June 17th - June 20th, 2024

June 17th -June 20th, 2024.

Nothing too exciting happened these days. The more times that passes the more I’m considering a career in teaching. Teaching English in Vietnam has been pretty simple. The lesson plans are laid out for me to follow and then I mostly play games with the kids to teach them about English. This week I’ve really been focusing on bingo and hang man. I also play a game where I put up flash cards on the whiteboard and then have the kids race to slap the card that matches the word I’m asking for. I usually do this with smaller groups. You can really only do this with say 5 kids at a time. For the most part the kids are really well behaved. This week I struggled with the kindergarten kids as they were out of control this week for some reason. Perhaps it’s because they are getting use to me and feel less inclined to listen. I don’t think I would struggle as much if the kindergarten kids were English speaking, but considering these kindergarten kids don’t speak English my words mean nothing to them. The Vietnamese teaching assistant wasn’t helping much this week either. Something I’ve noticed also while teaching these kids is that the school definitely has favorites. We are doing some practice with plays such as walking in the jungle and jack and the beanstalk. There are only so many spots for the kids to act so a lot of the kids get left out to fend for themselves. While the other kids are acting the other kids keep themselves entertained. Although these other kids aren’t acting they still have some songs they can participate in. I guess you do have to consider that there can’t be a part for everyone. I think if I were to teach a grade it would be grade 5 or less. Initially I thought it would be high school but teaching these kids here in Vietnam has gotten me to reconsider. I don’t necessarily think it would be easier but I’d think at this age they wouldn’t have phones and I could gamify their learning. I’d gamify at any age but I think the games would be easier at a younger age. Ideally, I’d like to teach German but there doesn’t seem to be a German program at any of the universities I’ve looked at in Alberta. I can take a couple classes but not major in it. I’m not sure I could get fluent with the few classes that are offered. I may have to go outside of Alberta to get the education I’m looking for. For German teaching I’d either have to teach at a German centred Canadian school or teach German at a high school level which would be fine too. Maybe it’s even an option to teach English to new comers as well. That’d be cool On Wednesday night Harrison invited me to go to Do Son beach with this girl he is seeing. We didn’t know what we were in for, it was quite mysterious. I thought we were in for a chill night of swimming at night on the beach. At that time the water would still be really warm. Instead what happened was that we went to a rave at the beach. It was a really good production. There weren’t many people there so it seemed pretty exclusive or VIP. We did get seated really close to the stage and we had a personal server who would keep pouring us drinks and refilling our beverages when they were empty. They even served nitrous oxide balloons to get high off of, but I didn’t partake. Apparently it’s like a 5 second high that you do over and over. I don’t know what it feels like and I don’t care to experience it either. I ended up going home early not for any bad reason but because I felt I’d experienced something like this before so I wouldn’t be missing anything, so I did the responsible thing and went home. I had to teach early the next morning anyways. On Thursday it was my busy day. I managed to teach this day and the day before without taking any clonazepam. I was proud of that. I did however end up getting some anxiety on Thursday night. I was playing with some kids after hours and I just got it randomly. I don’t know if it was because I’m getting close to these kids and it feels weird to have that kind of relationship with kids who aren’t directly linked to my immediate family. Regardless, I left and went to my home stay. I took a clonazepam and the anxiety only lasted for 45 minutes. Since speaking with my nurse I don’t feel bad for taking a clonazepam when I need it anymore. Trang and Ngọc have been really nice to me. Trang invited me to stay with her family in Halong after I am done teaching. Ngoc bought me a milk tea last night too. It had kumquats in it. It tasted pretty good. I guess a kumquats is like a mini lime/orange combo. Interesting to say the least. The drink was called Tra tac.