Miscellaneous

Ironically enough, stomach troubles finally came my way in the form of food poisoning. The timing couldn’t have been worse as it hit Friday night/Saturday so I had to miss my 9 hours of teaching…it sure did make teaching on Sunday quite nice.  Some funny moments from the teaching front. As you know, I have autistic kids in some of my classes. Well, after like 3 weeks, I made the connection in the middle of my class on Sunday afternoon that one of my students looks really similar to one of my beginner autistic students I have 2 classes prior. For about 3 weeks, I would be really surprised whenever this kid would raise his hand and sort be like “hope this doesn’t get awkward (as sometimes the students heckle each other if they get something wrong” and in my mind subconsciously I would have this miraculous reaction when he would almost always get it right…then just last Sunday I made the connection-NOT the autistic kid! It got even better when 1) I realized his name is Viet Nam and 2) He has worn the same Vietnam shirt to every class. I’m still trying to figure out the reasoning that goes on in their parents’ heads. Either they have quite the sense of humor; they are extremely practical in giving me a name card every week; or it’s pure coincidence that the kids name happens to be Viet and Nam (there are something like 8 total names in Vietnam). In the same vein, I have identical twins that are named Bao Nam and Nam Bao. The other funny moment came when I was drilling them on their pronunciation of dictation…which I like to do one syllable at a time.

Besides the teaching…we are in week 3 of our dance training. There is an annual teacher’s day holiday, and VUS has a celebration with dinner, drinks and…a dance competition between the different campuses of VUS. Libby signed me up without telling me after our boss pressured her into saying yes. We have a practice twice a week and a hired choreographer so yeah they take it pretty seriously. Honestly some of the Vietnamese teachers who are a part of it love it and take videos of our practice and presumably practice at home. I think Libby and I hovering somewhere around ambivalence. I think the main bummer is that we don’t get anything if we win…but our boss does? Doesn’t make much sense. Also I feel more than a little ridiculous doing “hip hop/pop???” dancing.  The dance is like a hybrid of So You Think You Can Dance and Dancing with the Stars. We have both traditional Vietnamese dancing and “hip hop/pop?” dancing parts.  It’s quite complicated and very intricate.  I’ll be sure to post our performance in a few weeks.

Found my new favorite coffee shop/bar/live music at La Fenetre du Soleil…Amazing building in the upstairs of an old French colonial building that has the perfect amount of charm and grunge. They have different types of live music every night, and we went on Sunday for their “Jam night.” Any musician can come a couple hours early to rehearse and they just go from there. They had a pianist, bass player, drummer, sax and occasional singer. It was some of the best live music I’ve seen in Saigon. It was seriously cool.

New food front. Tried pork ear in spring rolls. So disgusting. Like tendon, it was so disturbingly chewy it just didn’t seem meant to be eaten by humans. In fact, I think we used to give the dog dried pork ears to chew on. On the flip side. Ostrich. Delicious. Very lean but flavorful red meat. Doesn’t taste gamey at all, just tastes like a delicious steak but healthier. Apparently the ostrich comes from a farm in Dalat where you can also ride them! When Libby and I get to Dalat I definitely want to try riding an ostrich. I’ll try to keep the “I ate your brother, maybe I’ll eat you too” thoughts to a minimum if I’m ever riding one of those badlads.