Teaching

June 12^th – There is a thunderstorm in Hanoi. We saw the clouds approaching half an hour ago; (unfortunately the camera wasn’t working) immense, ominously dark, like heavy rollers in a bay. I was sitting on the window-ledge when the rain started, the lighted double-towers of some monumental blue and ivory building framed sharp as glass before the last of the daylight, and a mere band of yellow-grey seated low over the horizon of the city. The red metal of the crazy rooftops began to chatter as they got the first of the rain and I had to shut the windows. A woman in an opposing building stood gazing out through sliding screens, and I pressed my nose against the glass, making smiley faces.

June 22^nd – It is scorchingly hot now. Every morning I wake up at about 8:30, and lying in my bed beside the window, I see a bold hard sky, completely cloudless, itself seeming to burn from the heat. I begin to miss with a passion the feeling of waking before dawn; it is like the day is now curiously curtailed before it has even started. The first thing that catches my eye, for some reason, is the glassless window of an opposing building, that seems to lead to a through-corridor for some apartments. The outside wall is painted a bright, happy cyan, and the first semi-comatose thought that always runs through my mind is a curiosity about what lies through the window.

Work at the May School is going well. I am on my two-hour lunch break, having discussed ‘verb-ing’ and zoo animals with two classes this morning. Most thoroughly I enjoy teaching the older classes (about 9 or 10 years old), because the Vietnamese assistants don’t attend. I’m beginning to loosen up with the younger kids though, and realised that what they like best is for me to make a fool of myself blowing raspberries and pretending to be various animals.

I have been thinking quite seriously about becoming a teacher. A year ago I thought I might teach only because I’ll have a degree in English Lit when I finish uni, and I could use it as a sideline to fund the ‘more serious business’ of writing. Working here has made me realise what a versatile job it is, how many different opportunities there are for teachers! For example, here I could take up full time work at #7.50/hr, living like royalty on a fraction of the costs in Europe, with no qualifications whatsoever – or volunteer in the countryside helping communities. In Europe I could teach English as a language if I enrolled for a CELTA (#700, much cheaper than 4 years of uni), and in the UK on completing my degree and teacher training course I could teach English Lit at a normal high school, IB, Steiner, whatever takes my fancy – even a school like Edradour. With French Honours I can also try for French teacher, and Jocelyn suggested I teach Highers and Standard Grade students privately while at uni (there’s supposed to be an untapped fortune in it).

I thought, when I was in Bredalbane and Pitlochry, that I would never want to be a teacher at any conceivable point in my life, and the very least in some narrow-minded bureaucratic British state school. When I was studying in Sweden I realised what a difference it made to me to be in a class that wanted to learn, and with teachers so unavoidably ecstatic about their subjects – how incredibly important it is for students to have inspiration. I really don’t believe any of my skills were got through natural talents – I think I gained every skill I needed to develop myself at Edradour; to be a quick learner, an independent thinker, a problem-solver, knowledge-hungry, imaginative, etc. Everything that I have become I chose because I was given choice and the capacity to choose, to be aware. I really believe that stupidity does not really exist, but people are limited and made choiceless by a narrow education. Well, that’s my rather romantic humanistic notion of it...

It feels good to think that I have a real ambition now (I don’t really have ambitions to be a writer, as much as instincts and itchy fingers). Education has always been something that concerned me (even if at high school it more bothered me that I believed the teachers treated us like a flock of uncontrollable animals, and I was only interested in maintaining a silent anti-system defiance). I wonder if I am exactly like every other idealistic and unrealistic would-be teacher in hoping that I could change a young person’s life, or that I could offer the vistas of possibility that even I have only a vague conception of.

Well, 1:30 draws near. I have a dress to pick up that I was having modified, an engagement after work that might promise to have some inane novelty (I apologise if I offend, but we have invites to a party at the Hilton Opera House, put together by the British Embassy for all expat Brits... Jocelyn and I aren’t mature enough yet to resist the morbid attraction of dipping in for some mischievous ogling, even if we’re certain it’ll be a let-down).

I hope everyone’s well, and remember I’m thinking about you... getting gifts soon to send home.

xxx Andromeda