Life at the Friendship Village
30th December 2010
After the concert Christmas day was remarkably quiet. We were woken for breakfast at 6:15am (earlier than our usual 7am), but when someone makes you breakfast you can't complain! I then took a nap until it was time to go for lunch at 10.30am. After some very enthusiastic veterans attempted to converse with us in Vietnamese we retreated to our room for an afternoon of blog writing since it was a bit windy and rainy. In the evening we enjoyed a beer at the karaoke bar down the street, so that we could skype (video call) our families. It was great to speak to them, though we were a little jealous of the spreads they had planned for lunch!
This week I re-joined Aaron in the mornings in the special education class 2. Having been a little sceptical about how much assistance I was in this class, last week I had ventured to class 3. On our initial tour of the school at virtually all the classes our translator said the teacher welcomed us to join their class. In class 3 I found two dedicated teachers who showed up on time and spent the first hour and a half teaching maths and writing. They let the children have a half hour break followed by half an hour of drawing before lunch. I learnt how to count to ten in Vietnamese and enjoyed helping the children with their counting, addition and subtraction. When I was writing some sums for one of the children Tao told me not to write any sums higher than 10. She knew what level all the kids were and I could tell they liked her as they all wanted to sit at the same table as her. I did however wonder how much the children got out of the writing exercise as it only involved a page of writing the same word over and over. I only left the class later in the week when 2 Danish volunteers who had been coming there for a couple of months showed up and pointed out there were now more volunteers than needed in the class.
This morning in special ed 2 I worked with a small boy and a girl named Viem, who actually has better maths skills than any of the pupils in special ed 3. She enjoyed the attention and kept asking for more questions from me! We discovered though that none of the rest of the class could count to 3 and even if you spent all morning with them and they didn't seem to make much progress. I can sympathise why it might be more helpful to develop other skills with them.
At lunch time I ventured out of the friendship village to the only tailor on the street. The street is not well drained and there is no pavement so it's always a challenge dodging the muddy puddles and passing vehicles. Since tailor made suits are a good bargain in Vietnam I ordered one earlier this week in case I need it for work in Sydney. The shop is a small family run business and no-one speaks much English. However the young lady was very friendly and keen to learn the words 'jacket', 'skirt' and 'trousers' when I pointed to them in a magazine. Today I found she had run out of fabric for the skirt, but the jacket and trousers were ready. The jacket wasn't lined (apparently this is the local style in Vietnam - presumably to save money) but otherwise the suite was beautiful. The 2 piece suite came to 500,000 dong (only $25)! I tried to offer her a tip but the sweet lady smiled and politely declined. Her and her grandma happily waved me off, obviously pleased to have had an international customer, a rare opportunity in the suburbs of Hanoi.
A photo of the suite is at the end of this blog
After flower class I returned to my regular habit of frequenting an internet cafe for the bargainous price of about $0.15 an hour. I received an email from Katy, an old friend of mine who was travelling through Vietnam in the opposite direction. It was such a shame that we missed each other, but at least we have rekindled our friendship and really enjoyed reading each other's blogs!
After the concert Christmas day was remarkably quiet. We were woken for breakfast at 6:15am (earlier than our usual 7am), but when someone makes you breakfast you can't complain! I then took a nap until it was time to go for lunch at 10.30am. After some very enthusiastic veterans attempted to converse with us in Vietnamese we retreated to our room for an afternoon of blog writing since it was a bit windy and rainy. In the evening we enjoyed a beer at the karaoke bar down the street, so that we could skype (video call) our families. It was great to speak to them, though we were a little jealous of the spreads they had planned for lunch!
This week I re-joined Aaron in the mornings in the special education class 2. Having been a little sceptical about how much assistance I was in this class, last week I had ventured to class 3. On our initial tour of the school at virtually all the classes our translator said the teacher welcomed us to join their class. In class 3 I found two dedicated teachers who showed up on time and spent the first hour and a half teaching maths and writing. They let the children have a half hour break followed by half an hour of drawing before lunch. I learnt how to count to ten in Vietnamese and enjoyed helping the children with their counting, addition and subtraction. When I was writing some sums for one of the children Tao told me not to write any sums higher than 10. She knew what level all the kids were and I could tell they liked her as they all wanted to sit at the same table as her. I did however wonder how much the children got out of the writing exercise as it only involved a page of writing the same word over and over. I only left the class later in the week when 2 Danish volunteers who had been coming there for a couple of months showed up and pointed out there were now more volunteers than needed in the class.
This morning in special ed 2 I worked with a small boy and a girl named Viem, who actually has better maths skills than any of the pupils in special ed 3. She enjoyed the attention and kept asking for more questions from me! We discovered though that none of the rest of the class could count to 3 and even if you spent all morning with them and they didn't seem to make much progress. I can sympathise why it might be more helpful to develop other skills with them.
At lunch time I ventured out of the friendship village to the only tailor on the street. The street is not well drained and there is no pavement so it's always a challenge dodging the muddy puddles and passing vehicles. Since tailor made suits are a good bargain in Vietnam I ordered one earlier this week in case I need it for work in Sydney. The shop is a small family run business and no-one speaks much English. However the young lady was very friendly and keen to learn the words 'jacket', 'skirt' and 'trousers' when I pointed to them in a magazine. Today I found she had run out of fabric for the skirt, but the jacket and trousers were ready. The jacket wasn't lined (apparently this is the local style in Vietnam - presumably to save money) but otherwise the suite was beautiful. The 2 piece suite came to 500,000 dong (only $25)! I tried to offer her a tip but the sweet lady smiled and politely declined. Her and her grandma happily waved me off, obviously pleased to have had an international customer, a rare opportunity in the suburbs of Hanoi.
A photo of the suite is at the end of this blog
After flower class I returned to my regular habit of frequenting an internet cafe for the bargainous price of about $0.15 an hour. I received an email from Katy, an old friend of mine who was travelling through Vietnam in the opposite direction. It was such a shame that we missed each other, but at least we have rekindled our friendship and really enjoyed reading each other's blogs!
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