I own a proper hat now, too.
I seem to have developed an aversion to Museums, fancy! And I may have to miss Uncle Ho Chi Minh in all his embalmed glory, as he's only open in the mornings. Hmmm, Next stop, Mai Chau.
Marie-Ambre, my roommate, is small, dark, only just 19 and concentrates hard when speaking English. Consequently she often misses what's said. She's not yet bored of me either, which is nice but unlikely to last long. She is out longer than me during the day which gives me at least some time to myself fortunately. She arrived this morning just after I left for work.
At school today I wrote Tennis on the blackboard and my handwriting was so unclear one of the pupils wrote down 'Fennis'. I note this because one of the TA's (teaching assistants) mentioned that William was refusing to write on the board at all and was asking them to do it. In the midst of an explanation of dyslexia in the UK I realised it may just be a case of being seriously intimidated by the Vietnamese beautiful handwriting, which at any age and in either language, is exquisite. She told me I was quite brave to write on the board in such long sentences, compared to William!
Teaching today was good as 1) I was able to stick to my lesson plan, 2) it worked and 3) I was able to repeat it. Cool.
"Im hoi" - means 'hey you!' But is not considered rude. Can also be ,excuse me'.
"Cam on" - pronounced 'gammon' is thank you
"Dsong doi" - is 'stand up' "d" is like a soft 'z'
"Tot lam" is my favourite and means "good"
"Phai " is right and "trai" is left.
"Khong" - with the right accents- is No. (I don't actually use this much!)
The water puppet theatre was a spot of retelling of Vietnamese ethnic origin stories and cultural dances. It was lovely and I actually learnt quite a lot in small bite sized chunks that my brain could actually take in in the air conditioned theatre. Thang Long is the ancient name of the village Hanoi became. you see references to it everywhere from the taxis to the flower plaques. The theatre is essentially just a small pool of water surrounded by bamboo screens and populated by wooden marionettes operated from below on long wooden poles. I very much enjoyed the dragon and the Phoenix, meeting and mating and producing the elders of the tribes. All men of course, and you all laugh at male seahorses!
It was all over in 40mins. I went for an iced coffee and bought myself the green pith helmet veterans hat that I had been wanting. The star on the front represents the blood spilled for Vietnam and the raised parts around the edge represent the agrarian rice economy.
I also managed to attempt to use Stormfly today on the office computers. I tried the most up to date PC in the office according to the staff. The BIOS on this HP PC did not give me a clue as to whether it was 32 bit or 64 bit so I concluded it was probably 32-bit. However tried it anyway, no luck, error message. As I've not seen hide nor hair of a PC at the school I think I'm going to leave it at that point!
No comments:
Post a Comment