Vietnam

Each year, China has a national holiday at the start of October.  This is to celebrate the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949.  I know it's 1949 without looking it up simply because this year is being advertised as the 70th anniversary of the founding.

Anyway.  Having a week off of classes, and feeling rather bored and dull with life at home, and realizing that most people are going to be taking vacations and I'd be here predominantly alone, I decided to throw a virtual dart at a virtual map.  To do this, I used a site I found called skyscanner, which lets you input a starting location and look for flight prices to basically anywhere.

In this list, China was (of course) first, with Thailand, Singapore, and Phillipines being close after.  Several countries weren't listed, among them Vietnam - you could click through to get prices, but you had to bounce a site or two to find them.

Somehow the idea of checking out a country no one in my family had visited seemed like the right decision.  So off I went.

Vietnam has some very complex history recently.  It goes beyond the American War (as they call it, for obvious reasons); my tour guide said that since 1859 when the French occupied Vietnam (colonized, really, in an effort to rival the British empire), Vietnam has been involved in several wars.  The ones I can recall right now are French (for independence), American (on the process of unification under the communist government), Cambodian (newly unified Vietnam invading), and Chinese (in response to Vietnam's invasion of Cambodia).  They're in a period of relative peace at the moment, and it's allowing them to grow as an economy and a culture.  Rebuild their identity and such.

The visa process for an American is fairly simple.  Submit an application to visit, wait a couple days for an approval letter, print that out, and show up with that and your passport and two passport photos (which can be taken on-site for an additional fee).  Wait in line until they put your visa on your passport (full page thing, similar to my Chinese visa and residence permits).  In you go.  The ease of access is largely thanks to Bill Clinton, who in 1994 ended an embargo enacted after the war, as well as increased efforts from the US to repair relations since.  I hadn't realized that the conversations were quite this recent, actually, with Obama being involved in efforts to clean up the continuing issues cause by Agent Orange (more on that later).

Broad strokes: my trip to Saigon (also known as Ho Chi Minh City) was quite educational and interesting.  Vietnam is...short.  The food is good, though I feel I didn't try as much as I would have liked due to simply not having time.  One advantage of traveling with someone else is sharing things you try.  Vietnam is hot and humid, being in the tropics, and when I returned to Harbin's chilly <10 degree weather I was happy as a clam (meanwhile, everyone else transferring from the plane to the bus was groaning, and some were shivering).

I flew from Harbin to Xiamen early on Monday morning.  Short layover before flying to Saigon, got a short-term SIM card, and caught a taxi to my hotel.  The elevator has this quirky sign with #5 being one of those Engrish examples.  Their lobby had a neat map of the city.  Their rooftop (up a short staircase) was an open seating area with a nice view. The room itself was pleasant and more spacious than I'd anticipated (partly from my experience in Japan).  There were a few neat hints of the hotel's character, including a note about guests and a really thoughtful extra.  After settling in, I went on a quick walk, had a yummy dinner (did I mention Vietnam is small?) and found a convenience store with something interesting, something unique, and this old friend (which was made with real sugar or a modified recipe, and wasn't how I remembered it, but was still pleasant to have again).  I'd also seen this on the way back from the airport.  Two interesting things here - first, for reference, $1 US is about 23,000 Vietnamese Dong, the national currency; so the Hawaiian Whopper is about $2.  Alternately, a full combo would be about $1.50.  Also, they deliver.  This isn't unfamiliar per se, since McDonald's and KFC both have their own delivery service in China.  But it was still noteworthy to me.

I packed in for the night.  In the morning, I tried the hotel's breakfast, which was pretty good.  Then it was down to the lobby for my pickup to tour the Cu Chi (pronounced "goo chee") tunnels.  Along the way, we stopped at a place operated largely by the government, where victims of Agent Orange were employed making art pieces and souvenirs by hand.  These are unfinished examples but give you an idea of how beautiful the finished pieces are.  These were sold in the same building, but photography wasn't allowed there.

A major part of the success the Viet Cong had against the Americans (and the South Vietnamese for that matter) was the geurilla tactics they were able to employ.  Part of this was constructing a tunnel system in the hard clay ground between and around Saigon and Cu Chi to the north.  These tunnel systems allowed the Viet Cong unrivaled stealth and mobility without being detected.  The tourism area around it is beautiful.
Really.

The tunnels are...very small.  Uncomfortably small, by design.  The guide told us that tunnels like that one are actually expanded for tourists, and showed us this one that's more accurate to how some of them are sized (particularly the choke points used to catch 'tunnel rats,' those small American soldiers trained to get into the tunnels; think about that next time you complain about your job).  The tunnels had entrances every 20 meters or so, and we had the opportunity to get in, lower ourselves down, and close the lid on top of us for a few seconds.  This kid tried it too, as did this unfortunate fellow who couldn't quite fit and had to settle for above-ground.  After I climbed out, I turned to the group and said, "Let's play Spot the American," which got a good laugh.

The Viet Cong also employed some really nasty traps.  For example, this spike pit with a cover that would spin when stepped on, both injuring soldiers and often trapping them as well.  Several others existed, and I'll link them here without trying to build them into sentences, as it's hard to find unique things to say.
https://i.imgur.com/9fbOpMZ.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/1pGrme1.jpg
A picture of traps being made.

Aside from shelters in the jungle itself, the Viet Cong used these tunnel systems for weapons and explosives manufacturing.  This cross-section actually shows more of the different kinds of rooms built in these tunnels, effectively forming entire encampments underground (though of course, that's a demonstration, not a literal example - the vertical stress would be too much and the tunnels would cave in).  But you can see, left to right: VIP tunnels (triangular and reinforced), meeting rooms, underground wells (given the rivers were often poisoned), cooking and eating areas (you can see small chambers of smoke going to chimneys that were built away from the room to avoid danger if the smoke was sighted).  Also medical rooms, munitions depots, and even sniper roosts.  Some exits led to the river (far bottom right) for escape, with doors to block the tunnels if the water started flooding in, and traps to prevent tunnel rats.  Different tunnels were built at different depths.  Not pictured is an example even deeper - apparently that picture didn't get saved.
The tunnels were ventilated by bamboo poles built into piles of mud and plants made to resemble ant hills or termite mounds.  The tour guide explained that as the war progressed, these became strategic chess games all their own: as Americans began to pick up on these ventilation holes, they'd destroy them, so the Viet Cong would build decoys.  Then the Americans got dogs to sniff out which ones were real and which weren't, so the Viet Cong would put black pepper and chili in the pipes to repel the dogs.  Then the dogs got used to those and would sniff past them, so the Viet Cong took soap and uniform parts from fallen soldiers and would put those into the holes, so the dogs recognized it as something friendly and ignored it.

Random bonus pictures: an American tank that was destroyed by a mine.  A pretty flower (that looks like a pine cone) that grows in the jungle.   And someone who would have had no trouble navigating the tunnels.

Every so often, the jungle would boom with the echo of gunfire; as part of the tour, there was a firing range with era weaponry.  You could buy ammo and try out weapons like an AK47 or an M-80 machine gun.  I think it was.
I have no idea if I hit anything.  The gun was so low that I couldn't adjust my glasses to see down the sights effectively.  But it was a kick.
On the way back from the Cu Chi tunnels, I saw several of these cemeteries.  Nothing to say about them, just thought they were interesting.

After a shower, I went on a quick walk to find dinner, stumbling across an ironically-named store and a familiar name along the way.

That night, I went to a water puppet show. Water puppetry dates back to the 11th century, when farmers in flooded rice paddies would entertain each other with wooden puppets on bamboo poles.  They often reflect mythology and a blend of simple life and royalty, and had some common characters and themes.  What struck me about this is how universal many things are - entertainment through slapstick, bright colors, and silly situations; pursuit of goals and desires; a complex relationship with those in higher social stations/wealth brackets than ourselves, and so on.  The whole thing was performed with the puppeteers hidden behind the pagoda and screen, with a small orchestra of six musicians and actors providing both the music and the voices/narration for the skits.  I'll list these as numbered pictures to save space, cuz there's a lot of them, and I don't have much context for who the characters are or what it all means.  They're mostly in random order as well, since I don't recall the sequence of skits.
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And videos:
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One of the groups who saw the show arrived in style.

The next day I had a more in-depth tour of Saigon itself.  This started at the Saigon Opera House, in an area of the city that still has indications of the French occupation/colonialism that began ~1859. A couple was getting their wedding pictures taken outside that morning.
Then we went up to the Saigon Post Office (which is a tourist attraction with plenty of souvenir shops as well, for some reason, but again shows the French influence), a brief look at Notre Dame Cathedral, Independence/Reunification Palace (having two names for...well, obvious reasons), the War Remnants Museum, Pho 2000 (where Bill Clinton famously had lunch when he came to visit when ending the embargo), Ben Thanh Market (a large building with independent stalls and merchants who will almost badger you to buy things), and a Chinese temple in the Chinatown district of Saigon.  Like the water puppetry part, I'll just number the images below each one, because it's a lot and not much requires or justifies context.  Unfortunately, the Reunification Palace tour was long enough with enough rooms and information that I don't remember the order of things very well.  Imgur didn't keep my picture order when uploading (this post probably took 3 hours to write and organize), so a lot of the detail and sequencing is gone.  Sorry!

Reunification Palace:
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Reunification Palace is actually rebuilt, as the original palace was destroyed. The seat of government is now in Hanoi, in the north of Vietnam, so this is just a historical site.

War Remnants Museum
**WARNING**
So, this is obviously going to be the Vietnam War from the perspective of the Vietnamese, namely the Communist Party that is currently in power.  As such, not only will there be some slant, but a lot of the narrative will be strongly anti-American.  However, more important, this is reflection on and aftermath of a war, so there's some pretty graphic imagery in here, as well as descriptions of torture and suffering.  I'll try to sort them accordingly and label properly, but still.  Proceed at your own risk.

Arms and ordinance:
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The world in solidarity with Vietnam:
China  Europe

An exhibit on torture
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There was an exhibit about the protests in the US. I was actually kinda pleased to see this here, even if it's fairly common knowledge that the Vietnam War was a major turning point in public opinion and government confidence.  Seeing an entire room dedicated to exploring internal strife around this event within the US, showing that not all Americans wanted to be there...it was kind of reassuring, in a way.  Still, it was not without it's own slightly unsettling narrative.

Agent Orange (History Channel link)
This exhibit spanned a full three rooms, as there was a lot to explore - from initial use, to lasting effects, to current clean up efforts.  A lot of it is pretty awful to look at, but I think it's important to be aware just how messed up it was and how long-lasting the effects are.  There's a reason chemical weapons are no longer an acceptable part of warfare in the civilized world (is that seriously a phrase?)
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They had several quotes from American policymakers and such, justifying or defending the war, and a photojournalist's broader perspective. Suffice to say, after a while, I was just kinda too tired to take any more pictures.  And knew, also, that there was little point.  Y'all don't need or want to see even this much, I imagine, much less more.

Chinese Temple
As with most religious structures, almost everything here was very intentional and had some meaning or significance.  I'm sure you won't blame me for not remembering a lot of it, as this was the last stop on a very information-dense tour.
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Thank you for reading.  I know this was...really entirely too long, and had more pictures, frankly, than I'd want to go through in a week if I hadn't taken them myself.  Even if you didn't look at all of them, I hope you found it interesting.
In gratitude for getting down here, I thought I'd convey something amusing I learned about Vietnamese.  The word "Phuc" (I believe it's pronounced Fook) actually means blessed or blessing.  So it's very common on business names.  Which, given it's English phonetic pronunciation and the word implied by it, leads to some amusing combinations.

Zaijian,
-L

Student writing

So recently, we found from some test reviews and data collection that our students' weak areas are reading and writing.  Having weaker areas is, of course, totally fine.  It provides an idea what to work on and can even inform how precisely to go about it (increased spelling test frequency and focus, or sentence structure teaching, or what have you).  Depending on the issues, they can be addressed with just some minor tweaks in teaching approach, or even something as simple as homework assignments.

This is all fine and good.  But it dovetailed with my recent project to update some of our unit tests to be in line with the activities and demands of the Cambridge Young Learner Exams (YLE), sort of a gold standard of English learning assessment.  As I've been comparing the YLE writing tasks to those found on our tests, it turns out we're actually pretty far ahead of those tests - where the YLE only asks for words and a couple full sentences, we expect a full paragraph on every unit test (and on some, two).  The expectations are higher because if you set the bar above your goal, even falling a little still results in success.

So we find that our students' writing isn't quite where we want it to be.  This, unfortunately, is where the trouble begins.  Because there is only one way to work on writing, and that is by writing.  And yeah, the same can be said of reading, listening, and speaking.  But listening, speaking, and sometimes reading can all be done in active, engaging ways.  There are relatively few ways to make writing anything but a slow activity.

A major part of classroom management is energy balance, or what I tend to call 'orchestration.'  My term draws from theatrical directing, where orchestration refers to the highs and lows of a scene, act, or production.  Good orchestration can keep an audience's attention because it allows both times of tension and times of release - not quite relaxation, but a kind of rest nonetheless.  Classes need this same orchestration; a common industry term is 'stir and settle,' where an activity will bring students up and get them moving (physically if possible), and another will allow them to lower back down.  If you've ever sat through a meeting, sermon, lecture, or speech where you were yawning, nodding off, or just generally losing focus, it's because of a lack of these elements.  With lectures, of course, there's little you can do to get your audience physically active without risking some attention loss when you settle again.  But a lecture will also be dealing primarily with adults.

Classrooms of children need that active element, that 'stir' side, because without it they get tired, restless, distracted, or frustrated.  Sitting for forty minutes is torture to a child.

Long story short (I think I'm well past that by now), my next task is to work out how to include more writing practice, as well as direct instruction, into my classes while still maintaining a good stir/settle orchestration.  Which means finding more stir activities that can still support my lesson objectives.  When I first arrived, full of energy and lacking particular experience and such, I had a lot of ideas.  Trying many of them resulted in a dampened enthusiasm and creativity, unfortunately, as most of them flopped for one reason or another.  Add in a heavier class load and some very persistent insomnia, and I find I can't come up with anything especially interesting lately.  And since I'm lacking good stirs, I'm hesitant to add more settles.

The challenges of a teacher, I suppose.  I have a goal, though, and that's a pretty crucial step.

Zaijian,
-L

Ice and Snow

So my grand intentions for festival posting faltered.  It's amazing how little you can want to do when you have almost nothing you have to do.

But I did finally make it to the Ice and Snow World.  Because I have 64 pictures from it, rather than the in-line link format I've previously used, I'll just dump the link here and you can peruse at your leisure.

As of this coming week, I will be teaching 14 classes for a total of 25.5 teaching hours per week.  So my posting rate here will, sadly, not be improving much.  It's a manageable, but very substantial work load.

Zaijian,
-L

Beidaihe

Be warned: this whole post is a heck of a photo dump.

Belated greetings from Beidaihe (bay die huh)!  My school's annual conference took place here, at a Club Med resort.

Which sounds a bit better than it is, mostly because all the activities and interesting things take place during the day while we're in meetings and meetings and speeches and so forth.  Still, you can't deny there are some lovely views, rather lovely sunrises, and of course the beach with all it's beachiness.

This, too, sounds a bit better than it is.  After all, it is still winter in Northern China we're talking about here.  The formations made by salt water and ice are pretty interesting though, and being a balmy 0 degrees C means the beachfront is pretty open...very few people out enjoying the surf (or lack thereof) and sun (and lack thereof).

But I found this really interesting seashell, which has almost a cave painting-like design.  Nifty!

Still, it is a Club Med, which means they have lovely amenities with relaxing luxuries. There's also this neat little theater where movies were playing on a pretty large TV.  I didn't take the time to try it out, but the idea of a giant pile of bean bags serving as seating for a little movie nook is kind of alluring.  In a fun, I'm-an-adult-who-wishes-he-could-play-in-ball-pits kinda way.
And then there's the food.  Dear lord, the food.  So much food.  The primary dining choice here is a buffet, which has several offerings that stay the same (lamb chops, steak, fish, salad, bread, etc) and many that change from day to day (too many to name).  Here, I got to see more of my favorite thing in China: attempts to translate various things from Chinese to English with varying degrees of success.  I didn't get a picture, but there was a roasted potato dish of some kind with the placard "That's a small potato."
And of course, some desert options.  China in general isn't as big on desert as the US, but they did have some pretty decent ice cream.  I get the feeling they knew their audience too, and were kind enough to provide us with shovels.

The conference covered topics ranging from the history of our school, to current trends, to corporate partnerships for sales, academics, assessments, and staff recruitment.  Informative, if a bit dry, and mostly just sit and listen and maybe take notes you'll forget on the table so they get thrown away but that's ok you didn't need them anyway.

I'm not in a place to complain.  This is one of those moments where I feel like this school really is special - the meetings and speeches and whatnot could have been given anywhere.  They chose to bring us here to show how much they value us as the staff of the school.  They cancelled all classes for nearly the whole week for this.  It's a great school to work for, and I'm glad I landed here.

Now that we're back, it's time for our winter Additional Course (ADC) offerings.  These are mostly phonics intensives that students in multiple levels attend for an hour each day, four days a week, atop their normal class schedule.  My understanding is that Chinese public schools are out of service until mid-February, after Spring Festival. During the Festival, the school will be closed as well, which means I'll have about two weeks without any classes to teach.  Which will be a relief, especially after ADCs.

My 'typical day' for the two weekdays when I'm teaching is as follows:
Wake up around 6:30-7AM.  Be at the school around 8:30-9AM.  Teach a class from 10-11.  Plan the next class, which I teach from 12-1PM.  Downtime for about three hours.  Teach my evening class or classes.  Get home around 7:30-8:30PM.
My Saturday/Sunday hours are roughly the same - 8AM-8PM most of the time.  But two days of the week being 12 hour days, that's pretty easy to handle.  Four of them is getting a bit tiring, and we're just at the end of the first of three weeks.  When the school lets out for Festival, I'll be fairly glad for some rest.

I've mostly finished covering other peoples' classes now that they are back from holidays, which means it's time to take on my own.  Which is to say, taking classes from other teachers who are either leaving soon or just have a heavier load than is necessary now that I'm here.  So far I'm still getting oriented to most of them, but I'm guessing I'll be teaching around 11-13 classes over the course of the week.  It's manageable, especially once ADCs wrap up and I have more of my mornings to myself.

Hopefully during Spring Festival I can hunt down some actual Chinese lessons/classes, and get my History Bites more updated.  I'll certainly have the time.

Zaijian,
-L