Let's try this again
OK it's been a while I know. For a while there it seemed that nothing terribly new and exciting was happening, so we weren't posting new blogs. Of course, we're always learning new things here, and we should have been posting all along. I'll try to post something once a week from now on -- probably over the weekends.
Anyway, there have been some significant changes here. Hoa quit teaching at Clever Learn, effective last week. She'll be working for University of Oxford Press, which seems to be the biggest player in the teaching English market (which is big here), this summer, travelling around southern Vietnam, teaching Vietnamese teachers of English how to use the UOP materials and giving them some new ideas, which are greatly needed, about teaching.
And I'm no longer working at the Vietnamese law firm. They decided having me work part-time wasn't working out well for them. They said they want me to return full-time after spending a few more months studying Vietnamese. I'm not ruling that out yet, assuming they're serious about wanting me to return, but I'm certainly not sure that being an associate in a law firm is what I want to do here. The biggest disadvantage would be the hours: officially, 8:30 am - 7 pm weekdays, plus a couple of half Saturdays per month; unofficially, I'm not exactly sure, but I know one lawyer there who was regularly pulling all-nighters. I'm not quite sure what kind of part-time job I want in the meantime. Teaching English may be a good choice, at least for now. The money's not bad, and I'd still have plenty of time to study Vietnamese.
Our friend Otto, from Prescott, is arriving here in two days. We're really looking forward to travelling with him. And we just found at that Lisa and David, also from Prescott, are coming in July. We're very happy that friends are coming to visit; we really didn't think we knew anyone with the time, money, and interest to come here. I hope Otto, Lisa, and David all have a good time here and like Vietnamese food.
Hoa's in Buon Ma Thuot (I can never remember how to spell it, probably because it has another name, something like Ban Me Thuot). I just say it fast, with the right tones, and people understand me even though I always forget the exact spelling and pronunciation. I didn't go, although I've been wishing I had. It's a long, 4-day weekend -- for Independance Day and May Day I believe. I didn't go mainly because I wasn't up for travelling by "xe do," the inter-city buses very rarely used by us (soft) foreign travellers. Also, I wanted to get a start on looking for a job, before leaving to travel with Otto. But I really haven't done much yet. (Don't tell Hoa.)
What have we been doing for fun lately? Not much. Just going to the cafes, which are very popular here, studying, and reading. I've been playing basketball again for the past three weeks or so, after suffering two injuries, a slightly sprained ankle and a pulled hamstring, each of which kept me off the court for about 3 or 4 weeks. It's really been too humid and hot for basketball -- maybe 35-36 C, whatever that is -- but I've been playing anyway, getting dehydrated, and then having a bad headache for the rest of the day just about everytime I've played lately. It is cooling off a little because the rainy season seems to have set in early -- it doesn't usually begin here in HCMC until June.
Hoa fired her tennis coach for being a jerk (he was starting to scream at her when she made mistakes) about a month ago, and she hasn't started playing again. Neither have I, but we both should.
We've both been reading some really good books. I just finished Phillip Roth's The Plot Against America, which was one of the best novels I've read in a very long time. It's set in a Jewish Community in New Jersey in an America where Charles Lindberg has been elected President on an America First, stay out of the European war, platform. Interesting, and scary.
Hoa and I both read The Tortilla Curtain (the author's name is T. Con-something or another Boyle). Anyway, it was also a great novel, about a rich part-time natural history writer, part-time stay-at-home dad, who lives with his real estate agent wife in a wealthy new foothills development in So Cal that is being "invaded" by the native animal species and Mexicans. The critics compared it to Tom Wolfe and Steinbeck: but it's not full of dead-on dialogue like both, funny like Wolfe, or as weighty as Steinbeck, but still interesting and relevant.
And I've now finished three books about Vietnamese history, but I'm getting hungry and want to go to lunch, so here's the short version of my conclusions on modern Vietnamese history: it was all, well mostly, or at least largely, France's fault. Just remember, you're not paying to read this.
Anyway, there have been some significant changes here. Hoa quit teaching at Clever Learn, effective last week. She'll be working for University of Oxford Press, which seems to be the biggest player in the teaching English market (which is big here), this summer, travelling around southern Vietnam, teaching Vietnamese teachers of English how to use the UOP materials and giving them some new ideas, which are greatly needed, about teaching.
And I'm no longer working at the Vietnamese law firm. They decided having me work part-time wasn't working out well for them. They said they want me to return full-time after spending a few more months studying Vietnamese. I'm not ruling that out yet, assuming they're serious about wanting me to return, but I'm certainly not sure that being an associate in a law firm is what I want to do here. The biggest disadvantage would be the hours: officially, 8:30 am - 7 pm weekdays, plus a couple of half Saturdays per month; unofficially, I'm not exactly sure, but I know one lawyer there who was regularly pulling all-nighters. I'm not quite sure what kind of part-time job I want in the meantime. Teaching English may be a good choice, at least for now. The money's not bad, and I'd still have plenty of time to study Vietnamese.
Our friend Otto, from Prescott, is arriving here in two days. We're really looking forward to travelling with him. And we just found at that Lisa and David, also from Prescott, are coming in July. We're very happy that friends are coming to visit; we really didn't think we knew anyone with the time, money, and interest to come here. I hope Otto, Lisa, and David all have a good time here and like Vietnamese food.
Hoa's in Buon Ma Thuot (I can never remember how to spell it, probably because it has another name, something like Ban Me Thuot). I just say it fast, with the right tones, and people understand me even though I always forget the exact spelling and pronunciation. I didn't go, although I've been wishing I had. It's a long, 4-day weekend -- for Independance Day and May Day I believe. I didn't go mainly because I wasn't up for travelling by "xe do," the inter-city buses very rarely used by us (soft) foreign travellers. Also, I wanted to get a start on looking for a job, before leaving to travel with Otto. But I really haven't done much yet. (Don't tell Hoa.)
What have we been doing for fun lately? Not much. Just going to the cafes, which are very popular here, studying, and reading. I've been playing basketball again for the past three weeks or so, after suffering two injuries, a slightly sprained ankle and a pulled hamstring, each of which kept me off the court for about 3 or 4 weeks. It's really been too humid and hot for basketball -- maybe 35-36 C, whatever that is -- but I've been playing anyway, getting dehydrated, and then having a bad headache for the rest of the day just about everytime I've played lately. It is cooling off a little because the rainy season seems to have set in early -- it doesn't usually begin here in HCMC until June.
Hoa fired her tennis coach for being a jerk (he was starting to scream at her when she made mistakes) about a month ago, and she hasn't started playing again. Neither have I, but we both should.
We've both been reading some really good books. I just finished Phillip Roth's The Plot Against America, which was one of the best novels I've read in a very long time. It's set in a Jewish Community in New Jersey in an America where Charles Lindberg has been elected President on an America First, stay out of the European war, platform. Interesting, and scary.
Hoa and I both read The Tortilla Curtain (the author's name is T. Con-something or another Boyle). Anyway, it was also a great novel, about a rich part-time natural history writer, part-time stay-at-home dad, who lives with his real estate agent wife in a wealthy new foothills development in So Cal that is being "invaded" by the native animal species and Mexicans. The critics compared it to Tom Wolfe and Steinbeck: but it's not full of dead-on dialogue like both, funny like Wolfe, or as weighty as Steinbeck, but still interesting and relevant.
And I've now finished three books about Vietnamese history, but I'm getting hungry and want to go to lunch, so here's the short version of my conclusions on modern Vietnamese history: it was all, well mostly, or at least largely, France's fault. Just remember, you're not paying to read this.
posted by Tom Holz | 10:50 PM
<< Home