Good night and good luck!

Last Friday was the last day for the A2 class; they'll be taking the TOEFL-iBT in just a couple more weeks. As a way to celebrate the end of their studies and the final push toward their test, we went out to dinner as a group. Our original dinner with the students had been at a restaurant that prominently features goat meat (called "The Most Goat") and we'd been secretly hoping we'd return there, but the students chose another restaurant, practically a stone's throw from our dormitory.

Built over a small (possibly man-made) lake, the restaurant consists of a dozen huts perched in the water. It's a quaint setting with palm-leaf thatch roofs that shade your view of the other diners and definitely gives it that oh-so-tropical feeling. Thang and Chinh made sure to order some food that the kids would eat (chicken, always chicken) and took care of the rest of the food. After about a 20 minute wait, it started coming out. First the bits of pineapple and cucumbers. Then nem... these little sausage style rolls of pork skin, meat and spices that are wrapped in banana leaves. They are actually pretty tasty if you can avoid thinking of skin while you chew.

Next came the snails and after trying them I am completely perplexed by the Western notion of these as some sort of delicacy. They are chewy and thick and covered with a thin layer of mucus. It looked a bit like mildewed cartilage wrapped in nasal discharge and, personally, I'm not sure they tasted much better than that either. Yeah, definitely not a fan of the snails. It took forever to chew it up and get it down my gullet. Stuart tried, as well, and liked it just about as much. Audrey wouldn't even come near the stuff.

But she did eat some chicken and rice. Chinh was nice enough to take it off the bones for us, not always an easy task, and find the best bits every time. We had both lemongrass chicken and grilled chicken, but they were vastly different. The lemongrass chicken came with mostly leftover bits of the bird. Rib pieces, tails, sections of the neck. Nothing with any meat and everything that made me feel like a neanderthal while chewing on it. Needless to say not much of it was eaten. Audrey found the head in there, though, nicely fried up, and was somehow able to get past the "ew" factor of plunging a chopstick in and made a little puppet. Oh my.

And I got my palm "read" by the Vietnamese teacher. Supposedly, I have a good Luck Line, meaning that I will travel abroad often (not often enough). My Study Line is strong and shows that I will continue to learn and get more education (if I can ever afford it). My Love Line though is, as she put it, difficult. She said that your left hand is your love/romance hand and wanted to take a look at that to see if she could get a better answer, but the best that she could come up with after much inspection was that my love life is "complicated." I think non-existent may be a better word for it, but it still got a good laugh. And then she measured the thickness of my hand, which isn't so thick, and decided that I will never be rich (I was already quite sure of that) and that sometimes I will struggle financially (oh yeah, like every day). Audrey got the advice to exercise as her Health Line was a little weak and that she would get a Master's degree someday. I can only hope.


After the palm reading and eating as much of the meat (including squid and fish, along with the snails, chicken and pork skin sausages), we headed out for karaoke. Well, the kids went home and most of the students went out to, as they call it, carry-oh-kay. I enjoyed myself as they belted out Vietnamese love songs and joined in for a mediocre rendition of "Let it Be."

Thanks so much to everyone in the class who was there and for those who couldn't be. I had a great time teaching you all and wish our time together could have been more than these quick seven weeks. The best of luck to you all! -Co Teresa

As always, the men brought out the shot glasses and got started right away. After several tries, they stopped asking me and moved on to trying to convince Stuart to give it a try.

Stuart finally got them to stop asking if he wanted a shot of Vodka by pouring it down his back. The burn on his skin was enough to convince him that it probably isn't so healthy going down one's throat, either.

Picking through the meat to find the edible-to-us parts.

Just a handful of the A2 students: Na, Duc, Phuong, Chinh, Dan, Chien, Cuong and Chinh.

Teaching as a family affair

Thursday was test day for the students. In the big picture, it's actually a test for me--a way to have a control against which they will compare the students at the end of my teaching term. So I found a test in a book that I've yet to see here (in hopes of avoiding them knowing anything about it) and proceeded with listening and speaking tests.

The listening portion started off the test period with two student conversations, followed by two lectures (on human adaptation and Impressionism). They proved to be fairly difficult with a woman speaker whose lilt and breathy voice made her a challenge to understand for many of the students. But they managed to get through it and onto the speaking portion of the test. And that's where my kids came in to make their debuts.

I gave them a list of a half-dozen prompts, ranging from "What's the most difficult sport and why?" to "Summarize how to prepare for a test," to present to each student. Stuart, the technology-savvy teen, used the Memo application on his iPod to record each student's response. Audrey used her iPod to time them (15 seconds to prepare, 45 seconds to speak). Together they managed to record 34 students spoken responses. And from there I am grading each for flow, content, pronunciation and amount of fillers (including those blessed um's and uh's). It was an ingenious method, if I do say so myself and allowed me to stay with the class, working on pronunciation and listening via a game of word Bingo.

I couldn't have done it without the kids. In truth, I'm not sure I could do any of this without them.

Time to teach

My class at PCC is coming up soon, but I need a minimum number of students or the class gets canceled. So, now's your chance! Come, meet me -in person-. haha Really, it should be fun and fairly interesting as well. (I hope.)

Here's the recap and link to click:

Travel With Purpose: Volunteering Abroad

Opportunities to volunteer abound: work with children, endangered animals, teach English or build homes. Discuss possibilities for solo travelers, couples and families; the pros/cons of voluntourism and how you can make a difference.

The class is on 6 October out in Beaverton at the Capital Center. 9a.m. to 12 p.m. Come join me. Please.

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In other news, we are still "transient" as put on my OHP application. We're staying a friend's house while she's out of town, then truly transient for another week and a half before the next house-sitting gig. But the job's good, I'm learning a lot and my website is plugging along. I'm hoping to unveil it officially at the end of the month...wish me luck!

Co Teresa, teaching again

Looks like I'll be teaching a one-Saturday class on volunteering abroad, so if you're interested and in the Portland area, here's the info.