Hello,
Today's post will be a further update into teaching and free time activities at Halong Bay. For the last two weeks I've had Thursdays and Fridays off, it's not really a traditional weekend, but I'm trying to make the best out of it.
I teach an adult class on Monday and Wednesday evenings. I've had a hard time bonding with them as the youngest is a decade older than I am. Their English is quite good, still every class they say they don't understand, and yesterday one of them even said that I have a hard accent. Now it might be hard for you to judge that as you may have never heard me speak English, but I can genuinely say that I believe I have the most neutral accent ! I do really enjoy teaching them and we have covered a lot. It is rather fun to start thinking about old grammar rules and ways to explain things that seem so obvious to us who speak English daily. For example, yesterday we drilled the pronunciation difference between walk and work for a while. They also asked me to explain the difference between think about and think of.
During the weekends I have a good mix of kids, I teach infants and young kids as well as advanced teenagers. With the younger ones we usually play and sing a lot, and with the teenagers we role play and cover a lot of reading. It is quite nice to teach different ages, I need my smart teenagers after drilling five words for an hour and a half.
I had Wednesday afternoon off so I and my newest friend headed for a walk around Halong, she had just arrived and I promised to show her around. We were walking on the Bay road when we decided to stop for a drink at one of the street side 'cafes'. Everyday the streets are full of locals who bring out plastic tables and chairs, and sell drinks and maybe some snacks from coolers they have with them. It is a very common Vietnamese past time and lunch time activity to sit in these and socialise. We sat down and the locals just got so excited, it was very sweet. They offered us oysters (a common cheap snack here) and drinks. They didn't really speak English but we managed to communicate with my little Vietnamese and sign language ! It was fun and a great display of Vietnamese hospitality, we weren't allowed to pay for anything, loads more people showed up and it was actually quite hard to tell them that we had to leave.
After work my friends picked me up and we headed to a view point by the Bai Chay bridge. Halong City is separated into two parts by the Halong Bay, there is a long bridge between the sides that gets lit up every night. The lights change color and the whole bridge shines in the darkness to guide everyone home. We sat in a cafe on the hill with a perfect view over the Bay and the bridge. I met some great new people and we all had a blast. Now we have some exciting plans for the next few weeks, and I received my first invitation to a Vietnamese wedding ! This week I have met so many great new people that I am starting to feel like home in here.
I'm not too sure what I will do with the rest of my day off, I might hike a mountain. It is definitely getting cooler in here now, but by that I mean 21- 25 degrees during the days. Our hotel has just finished building us a kitchen so I just cooked for the first time in two months, might be doing some further cooking today. I'll keep you posted !
Love,
Mira
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