The last two or three weeks have been a very busy spell for me. First, I had quite a major project related to my Resource Room maven duties at RMIT. I had to complete an inventory of the books and other resources... more than 1400 in total! I think some of this had been done before, but the files had gotten lost in translation, somehow. So, I have almost all of it done, except videos. And there are a few items that are MIA, but that is fairly par for the course, I guess. I feel quite happy with the status of this job, although it is a bit like housework ... everything looks great for just a brief, shining moment in time. I can see how it would affect my personality if I took it too seriously ... sort of what happened when I taught Level 4 Grammar for an extended period of time ... picky, picky, picky. I have colour-coordinated many of the resources (saves me having to know where to put things based on their titles) and while I know some folks mock me for my OTT system, who cares? I like the blue dots on Level 4 CDs, which are lined up ever so alphabetically in their blue plastic sleeves. Yellow for Level 5 and green for Level 6 and ... you get the picture . ^_^.
Then there were some social activites related to birthdays and retirements of colleagues, one of whom has retired to Kho Samui. She could hardly wait to leave ... but a lovely house with a pool and sea view on three sides on a tropical island does sound pretty great.
Then there were some social activites related to birthdays and retirements of colleagues, one of whom has retired to Kho Samui. She could hardly wait to leave ... but a lovely house with a pool and sea view on three sides on a tropical island does sound pretty great.
As well the long-awaited visit of dear friends Sally and Patricia has come and gone. They were here for 5 or 6 days. 
They visited a Waldorf kindergarten and the Mekong while they were here and I hope they enjoyed themselves a bit in Ho Chi Minh City. Of course, we had to eat ... look how pretty this dish was! 
They visited a Waldorf kindergarten and the Mekong while they were here and I hope they enjoyed themselves a bit in Ho Chi Minh City. Of course, we had to eat ... look how pretty this dish was! They have gone off to Haiphong and to see the North now... possibly to Sapa and Halong Bay. I will see them again in Hoi An in a few weeks and Sally and I will fly back to North America together on May 1. Time is just flying by! 
Last Saturday, we all went to the Mai Tam Center, an orphanage where I have been volunteering for a few weeks. Mai Tam was set up to help kids with HIV-AIDS, some of whom are orphaned and who (might) suffer discrimination because of their own positive HIV status. 
Father Toai, who started Mai Tam, has worked really hard to create a place where people living with HIV-AIDS can live with dignity. One residence has a focus on independent living and there is a small workshop where residents sew articles to sell. Another house is a hospice, where people can live out their last days. And the house that I go to is an orphanage with about 40 kids and 4 mothers plus a wonderful woman, Le Thu, who runs the place. Many of the children at Mai Tam are orphans, but some of the kids are brought to Mai Tam if their parents cannot afford to keep them or if their parents are ill. Some of the kids at the orphanage have HIV-AIDS but not all. It is quite the place and I usually help out with the infants and toddlers from 8-12:30 or so. It is pretty exhausting, but the kids are very cute. 
Last Sunday, Sally and Patricia kindly supported me while I gave a presentation on Canada to an English Speaking Club at the Labour Palace. I had met Anh Tuan, a professor at the University of Pedagogy, while I was in Cambodia and he asked me if I would talk about Canada and, of course, I agreed, without thinking of dates and times ... but now it is over. It was not all that great, but we all survived. I taught the participants “Land of the Silver Birch” and they seemed to like it a lot. My biggest faux pas was stating that the Canadian dollar was worth 19 VND instead of 19,000. There is a very good reason why I do not teach math ... oy.
Last Saturday, we all went to the Mai Tam Center, an orphanage where I have been volunteering for a few weeks. Mai Tam was set up to help kids with HIV-AIDS, some of whom are orphaned and who (might) suffer discrimination because of their own positive HIV status. Father Toai, who started Mai Tam, has worked really hard to create a place where people living with HIV-AIDS can live with dignity. One residence has a focus on independent living and there is a small workshop where residents sew articles to sell. Another house is a hospice, where people can live out their last days. And the house that I go to is an orphanage with about 40 kids and 4 mothers plus a wonderful woman, Le Thu, who runs the place. Many of the children at Mai Tam are orphans, but some of the kids are brought to Mai Tam if their parents cannot afford to keep them or if their parents are ill. Some of the kids at the orphanage have HIV-AIDS but not all. It is quite the place and I usually help out with the infants and toddlers from 8-12:30 or so. It is pretty exhausting, but the kids are very cute. Last Sunday, Sally and Patricia kindly supported me while I gave a presentation on Canada to an English Speaking Club at the Labour Palace. I had met Anh Tuan, a professor at the University of Pedagogy, while I was in Cambodia and he asked me if I would talk about Canada and, of course, I agreed, without thinking of dates and times ... but now it is over. It was not all that great, but we all survived. I taught the participants “Land of the Silver Birch” and they seemed to like it a lot. My biggest faux pas was stating that the Canadian dollar was worth 19 VND instead of 19,000. There is a very good reason why I do not teach math ... oy. 
I had a nice visit with Kim Linh and her husband, Tinh, and their kids Phuc, and Quyen on Easter Sunday. They were the folks I went to Dalat with and it was so nice to see them again ... the children have really grown since January. 
The start of the work week brought a new project ... some curriculum work. I am not teaching this month as I have been released for a project. Had a conference call with some of the curriculum developers in Melbourne today ... don’t think they need me to go to Australia for f2f meetings ... what a pity. I could certainly make myself available.
Went to a gorgeous Chinese restaurant last night with some colleagues and helped with a debate preparation workshop today ... so tired now! It really has been a busy time and filled with hard work and fun activities. I hope you all are well and happy and engaged in what you are doing. If you are experiencing spring, glorious spring, I hope you are relishing every moment of it. Cait posted pics of daffs, crocuses and tulips on flickr and they looked so great ... I hope a few tulips will still be blooming by the time I get home. These dyed red pussy willows will be my Spring fix in the meantime! 
Two students from my class got distinguished awards last night. That meant they got 90% in every course (Listening, Speaking, Reading, and Writing) in Level 7. Way to go Tu and Vy!!! They are the ones holding the flowers. 
In addition, 5 students that my colleague Astrid and I had in a Repeat Class got through Level 7 on their first try, so I was extremely proud of them. Level 7 is a 5-week intensive course that has extremely high expectations … it could easily be a 10-week course like all the other levels.
On the 5th floor of RMIT, where the Academic English Program is housed, there is a coffee bar called Bobby Brewer’s. The nicest young women work there, and as they serve really good lattes, I am a frequent customer. The staff varies from time to time, but there is a core group of barristas whom I have gotten to know fairly well. They help me a lot with my Vietnamese pronunciation.
Then there is Miss Be (sort of like Bay with an undulating inflection) who is the chief barrista and who often puts a heart on the top of my lattes. She is a latte artiste and always has the sweetest smile even though she usually works seven days a week.
Next is Miss Chau, who has got the coolest burgundy red hair. She is a student at RMIT and works part-time at Bobby Brewer’s. She is a go-getter and a lot of fun. Then there are two Anhs.
The first Miss Anh has been at Bobby Brewer’s since a week or two before Tết and she is a tall self-confident young woman who is also very forthright and capable. 
So, none of my friends had ever been to Ganh before; they had looked it up on the Internet, and thought it sounded pretty neat. 
Well, we feasted, let me assure you. We had two kinds of fresh spring rolls and one kind of deep-fried spring roll. There were a few other appetizers of meat and shrimp in rice pancakes. And of course there were delicious blended fruit drinks. As for me, I love to drink tra da .. Vietnamese ice tea. We also had seafood lau, which is the Vietnamese hot pot. Along with the seafood go a lot of vegetables, such as bok choy, cabbage, okra, beansprouts and banana blossoms, which are sort of shaved very thin. The broth was just wonderful, with a hint of pineapple in it. Yum. Or should I say rất ngon ... very delicious!
Here are 'before' and 'after' pictures.
Miss Be took me home after dinner. I do love to ride on the motorbikes! I was so appreciative of the time we spent together but also aware that everyone had to get up early. Bobby Brewer’s is open by 7:30 ... and we were all a little tired the next day. It really was a lovely evening - one I will remember!
There is a lovely walkway along the river in Phnom Penh and I strolled along, looking for a restaurant. I finally found one with a balcony and parked myself at the railing and watched the world and one elephant go by. I saw so many interesting sights... lots of women (and some little girls) carrying big baskets of lotus pods and peanuts and ??? on their heads. 
By the time I headed back I was in a better mood, and I really enjoyed watching the dancing and exercise sessions going on at various points along the river. I really felt that I could see signs of deep poverty that I haven’t been so aware of in Vietnam ... or at least Ho Chi Minh City. I saw one little guy ... just a toddler really, walking along his mother. He was carrying a big bag of plastic water bottles ... no shoes, no pants, no chance to be a little boy. Omigoodness, how sad. We are so fortunate. So, it was with some gratitude and some hope that I asked if I might be able to change rooms the next day. When I explained about the smoking, the kind young man in reception switched rooms for me ... not a non-smoking room, but no odour to speak of ... and it had a river view! So happy me.
All the CamTESOL presenters had been given an opportunity to visit various locations in order to familiarize ourselves with Cambodia and the level of English among Cambodian teachers. I couldn’t remember what tour I had signed up for, but was told it was the self-access centres. That sounded about right, as I knew I hadn’t wanted to sign up for anything too sad. So an interesting thing happened as I walked to the bus to take us to the SACs ... the first person I saw at the bus was Marina, someone whom I had met in Qatar and who would have been my colleague had I been able to take the job at Weill-Cornell. So, I was able to get all caught up on the news from Doha! Then the next person I met was Beth, a woman from UCanberra, who guessed I was Canadian by my (non-existent) accent, and when we got to talking, is good friends with Robyn, one of my colleagues at RMIT. Like Robyn, Beth had lived in BC, and had stayed in Canada for many years before returning to Australia. In fact, she studied French at UVic and went to Shippegan for their summer French immersion program ... so in the space of 10 minutes we knew that about each other. Now, how many people in Phnom Penh do you reckon would have been to Shippegan, NB? I had only been to the Nort’ Shore just the once, but it was a really colourful memory. My mother would say I never go anywhere without meeting someone I know or who knows someone I know ... and I guess that was true in these cases. Those two were enough to have me positively extroverted ... and I met lots of nice folks. I met a lovely Thai woman named Apiwan, who is studying for her PhD in Linguistics at Macquarie University. It happened that she was also staying at the Cambodiana, so we travelled to and from the conference after that. Another really friendly person was Ilene,a young woman who teaches at Southern Connecticut University, but who is in HCMC on a Fulbright, working with the University of Pedagogy. All the groups ended up at a restaurant that teaches street kids to work in restaurants, and while I didn’t love Hagar’s quite as much as I love Sozo’s in HCMC, it was pretty good. Cambodia has lots of NGOs and volunteers trying to do good works. In fact, a common career destination in Cambodia is to work with an NGO, whereas many of my students would have no clue what an NGO is.
The hotel, the Angkor Spirit Palace, is lovely and a bit quieter than staying in the town itself.
Siem Reap is full of tourists and new hotels are being built all over the town. It is a bit of a tourist hustle, but I just consider it training for Sapa.
It took me a while to realize that the nuns in Cambodia don’t wear robes, but rather white blouses and dark shirts. They do have their heads shaved, though. Chamreoun said that an important monk had died and this was his funeral procession.
There is much reconstruction going on, so the initial approach is a bit marred, for a good cause, no doubt. I wandered around on my own for two or three hours, looking at the amazing friezes that depict much lore related to both the Hindu and Buddhist elements that are evident at Angkor Wat. I ended up taking lots and lots of pictures of asparas, the heavenly nymphs.
There was quite a line to climb up into the central tower, but it moved quickly and so I decided to go up. Compared to the Pyramid of the Sun and the Pyramid of the Moon at Teōtīhuacān, the stairs were easy-peasy.
But I am sure I was pretty red in the face as I reached the top! In fact, I was reminded of Teōtīhuacān at several points, but Angkor is very different in most ways. Once in the upper elevations, it was lovely to wander around at my own speed and look at everything. Once I made my way back past the temples and over the moat, off we went to Angkor Thom. One of the most incredible temples there was Bayon, with all the towers with huge faces on them. With my interest in masks, it was an incredible place to be. 
Chamreoun and I stopped for water and a little shopping here and there. It was incredibly hot. I kept thinking the tour would be almost over, but they kept coming.
Omigoodness. At the last one, I saw a large reservoir that had been hand-constructed for the King ... nice to see some local kids swimming in it. I imagine no commoner would have been allowed to swim there during the reign of the god-kings.
Arrived in HCMC after a 45-minute flight ... followed by a one-hour taxi ride. Nice to be back. Hope all is well with everyone. I look forward to hearing about your adventures! I will post pics on
Yesterday was the day Patricia and I had set aside to go to the Cao Đài temple and the Củ Chi Tunnels. We had purchased the tickets in the backpacker district the day before and had debated about whether to do the whole-day trip or just the half-day Củ Chi Tunnel portion. In the end, although we still had many questions about the Cao Đài religion and wondered about the notion of umpteen bus tours unloading hundreds of tourists to witness their noon service, we did decide to go to both places.
We also came across a man of God who was waving a Bible and approaching people, saying, ‘ Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ ... kick the bucket and go to heaven’. It was quite the early-morning message! I have to say, I couldn’t fully embrace it as I was in a bit of a pissy mood ... put off by the delay. Let us just say I had some doubts about the tour before we even left Phạm Ngũ Lão, which is the name of the backpacker district ... apparently he was a general in the Trần Dynasty. I wonder what he thinks of all the goings on in the district named after him.
After a few minutes, a procession led by several elderly men and one woman entered. There must have been a couple of hundred worshippers ... in the sanctuary along with people behind the main sanctuary and some musicians and other clebrants upstairs. We were permitted to take photographs but asked not to make noise. As it does so often in houses of worship that are also tourist attractions, it seemed so jarring to see folks rush in, take their prerequisite photos, and leave, without regard for what may be happening spiritually in the service below. Granted, the photo ops were pretty good, with the carved and painted columns and rows and rows of men and women dressed in white ao dàis and robes, with some senior celebrants in vivid yellow, blue, or red robes.
The chanting and exotic music only added to the very interesting and confusing mix. And in the end, we also left in mid-service, as we had been asked to regroup at the bus by 12:30, before the service ended. I kept thinking that losing 45 minutes at the beginning of the day resulted in our having much less time at the temple... Moral of the story ... go with a driver if there is to be a next time.
We travelled on to Củ Chi. Our guide told us that 80% of visitors to Vietnam visit the tunnels, which were so important during the war. They are an immense network (maybe like 250 km?) of connecting underground tunnels. They were one of the bases of the Viet Cong in resisting American operations and an immense source of pride for the Vietnamese people. The documentary we saw was pretty amazing for its anti-American rhetoric ... this after my assuring Nicky, my young American bus seatmate, that I hadn’t noticed any overt anti-American feeling among the people I had met here. So we saw some of the spider tunnels and some of the other tunnels that people used along with trenches where they shot at aircraft and then retreated to the tunnels. It was a bit difficult to hear everything the guide said, as it was a large group and hard to see everything. You can imagine this improved my overall mood quite considerably. In addition, we saw examples of workshops where weapons were fashioned along with various traps the National Liberation Front guerillas would set for American military personnel ... and other instruments of destruction (along with more than a few large craters created by B52 bombs). It was very hot and quite depressing; the woods we walked through had all been defoliated by Agent Orange or burned down. It seemed to still reek of war and chemicals.
The place where we were walking was cleaned up and all tunnels and traps clearly marked but our guide told us other parts of Vietnam, especially the DMZ is still extremely full of mines and unexploded bombs.
And then we got to the place where we could have a cold drink - and people could line up to shoot various forms of assault rifles, some of which were left over from the war. And they did, with alacrity. Heee hawww! The noise of these weapons was so loud and jarring and people’s love of shooting stuff up was so at odds with what the tunnels represented to both of us that we just left. That forest where so many people lost their lives and took the lives of so many others juxtaposed with the people lining up to shoot guns was just too much. Oy. We walked out of those woods and waited at the end of the tour for our group. When the bus came, we got on it, but the engine quickly shut down. Patricia got off, as the bus immediately got hot, but I was too tired and wanted to stay in the sauna. A Vietnamese woman sat down behind me and we struck up a conversation. She was such a nice lady ... Anh. She heard someone say in Vietnamese that the bus was going to take a bit of work and so she suggested we get off the bus. It was cooler outdoors and we waited for a while. Everyone on the bus just stood around. Our guide said nothing ... Anh said she heard that they were trying to rent a couple of local buses from the town nearby, as the tour bus was very broken. Someone had gone on a bicycle to see about renting some buses. Then the next thing I knew she was taking her things off the bus and she came over to tell us that she and her nephew were leaving. She said she had heard they were sending a bus from Ho Chi Minh City and it would take an hour to get to Củ Chi and so she and her nephew were going to take the local bus and go home by public transit. I impulsively asked if we could go with her, and she agreed. It felt great to leave the broken down bus and the non-communicative guide and the big group of people behind. A bus came after about 5 minutes of waiting. It was my favourite part of the day ... we drove along country roads and it was so interesting. It felt like we were on an adventure. The area actually looks quite prosperous today, with lots of new houses and the light was late-afternoon wonderful, so the rice fields were really sparkling and verdant-looking. We changed buses after about an hour. That first ride cost 12,ooo VND for two ... around 40 cents each and the second ride was the usual 3,000 VND each. Anh was so lovely ... I will always remember her taking Patricia’s hand and leading her across the parking lot at the bus depot. We luckily got the last bus to the city and arrived in Hồ Chí Minh City at about 7:00. We took a taxi back to Phú Mỹ Hưng and were both glad to see that Nathalie’s, the Thai restaurant next door was finally open after Tết and so we polished off a very strange day with some cashew chicken, pad thai and a spicy green mango salad. Although the day had its challenges, it also had some memorable moments and we were both glad we didn’t kick the bucket, heaven or no ...