing: all the kids--preschool to fifth grade--take an hour long nap after lunch... This is flabbergasting. Why? They lose so much time when they're taking a nap! And most of the Vietnamese people who work here take a nap when the kids are. Very strange.)

Weeks 3 and 4: Student Teaching

After our Sihanoukville beach weekend, we all went to our teaching destinations. On Sunday, September 12, seven of us caught a bus to Ho Chi Minh City (aka Saigon) in Vietnam.

Driving in at night was a rush of neon lights and whizzing, honking motorbikes.

Rush hour traffic. Scary, scary.

My first week in Vietnam was hard. I got sick right off the bat and ended up going to see a doctor during our first day of student teaching. Luckily, I just had a nasty cold, not dengue fever. The next day, I managed to get through my first actual teaching class only with a lot of help from one of our instructors. I had eight to 13 year old students who had more energy than I could keep up with, especially seeing as I hadn't started the day with any actual energy...

Regardless of my weak start, every day got a little bit better and I discovered something: I really like teaching. I know what you're thinking: shouldn't I have known that before I set off to teach English in a foreign country for a year? Well, I had an inkling but no real experience, so let me tell you, it was a relief to realize I like it. And I'm not half bad at it either, which, of course, helps the whole liking it thing. It makes me feel good about where I'm at in my life right now. Helping others in their education is one of the most rewarding things I've ever done. Yeah, I had bad days--student teaching is difficult--but most days I found myself energized after class.

Those two weeks of student teaching were equally as intensive as the first two weeks, but in different ways. In Cambodia, we didn't have a lot of free time because we were in class learning how to teach. We started at the same time in Vietnam--9 a.m.--but we ended at all different times of the day. My first week in HCM, I was at school from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. We had Vietnamese language classes in the morning, then an hour and a half with one of our instructors either helping us write our lesson plans or going over resumes or talking about how to teach Vietnamese students, and in the afternoon and evenings we taught our own classes. Even though I didn't teach until 5:30 p.m. that first week, I was still at school until then every day because I was planning my lessons.

Those two weeks were full of long days. Fortunately, we had another adventure our first weekend in Vietnam. One of our students invited us to go to a water park. It was unlike any water park I've ever been to and it was awesome.

Water park on the Saigon River.

The water park had no rides, no lines and very little of it was man made. Stretching along a portion of the Saigon River, the water park hosted a few water slides that went into the river, a few platforms to jump off of, a line of floating devices on the water that you're supposed to try to run as far as you can on, and some canoes. The rest of the water park consisted of huts with tables and/or hammocks. The student who invited us even brought a traveling stove and a wok, and he fried up some spring rolls, noodles and veggies for us.

Yum.

It's monsoon season here, so it inevitably downpoured on us. But swimming in the river, reading a book in a hammock, eating good food, and playing card games in a hut with good people made for an awesome day. I also learned that Vietnamese people swim in shorts and t-shirts. Some people wear real bathing suits but keep their clothes on--even the men. Very strange.

The fourth week was much the same as the third. However, I had the same group of students for the entire week. They were roughly 18 to 26 and the best group of students ever. I had a lot of fun teaching them and I definitely would like to keep teaching that age group. There's more room to build a report with older students and, while they don't usually get my jokes, they still appreciate that I have a sense of humor.

At the end of my fourth week abroad, class was over. We had a party at a Mexican restaurant of all places and we received our certificates. All in all, the course was difficult, time-consuming and fun. I learned a lot and I'm glad I had the opportunity to take it.

Catching up: Cambodia

As most of you are probably aware, I set out for southeast Asia at the end of August in order to take a Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) certification course. The first two weeks of the program were in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

The elephant that walked around the park every day.

Class started on August 30 and it was intensive. Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. left little room for exploration. I did manage to make it out to S.21, the genocide museum, with two others from my class during lunch one day, but the experience didn't engender the desire for more such outings. Mostly, I went to class, did homework and got to know the other 23 awesome people in my class.

The first weekend, we went on a scheduled trip to the city of Siem Reap to visit ancient temples, most notably that of Angkor Wat.

Angkor Wat somewhere between 5 and 6 a.m.

The visit to Angkor Wat was one of the most moving experiences of my life. The temple itself is huge, made out of massive stones that were dragged by elephants from over 100 kilometers away. Stone was set atop stone without any mortar in between and then carved into intricate designs and statues. It's a marvel that it still stands today. Inside the temple, I was at once overwhelmed by its sheer magnitude and overcome with feelings of peace and calm--I'm not sure why this last is true, seeing as how there were swarms of people there, but once it started to rain, the temple felt like the calmest place on Earth to me.

On the second weekend, right before all of us went our separate ways to our own teaching destinations, we went on another trip. This time to Sihanoukville, a beach town on the Gulf of Thailand. There we rented a boat and went island hopping for several hours. It was overcast but the water was warm and the views were beautiful.

The island we stopped on to play volleyball, swim and read.
(Okay that last one was really just me and one other girl...)

As my first taste of southeast Asia, I loved Cambodia. Phnom Penh is a lazy, relaxed city full of sweet, friendly people. My favorite part (that I wish I had photos of but alas do not) was the masses of teenagers dancing to Justin Bieber in the park every night at 5:30. I don't know how it came to be but every night at the same time, people would set up stereo systems and blast pop and hip hop music all over the park. In front of each sound system would be a group of teenagers--anywhere from five to 150 of them--performing the same dance together. It was amazing. If I were still in Phnom Penh, I'd join them for some good, sweaty exercise every day.

The Blog That Never Was...

Talk about a mental block... How do people write blogs, anyway? Every time I've sat down to make this blog, I've hit a wall. The idea of all of my thoughts and words out there for the whole world to read... It's daunting, to say the least.

But I've promised to write a blog, so here I am attempting it. As the title says, I'm going to report what is real for me at this moment in my life--or as real as I can be on the world wide web without getting into trouble.

I hope it's not too late to play catch up...