The Honeymoon is over....

The first week of Vietnam was a literal trap. We were thrusted into fun activity after fun activity to distract us from the unavoidable despair that was headed our way.

The weekend flew by pretty quickly, with a trip to the Ben Thanh markets, bargaining like a local followed closely by easily the worst massage experience I have ever experienced (Honestly guys, I was attacked), it was Sunday night and the sheer terror of the weeks classes were approaching.

Arriving at class crusty-eyed and flattened tails we were ready. Or so we thought. The first half of the morning we discussed teaching methods and styles, highlighting the advantages and disadvantages...Blah blah blah

That’s when we are hit with the cold hard truth... We will be presenting a lesson plan...Tomorrow. Less than 5 hours of actual teaching information and we have to plan a lesson.

Fan-bloody-Tastc. We leave the classroom at 4.30pm with the intimate threat of the templates being emailed out at 5pm, working out how many family fun mart beers we can down in the meantime. The old kiwi “she’ll be right” mentality kicks in, I put pen to paper and give it a fair whack. After about 20 minutes of getting the cogs turning I finish my last section of the lesson plan and call it a night.

The next day everyone in the class presents their lesson plans, and I tell you what, I’m in a room full of straight up geniuses. The whole day was lesson plan after lesson plan, each one better than the last. I’m feeling like a fish in a suit at this point, completely out of my depth. I stand up, say my bit and wait to be torn a new one. The thing about these sorts of exercises, I don’t mind being loud, bubbly and out there, until it’s deliberate. When I’m standing in a room full of people and they are watching me specifically, I flop. I’m my own worst enemy when it comes to these things. So I took my feedback on the chin, adapted and moved on. Until we were given our next assignment. We were told that on Sunday (currently Wednesday) we were travelling to a language centre to teach our first class. Luckily we were partnered up. We had to teach two classes at 1 ¾ hours a pop. As there are an uneven number of people on our course, I was lucky enough to have two separate Partners, which were my saving grace throughout the absolute shit storm that was my lessons.

After smashing out not one but two lesson plans for two vastly different classes (one was Basic English, apple and banana kind of deal, the other, about tourist graffiti. Screw me right??) The only logical thing to do was reward myself with far too many 80cent beers. A blur of a night later (and a marriage proposal, but I’ll get to that another time) by alarm was screeching and it was time to present. Thankfully for the assessor I had already torn myself to shreds the night before so her job was already done.

We had the Friday/Saturday to compose ourselves before we headed to the learning centre on Sunday morning at 6am.

(Saturday we did a day trip to the Mekong Delta, which will be a story on its own because it was fantastic).

D-Day.

Stumbling down to the lobby at 6am and of course I’m the last on the bus. Headed to the centre I find myself full of hope. Like a lamb to the slaughter I had no idea what is coming. In summary...

My first lesson: Tourist graffiti

The work we were given to teach these kids was far too advanced. These were 10-12 year olds, learning a second language given words like “Egyptologist” “Monument” and a question that read “What is the Chinese national tourist administration’s stance on tourist graffiti”? – Like what the actual hell?? Years 9’s are barely learning that and here we are trying to explain it to ESL learners. So all planning went out the window as we had to spend the time explaining words like “responsibility” and “civilised”. Blank stares and confused faces.

The second class were around the ages of 5-7 and this is where the wheels well and truly fell off. In contrast to the other group we had, they knew hardly anything. Within 10 minutes of being on the class we knew this lesson plan was out the window. After playing “baby shark” literally like 10 times, using all the paper we could get our hands on and getting the kids to should apple as loud as they can, the sound of the bell was a god send. After the last kid left, I turned around and just lost my shit. Everyone was so supportive but I couldn’t help but feel I had failed. I have left everything I have ever known teach, and I couldn’t even get the kids to stop drawing boobs on the board (which is refreshing to know that young boys are the same in every culture).

A few family fun mart beers later and I feel completely shattered. The saying it can only go up from here is pretty spot on cause I feel pretty damn low.

Tomorrow is a new week! So watch this space and we will see how it goes!