Inner terrain...Outer adventure

Thursday, July 19, 2007

“…as important as methods may be, the most practical thing we can achieve in any kind of work is insight into what is happening inside us as we do it. The more familiar we are with our inner terrain, the more surefooted our teaching—and living—becomes.” From The Courage to Teach by Parker Palmer. This is the passage I used to open my teaching with the idea that I wanted this to be my guide. I loved working, playing, and laughing with these teachers.

I was picked up by the principal’s car again this morning. Trang (pronounced “Choung”) came with him, which made the ride nicer. She had ridden home with me yesterday and will be going on the trip with the (American) teachers this weekend. It was a smaller class today, but I had done some research on syllable stress rules in English and was able to give them that information. I also ran across some ESL grammar games that we spent some time playing today. Now that my initial nervousness was over, it was easier to interact and see each of these teachers as individuals. What a lovely group of women. The assistant English head, Ms. Huong, had her 5-6 year old son along today. He walked in and said, “It’s nice to meet you.” I laughed because I was so surprised by this little boy’s English. He showed off more of it during the morning and gave me a pen when we went up to the office for our break.

One of the games we played this morning was “Secret Word.” The class chose a word while someone was in the hall and then we had to ask them questions to get them to say the word in the answer. My favorite moment was when Lan was being asked questions. One of the other students said, “It’s something all of us have.” She said, “Breasts” without missing a beat. I laughed along with everyone else, then I said, “True, but not what we were looking for.” She eventually got “mobile phone,” which was the answer.

I had wanted a picture with the class, but when I got to school, I realized that my camera was gone. I called Sandy to see if she could find it, but she didn’t have any luck. I spent time retracing my steps and figuring out when I last had it. When I got home, I did finally find it, but it wasn’t anywhere near where it should have been. I quickly caught up on backing up all my photos, in case that really DOES happen!!

After lunch at the school, they sent me home by myself in a taxi. There’s nothing like a cab ride in a foreign country to make you realize how much trust you need to put in humanity. I wasn’t completely confident in the route home and I couldn’t have found it myself yet, but I know we went through many new areas that I had never been to. Sandy said her street is hard to find, but you never know whether you’re being “taken for a ride” or just taken for a ride. He was the SLOWEST vehicle I’ve been in (or on) here. He even yielded for pedestrians. I was just beginning to wonder and remembering what Sandy said about just paying what is fair, even if they tell you a different amount, when he asked to see the address again. He looked around and seemed as genuinely glad to find it as I was (and his rate what exactly what it should have been!).

Sandy had errands to run and had asked if she should do it in the morning or wait until I got home. I asked her to wait, I mean, after all, one woman’s errands is another woman’s adventure in the city. And what an adventure it was…

We took Xeoms (pronounced SAY—ooms) which are motor scooter taxis. The 2 men came to pick us up. We had a large bag of books that Sandy was selling and an LCD projector. With our bags and our beings, we loaded up. Riding through the town awake and at daytime was amazing. In the course of today, I saw a 26” TV (in a box—I didn’t measure it.), a ladder, a 10-12’ bundle of molding or trim, 5 1-gallon paint cans, a small mattress, and (my favorite for the day) a gym-sized exercise bike ALL traveling by motor scooter. That’s not even counting the regular bicycles with flowers, fruit, pots, etc.

Intersections were the best (and the worst). We ran several red lights, or so I thought, until I realized that there is a “countdown” monitor for both the red and the green lights. When I light is changing to red, many folks run it. At the same time, the light that is ABOUT to turn green gets to about “5” left and people start going. In this way you have a 5-10 second overlap of traffic going in both directions and the same time. At most intersections or crossings, there is a weave of motor scooters, bicycles, cars, trucks and an occasional pedestrian! In order to turn right on a scooter, you go to the farthest LEFT in your direction, get all the way to the front of the line by the intersection, then merge through traffic within 5 feet to turn right. This works “really” well, especially if you have a horn and hold it down the whole time!

One of the stops was the bank. When we walked in there were several open lines, however, we needed to go up to a small box to get a “Queuing Ticket.” The directions were to push button “A” and a ticket with a number would come out. There was also a button “B,” but there were no directions on what would happen if you pushed it. When I exchanged money at the airport, I got over 3,000,000 VND for $200 USD. Apparently the $200,000 bill of money is new, but the 200VND is being “retired” as no longer necessary. There is now 500, 1000, and 5000 VND coins (as of the past 2 years) which means that now there can be (and are) vending machines. Coins did not exist before this.

Sandy and I went out for dinner tonight. We were having rice and 2 great “hot pot” dishes when Sandy looked over my shoulder, got very wide-eyed, and said, “Kimberly…Kimberly…” As I looked over my shoulder, there was a waiter walking by carrying a turtle by his head. The rest of the body was just hanging and swinging underneath. She said, “Kimberly, did you SEE that turtle. I’ve never actually SEEN a turtle being carried by his head.” That was NOT what we had in our meal!