Thanks for taking the time to read my blog about my time here in Hanoi. I arrived last Monday night and have been enjoying my time here so much. Last week was a week of adjustment as the other volunteers and I learned the ropes about how the school seems to operate and how we will fit into everything as foreign teachers. There are 7 other teachers in my group and we all live in "teacher housing" on the back side of campus. Our accommodations are wonderful; much more than what I was expecting. We have our own bathrooms, a shared kitchen and common room, air conditioning, and full-sized beds. Other than the beds being hard, it's all great! The campus also has security around the perimeter. I'm located about 4km from the city center by taxi... which would cost approximately $2 USD. The exchange rate is 21,000 VND (Vietnamese Dong) = $1 USD. That's been quite an adjustment!
We have a program director on-site at Wellspring named Mr. Vinh and he has been everything I could have asked for. He has helped us get internet set up (although it's been touchy so far), helped with getting pool passes, fixed any issues we had with the rooms, helped us get Vietnamese phones, and even took us to the mall!
For the next few weeks we will be doing lots of training to get ready for our first day of class on August 5. I haven't found out what grade level I will be teaching yet but I'm hoping to know by the beginning of next week. This week I will be observing a 5th and 7th grade classroom and next week I will be doing some practice teaching with the 7th graders.
I had most of the weekend off from training and had a chance to explore the city a bit. On Friday we went out to a new bar in town and Saturday we went to the Night Market. On Sunday I went to St. Joseph's Cathedral for an evening mass (the biggest and highly recommended in our guide book) and then we strolled around the French district. We ended up finding a fancy mall with a Versace and 7 floors of amazingness so it turned out to be a great end to the weekend! I love exploring this city and everyone has been so nice. Almost everyone smiles, waves, and will even tolerate my attempts to speak Vietnamese. More on the language learning from my next post....
Until then,
Kelley
PS-
Our kitchen sink isn't set up yet and we had to drain our spaghetti in the shower last night #thirdworldproblems
What, no Ramen? :)
ReplyDelete