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| How to tell the time |
Our Orientation Week has come to an end in Hanoi and it has been busy but fun and really useful. Rob hadn't even realised we hadn't posted for a week, it has gone by so quickly. On Monday and Tuesday we had more learning and talks getting us ready to teach. We had a fantastic guy called Alex who teaches in Malaysia for ELC (the place who sort our placements). We also began to learn some Vietnamese and can now count to 30 and say basic greetings. We had some new friends - Hannah and Ed - round for a few rounds of President and beer. We also spent a lovely evening by West Lake hanging out with Sabrina and getting some delicious ice cream milkshakes after a hot hot day. Fortunately the weather broke and it rained extremely heavily, so much so we could barely see out of our window - see the photos below.
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| Mr Blobby on Tour |
It was on one of these slightly cooler days that we started the next part of the work permit process - the dreaded health check. This was a slightly bizarre experience but apparently we are both fit to work. The health check consisted of a very public blood test, blood pressure, weight, height, general examination, eye, nose, mouth, throat, dental, X-ray, Ultrasound, urine sample and we think that is it.... Anyway we left the health check to head back for more internship lectures and in one of these we met our new bosses - BME. These talks went long into the evening so we got an early night after desperately searching the internet to stream an episode of Battlestar Galatcica and failing (the wifi is still superb though, GOT has not been missed yet!).
The next morning (Thursday 24th August) we had more Vietnamese lessons and then the afternoon was spent observing a class at a local school with a BME teacher. This was a surreal experience. Upon arrival at the school we were greeted like rock stars with the children running towards the bus, screaming and wanting to give us high fives. When we entered the classroom the normally well-behaved children burst into cheers and laughter. The lesson was really useful to observe, Jonny taught them all about daily routines and given they are only about 10 years old their English was good. It was a really motivational experience. We spent Thursday evening with the wonderful Liz, sitting out on our balcony and enjoying some really expensive beer - four tinnies for about £1.50.
Friday was our last full day of Orientation Week. We visited a local village in the morning which specialises in making pottery (see picture to the right and Rob in the Pottery Workshop below). We went and observed this being made and then wandered the village checking out the local market and the Red River (see left). After grabbing dinner it was time to head to the alcohol fuelled Farewell Drinks which were enormous fun. We both sang karaoke - Summer Nights of course. Rob was fairly confident but Becky looked like she was about to shit her pants, but as Rob said if you can sing in front of 140 contemporaries you can probably teach a class of 50. We spent most of our evening with Lucy and Brent taking full advantage of Brent's very strong arms for lots of beers (celebrations can be seen below).
Today was essentially a move in day - we left the hotel around midday and ended up in our new room which is already looking quite homely. Becky got decorating almost as soon as we got into the room - see below. We then headed out to get a few essentials, like toilet paper and water, and grab some lunch. We spent the evening bonding with some of our new housemates - Liv, Sabrina, Rachel and Louise - over pizza takeaway. The delivery of the pizza caused more stress than you can imagine as we don't really understand what our address is or where we are! But it allowed Rob to save the day and he was very happy/relieved when the pizza arrived. Tomorrow we are doing some more teacher training and then we both teach our first trial class on Tuesday.
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