HJS

We’ve finished week 2 of the infamous CELTA, and we’re exhausted. Exhausted, but happy that it’s half over. In just a short time, we’ve learned loads about teaching. Kind of like English-teaching boot camp. The nice thing is that the CELTA is the poshest ESOL course available, and it’ll get us into much better positions in almost any country.

HCMC is a living, vital, brutal city. Places like this sum Asia up: wild and chaotic and full of hope and despair–like getting a glimpse at New York or Paris in 1830. Everything exploding. People are getting rich left and right, struggling after the last bit of meat on the bone, living packed in–sleeping anywhere, people falling through the cracks of the system and getting smashed like cockroaches. Nothing like looking the sweatshop kids in the eyes and walking right on by–makes you feel like a real creep, but I’ve been doing it all my life: I just haven’t had to look at them.

Here’s a list of few HCMC images that really stuck with me:

A motorcycle taxi-driver, balanced like a rope-walker, asleep on the back of his motorcycle.

A snaggle-toothed man holding a cage and in it, a frazzled rat. When I came back down the alley a few minutes later, the cage was empty and the man was smiling over some boiling water.

A family of four on a Honda motor scooter.

Whipcrack lightning and thunder booming as I type away at my homework late at night in the computer lab. Outside the windows the tropical rain is crashing on the windows. It is very dark outside, save for the neon flecks and curls.

A real Czech-style brew hall complete with polka and swarthy, frosted mugs.

A western kid (of the ubiquitous backpacker tribe) passed out in a puddle of filth (right next to the guy with the rat).

Our comfy, cool hotel room with its generous, dirt-cheap mini-bar and every cable channel that we could want–but never watch.

A gang of very cute dogs roaming the streets on a Sunday outing.

An enormous Romanesque Catholic church–quite grand.

Streets with no stoplights, teeming with human flesh and motor scooters and every single one of them honking at once.

Korean tourists with bazooka lensed cameras, photographing everything!

It’s been quite a trip so far. We love it!

So long for now,

Joel

Since Sunday at noon, we’ve done nothing but coursework. Orientation went for four and a half hours that day, so by Monday morning, the supposed first day, we were well into the course.

It’s not really intellectually challenging–just a lot of work. We have two hours of practice teaching beginning at nine in the morning (where a trainer and all your peers sit in the back of the room and scrutinize you), then comes feedback (which has generally been good), and then after lunch, we sit through two long, sometimes vague training sessions. By then it’s 4:30, and for the last hour, we meet with our trainers to plan the next day’s teaching. After the official day ends, we usually stay around and prep the next day’s lessons until around 8 at night.

But today’s Saturday. It’s 9:45 a.m. and I’m in bed! Later today we’re going to go have another look at this city, which we’ve learned little about since the last time we posted!

Three weeks to go!

Hope you’re all well and happy!

–HEATHER

Paradise. And the parts that aren’t haven’t really sunk in yet. I wandered away from the (charming) guesthouse yesterday to look for rain jackets and came back drenched–too wet to even slip mine on. The locals probably linked my grin to a mental condition, but my delight was genuine. This place is so wild, so beautiful. I’ve never been somewhere so worthy of that oft-misapplied “exotic.”

The Saturday night dinner started with a thrill. The party organizer left one letter off the restaurant’s address, so we and some other students who are staying at our hotel hunted around–in the budding storm–for a good 45 minutes before figuring it out. But we found it eventually and had a nice time. Our first Saturday night in Saigon.

It’s exciting to think of where we’ll be in our course by the time our second Saturday night here arrives. We’re a day and a half into the month-long training (Sunday’s orientation lasted four and a half hours). By Saturday we’ll be a quarter of the way through, which is a real accomplishment with this thing.

The course is exciting. Tough, but not as bad as we thought it might be. Of course, it’s just beginning.

I’d love to write more about how the food is fabulous and we have a bunch of new expat friends and I just got a mani/pedi for six bucks, but it’s 9 and that’s almost our bedtime here. We’re going to try to make it up tomorrow in time for a 90-cent coffee/baguette breakfast at the cafe by our hotel. The coffee is the best we’ve ever had!

Oh–there are new pictures on the other website, in case you haven’t seen them.

So long from Saigon!

–HEATHER

It’s 7:14 on Friday morning here, and we seem to have escaped jet lag. We made it to the hotel by 11 last night, and were asleep soon afterward. No matter that it was morning in California, or that we’d dozed on the plane and napped, full-snore, sprawled out in the Hong Kong airport. It was bedtime; we went to bed. Maybe that’s the best way to adjust quickly–try to arrive at night.

What a journey! The flight times were shorter than scheduled, but it was still 15 hours in all. If you count the trip to the airport at 7 (thanks, Tom!), we were traveling for 26 hours. The turbulence wasn’t terrible and the United people did a great job. Five of their delicious airline meals still dwell within me. Ugh. Okay, I’ll stop there…

Anyway, the hotel’s cozy and they surprised us with a discount: our good-sized, “first class” room, with great air conditioning, a balcony and a (rare in Asia) bathtub, is only $16 a night! And I’m writing this with the aid of free wi-fi. Bliss!

We’re going out to explore today, and we’ll try to take and post some pictures. We’ll probably write a few more posts on either here or the other site (www.heather-and-joel.com), but after our course begins on Monday, we’ll likely only be doing quick “still alive” updates. This course is INTENSE!

More later!

–HEATHER

P.S. I mentioned it on our new website, but not here: Welcome to the world, Cora Rose Jorgensen! We met our new niece (Joy and Brian’s daughter) just days before we left. Thanks, Cora, for arriving early! We posted pictures on the site–www.heather-and-joel.com. Just click on “Family Visit” in the photo section–they’re towards the end.

Now we have THREE beautiful nieces, Anna, Freddie and Cora (and a new second-cousin, Georgia, in San Diego). Is there enough silk in Saigon to dress these lovelies in splendor? Oh, I think so! I can’t wait to hit those markets.

But first: The Training. Wish us luck!

We got restless and decided to resume our international life. We’re flying to Vietnam this week for a month-long teacher-training course. After that, we’ll take jobs in Vietnam, Korea, or maybe somewhere else!

We’ve made a new website for our friends, family and students. It’s www.heather-and-joel.com. We’ll probably keep that blog more updated than this one, but we’ll still post on here occasionally–especially for those just-for-Americans musings we occasionally have.

It’s been great seeing you all. Take care!

Love, Heather and Joel