Hot Pot Dinner

SUNDAY 13^th March

Today I taught my first children’s class... aged 7-11. They were boisterous, and we had to play lots of games as well as written work, but it was all good. I have found that every class I’ve taught, the students already know the vocabulary and much more, so if I just stuck to the curriculum they’d be bored silly in 10 minutes... let alone 2 hours!... but at the same time there are always a couple who are way behind the others. There is so much for this teacher to learn!

I got my first ‘real’ roster. This week I will  teach 2 classes on Monday and Tuesday nights, have both Wednesday and Thursday free (yea!), Then a 5:30 class on Friday night,  2 evening classes on Saturday, and the same kids class on Sunday as today.... 16 hours. Out of those 8 classes I get 3 classes twice and 2 classes once. So the good news is with that degree of continuity, I should be able to get to know my students quite quickly... thank God they have all adopted English nicknames to make it easier. Today I taught Batman, Tiger, Tom and Levi...

After classes finished, 10 of us went out to dinner to a new teachers welcome dinner. It was sumptuous. The restaurant was a BarBQ -  Hot Pot restaurant... Lẩu Tứ Xuyên .  Braziers are set into the table and you BarBQ your own meat...

L to R: that’s Linh, Frank, Lina, Amie, Eathen, Sarah, Dave and Ann

                    Squid, quail, and goat’s meat, pork, kangaroo (!), eel and fish.

Our Vietnamese colleagues are  a very cheerful bunch. This is Oscar, Linh, Frank and Lina. They all seem to really enjoy their work and life in general.

Then when you reckon no-one could eat any more. They bring out a big pot of soup that heaps of vegies, mushrooms, tofu, rice noodles etc gets tossed into and that’s the second course!

                                                 The aftermath of our banquet!

After that we all headed over to Megan’s for a Trivia night with a bunch of the English-language teachers from other schools. They're a rowdy bunch...

The winning team ... Sarah, Dave and Lance (USA)

At about 11pm Dave and I walked home while the young'ns went off to play pool. Unfortunately I didn’t realise till we were half way home (at a very brisk pace) that I was still wearing my teaching shoes, not my walking shoes... big mistake. By the time we got home I had blisters on the balls of my feet. Wont make that mistake again!