The final days in the CWD

This is the first post not taken directly from the book, as it turned out I didn’t write much about the experience in the CWD after the tour. The buildup of teacher training and (lets be real here) plenty of hungover experiences contributed to not physically writing much. However, plenty of photos were taken and documents remain to recall a lot from memory. This is from the 8th to the 14th January 2018, the week of teacher training.

A typical day would be waking up at about 7 or half 7 in the morning and having what the CWD buffet was offering. Typically I would have an egg, some fried rice, and plenty of juice. Despite being around 20°C, I was sweating and constantly losing fluids going outside. Irish winters were particularly dark and cold after all! It was at the tables where I would talk to different interns. Jack and Cian would be around a lot, but oftentimes others like Diana and Kristina, Tom and Sophie, or Megan from Waterford. Usually when talking I would get a coffee, but it was more of the same sweet, condensed milk variety that was in the Dragon Airport hotel as well. Even so, it was much needed for the day ahead…

ELC would have teacher training at 9, and most days this would go on until midday. Sitting in a chair for up to 3 hours in a hot environment is not all that engaging and of course at times anything learned would go in one ear and out the other. However, the training rooms were fairly large, being in one of the CWD’s function rooms, and had all chairs in a circular formation around the edges of the room. It was also helped with our teacher trainers. Nick Sando was a ball of energy and it was impossible not to notice his presence in the room. His slightly slim frame combined with a long red fringe and loud New Zealand accent was all that was needed to hold your attention. As the week progressed, you would see him arrive with a birds nest of a hairstyle, as if he was up until 5AM the previous night to enjoy Hanoi (he was a teacher in Saigon and flown up north for the week). Crazy as he was, he was the perfect instructor for teaching classes of 60+ students. Later internships would be more formal, but Hanoi and formal teaching is not going to happen!

Lunch was usually 1-2 hours and essentially boiled down to walking down Thuy Khue to get a few Vinmart snacks or coffee. Plenty of chat about the class and what we did, along with the dread and excitement of knowing that teaching was going on the next week. One time me, Diane and Andy ate at a bar/restaurant just across the road from the CWD and had beers and noodles. Another time I would be with Molly as she talked about all the things she thinks would happen once we actually go into class. And finally there was trips to the Nhà Chay vegan house with Cian and a few other vegetarians, trying out something healthier than a tub of pringles.

The afternoon class was where things dragged at times. At first it was further teacher training. Afterwards it would be about the Vietnamese language, other times it would be a survival guide to Hanoi, or maybe it would be a powerpoint on BME and getting paperwork done for them. These weren’t bad per se but the final hour was when I would typically lose focus.

Dinner was usually more planned than breakfast. You chose either a vegetarian or meat dish. Interestingly as the week progressed more people would move to the vegetarian side. There was one moment when I moved to the vegetarian table and Cian was delighted, “WAaay, Paul is joining us!”. Its hard to say no to the spring rolls and sweet chilli sauce on their side after all, compared to some of the beefier or fish options with some questionable sauces.

The evenings were split between sessioning hard and (ughhhh) a BME powerpoint presentation. To get the BME presentation out of the way, the head of the foreign teachers, Ms Nathalie was there. Sporting a straight, short cut of hair and the most insincere smile seen since Daenerys Targaryen’s mean girl meme face, she was aiming to get childlike interaction going between a group of 75 somewhat hungover and definitely exhausted interns. It was 8 O’ clock, and the presentation was an endless, punishing 120 minutes of dry, wordy slides and job descriptions. let us relax BME! The most notable thing about it was that I felt the onset of food poisoning from the fish eaten earlier at dinner and coincidentally Jon Howard also felt the same, so we got it out of our systems in the bathroom down the hall. Fortunately both of us were OK and could easily have fun after, but when that was the most exciting part of the presentation there was issues. We did sign the contracts to teach in Hanoi but that was really all that we needed to do and it took all of 15 minutes. I was clearly not alone with feeling bummed out as very few people attended the supposedly ‘optional’ second BME presentation.

At least the rest of the evenings were great craic. One session was on one of the CWD’s top floors with maybe 30-40 of us in one hotel room having a heap of cans and with music from a portable speaker. It got so loud that the security were called! Another was just a simple cans session and watching some others go to the Old Quarter again. But the highlight was the final Karaoke event at the end of the week.

All of the teachers went into No.1 Beer club, the same bar me, Andy and Diane were in earlier in the week. There was a flow of Bia Hanoi’s, Tuborg and the occasional rice wine or vodka. It was packed, and after a few drinks the karaoke got started. The red team assistants sang Quynh Anh-Hello Vietnam and some Taylor Swift, but that was just the beginning. The English teachers sang the likes of Uptown Girl, Niamh pulled out a belter of a tune, and me and the lads teamed up to do Toto-Africa. I sang New Order-Crystal while also spassing out around the bar because why the heck not! It went down well and the whole session was fantastic. Jonathan even played Wild World with his guitar!

Afterwards we all headed to the Old Quarter and really hit the town, being in all sorts of bars in pub street such as Toms Bar. It was quite the blowout and all I could really recollect was that just when the night was cooling off, Odhran showed up and it gave us all a second wind. The hardest part was navigating the narrow streets while out of it, looking for a taxi for 5 people back to the hotel. Somehow we did it, and likely overcharged in the process, but hell, we made it back to the hotel.