Hanoi Gray

Hello and xin chào! This post comes by request: I’ll be talking a bit about my experiences in the classroom so far. The center I teach at accepts students from ages 4 to 15, broken down into eight levels: Pre-School (4-5), Pre-Starters (6-7), Starters (7-9), Movers (8-10), Flyers (9-11), and then three more levels for older kids. When I got my work schedule and saw that I would be teaching almost exclusively the younger classes, I was admittedly a little distraught. I teach one Pre-School class, four Pre-Starters classes, two Starters classes, and one Flyers class, so my students are mostly 6-8 years old. Luckily, the center provides the native teachers with teaching assistants, two in Pre-School and Pre-Starters classes and one in the other classes. Their role is basically to manage the classroom and student behavior as well as provide Vietnamese translation when the need arises. In the end, I've actually come to enjoy teaching the little kids—it's pretty easy to do with th...

Hello and xin chào ! Now that I'm basically settled in—phone fiasco behind me, regularly commuting on my beat-up Yamaha Nouvo motorbike, nearing my first full paycheck—I can post at a much faster clip than before. About a month ago, I had an extra day off for Vietnam's National Day, which commemorates Vietnam's Declaration of Independence from the French on September 2, 1945. Around Hanoi, lots of national flags were popping up (including on my street—see the header image of the blog), as were ample propaganda banners and posters. Since September 2 was a Sunday, both Sunday (one of my regular days off) and Monday were both holidays. I took the opportunity to take a brief trip to a small town in the mountains called Mai Châu, which I had only read about on a whim in my Lonely Planet book. It was a four-hour van ride from Hanoi, complete with beautiful scenery and unrelenting Vietnamese EDM pumped out to the half-asleep passengers (for the benefit of the driver, I assume). ...

Hello and  xin chào ! As promised, here's the final sightseeing post, focused on the Temple of Literature, or Văn Miếu , and Hoàn Kiếm Lake. This post is going to be light on text because (1) I've fallen so far behind on blogging and (2) I don't really know much about what you'll see in the pictures. Thanks to Wikipedia, I can tell you that the Temple of Literature is a Confucian temple built in 1070, and from 1076 to 1779, it housed Vietnam's first university. (Incidentally, it's also about half a mile from my apartment.) Walking through the entrance courtyard. The temple consists of five successive courtyards arranged in a straight line. The first two courtyards as you enter are primarily serene gardens, providing a welcome dose of green space. The third has a large reflecting pool flanked by the Stelae of Doctors—massive slabs of stone inscribed with inscribed with the names of 1,300+ successful exam takers from 1442 to 1779. At the bottom of the s...

Hello and xin chào ! After an unplanned hiatus, I'm back to post about things that I did over a month ago. (Losing your phone and getting locked out of iCloud in a foreign country totally throws you off balance, so to speak.) At some point during the whirlwind that was my first week here, the sightseeing component of orientation brought me to the Vietnam Military History Museum. Upon entry into the museum's grounds (much of it is outdoors), I was greeted by the Flag Tower of Hanoi, built in 1812 for some military purpose? The internet is not helping me with this one. Given the oppressive heat, I was relieved that you couldn't climb to the top. What was more interesting was the vast array of military vehicles parked just beyond it. Some were [North] Vietnamese; some were American. There was also an indoor portion with various war paraphernalia from the wars against the French and Americans, including the boots of a B-52 pilot and South Vietnamese torture instrumen...