The Englishman of Phung Hung Street - Part 2

I spent my first 2 weeks in Hanoi living in a hotel, it was lovely and a vast improvement on the first night hotel which was so hideous that I spent less than 12 hrs in it. The bed was alive with god knows what, there was sewage leaking up through the tiles in the breakfast room and the staff were scary and very aggressive pushers of organized trips to the tourist spots. 

I changed hotels and with the porter from my new hotel and a scooter I was transported across the old quarter of Hanoi and from a world of no star grubbiness to 3 star comfort, hot water, clean rooms, laundry service and all the things a very demanding Englishman needed whilst job hunting and apartment hunting in a city of 5 million people whose language was totally unfathomable to me!

My 2nd, 3rd and 4th days were spent job hunting, usually on the back of a Xe-Om (motorbike taxi), traveling far and wide to suburbs that claimed to be central but were practically in another province. I had 5 interviews and accepted an offer to teach at a Kindergarten/primary school on Vọng Đức, , Hoan Kiem District, Hanoi and my life as a teacher began.

One of my 3 year old students on the field trip

My saturday english class

Field trip by Hoan Kiem lake

I began teaching on my 2nd monday in Hanoi, I was assigned 12 classes per week teaching children aged 2-6 and oh my god it was funny. Children are the same all over the world, cheeky, naughty, funny and almost impossible to tire of. My first few classes were worrying, lots of tears from the youngest children. The children had never had a male teacher before and that change was enough to send some of the kids rushing to the door and crying but slowly I gained their confidence, usually by sitting on the floor with them, making silly noises, playing games and disney tunes on my laptop and the vietnamese teachers who helped me were great and fascinated by me at the same time. They told me that all the previous English teachers had stood at the back of the room and kept a distance from the children and not really liked children. 

My leaving party December 2011

My experience as an uncle helped a lot being a teacher to such young children, make the children laugh, make them feel safe and they will learn and make sure the mothers like you as if they like you and the children do to, your job is a lot easier.  I didn't expect to be teaching such young children and it was exhausting at times but the experience was a truly amazing one. It was very sad when I left and some of the children cried. 

And as I settled into my job as a kindergarten teacher I found myself with 2 more student, very different from the toddlers at Queensland Kindergarten.

To be continued..