First week of bootcamp

It's Saturday morning and I just woke up with a bit of a hangover. I've finished the first of my four weeks of CELTA training, but this weekend won't be the two-day oasis of repose and refreshment I'm craving—only a chance to catch a quick breather before climbing back onto what is proving to be a grueling 26-day obstacle course.

I had imagined the CELTA course to be this: Me, sitting at a desk, listening to lectures on education theory, classroom methodologies, pronunciation difficulties specific to Vietnamese ESL students, tips on coping with culture shock. In my imagination, I was taking notes, contributing my own brilliant ideas, and asking questions about how to get a good deal on an apartment and where to buy one-a-day vitamins. After a week or two of lectures, discussions, and observations of experienced teachers, I would be given some opportunities to team-teach (me with a trainer in front of a class, then me with another trainee in front of a class). Finally, in the last week, the fledgling would leave the nest and fly solo in the classroom. Weekends would be spent doing short reading/writing assignments and partying with the other trainees.

Here's the reality: Me, one of ten trainees bombarded with a blizzard of important printed handouts to be read "when we get a chance" and forms on which to make a detailed record of everything we observe, do, or plan to do. From the very first moment we're in constant motion, being lead through a rapid sequence of kinesthetic learning experiences in which almost nothing is given to us outright by the trainer, almost everything is suggested or elicited using pictures, gestures, and examples. The trainers are mirroring the same multi-sensory kaleidoscope of activities they expect us to use to engage our students' interest and extend their understanding and skills.

The very first day, Monday, we meet our students and watch our trainer take them through a one-hour lesson. That night, after an eleven-hour day at school, I eat an apple for dinner and then stay up until long past midnight preparing a detailed lesson plan for the next day. I'm exhausted but too keyed up to really sleep. On Tuesday I teach my first 40-minute solo lesson to 8 bewildered intermediate students while being observed and evaluated by a trainer and four peers. Classroom management turns out to be harder than it looks. I bomb, but my peers mistake my zombie-like exhaustion for aplomb under pressure and award me a few style points. On Thursday I teach again. I bomb again. I would be having a better run if the students would just speak English.

Every weekday is jam-packed from about 8:00AM to midnight, a nightmare of non-stop input sessions, teaching sessions, teacher observation, peer observation, student observation, observation feedback sessions, written assignments, and lesson prep.

Lesson preparation is particularly time-consuming. It involves searching books and Web for suitable text and visuals, printing, photocopying, cutting, pasting, photocopying again, etc., while developing, writing, and memorizing a detailed step-by-step plan. It requires such meticulous planning and structuring that it currently takes me about 6 hours to prepare one 40-minute lesson.

Our classrooms are on the 6th floor, the trainees have a workroom on the 5th floor, the trainers' office with resource books is on the 4th floor, the teachers' workroom with the photocopy machine is on the 2nd floor. There's an elevator, but it's quicker to run up and down the stairs all day long. When the power goes out and the AC goes off, it's sweltering.

There are 10 trainees. We are 4 Americans, 2 Aussies, a lovely girl from Wales, another from the Philippines, another from the Netherlands, and a man from Bangladesh. All except the 4 Americans have significant previous classroom teaching experience. I'm the oldest one by far but everybody has been a little surprised to learn how far. Last night Wales, Netherlands, Texas, Colorado, and I joined Philippines and James from Sydney in a drinking tour of the Old Quarter.

We started with a few beers at the Bia Hoi Corner—a small street intersection mobbed by international backpackers where you can sit in a crowd on a plastic chair, drinking beer siphoned into your glass through a hose, and watch more beer drinkers doing the same on the other 3 corners of the intersection. In the street is a non-stop parade of motorbikes, tourists, street vendors, and colorful sights like the guy playing a flute (not badly) with his right nostril and the lovely young Vietnamese girl sporting six-inch incandescent (battery-powered) red devil horns on her head.

We had more beers at Mao's Red Lounge in an upstairs room reminiscent of a hookah bar in Charlottesville (the Twisted Branch). We moved on to a place called Beer Minh where, on a comfortable large terrace overlooking the street, we ate, drank more beers, and watched the human carnival on the street below. We finished—or at least I finished—the evening at Dragonfly, a club that had an actual hookah bar upstairs and downstairs a pool table, a tiny dance floor, and a DJ spinning American hiphop and pop tunes like Sean Kingston's Beautiful Girls. I ran out of gas around midnight and headed home alone.

Picture this: I'm slightly drunk and walking all alone down a dark, narrow street. I'm only vaguely oriented as to direction. The street curves and then forces me to choose a turning. I'm wandering through a maze of tiny streets in the Old Quarter of Hanoi. It's well after midnight. In any other city I'm sure I would feel some apprehension (certainly true of Oakland, but also true of Charlottesville and Cheyenne). In Hanoi I feel quite safe. I can see dim figures crouched in the shadows—a man holding a sleeping child in his arms, a family sitting around a low table having a late supper on the sidewalk, two old women sharing a glass of tea. I turn the corner again into a darker street deserted except for two tiny women sweeping up trash. I can hear a murmur of voices floating down from tiny terraces and dimly lit windows.

Eventually I work my way back to Hoan Kiem lake where it doesn't take long to hear a voice say "Hello, motobi". It's too late to catch a bus, so I agree to take my first xe om ride back home (to Vincom Towers). Before getting on the bike, I negotiate a price of 20,000 dong with the driver. He only knows a few words of English but he's eager to try them all out. He covers most of the ten minute ride with his head turned round to me saying things like "shee kah goh" and "wah sheen tone" and when I confirm the place name by repeating it he nods his head vigorously and laughs maniacally. Reaching our destination, I offer him a 50,000 dong note and remind him of the price we agreed on. He pulls out his wallet and looks in it, but won't pull out any bills until I hand him the 50,000. Then he hands back one 10,000 note. I shake my head and remind him of our deal. He feigns absolute bewilderment. Then he tries to show me how hungry he is. Then he goes back to pretending not to understand a word I'm saying.

In the end I got him to fork over another 15,000, but I was tired and let him slide with an extra 25% (30 cents). At my hotel I found the doors locked and three of the hotel employees sleeping just inside the door on a mattress on the floor, surrounded by their motorbikes. I had to pound hard 10 or 12 times on the glass before one of them woke up and let me in.

Physically, I'm feeling much better, though my state is still a soup of mild rib discomfort, itchy insect bites, severe heat distress, mild diarrhea, brain overload, high anxiety, and sleep deprivation. Gordon Heavyfoot seems to be gaining weight, but I'm losing it (no appetite on the days I teach, too little time to eat on the others—plus the diarrhea).

There's a great many more things I want to tell you about, but I just don't have the time. I have assignments to research and write and a lesson to prepare for Monday. I'm already a little anxious about the time I've lost writing this blog entry. I'll fill in more of the details three weeks from now. In the meantime, drop me an email or post a comment to let me know there's still a world outside Hanoi.