Hi everyone! It's been a while since I last updated. Things were (and still are) pretty stressful for a while, but I'm still here.
I don't like to talk about work too much on a public blog, but it has been an adjustment at times. I still find it challenging to plan 20 hours worth of a lessons each week. Sometimes I don't feel that creative or charismatic, but the show must go on! I don't think I'm a very good teacher yet, but I'm trying to get better.
There's been a lot of change at my company in the last few months. We have a contract with the government to put teachers into the public schools. The issue is that the classes are enormous in these public school classes, it's hard to manage the dozens of kids, and the teaching resources are rather lacking. Some schools don't have AC and are hot as a brick oven. For the moment, I only teach lessons at the private language centers, but I probably will have to change that soon. It might not be so bad. The public school kids seem nicer than the wealthy entitled kids I usually teach.
Second, I feel that I'm trapping myself in an expat bubble. Almost all of my friends work for the same company. One thing I learned from graduate school is that you don't want just one group of friends. I used to hang out with only chemists. Imagine how strange and awkward that must have been! (and it was) I want to have a mix of expats and locals for friends. The language barrier can be an issue sometimes with Vietnamese people. Time to learn the language fast, I suppose! Anyway, I'll try other social opportunities like clubs, organizations, and lessons in things like Salsa dancing. If I only wanted friends from the West...I would have stayed there!
Also, I need a motorcycle. I think I've said that before, but I'm moving on that now. It's not fun thinking about going places in terms of how much I'll need to pay the motorcycle taxi driver. Also, haggling all the time gets old.
There's more I have to say, but I'll let that wait for another blog post. What I write here is only a small fraction of what I'm experiencing on this grand adventure!
