Day 16- First Day of Teaching

I feel like I finally started what I came here to do. Today was my first chance to teach English to anyone and it feels nice to actually do something philanthropic… So much of what I have done in the past 16 days has completely revolved around what I want- what I want to do, see, experience. Its nice to have such freedom, but I’ve come to realize that without a purpose in our lives (though to this point it has been experiencing all that I can) the sense of accomplishment seems to fade away. I’ve done so much in the past couple of weeks but I guess I don’t like everything being so egocentric all of the time. Today that changed completely.

We officially started our teaching duties this morning and it was awesome. One thing that I didn’t realize is that English tutoring was also available to anyone who sought it out, regardless of age or level. This afternoon a group of older kids (calling them kids feels a bit weird since they were 19, 20 and 23) came to the Peace House for 2 and a half hours for a lesson. It makes sense that you could get English lessons at any age… The lessons are really open format which is hard because there is no structure whatsoever, and on top of that you have no idea how much English any of them actually know. We played a few get to know you games really just learned about one another for the first 30 minutes. I found out Thao and Phoun were both at university and lived with their parents. They were both studying some form of business- Thao studies marketing and commerce and Phoung, real estate. Its great because with my own background in business I think I was able to give them some good business practice. Hung was no longer in school but was preparing for interviews which if passed, would allow him to go on to flight school and become a pilot.

I found it pretty inspiring that those three had such big dreams and were really tackling them head on by studying English in their free time… It was honestly fun to talk to them. I thought that Phoung knew little to no English, but it turns out was just extremely shy and didn’t like speaking in front of the group because she was self conscious. Makes sense. So when the lesson devolved from structured practice to just conversation (which is extremely useful because just putting them in a social setting where they are forced to use English with someone who has lots of practice, is a great way to learn) I had a great talk with her about everything under the sun. Food, music, movies, sports, school… I feel like I know her so well. We used spare sheets of paper to draw pictures or just pantomime clues to each other until we were on the same page. And it was pretty fun to teach her about my home and learn about hers. Im going to really enjoy teaching here.

After the lesson concluded and we scarfed down some pork, steamed rice and some sort of omelet thing. The crew hit the streets for a night time walk and we bought an extensive collection of bootlegged dvds… 75 cents a piece. Down time is pretty necessary here and we are all looking forward to sharing our favorite movies with each other…