Sunday, (the 17th) was the last day that I would stay in the Thanh Truc house, the house I have been staying at for the last two weeks in the center. This post will cover the events of yesterday (I was too exhausted to catch up on my writing yesterday). I now get to live in a new house now - and have a new family to get to know!
The was tired that morning, still exhausted from the all the events that occurred on Sunday. One of my brother's, Manh, decided to sleep over in my room, and so I gave him my sleeping bag to sleep in the room. He told me that I would miss all of the brother's and that I would have to visit them everyday (which I always seem to do out of habit). Manh had to tend to morning chores at 5:00, so I set my alarm the night before. After waving him off at his wake up time, I decided to sleep in another hour. At about six, I jumped up out of bed and grabbed all my dirty clothes to go wash them. By that time my brother's were still tending to their chores. Washing my clothes has actually been rather fun for me, having been a long time since I've had to hand wash my clothes for a long period of time. Humming away for about half an hour, I finished washing and hung up all my clothes. Breakfast time.
Ua, the director's daughter, asked me if I would want to go and have breakfast out at a small restaurant about ten minutes away by walking. I agreed and so we met up and walked over to the outdoor restaurant. Walking around the streets of Hue was a big difference then going by motorbike. The feeling of freedom and the wind pressing against my face was gone. People zipped by on their vehicles and bikes, weaving back and forth to find the closest route to their destinations. The sky that morning was still cloudy, the smell of the streets wrought with gasoline. Debris flew about, and was met with the broom. I've noticed that the Vietnamese take cleanliness quite seriously, noticing people sweeping at every single location that I've been to. Even if its a twig or two, there is someone sweeping debris away. Anyways, upon reaching the restaurant, we ordered two bowls of spicy noodles, chatting over my time thus far in Vietnam. She told me that she is to have the screw removed from her spine from her last surgery about two years ago, a surgery to fix her scoliosis. This Friday, she said that she is going to fly out to Hanoi to check in with her doctor to figure out when she needs to have the surgery. Having this back problem made me wonder how she kept up with her organ practice and studies, but she told me she just worked through the exhaustion and soreness. The meal cost about two dollars and I insisted that this time I pay for the meal, since last time she payed for our smoothies over at the nearby cafe. Coming back to the center, I grabbed my teaching materials and went over to the library to prepare to teach the primary school students.
Today's lesson was primarily vocabulary based, as I found some old sheets of vocabulary in Vietnamese and English. I taught them the names of different common household objects and also parts of the body. I even taught them the "Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes Song," a song that I remember teaching to my Thai students in my summer of junior year in High School. Their enthusiasm with the song was amusing, as they sang the song so fast that I had to incorporate hand motions to make them slow down. The second half of class, I decided to allow them to watch a movie, while I translated it into English for them. Today was a film on tigers, as the small children loved seeing films based on animals, such as Happy Feet, which I was told was one of the favorite movies. When time was up for the class, I asked them to help me clean up the room, noticing trash scattered about the room. Moving time!
My brothers and I cleaned up my room and packed up all my things. Shortly after teaching my class, I went down to see the secretary/assistant director Ms. Minh to ask for the key of my new room I was moving into. She gave me the key to the room and also a key to the center, a sign of trust between the center and me (the center locks its entrance at around 10:00 pm). Having finished up with my packing, my brothers, Bao, Hai, and Manh helped lug all my items over to my new room, which was adjacent to the home of the baking school in the center. I greeted my new brothers, many of them older than me (ages ranging from 17 and above), scheduling to eat lunch with them. I greeted my new host mother, Ms. Yua, telling her that I would be spending this week getting to know my the brothers of the baking school. After turning my key to my new room, me and my brothers threw all the stuff in and sunk into the giant queen sized bed. Wow, what a room.
This room was reserved normally for foreign travelers visiting the center, as it was equipped with a sink, bathroom, air conditioning (!!!!!!!!!!), refrigerator, dresser, and many other amenities. Now this was all mine. My brothers quickly turned on the air conditioning and talked about how amazing air conditioning was. "Can I stay here Ben?" one of my brothers asked me. "Yeah, sure" I replied, relaxing my sore muscles onto the soft mattress (a mattress at last!). While I was talking to them, I soon thought over my privileges, having such a comfortable room to sleep in, while the children sleep in their normal rooms. I told the director at first that I wanted to stay, making a semi-promise to try my best to live like the children at the center, but eventually after discovering that I was not sleeping well, the center made the decision, along with my parents, to send me over to this room. Oh well I guess...
Lunch time came around, about an hour after I settled into my new room. The baking school currently is teaching eight students, with six on site at this time. My new brothers were a friendly bunch, greeting me in English even, as they have been getting regular English tutoring from a professor from a nearby university, Dr. Thun (now I remember his name!). They were very friendly and delighted that I also spoke Vietnamese. The food was great, and the camaraderie even better, as we smiled and chatted over Vietnam and America. They surprisingly knew of the difficulties of living in America, telling me that the only thing people judge living quality is based on monetary exchange rate, seeing as how one U.S. dollar at this point trades for around twenty thousand or so Vietnamese dong. They were mature, confident, and hard working individuals, running me through their schedule, which included starting work at four o'clock in the morning. They were given orders for every day from different cafes, restaurants, hotels, etc. for breads, and they were adept at their baking, the enchanting smell of sweet bread my nostrils every time I pass by the school. It was a long lunch, as I decided to stay to get to know all my brothers. They invited me to wake up at four with them to help make bread. I smiled and said "We'll see."
I then went off to take a nap, rolling around in my bed with the nice air conditioning to cool me off. About an hour later, I got up to teach my next class. This time, I ended up having to walk down to the children's house to call up the students in my class, getting replies of either being busy or having just woken up. About thirty minutes later of waiting, we marched on up( Hien and Thuy, both high schoolers, and me). One other student had an extra class today, Loi, so we had a smaller class. This class covered vocabulary and grammar, which I've noticed is getting a bit easier to teach now that I can read Vietnamese much better than before. We actually spent nearly half an hour listening to music after our small break after the first hour of class. Listening to English was something I wanted to stress to the students, and so by giving the freedom to request English songs that they knew or wanted to here, it made my job and their experience much more satisfying. After finishing, I went back to my room to work on some homework, read, and relax 'till dinner at six (the time after finishing my class about 4:00pm).
The rest of the night was rather calm, having had a filling dinner with my new brothers. We talked about our days and also joked with one another about this and that. Waving my brothers off to tend to my work, I reentered my room, relaxed for about an hour, reading some more Vietnamese-English lessons, and worked on my blog (catching up on three entries!). At around eleven or so, I decided to call it quits and rest up for the big event the day - swimming with the children at a nearby swimming center! Pulling out a blanket, turning off the air-conditioning, I plopped into bed, reading a few pages into some of novels I brought home, eventually falling asleep. There was much to look forward to this next day.
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