So, last week I wrote of the bikes. Well, mine needed some work done, as it had a flat tyre and the pedal kept getting stuck. It cost me 10,000 Dong to have it fixed, which is the equivalent of 0,5 US Dollars! So I've been cycling around a bit, which is mental! Traffic here seems to have some kind of secret logic to it, which I'm starting to understand. But actually getting out there on a bike is different to sitting on the back of a motorbike which I'm starting to feel comfortable on and have reached a point where I'm neither clinging on to the driver nor the bike. Woop!
Anyways, we visited all the different placements this week, including the two I'll be at.
I'm teaching three hours a week at the Hope Centre, a vocational training centre for young adults with disabilities and/or of ethnic minorities. The centre offers them the opportunity of enrolling on garment production training courses, where they make custom-ordered school uniforms. They are now starting to tap into the tourism market, producing jewellery, bags and other things. They've also gotten hold of a little shop front where they'll be setting up a store. So I'll be teaching them shop-keeping English, as well as helping produce new things and coming up with a marketing plan, too.
Many of the people at the Hope Centre are deaf or mute so I'll be able to learn sign language, even though there will be people there to translate. I'm thinking of making instruments with all the students and setting up a choir/band of some sorts. I have a meeting with the woman who's been volunteering there for a year tomorrow to discuss my ideas!
My second placement is at Hue Children's Centre, where I will be setting up a library and putting in place a borrowing system. Eventually we'll be able to hand it over to some of the older kids to run, but it'll take a few weeks of trial and error ideas first. We're also going to have a 'book of the week' scheme where we organise different creative activities around an English book every week - designing posters, putting on a play, doing mini-English lessons on the topics etc. That obviously depends on how many English books are in fact in the library, so again, we'll see how that goes!
Wednesday night we went with Khanh, the Vietnamese who works in the Hue Help office, for dinner, as he setting up a weekly restaurant club. I tried my first Goat, which was really good, though, like goat's cheese, it smells of goat a bit.
On Thursday night the French NGO 'The French Bakery', where my fellow volunteer Kim will be teaching the baking apprentices English, invited us for a tasting session. They spoilt us rotton with quiche, breads, mango mousse, chocolate brownies, croissants and more!
Afterwards we went for Bia Hoi, the Vietnamese equivalent of going for a pint of beer. A bottle of Hue beer (Huda is the best so far) costs between 7000 and 12000 Dong, so somewhere between 0,3 and 0,7 US Dollars.
Friday night we all gave in to temptation and went for some "Western" food - PIZZA! I worked out I'd gone for 10 days without cheese, a personal record!
On Saturday we visited the nearby beach, well, it was a 20 minute motorbike ride away, so I'm probably never going to cycle that distance! The beach was really nice, not a tropical white-sand, palm-trees kind of beach, but still a lovely place for a cooling swim. Afterwards we went for seafood at the lagoon, where I had my first 'crack into your own crab and realise it's actually a lot of work for a tiny piece of meat' experience.
At the beach, relaxing with some Huda!
Sunday - yesterday - we got up early to be judges at a local English Club. They meet twice a month and the local highschool English Clubs are all invited to join. We watched 3 performances on 'What to do in Hue as a tourist' and helped stage some debates on 'How can we make Hue greener'. It was good fun and I was surprised how good they're English was. Before we left for our next appointment, we had to join in a public performance of the birdy dance, not for the last time that day, as we were to find out!
We were invited to lunch at one of the children centres, where again we had to join in some songs and dances. After cycling the 5km in the boiling heat all I really wanted was a cold glass of water, not having to sing and dance with 50 kids staring at my sweaty bright red face!
Anyways, lunch was worth it.
Today we went fishing with Khanh. We drove (again on motorbikes) to a restaurant that has its own fishing pond. They brought us bamboo fishing rods and some bait - bananas and prawns, but by lunchtime nobody had succeeded in catching a fish. So instead we ordered chicken, which came as the WHOLE chicken, including the head. Afterwards we used the skin and the head for bait, but still no luck! The chicken innards were brought to us in a soup, I only later found out the meat I ate was lung and blood, yummy! I also later realised that the 2 feet were also in the soup. The Vietnamese sure don't waste any food!
Anyways, I've been rambling on and on.
Basically, I've been keeping really busy and I love it here. The food is delicous, though a lot of it reminds me that as a kid I was never really introduced to the 'grosser' parts of animals, so we'll see where I draw the line!
The people are really friendly,two of the vietnamese volunteers, who work for Hue Help to come with us to our placements and translate if necessary, are taking us out for dinner and drinks tonight.
I start work on Wednesday, so I have quite a few lessons plans to come up with until then, probably in the Cafe next door which does delicious Cafe Sai Gon - Vietnamese coffee (tastes of chocolate) with condensed milk and ice!
I'd love to hear from all of you so feel free to email me with all your news!
xx
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