Saturday, March 19, 2016

On Teaching English

Flexibility. One of the keys to travel. I know it well, so when the organization asked me to pilot an English program in an orphanage once a week, I said of course.

It is my third week, meaning I am practically a native on the bus, weaving in and out of scooters to catch it, wearing my mask, no longer staring at every landmark along the route to make sure I get off at the right stop. I am also taking full advantage of the hour rides by listening to podcasts, so I will be able to spew random facts about Hulk Hogan litigation, women’s wages, bipartisanship and pencils your way. Did you know that no one in the world actually knows how to make a pencil from scratch? Even simple technology is crazy.

Speaking of technology, I’m in awe of how connected I am despite being across the world. It feels like cheating. I have emailed and whatsapp’ed friends, Facetimed my sister, iMessaged my family and stalked everyone on Facebook. If it weren’t for the abundance of rice, the lack of the NCAA tourney, and the wave of pollution that greets me every morning*, I might just think I was in the States. Two months is no time at all, and adjusting has been very easy.

I went to a Bible study the other night - another comfort I have been fortunate to find - and some of the women are here for two years or indefinitely. I would have a much harder time adjusting if that were the case, and I secretly – or not so secretly - hope I don’t get called to do that down the road. Which means maybe I'll be called to do that down the road.

Ahh KFC! That's my stop. Walking to the headmaster's car, I wonder why Chipotle has yet to expand into Southeast Asia. I think the Vietnamese would embrace the burrito, and they have an endless supply of rice. Plus, people are used to food poisoning here, so that won't make headlines.

The headmaster doesn't answer this question, and I continue listening to my podcast on K-Pop, the Korean pop culture phenomenon. We pass through VinHomes, owned by VinGroup, the most powerful corporation in Vietnam. This is the Orange County of Vietnam, where homes are worth a billion dong, or 100,000 dollars. An hour later, the paparazzi has liberated K-Pop stars from forced isolation. We arrive at the orphanage, and I step outside and breath in the fresh, mostly unpolluted air.

The Vietnamese supporter and I spend the morning visiting the Phat Tich Pagoda, only a kilometer from the orphanage. It is said to be the place where Buddhism first entered Vietnam, and if the number of stairs were any indication of age, it would be really old. A woman asks to take her picture with me. I learn more about the tradition of giving food at the altar. Apparently, you can give food, pray, leave it for a few minutes, then retrieve it for good luck. I then wonder who's monitoring this behavior. Could I meander around a temple for awhile and snatch a package of Oreos on the way out under the guise of homage and luck? Out of respect for tradition, I decide not to find out.


Lunch is served at 11:30 and is literally farm to table. The duck, milk, fruit, vegetables. All fresh. All delicious.



Walking to the dining hall, we are accosted by young Vietnamese girls. As a white woman with wavy blonde hair and blue eyes, I am certainly novel in Hanoi, but here, I am the first of my kind. The Vietnamese men ask if I am married and suggest I stay in Vietnam and marry one of them. Afterall, 27 is a lucky age for getting married. Since I am technically 28, because I have to count the time in my mothers womb, this luck no longer applies to me, so I assume I am free to go back to America.

After lunch and my siesta, it's time to teach. We go around the room and introduce ourselves, though I have already given up on learning all forty names. I just mumble syllables such as uh, ah, on and assume I am calling on someone. I am Teacher Anna from America.

The children are very enthusiastic about learning, although I’m slightly skeptical as to how much knowledge I’m imparting. I didn’t sign up to be an English teacher for a reason. I don’t know how to teach English. My last lesson went something like this:

Pronunciation.
G.
Hard and soft.
Hard at the beginning of the word... unless it’s soft. Give, giraffe.
Hard in the middle of the word... unless it’s soft. Forgive, garage.
Hard at the end of the word, unless it’s – no wait, it’s always hard! Yay!! Dog.

As annoying as pronunciation is, today I am teaching the one thing I would change about English, the number system. Where the heck did eleven come from - for that matter, the entirety of the teens?

I have mastered 1 – 10 in Vietnamese, which essentially means I have mastered every number. In learning the English counting system, however, students often stumble on eleven, twelve, thirteen and fifteen. I can’t blame them. Eleven and twelve are completely random, and consistency implies threeteen and fiveteen. No wonder American children struggle with math – their first introduction shows no logic. I would also change our foot/yard/mile system, because that makes no sense either. For that matter, I’m content switching to Celcius so I can stop doing the 9/5 + 32 calculation every time I’m discussing weather with a foreigner.


I keep these thoughts to myself, and we make it through the two hours counting, playing games, and learning a song. There were shouts and screams of enthusiasm, so I assume the children have mastered the numbers. The time is four o'clock, which should be the time we depart for the trek into the city, but since the Vietnamese are similar to cable companies when it comes to timeliness, it could be four, it could be five. We sit by the lake while waiting, and a group of students admires my paleness, sitting in a circle, and staring at my bright blue eyes.



Should I dance? Should I sing? Should I show them the correct form for overhead squats? My question is answered when they ask my to sing. I perform a rendition of Five Little Monkeys, and they ask for my autograph.* I oblige, signing, “Lots of love from America” (We’re not all crazy)!!!, just as our driver arrives. Promptly at five o'clock. I hop in, grateful for flexibility.

* Seriously, pollution is not a joke. I have started donning the pollution mask, which has inspired a subsidiary of Pimp My Religious Head Garb – Pimp My Pollution Head Garb.
* The only time I will be asked for my autograph after singing.

Picture Descriptions:
1) Big Buddha
2) My favorite altar
3) View from the pagoda's top
4 - 6) Corn, Papaya, Tomatoes. You can figure out which is which.
7) The latest number whizzes
8) A riveting crossword competition
9) To break up the silence during the staring session, I took their picture
10) The boy who dubbed me Teacher Anna from America

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