What happened to Richard?

If you're a regular visitor to this blog, surely you must be wondering what on earth has happened to me? Why haven't there been any updates for 2 months?

The sad truth is that working life opened its jaws and swallowed me whole. Since the end of May my weekly schedule was upped from 24 hours to between 26 and 30 (current status) hours per week, because I agreed to be one of two teachers on an intensive (10 hours per week) course with a corporate class. The eight students in that group are from Southern Service Flight Company (SSFC), a helicopter charter service that works closely with the oil and petroleum industry in Vung Tau, flying workers to and from the rigs - "off-shore" is the local parlance. They will then be heading off to Sydney - of all places - at the end of August for a 10-week course at AICL, which incidentally is a training partner with good old TAFE NSW - Sydney Institute. Part of my contribution to the course at ILA has been to give an Australian slant to the teaching - accent, cultural preparation, information about living in Australia, etc. It's been hard work to have the extra hours but rewarding to be with the class.

However, I fervently hope that when I come back to Vung Tau in mid-August (after my 2 weeks back home in Australia) that my schedule will be back to normal. That having been said, there is a possibility of another group from SSFC starting with us at ILA in September ...

Lately, though I have been clawing back a little bit of me-time. I tend to wake up very early nowadays - before 6am - and can't always get back to sleep. On Monday morning I decided to get up and went for a walk. The initial plan was to go just as far as my new favourite beach and back to take some photos. But I ended up walking around the whole base of Small Mountain and back home - a distance of 6-8 kilometres! This morning (Wednesday) I took a shorter walk up to the Jesus statue and back home, then got on the mountain bike and rode off for breakfast and a trip to the market. And now, of course, I'm making some time to bring you new and exciting stories from A small part of Vietnam!

A different teaching experience

On Monday night I was a guest teacher at a community college nearby my home. It is an adult class with more than 30 students in a Vietnamese school classroom. Those of you who have been to school in Asia may recognise the description. There are two doors - one for the teachers and one for the students. Two large blackboards and a raised dais for the teacher and the desk. The students sit in rows of long desks - some on forms and some on chairs.

4 of the students in this class come from Binh Chau town which is 80 kilometres drive away, and they do this 3 nights a week, then return home to work the next day. They are secondary teachers. The ages of the students range between early 20s and mid-late 40s. I enjoyed the experience very much - I hope that they did too.

The real value was that they do not often have the opportunity to speak with and listen to native English speakers, so there were lots of questions before we really got started on the lesson I'd prepared. Seeing that Valentine's Day has just passed, I made this and marriage the theme for the night. We started by discussing whether Valentine's Day is important to couples and lovers, who should give (men/women/both) and what the expectations are, including what the students would like to receive. Before the groups reported back I also asked them to poll who is married and single in their group, so that they could consider whether there is a difference in views. Nope - Vietnamese are very romantic people!