Where you think you're going, baby?

Since I have nothing happy and exciting to say about living in Vietnam I am going to focus on my students in this post. I have two classes in particular that I just adore, year 8 and year 11. I set both classes the task of writing a list of 100 things they want to do/achieve in the future. This is a surprisingly difficult task considering how many things people generally want from life. I'm sure we each want thousands of things, but the process of writing them out is a challenge. I suppose we all have our own secret goals, too.

I had very different reactions to reading the goals and dreams of each class. Reading those of my year 11 students made me feel a bit teary, remembering the feeling of being 16 years old and having so many plans for the future, everything seemed so far away but also very possible. I don't have that feeling anymore. My goals have become more realistic, I only bother yearning for the things that I perceive to be attainable. I became more realistic but also more cynical.

I've definitely given up on the dream most young people have of being ' wealthy'. Totally given up and I don't care. I suppose it's because my idea of what it takes to be happy has...matured. My profession is not a money maker. Law is. Medicine is. High class prostitution is. I want to be a teacher so one goal has cancelled out the other. Anyhow, after getting all nostalgic over my year 11 students' goals I read those of my year 8 class - and laughed my arse off (it would be awesome if one could really laugh one's arse off since I've put on 5kgs in the last three months).  They had written stuff like be iron man, marry superwoman,  blow up a house with TNT (worrying), learn to shoot a gun (also worrying),  shoot an insect with a machine gun (errrrrr), take over the world, become a vampire (screw you, Twilight),shrink the sun and eat it (my personal favourite), and  take a shower every day (admirable!).

When I was in year 8 all I wanted to do was get the hell out of High School, grow taller, become an actress, and marry David Boreanaz (as Angel).

When I was in year 11 all I wanted to do was get the hell out of High School, grow taller, live in England, and meet the man of my dreams (a real one). I had no idea what I wanted to 'be'.

I have achieved two of those goals.

Ten years later, my goals are to improve my Spanish, get a Masters or PhD in History, work in an international school, and to eventually own my own home (yet to decide which country it should be in) that looks something like this:

 Photo:  errr...somewhere on tumblr...

Post Script: an update on my last teaching post/insane rant: my students have now come to terms with their project and are working on it like a boss. Like, a class of bosses. Boss class, yo.

Much as you blame yourself, you can't be blamed for the way that you feel.

I've heard it said many times that every relocation takes at least three months to get used to, so no big decisions should be made before you've been somewhere for twelve weeks. Don't get yourself into a situation where you can't easily leave after three months and also don't decide you hate everything and want to leave before the first three months. Well, considering I'd signed a 15-month contract before I'd even left Australia I wasn't too wise about the first part but luckily, as I approach twelve weeks in Vietnam, I'm happy to stay.

It's possible I'm starting to like Hanoi. I won't make any grand statements because a good weekend does not a perfect life make....but things look promising. Ah, yeah, I'm being a dick. I had a good weekend and I'm relieved that I managed to make more of a connection with this city. It seems that public holidays here are few but not far between. Three days this month and no more until September. Because it was a long weekend I decided to treat myself and get a fancy hotel room in the city (four star hotel, $60 a night with free breakfast). My apartment is in the outer districts so staying in the city centre made socialising a lot easier than it normally is, sometimes I feel like I'm living in expat exile.

A few photos: My hotel room, the view from my hotel, a pool at another resort on the lake, and a delicious drink in a lovely little café (a respite from the chaotic streets and humidity).

It poured down with rain last night and there was some pretty impressive lightening going on. Now the temperature is blissfully low, although the smell of piss keeps wafting into my room. Hmmmm. Trade off?

Time to go and mark forty exam papers before I go back to work tomorrow.

Just another brick in the wall

Teaching can really be a thankless job sometimes. Wait. What am I saying? That's not right. Teaching is a thankless job all of the time. I haven't been teaching for long in the scheme of things so I'm not constantly bitter about it yet, in fact most days I don't really care, I like my job so I don't need people thanking me for doing it. There's a reason why teachers talk about moments when students approach them and tell them they appreciate all the hard work - they are rare moments. I've had a few and they've been lovely. I keep them stored in my memory to pull out when I'm having a rough class. I had such a lesson this afternoon.

Due to the way my school works, the students studying English subjects have already sat their final exams despite having a month left of school. They've finished the work in their textbooks and apparently thought the last month was going to be a holiday. It's a challenge to keep up motivation when they're not working towards any official grade. I get that, it seems like work for the sake of work. They're not at the stage where they want to learn just for knowledge.

I decided to create a project where they can choose from a list of varied tasks (computer stuff, art, music, writing, speaking etc.) which are all worth a different amount of points. I spent aaages putting this bloody list together. Sitting there alone in the office after school thinking ' Now, if I were sixteen, and I had to do a task for English, what would I want to do if sleeping and watching films were out of the question?'. I've gotten to know these students pretty well over the last two months and I tried to cater to their interests.

How did they react? Screwed up faces. Groans. Complaints "Oh but we have exams for Vietnamese this month" and "this is too much work" and "but we've finished".  SULK SULK SULK. It's not fair. Lots of epic sighs. Before they'd even read the tasks.

Oh no, my poor babies, you have to make a poster...or write a short story....or compile some inspirational quotes....or write a list of goals.....or make a powerpoint on fashion. YOU POOR SOULS! Ugh, I was so mad. What made it worse is that it is a class which I generally get along really well with. They're good-natured and intelligent kids. They just thought it would be easier to take advantage of me. That is the downside to being a friendly teacher. Sometimes they forget that you are not their friend.

Such a small thing, I know, but it has put me in quite a foul mood. I'm wondering whether to even post this. Ah, what the hell. If you think it's boring you've probably already stopped reading anyhow.

There is some crazy lightening going on outside and I am waiting for the nachos I ordered 45 minutes ago. It'll probably start pouring down and my food will arrive soaking wet...and then the power will go out.

To brighten up this teaching post I will...nope, I've got nothing.

I'll be the one to show you the way. You'll be the one to always complain.

Comfort food: the expensive kind

Paired with comfort drink (sav blanc) and a nostalgic soundtrack of oldschool Kings of Leon, Bloc Party, and Arctic Monkeys. Monday night, come at me.

Got the blues in Hanoi

As much as I wish my title were about some awesome blues bar I have found, alas it refers to the state of my soul.

I found out on my lunch break on Thursday that my parents had had to put our family dog down. We got Buffy when I was 13 years old. I remember, I'd been at my friend's house and when my parents came to pick me up there was a tiny, adorable puppy jumping all over the backseat. I've never been one for gushing about adorableness, hand holding, flower picking, or slow-motion field running, but she was so small and beautiful I instantly started crying. She didn't have a name at the time, and on the car ride home my parents decided to name her Buffy after my tween idol- the Vampire Slayer.

Buffy had been there for half of my life. All though the messy teenage years. So this year, at 13 years old, she was quite the old lady. She'd been having fits for a while but the vet had initially told us it wasn't a big deal and that lots of older dogs have them(I hate this vet). The fits gradually became worse and worse and despite various medications nothing seemed to stop them. On Thursday she couldn't breathe and a different vet told my parents that if she were her dog she'd let her go. I don't know how I feel about putting dogs to sleep. I guess it's the most humane thing but if it's so okay to put dogs down then why is the morality of euthanasia such a hotly debated topic? I can't help but wonder if I'd been there whether I would have begged my parents not to let the vet put her down or whether I would have been able to make that hard decision with them. I'll never know now and I'll never get to say goodbye.

My melancholy, over-thinking, switch has been flipped. Living overseas can be empowering, taking charge of your life and doing something different; the other side of it is when you think about how helpless you are to control things back home. Now I worry about my parents, I worry about their health and I panic about all of the terrible things that could happen to them. I worry about the terrible things that could happen to me and the effect that would have on my parents. Are my students right, is it selfish of an only child to move so far away? Round and round my head these thoughts go and there's nobody here to tell me to snap the hell out of it. I will snap myself out of it, I might just wallow for a bit first.

Buffy in February while I was packing to move here.

We are the ever-living ghost of what once was.

I have run out of wine.
My Spanish tutor stood me up.
I'm getting a cold.
I can't go away on the up-coming long weekend because all of the trains are booked out.
I am so not getting any kissage while I'm here. I can tell. It's not going to happen.

Wah wah wah, sook sook sook...aaaanyway....

Enough of that, this is actually going to be a post about my favourite place in Hanoi so far: Hanoi Social Club.

It's a restaurant/bar located down a great little inner-city laneway in a narrow three-story building in her 80s. She looks good for her age unlike many other old buildings around town. The laneway is like an oasis on the fringes of the chaotic Old Town.

 I think what I like best about Hanoi Social Club is its Melbourne feel (I'm not doing well with this whole ' embrace Hanoi' thing). It's a hub for expats/travellers in Hanoi and has cool (though, blatantly hipster) events like Ukulele classes.

 A couple of weeks ago I went there to meet a group of other newbies to Hanoi and a couple of locals we sat on the covered roof terrace as it pounded down with effing crazy torrential rain. It was a really nice evening and I went back the next morning by myself for brunch. BRUNCH. BRUNNNNNCH. I miss Melbourne brunch so much so it was really comforting to eat French Toast and drink a caffe latte which tasted like home. Perhaps even better than home.

After I had finished my brunch I chatted with the Australian woman who was working that morning as I signed up to be on the mailing list, I told her I am a history teacher, and that afternoon she emailed to tell me about a local history group she had remembered about. How nice! I could rave about this place, the atmosphere, the staff, and the food for ages but for some reason it's making me feel homesick again so I'll stop.

Great place, if you're in Hanoi you should go! Just don't order the bamboo fries, that was a mistake.

 My Photos of Hanoi Social Club

Let's be honest.

(WARNING - extensive self-involved text to follow)


The decision to move to Vietnam couldn't have been more different to my move to Spain in 2009. I moved to Spain a few months after I finished my undergraduate degree and I had been counting down days, planning, dreaming, and driving everyone nuts about it for close to a year. The third year of my degree was all about history essays and researching everything I could about my future life in Spain. My Mother took me to Europe for four months when I was seven years old and ever since then I've had a love for the continent; I've been back twice for prolonged periods. I moved to Spain to be in Spain. To eat Spanish food. To hear Spanish spoken around me. To travel the country and see the landscapes. Teaching was just a way to live abroad, albiet a mostly enjoyable means to an end.

My decision to move back to Australia was influenced by a variety of ideas and incidents. Although I returned earlier than I had expected to I don't regret it at all. It was time to grow up and focus on a career and I am completely satisfied with the decision to become a qualified teacher. I wrote my History thesis and got my teaching qualification and to my surprise, I was feeling quite settled in Melbourne. I kept thinking I would get a job in a local school, save some money, and then possibly consider moving back overseas in the future.

I couldn't find a job. I applied and applied and heard nothing. I knew it wasn't due to my own shortcomings. There is a major shortage of teaching jobs in Australia right now, in both primary and secondary sectors, and the jobs which do exist are mostly contracts for a year at most. Difficult to find work and once you have it there's little security. Regardless of the fact that my failure to find a job wasn't a personal failure it still felt like shit. I started applying for everything, half-heartedly, and not expecting that anything would come up. Four days later I'd been offered a job in Hanoi.

Now, here's my dirty little secret. I've never been interested in travelling in Asia. Never. Not in the slightest. Not China, not Japan, not Thailand, and yeah, not Vietnam. Many of my friends have been to Asian countries and loved them, but I've always been about Europe, Europe, Europe, and occasional yearnings to see South America.

I've always found it fascinating that different people are interested in different places. What makes two Australians with similar backgrounds, socio-economic status, educational opportunities, and careers so interested in totally different countries and cultures? I feel an affinity to Melbourne and to many of the European countries I've visited but to Hanoi? Definitely not.

I don't love this city. I'm still trying to work out whether I even like it. When it comes down to it, I came here for a job not for any personal desire to live here. If I'd been offered a job in Melbourne at the same time I would have taken it. I have met a few other new expats here and they're mostly ESL teachers who have travelled here before, loved it, chucked caution to the wind and moved here. When they ask me why I'm here I feel like the biggest scum bag in the world when I say I came for a job. I feel like it's shameful to admit that I'm in this country just to earn money and improve my career prospects while they're struggling to find teaching hours in a country they love. I know that if some douchebag had told me they didn't even really care that  much for Spain, while I was desperately looking for a job, I would have been most unimpressed.

So I am trying really hard to make some kind of connection with the country. I have some travels planned for June which will take me along the coast and hopefully seeing some of the county will spark something between me and Vietnam. I've been venturing out on the weekends and trying to meet new people. I'm trying not to become bitter about the 9 hour power outages or the fact that I can't go a week without eating something which makes me violently ill.

All this said, I love my job and I am glad I am here. I just wish Vietnam inspired me like Spain does.

Learning to love life in Vietnam. Coming soon.

Mrs, Miss, Miss

       

I’m going to go on a little rant here about something that has been bothering me for a while now. I originally posted this on my tumblr (where my initial disgust occured) but I thought I'd paste it on here too.

I read a post on tumblr, perhaps in the teaching tag, in which a young teacher (I think from the US) had written about how she had corrected her students when they addressed her as Ms rather than Miss by saying ’ do I look like a spinster to you?’. She thought it was a humourous response and was pleased nobody in the class would ever make the mistake of addressing her as Ms again.

This makes me really, really mad. Here are my reasons:

Firstly, women have the option of using the title of Ms if they do not want their marital status to come into play. There is no way of telling if a man is married or not by his title, so why should women have to put their relationship status on display? Female teachers may decide they don’t want their students, the staff, and parents to know whether they’re married or not and therefore use Ms OR like myself, perhaps they don’t really care whether people know their martial status, but would just like to be the one to tell them. By reacting the way she did this teacher has put doubt into the minds of her students about how they should address women. Her students will probably now fear offending women if they use Ms incorrectly (when there is no incorrect way of using Ms....unless you're talking to a man, I guess). If you would prefer to be addressed as Miss, that’s totally fine, but do not reprimand a child for respecting women. It’s about equality, really, and anyone who can’t see that…to be honest, is an ignorant twat.

Secondly, “spinster”? Really? What the actual fuck? Someone spent too much time playing Old Maid as a child. Once again we’re brought back to equality. What is the male version of a spinster? Bachelor. So we see a bit of disparity here. Also, what exactly is a spinster meant to look like? Clearly this teacher believes she does not look like one. Are unmarried female teachers ugly, stooped, and miserable? Do they shuffle around muttering ’ Forever Alone, Forever Alone’? Um, no. Would a male teacher be horrified if his students referred to him in a way which indicated they didn’t know his marital status? Probably not and we’ll never know BECAUSE FOR MEN IT IS NOT AN ISSUE and it shouldn’t be an issue for women either (refer to reason one if you’re still lost). This teacher has further wronged her students (and to be a bit hyperbolic - women everywhere) by driving home her (fucking moronic) opinion that unmarried women should be ashamed of their status.

If we can’t even get a TEACHER to understand why women should have a neutral title what chance do we have of teaching an entire generation of children/teenagers to be more open minded. They are the ones who will grow up to ensure that everyone not matter how they identify has a title which represents them in a way they feel is adequate and equal. What chance do we have for any kind of equality when people like this are making throw-away comments, and posting about them, without even realising the implications of their words.

Ranty, ranty, rant. Okay, perhaps I went a bit overboard but it felt good.

Spinning. Like a boss.