Day 20

What a busy couple of days… It has been a while since my last post but I’m back for updates. Its amazing how the days fly by when you are only teaching 4 hours a day and exploring as much as you can for the rest. I’m starting to get the hang of the whole teaching thing and its nice to feel organized when you walk in the classroom even if its only with games for the kids to play.

Yesterday was a particularly big day here in Saigon. We had class in the morning, where I was teaching at a girls shelter. This was particularly fun because up until that point I had only taught all boys. The girls of this age group were way more advanced than the boys and way better behaved. They were also extremely shy though, probably because im the strangest looking human they have ever seen haha.

After morning class ended Matt and I had a personal tour of a few Saigon gems that are close by our hostel. Firstly we visited a Pho restaurant, which is a native Vietnamese noodle soup- amazingly delicious. The typical Pho is served as noodles, beef and broth with a plate of bean sprouts, kale, and a type of basil which you add and spice up with chilis and chili sauce. I tend to overdo the chili sauce and start sweating every time I have it…

From there Matt wanted to get iced café which we have heard so much about so Thao, (our guide and one of the staff at VPV) took us to one of the coffee shops nearby. According to Thao, while most of us back home go out to bars at night to socialize, the Vietnamese go for coffee- so she was a reliable source for good coffee. I’m not a huge coffee drinker but I was thoroughly impressed by the whole experience. We walked in through a massive set of plain double doors into a small oasis in the middle of the city. Tropical trees, a waterfall, a stream you have to hop across on rocks just to get to the tables. And the coffee was equally as well crafted.

The afternoon lesson was a group of university students who wanted to practice their interviewing skills. And even though they struggled mightily with it all it made me happy that I knew they were improving. Within a two hour period I knew they were better prepared than many of their classmates, and within a couple of weeks, hopefully they will be ready to apply for jobs in their fields of study.

Yesterday was Andy’s last day and so we had a big night out on the town with the whole group. It was great to get the whole crew together for a night. I’ve gotten really close with the 14 of us that are still here and I’m sad to see Andy go. This weekend we booked a tour of the Chu Chi Tunnels, which are to the North of Saigon. The chu chi region has a network of miles and miles of underground tunnels that were used by the Socialist Republic of Vietnam during the Vietnam war. I’m looking forward to crawling though some history tomorrow…