The move to Trung Hoa

13-01-2018->15-01-2018

After writing an extensive amount on the CWD, school observations and attractions in Hanoi I felt like I needed to get to the main setting of my Vietnam internship: Trung Hoa, an area 15 minutes southwest of the city center in the Cau Giay district of Hanoi. There were a few other notable incidents before then, such as Dr Binhs medical check up and a load of teachers riding in the CWD, but if you want the riding then that’s probably going to crop up in future posts anyway so don’t be alarmed if that’s what you want when reading blogs! I will however present to you a video of how wrecked we were during certain stages of the teacher training week.

In all honesty the move to Cau Giay district in Hanoi was all very exciting, as we all wanted to see the accommodation we were given. Naively, I thought we would all be in one campus style area, as if this was UCD or something. In reality we were in real houses dotted across the area!

Something Nick had said at the time in the CWD was that it was a roll of the dice on what house you will get, and if you say ‘its not fair’ when talking about the accommodation to remember that ‘nothing is fair in Vietnam’. It was a curious remark, but had me thinking what quality of house we would get. All I knew going in was that there would be a small room with a bed and dresser, and that was it. I was 9 months away from the life of high quality Saigonese apartments so it was a real question as to what these rooms would be like.

Trung Hoa in relation to the rest of Hanoi, and where all the intern houses were in the area.

The bus ride was slow, as the roads seemed quite narrow near the end, and after about 25 minutes of excited chatter we eventually stopped in a laneway behind Nguyễn Thị Định street. It seemed quiet despite having a larger road nearby and a lady cycling with a megaphone selling bánh bao. The street may have had only 1 lane of paved road, but it had buildings up to 5 floors high on each end and Vietnamese flags hung up on the second floor. Unfortunately before I even got to see my house Cian was short of breath and had to take a few minutes rest at the entrance to the main accommodation. Maybe it was nerves, maybe anxiety over the thought of the places, but he had to take a break at the underground. Myself and Megan stayed behind to check on him.

All this was happening while the teachers started getting directions to their houses. Molly and Samantha happened to get the main accommodation (meaning they just had to go out the front door and a taxi would bring them to the schools). About 5 minutes later they both came back down from their room upstairs to burst into tears in front of us. They wailed ‘We had no expectations but it was even worse than that’. Myself and Megan gave each other a look of ‘what have we got ourselves into?!’. Cian was due to be in a different house to mine, and we both hoped he would get a better place.

Half an hour passed and Cian felt good enough to sit up and have full on banter again. Myself and Megan thought it was OK to check out our house. We didn’t have much confidence considering a third teacher had left the main accommodation saying it was crap, but we went anyway. After a 4 minute walk we headed to a house near the main road of Trần Duy Hưng. This was 5 Đỗ Quang, with its entrance padlocked and an iron gate covering the front door. Hopes were not good…

Yet after going in and seeing that the ground floor was blatantly an old reception area, we got a bit more optimistic. This was possibly an old hotel, so rooms should have some standard…We climbed the first of what turned out to be a 5 floor house. We met Andy, Alex and Diane. Their rooms seemed OK, and myself and Megan gave each other another look, this time of confusion. Sure, the black and grey tiled floor, double bed and en suite wasn’t going to set the world on fire, but it seemed leaps and bounds ahead of whatever was in the main accommodation.

We made it to the next floor to find Kelly, Laura and Leonie. Again, like the last floor it was a 3 room floor with the same tiled floor and bathrooms. Our floor happened to be the next one and Myself and Megan would turn out to live next door to each other, so at least I would have someone sound on the floor! We hugged for joy that we had liveable accommodation, and a huge weight of relief had gone away. Jon turned out to be the other neighbour to me, being right beside the stairs, so a decent floor all in. A little while later we would find Sarah, Kirsty and Kristina one floor above us. Not bad having a house of 12 teachers!

Calling others with my Vietnamese phone, I found out that most had a similar style of house with a lot of stairs and small rooms with a bathroom on each floor. Not every house had en suites like mine but they had other advantages such as a decent kitchen or a more appealing rooftop area.

One trip to the giant Vinmart 10 minutes down the road later, I had bought a towel, bedsheets, pillow covers, a bowl of cashew nuts, some cans of Bia Hanoi, ginger ale, a bin, some tumbler glasses, water, pringles, some chocolate, mouthwash and a french stick….some list for one list! Things were looking up for the weekend.

The weekend was spent lesson planning in Leonies room. I tried planning for hours, but just couldn’t get a hang on what to plan for students. So many objectives and aims had me very lost on what exactly to submit, but I was able to submit something vaguely presentable by the end of the night. The syllabus seemed to be a decent roadmap as it was. I had a feeling this was going to be a rough part of the teaching process, but found better luck simply scribbling and writing ideas into a notebook.

An e-mail clarifying the taxi arrangements and timetables had me set for Monday afternoon to start teaching. To vaguely quote Achilles from Assassins Creed 3 “You have your tools and training, your targets and goals.”

Lets do this…