I'm a teacher!

Yesterday morning I went out and bought myself a new helmet. I have seen so many young people riding around with these jockey-like helmets and I thought they were so adorable in comparison to the traditional ones and I knew that this is what I wanted. When I brought it into work at least 5 people picked it up and was like "Is this your helmet? You must be kidding" haha. One guy was like, "Where's the race?". A woman said, "I think it would work better as an ice bucket." Yeah, so maybe it's not the most practical of helmets, but at least I'll look cute wearing it!

All of last week I shadowed a few of the teachers at Language Link. It was interesting to see the different teaching styles. Some provided a constant flow of 5-10 minute activities so the class kept moving, while others would have a few 5-10 minute lessons and then one 30-40 minute exercise. I think that I prefer the latter and that's how I have been planning my own lessons so far. Everyone at the school is so friendly and helpful! When I have a question about something a bunch of the other teachers would throw ideas at me and refer me to books and specific pages. The teacher's room has such great energy; it's just a great place to work. I find myself laughing hysterically several times throughout the day. Besides camp, I think this is the only job that I've really enjoyed myself at. I get to work between 12-1pm even though my classes don't begin until 4 or 5:45pm, but I come in early to lesson plan and just hang out.

I taught my first lessons last night and they went Ok! I taught the structure "If ...I will..." for example, "If you damage my motorbike I will get angry". One of the teachers suggested that I play this game called "Man Overboard" with them. The premise of the game is that they were on a boat that sunk and now they're floating on a life boat that's sinking and the groups need to kick off two people in order to survive. I split the class into two groups of 8 and each received a little card with their position on it. Each had to plead their case to their group as to why they should be kept on the life boat. Without realizing it each of the students were using the "If....I will..." structure, and they were having fun while doing it!
I love doing pronunciation activities with my classes. Vietnamese speakers have a problem with their "Th", "Sh" and ending consonants. In their own language they never pronounce the end consonant, so it's a struggle for English teachers to get them to say them. "Like" becomes "Lie","Girl" becomes "Gir". I had some extra time at the end of one of my classes, so I took advantage of this to practice their pronunciation on words that I knew they have difficulty with. For instance, the difference between "Live" and "Leave", "Three" and "Tree", and a few others I can't remember. They seemed to enjoy the exercise.

As far as apartments go I still haven't found one yet. Last week I took a look at one across the street from the school, but I would be living with two other girls from Language Link. Even though it's within such close proximity which would be really convenient I don't want to live with the people I work with. I need some space. I was going to check out another apartment last night that I found on The New Hanoian, but I realized that it's too far from the school, so that was a bust. Alex, one of the teachers, gave me the name and phone number of his housing agent who helped him find a great apartment at a good price. I called him this morning with the details of what I'm looking for and he's supposed to call me sometime this afternoon with his findings. I wanted to avoid using a housing agent because I figured it would be too expensive, but it actually isn't and I have gotten sick of living out of my suitcase for the past 2 weeks.