Christmas can be weird here too.

The newspaper article quoted below is about Ho Chi Minh City, but it's similar in Hanoi - if you take out the religious part because about the only thing you see up here are lights, trees and Santas. It's kind of depressing.

The festivities climax on Christmas Eve, when it seems that half the city's 9 million residents take to the streets for something akin to a holiday rave. Churches overflow for midnight Mass while Vietnamese outside drink beer and spray each other with fake snow. It can take two hours to travel a few miles in District One as everything comes to a virtual standstill.

"Vietnamese want to integrate the country with the international society," said Che Huyen Bao Vy, wearing reindeer antlers and angel wings at a holiday display outside another shopping center in District One. The 21-year-old college student, along with two other reindeer angels, stood next to a blue Santa.

"I don't practice the religion, but I enjoy the Western culture a lot," she said. "Christmas Day, the Christmas spirit, is happy. It's a Christmas-spirit thing."

from "Vietnam Catches the Christmas Spirit."

John Howard

I'd be surprised if he's still alive - he'd be in his 90's. Though it's not unusual for someone to live that long, the "old Sea Daddy," as he sometimes called himself, was a former Marine who was among the first to enter radioactive Hiroshima at the end of WW II. He was also my high school science teacher.

Specifically, Mr. Howard taught me chemistry when I was in 11th grade and physics in 12th. Somehow knew how to get the most out of his students and, after nearly failing me in chemistry with a D in the first quarter, my marks gradually rose to a C, a B, and then a 92 on the final exam and an A for the last quarter.

Then came physics and another rough start. Once we got beyond vectors, it began to make sense. One of the most helpful things Mr. Howard did was to teach us one basic formula and then show us the steps to get from there to the other formulas we would need. With a few simple steps, we could get from an easy-to-remember formula to a more complicated one. It was so much easier, and made much more sense, than simply memorizing a one formula after another.

I thought about Mr. Howard when I was lesson planning for my reading class this morning. The units we teach are incredibly difficult for second-language learners - next week is a 2007 article from The Economist about the West's unfavorable response to the Hamas-Fatah coalition government in Palestine. My students frequently come across words and expressions that they may never see again, like "poster child" and "self-defeating machismo." Still more important from their point of view, is that they will likely be handed a final exam with words and concepts they never saw in class.

So, instead of just teaching them concepts and vocabulary from each unit, I've been trying to teach them how to look at a brand-new article and work, step-by-step, toward an accurate understanding of the most important parts. My goal has been to help them apply simple steps to reach a complicated goal.

The translation of this blog's header is "like teacher, like student." The old Sea Daddy apparently rubbed off on me. I don't know if he knew the concept of "teach others so they can teach others also" but I'm reminded again of how important it is in so many ways.

VTF is back!

Most of you know that Nancy and I were team leaders for ELIC's Vietnam Teaching Fellowship (VTF) from July 2007 till we had to go back to the USA for Nancy's cancer treatment. Last year there was no VTF team but the program is back in business for the 2010-2011 school year. This year's team of 3 teachers is led by a China Teaching Fellowship alum and the four of them will be teaching a few km west of here at Lomonoxop High School where our VTF team was supposed to be placed back in 2007.

VTF is a great program for those who have recently graduated college and are thinking about serving overseas. It gives them a chance to get their feet wet and see whether it's a long-term calling. In the three short years of the VTF program, sixteen teachers have participated. Of those, four are back teaching with ELIC in Vietnam, one has left ELIC but is beginning her fifth year in Vietnam, and one has been teaching in Laos since she left VTF. Six out of sixteen is a pretty good ratio!

We're pretty happy that the program is back. Our role this year is to be "on call" for the new leader as she breaks into her first year as a team leader. I guess we're still in the mentoring business and that's a good thing.

Fall Schedule

As the sun sinks slowly into the western sky, a second week of teaching comes to a close. I've been given two reading classes and two listening classes, all 4th year students. Half of the students have had me before so I'm hoping that will lead to some good connections. I'm trying to get all their names memorized and that's a pretty big task when you have a class with four people named Ha, three named Trang, two named Mai and two with exactly the same name (first, middle and last). Fewer names to memorize, I guess, but then you have to learn who's who. Fortunately, like people the world over, they tend to choose one place to sit and sit there every class.

The classes have been enjoyable and they seem to be tracking with the material so far - even the minority students who have had much less English and really struggle with the advanced coursebook.

That's the quick version of the teaching update.

100 Things

This really has nothing to do with teaching EFL but the prospect of moving to a new house, combined with a recent newspaper article, got me thinking again about living simply. Ever since reading Ron Sider's Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger more than 30 years ago, the idea of living simply has really appealed to me. That's not to say I didn't poke at the iTouch at Best Buy this summer or spend time online to find out if you can read a Kindle in the dark (you can't). But, it has made me think more about my stewardship of the other 90%. As my family tires of hearing me say, "You can only spend it once." Living simply allows me the freedom (or maybe it's the pleasure) of deciding the best way to spend it. I like that.

Chasing links from the newspaper article, I found a 2-year-old Time magazine item about people trying to cut their personal possessions down to one hundred things. (The article, How to Live With Just 100 Things, doesn't actually tell you how.) It seems to have originated with a guy named Dave Bruno. It would be tough for me to whittle things down to 100; in America I easily had more than 100 tools! But, once we get moved I think I may do an inventory and see what I can live without. Maybe I can get to five or six hundred?

I'll be back soon.

It's been a long hiatus with the summer travel. Now life is in an uproar because, in addition to the usual beginning of the semester stress, we need to move to a new place. Soon I hope to get back to contributing substance to my blogs but it won't be for a while. Stay tuned. You might even hear about some of the opportunities we checked into this past summer.

Rules

The sign says, "No parking area"

Vietnam has a decidedly un-American approach to rules. I've been in the USA for a couple weeks now and I've already noticed that - from turn lanes to grocery lines - most Americans are sticklers about rules. Admit it, have you ever counted the items in the cart in front of you at the express checkout lane?

In Vietnam, most rules are followed if 1) they are convenient and 2) they make sense.

But even that general rule is subject to change. For example, the city of Hanoi has been (sporadically) enforcing a rule to keep sidewalk vendors off the sidewalk for the last year or so. That's inconvenient for anyone who's used to buying food from the vendors and it doesn't make sense to take a source of income from vendors in a society where unemployment and underemployment is so high. Personally, I think the vendors gives Hanoi much of its character.

Rules are different even within the same country; elementary students in NY aren't expected to use "Ma'am" and "Sir" like they are in the South. Being able to adapt is important. It's what Paul said about becoming "all things to all men."

Locks of Love, Long Bien Style

About 3 years ago, padlocks began mysteriously showing up on the fence on Long Bien bridge. Most of them belong to young couples and were placed there as symbols of their love.

First, the couple finds a good location. Some have been known to measure the fence so they can be sure to buy locks that fit. Then they return with their steel locks, intertwine them, and snap them onto the fence. The last step is to throw away the keys as a sign of their commitment to each other. The couples believe the locks will bless their love and keep it alive.

Some locks have saved relationships. A 21-year-old student said that she and her boyfriend put their locks on the bridge two months ago. After a big fight, they were ready to break up,

"But then we went back to the bridge and saw our locks there. Through all the scorching sun and pouring rain of Hanoi, they are still holding onto each other. We immediately found a way to solve our problem. It's better then therapy."

from Vietnam News Service, 23 March 2010.

I Love Tết (but I missed it)

Tết, the Lunar New Year festival, is a time when life in the city calms down and everyone seems to be in a good mood. Hanoi is noisy and over-crowded, but when everyone heads back to their hometowns for the holiday it's so peaceful! (Imagine what it would be like if everyone in NYC or Atlanta whose roots were in another city left town for a week.)

I've come to really enjoy the peace and quiet of Tết but this year I missed it because I spent the 2-week school holiday with my kids and grandkids in Hawaii where our youngest daughter lives. No regrets, though. There will be another Tết, if I live that long, but I don't always have the chance to be around when my grandkids are born.

Hello USA!

This afternoon I was one of four judges for the "Hello USA" competition at school. Three teams, representing the Diplomatic Academy of Vietnam, the Center for American Studies at Hanoi University and the University of Social Science and Humanities, competed in games that tested their knowledge of American history and culture. Hanoi University won. They were quite impressive. We were a distant second. The photo below is some of the students setting up the rehearsal (Both photos were taken from one of my student's Facebook album - the guy sitting at the computer.).

Christmas 2009

For the first time, Christmas in Vietnam seemed as hectic as Christmas in the United States. Many people in Hanoi have begun to celebrate Christmas as a time to have a party. Unfortunately, most don't seem to "get it" any more than I understand the reason for having a party on St. Patrick's Day.

Two "Vietnam: Christmas traditions have developed for Nancy and me. One is making Christmas cookies with students. It's incredible how artistic they can be.

The other, which dates back to the 2007 VTF team, is helping to wrap and deliver presents for the preschools sponsored by CAMA Services. (The kids memorize lines from the Christmas story and put on a little play.) It wouldn't feel like Christmas in Vietnam without it.

 

(L to R) Innkeeper, Mary, Joseph

Shepherds and Angels

Magi

Twitter

Someone suggested that in order to understand Twitter, I need to try it out. So, here goes. But if you're in North America and you get tweets on your phone, you'll want to check out Setting sleep time for text messages. No one likes hearing their phone in the middle of the night!