Class of 2012

You don't have to travel overseas to experience a culture gap. The Beloit College Mindset List is published every year to make people feel old - I mean, to help professors understand that some of their references may not be understood by the incoming freshmen. Here are some highlights from this year's list:

Most students entering college for the first time this fall were born in 1990. For these students, Sammy Davis Jr., Jim Henson, Ryan White, Stevie Ray Vaughan and Freddy Krueger have always been dead.

• GPS satellite navigation systems have always been available.
• Gas stations have never fixed flats, but most serve cappuccino.
• Electronic filing of tax returns has always been an option.
• Films have never been X rated, only NC-17.
• Students have always been "Rocking the Vote.”
• Clarence Thomas has always sat on the Supreme Court.
• College grads have always been able to Teach for America.
• IBM has never made typewriters.
• There has always been Pearl Jam.
• Pee-Wee has never been in his playhouse during the day.
• They may have been given a Nintendo Game Boy to play with in the crib.
• Lenin’s name has never been on a major city in Russia.
• Caller ID has always been available on phones.
• They never heard an attendant ask “Want me to check under the hood?”
• Iced tea has always come in cans and bottles.
• Soft drink refills have always been free.
• They have never known life without Seinfeld references.
• Windows 3.0 operating system made IBM PCs user-friendly the year they were born.
• The Hubble Space Telescope has always been in space.
• There have always been charter schools.

If you want to see the whole list, you can find it at http://www.beloit.edu/mindset/2012.php.

The Scavenger Hunt

Saturday started off with 3 hours worth of orientation for observing the new teachers this week as they do their teaching practicum at DAV (Diplomatic Academy of Vietnam). The vice-dean of the English department is also serving as a mentor/observer, so she was there too. She came armed with a cassette tape of two English news broadcasts she wanted me to listen to and a transcript to correct. Since I don't have a cassette player, I headed over to campus about 1:30 to check the transcript. It didn't take long - just lots of minor corrections.

From 4-7 we were supposed to have a scavenger hunt for VTF. But, Friday one of our good Vietnamese friends (Lien) called to invite us to her house to celebrate its renovation - the family had added two floors, upgraded the kitchen, and done a lot of other work. She had been trying for a couple of weeks to try to get the three families she was inviting to mesh with a date and we didn't want to mess it up. So we moved the scavenger hunt to Sunday afternoon. Plus, that would give VTF Saturday night to work on their lesson plans.

Unfortunately, some of them were thinking that putting it off to Sunday night would be a good idea. But we did the scavenger hunt anyway and they were finished and on their way back home by 7 PM.

What do you look for on a scavenger hunt in Hanoi? Stuff like:

• A photo of a live animal.
• A photo of a cooked animal (whole).
• A photo of someone on your team talking with a child.
• A photo of an artist at work.
• A photo of you in a store downtown. One extra point if the shop owner is in the photo.
• Team photo with a Colonel Sanders statue.
• Team photo with everyone wearing a conical hat.
  
• Team photo of you drinking coffee or fruit drinks at a café.
• A bus ticket stub.
• A pair of chopsticks or a new pair of plastic sandals.
• Three pieces of fruit.
• A postcard of Hanoi.
• A single-use packet of shampoo.
• A Vietnamese postage stamp.
• A bottle of “Joy” brand water.
• Ten business cards from ten places you’ve never been.

There were about 40 items in all. The Dalat team pulled off a 38-35 win.

So, it wasn't as flashy as the Olympics, but sending them out without their team leaders brought them back feeling a little more comfortable about negotiating Vietnam and, hopefully, happy about the start of some good friendships.

New Relationships & New Schedules

Tonight I met with a young man and his friend who want me to help them with their English. The guy's dad is the guard who works near our house. A while back he asked if I'd be willing to tutor them and we were finally able to meet tonight. The plan is to begin this weekend and trade one hour of English for one hour of Vietnamese. Maybe this is the start of some new friendships.

Until this afternoon, my boss at the Diplomatic Academy thought I was still in the US. I've been doing some work for the department via email over the summer so it's not that I've been hiding out these last ten days - the subject just never came up. But the new textbook for the juniors needs a few finishing touches before it goes to the printer, so tomorrow I'll head over to the campus to see if I can help with that. The fall teaching schedules are ready too.

It's been nice to be back early enough this year to get some things in place before training ends.

Teamwork

A few months ago I came across an online news article about a young woman from the midwest who will spend a year teaching on the outskirts of Hanoi as part of the Fulbright program. Her blog is frighteningly titled, "Things That Could Kill Me in Vietnam".

Last night she posted that she'd arrived in VN. She got through immigration with the "scary visa people in military uniforms" and got her bags, but apparently she was on her own when it came to getting to her school. She somehow ended up paying $120 for what should have been a $20 taxi ride. She arrived at the hotel with no one to tell her that it's normal for the hotel to hold your passport when you check in. All this happened in the wee hours of the morning after the long flight from the US.

I'm glad she's still writing about it from here and hasn't turned around and headed back to the airport. And I hope she makes good friends quickly and starts to feel more at home in her neighborhood.

But reading her story got me thinking about how much I appreciate ELI's team approach to teaching. While Nancy and I can negotiate VN pretty well these days, the experience we had 8 years ago of having friends, old and new, on the other side of the "scary visa people" sure made life a lot easier and more enjoyable.

Now we get to be the people on the other side. It's been fun doing for others what others have done for us.