Tuesday Teaching in Cự Khối

16-01-2018

Vietnam is not a country where I thought much about eating breakfast.
In Ireland I would have had a bowl of porridge, some toast with peanut butter or if there was time I would fry some eggs and have orange juice. It was needed for the hour long cycle from my house to work, and with lunch breaks being shy of an hour long, I would tend to get a roll in Centra for lunch or something fast rather than eating somewhere substantial like a restaurant or cafe.

Here though, it was very different. Once ready I would have a shower, get into the uniform of baby blue shirt, black trousers, and shoes. Then I would put on the lanyard , head down the winding staircase and out the door, before walking a few hundred meters to a taxi rank. Breakfast at this time was really something I wouldn’t think about. I instead would pack a bottle of water and a snickers bar into my bag to keep me going during the morning. Not healthy by any means, but I would rather have an empty stomach during the morning with some tasty street food afterwards than feeling half full after class and not eating a full lunch. It was very much a 2 meal day with maybe 1 or 2 snacks breaking up long stretches.

Unlike An Hưng, the drive to Cự Khối was far longer than 20 mins. Even with the earlier hour with less traffic and using the CT20 ringroad highway to get there, it was a good 45-50 minute drive. Me being me, I had brought an MP3 player with me to Vietnam, so I was listening to music on it to keep myself occupied, while double checking the lesson plan in the car. After a few months of this I would fall asleep for half an hour because getting up at 6 in the morning was not doing wonders for my sleep. I was the only teacher at Cự Khối, so I wouldn’t need to have any chit chat in the taxi.

Something else I would do during the drive is pinpoint a few landmarks as progress for the journey. 3 main ones would come to mind; the Kim Văn Kim Lũ apartment complex about a third of the way, then the Yên Duyên church at the second third, and then finally a billboard with FAS (no, not that one) on it after crossing the Red River via Thanh Trì bridge, which was a sign that the taxi was about to take the off ramp. After the off ramp it was only a 2 minute trip to the school, so it was not too complicated to get to. It was just the damn distance!

Arriving at the school, it became clear that Hanoi has one and just one design for schools. It was the same squared two floor, yellow (or white) building with an open courtyard entrance and possibly a sports ground behind. It was easy enough to find the teachers room, being in the exact same part as it would have been at An Hưng.

After waiting in the teachers room for about 30 minutes, I was greeted by my TA, Ms Huong. She was another local teacher here and was actually the dedicated English teacher too. The classes I was teaching were all grade 5 (the last before middle school) and they were the only ones that got a native teacher class at this school. I had to prove my worth it seems, but she looked more like a typical teacher, being in her 40’s and with veteran experience.

The classes went by OK, and the morning actually got better as I taught, with the first class being the rowdiest, and the final class being the least crazed. I was given a lot more leeway to teach here, but at the cost of a less strict discipline. That said, It went by fairly quick, since I had taught the same lessons at An Hung the day before, and I got back in the red taxi, ready for the next hour long trip. The driver tended to hang around, because there’s not much point driving 50 mins back, then instantly 50 minutes back to the school. He was one of the good ones as they say, and I often offered him snickers or mars bars.

The other big thing about having lunch was that in Vietnam they had a siesta between 11 and 2. 3 hours from classes is far more time than back home, so it was a time to eat some street food by the taxi rank, have a coffee and a chat with some other teachers, or even catch an hour of sleep if the morning school was close to the main accommodation.

As the classic Irish film Intermission’s tagline goes, “Life is what happens in between”, and that was definitely the case with these lunch breaks. So much banter could be had to find out about the state of other teachers accommodation, what they were going to do after the afternoon classes, who was having sex with who, where were the hidden gems in the maze of laneways, which places were worth checking out to play football, what trips were planned, why BME was being so crap with their new announcements via e-mail, and where the big weekend sessions were happening. All that and more would be discussed, likely over a few spring rolls with vermicelli noodles, or some fruit juices at moc cafe. Looking back at the internship, it was an incredibly social few hours for the most part, and I would quickly get to know other teachers each day over the food. Rebecca, Megan, Niamh, Chris, Jodie, Mel & Michael, among many others would often be sitting on a blue table eating bun cha, pho or nem and I would join in.

Up next, Thanh Liet and the notorious Co Nhue 2B….