Xe Om Update

OK. Now I feel a little more guilty. I think Friday's Xe Om driver tried to give me my change this afternoon when I got back from the health check (of which more later). And, assuming that he was just trying to get another ride when it was fairly obvious I was heading into my building, I just waved him away rather brusquely.

Xe Oms and the Meaning of Life

Tonight, for the first time since being here, I actually spent most of the xe om (motorbike taxi) ride home with my eyes tight shut.

Perhaps surprisingly, this had nothing to do with the traffic or the quality of the driving. In fact, it was simply an involuntary physical response to hurtling into pouring rain. On the long, straight stretch of Nguyen Thi Minh Khai from school to the river there was precious little bar the driver’s shoulder stopping the sharp needles of rain hitting me in the eye, the face, the neck and eventually even down my cleavage. By the time we whooshed through the flooded taxi rank and pulled up outside my building there wasn’t much of me that wasn’t soaking wet.

Yet, this is far from being the worst xe om experience I’ve had. I’ve already mentioned the difficulty of maintaining one’s dignity and public decency on one when dressed in a short, straight skirt. But there are other problems to catch the unwary too.

For a start, away from the tourist areas, it can sometimes be surprisingly difficult to find one when you actually want one. Walking across the road to the shop, no problem. You are bombarded with offers from all sides. But walk out of the flat, dressed for work in the early afternoon (as I do) and it can be tricky to track a driver down.

Then, as a relative newcomer to the area, it’s difficult to discern which drivers to trust. It appears to be a pretty unregulated profession (no surprises there) and while you can find little gangs (usually on street corners) who work together, and who, like the guys outside school, get to know you and your routine well and even take it in turns to drive you, you can also stumble upon someone who is apparently just taking a chance on a passer-by.

Take Friday, for instance. Now, I know this isn’t London. They aren’t Black Cab drivers. There is no knowledge here. Heaven knows I gave enough taxi drivers directions in Italy and Japan to know that. But really. If you’re going to set yourself up as a xe om driver, surely there are two basic rules you need to bear in mind. First, have some rough knowledge of the city you’re driving around. And secondly, have some change on you in case your passenger doesn’t have exactly the right money.

On Friday, I was hailed by this chap as I was leaving the apartment. I knew I should’ve walked away when, despite my print-out from the website showing not just the school’s address but a picture of it (located in, let’s face it, one of the main streets of the city centre), he had to ask not one, but two people where it was. Then after taking the circuitous route round the back of Nguyen Thi Minh Khai he had to keep asking me where to turn off. Which would’ve been fine if he’d actually been paying attention. Unfortunately, his response to my tapping his shoulder and pointing down the next alleyway was merely to slow down, pull in to the side of the road, and keep going.

He tried this tactic again at the next alleyway too. I persisted and we found ourselves halfway down an unfamiliar side street (which also looked like it might be a dead-end) with me simultaneously talking to him in the coaxing voice I usually employ for animals and small children, and rolling my eyes at the women watching me from a street stall. Finally emerging back into Nguyen Thi Minh Khai just a few doors down from school, he then seemed slightly stumped to find us facing the wrong way into the on-coming traffic. I gave up and got off the bike.

I got my purse out of my bag and proffered a 50,000 dong note (we’d agreed a fare of 40). He started waving his hands in the Vietnamese gesture of not understanding/not being able to help. In other words, he wasn’t even carrying 10,000 dong (probably less than 50p) on him. Now, I wasn’t being awkward here. I just didn’t have 40,000 in change, otherwise I would’ve given it to him. Hot and sticky, I gave up once more and walked away in a huff, leaving him with a 10,000 dong bonus. An amount so piffling to a Westerner one does feel twinges of guilt at begrudging it.

Still, I suppose he had at least attempted to get me to the right place. There is always a danger (especially if you don’t have anything written down) that the driver will misunderstand your pronunciation and try to take you somewhere else. I live in Binh Thanh district. Picking me up in Backpackerville the other week, one old boy assumed I was a tourist and tried to take me to Ben Thanh market. And, again, he didn’t have change when we finally arrived back here – much to the amusement of the 4-wheeled taxi driver parked up next to us.

But my increasingly familiarity with the city means my haggling skills are coming on. I know what such and such a trip normally costs, so I can make a fair guess at what’s a fair price for another trip. And in spite of tonight’s blinding, I’m getting fairly confident at riding pillion. Don't tell dad but I don’t even hold on most of the time now. And I’m coming to realize that safety and stability has as much to do with speed (falling off actually feels much more likely at a crawl) and the size of the bike (the bigger the better – who says size doesn’t matter!)

Finally, while stopped at traffic lights during Friday’s magical mystery tour, I noticed one bloke leaning against his bike on the street corner, puffing away on what appeared to be a huge bong. Now, where would a trip (yes, pun absolutely intended) with him take you, I wonder? Nirvana, or just Casualty?

Random

As I came out of the apartment building yesterday to go to work, a tiny old woman in pyjamas, conical hat and with precisely two fang-like teeth in her head spotted me and gestured towards a taxi parked nearby. When I made no objection to the idea, she hobbled over to the car and hammered on the side of it with her fist. The poor unsuspecting driver jumped out of his skin. Then, with a huge toothless grin, she waved me off.

Things To Do On Your Day Off

… Err, right now I’m thinking – stay in bed and recover from being kept awake all night by the neighbourhood’s World Record attempt on the ‘Loudest and Longest Funeral Wake’. Two days, tone deaf karaoke, pub gigs and opera of the Asian cat-strangling variety (definitely no Puccini here), topped off with the inevitable jazz procession through the streets at 6am. This time I did drag myself out onto the balcony to see it. Saffron-robed priests, a coffin draped in red carried by pall bearers dressed in white complete with peaked caps, and assorted followers bringing up the rear, dodging the potholes and motorbikes already buzzing round the alleyways.

This comes hot on the heels of the local school’s open-air assembly at 7am on Friday morning, which also seemed to last several hours and involve the headmaster whipping the kids into a frenzy over the tannoy.

The Vietnamese construction industry, similarly, doesn't seem to have any conception of time, and with half the city a building site the sound of hammering, drilling and sawing is pretty much constant.

Teachers' Day

Saturday 20^th November 2010.

So my first experience of the Vietnamese national Teachers’ Day passed in the haze of a twelve and a half hour shift, disappointed-looking Juniors, bored-looking TAs and finally culminated in me giving some 13 and 14 year olds a very un-Asian-style bollocking (so much for maintenance of ‘face’).

Teachers’ Day is a national celebration of the esteem and respect in which teachers are held. It is mainly aimed at honouring those teachers in mainstream education, and for many people involves returning to their old school even after many years in order to see their former teachers. Schools hold Open Days with performances by the students and presentations of gifts and messages to the teachers.

But we lesser mortals in ELT do get a look in too, with teachers rushing into the staffroom at every break to deposit yet more gifts of bedraggled roses, chocolates, cakes, shower gel, useless knick knacks, rolls of fabric and, in one case I heard about, a box of washing powder. Not to mention the disconcertingly Mafia-esque offer, ‘If there’s anything you want, just let my mum know…’

Having few very young learners classes, and having clearly failed as yet to warm the cockles of my students’ hearts I didn’t fare quite so well, although I did come away with a Winnie the Pooh mug and an envelope containing 100,000 dong (just over £3). Plus my adult students took me out for sushi on Friday night, which is always welcome! However, dragging myself out of bed before 6am on Saturday morning to cover a Juniors class (average age 8) of whom fewer than half turned up and all of whom looked at me as if to say ‘Oh. You’re not our teacher. I’m not giving you a present’ was not so welcome. Bless ‘em. It was the final lesson of their course, and not only was their regular teacher absent but so was their TA. So they had to put up with a couple of strangers playing pointless games with them.

Not surprisingly there were no gifts from the Seniors class I gave the bollocking to either. Dragging a bunch of 13 and 14 year olds through an Advanced level textbook was never going to be easy. And maybe I’m not used to such young teenagers being at that level. 16 and 17 year olds, yes, but younger ones at that awkward point of painful shyness and cockiness, not so much. Getting any of them to say anything that is audible to the human ear is a feat in itself, unless its from the gaggle of giggling girls who randomly interject questions about sex whenever they feel they’re in any danger of being made to do any work.

Anyway, after having been at work already for nigh on ten hours, something snapped. I caught one of the boys writing on his desk with a board marker, and hit the roof. The lesson ground to a halt as I threw a toilet roll at him and screamed at him to scrub it off immediately. Then I made him spend the remainder of the lesson sitting next to the TA. Possibly not one of my finest moments as a teacher, but it did seem to do the trick. Going into the next lesson the following day with all guns blazing, I read them the riot act again, wrote MY non-negotiable set of class rules on the board (forget all that baloney about giving teenagers a voice) and threatened them with the set of humiliating forfeits that have been known to make 6-foot tall, 18 year old Italian boys cry. They were a little subdued to begin with, but we all emerged unscathed 2 hours later from a perfectly pleasant and productive lesson.

Worried about issues of face, I did apologise to Linh, the TA, but she told me not to worry. ‘Sometimes’, she said, ‘they need it.’

I still haven't got to grips with the whole TA thing. No doubt it will come up as an issue if I get observed with one of the kids’ classes. And I’m a bit worried that one TA in particular is starting to look bored a lot of the time. But honestly, the kids don't play up much and I’ve been teaching alone for long enough now that I don't feel I need that much help demo-ing activities or explaining vocab. What am I meant to do with him? I was starting to feel a bit uncomfortable about it, until last night, another cover TA came up to me after my Elites class, asked me how long I’d been teaching and said, ‘You know, it’s funny but you remind me a lot of my university teachers. You were so calm and in control of the lesson’. Ah! Now that’s how you end Teachers’ Day weekend – with a TA being nice to you!

Happiness is a kettle, 2 mugs and a dictionary...

My beloved parents have commented that yesterday’s post made me sound rather depressed … though not nearly depressed as it would have done if I’d written it a few days ago, it has to be said… So to set the record straight, things are not quite all gloom and doom chez Pippa. Relations between the new flat and me have been a little strained it is true, but things are looking up gradually.

For a start, what I didn’t mention yesterday was that along with cleaning I also spent part of my day off on Tuesday shopping for mugs and glasses. And right now I’ve just got back from another foray into the CBD where the ridiculously chic department stores keep international supermarkets hidden away in the attic or basement. These supermarkets, besides stocking such delights as baked beans, also include homeware sections apparently loosely based on upmarket ¥100 shops. You find me thus high on the purchase of an electric kettle to go with the mugs I bought on Tuesday! I’ve also invested in a jar to keep the sugar out of ant’s harm’s way.

In fact I’ve had a bit of a splurge today. In a sad comment on my life, I’m also quite overcome with excitement at buying a (legit) copy of the Macmillan Advanced Learner’s Dictionary for about £4.00! For those of you not in ELT it would cost at least £20 back home, and possibly a lot more. I also stumbled (excuse the pun) on a branch of the Body Shop and got myself a new foot file – all this mooching about dirty, dusty streets in flip flops is playing havoc with my heels, which weren’t in the best nick to start off with.

And I am slowly getting to know my new neighbourhood. In the mornings when I go round to the little bakery the landlady recommended, with a clear (-er) blue sky, sunshine and bustling streets, it is quite attractive and even endearing. Give me time, I’ll grow to love it. Plus, the journey to work every day, and the sometimes creative routes the drivers take to get me there, is helping me get my bearings around the city better than if I’d stayed burrowed away in Backpackerville.

I should say thank you to Matt, Debs, Julia, Alison and Oye for their comments on the blog too. Sorry I haven't replied to any of you – I’m still coming back down to earth. Anyway, thanks everyone, and honestly, I’m not as depressed as I sounded yesterday. Guesthouse Pip is almost ready for business!

Ants in the Sugar - Part Two

Ants in the Sugar – Part Two

(Thursday 11^th – Tuesday 16^th November)

So the agent arrived to drive me to the apartment, sign the contract and move in. All the way here through the city my doubts continued. Admittedly I haven’t done much exploring yet, but (even being only 15-20 minutes in the car) it seemed very far from the city centre surroundings I’ve become familiar with. My moving day loneliness was exacerbated by the huge windstorm that blew up like something out of the Wizard of Oz later that evening. Being on the 12^th floor in a fairly low-rise area, this created a howling noise I haven't heard since Senate House Library.

Then, the apartment block looked just as run down in daylight, and the flat itself tattier, dirtier and less well-equipped. Going through the inventory was even stranger than usual. One glass, no kettle, no cutlery to speak of and a couple of manky pots and pans, plus the dinky little tea set with the thimble-sized cups the landlady had seemed so proud of on Tuesday night. Not to mention the office-style water dispenser with three empty barrels and a telephone number for re-orders that didn’t seem to be working when either Mai, the landlady, or Duy, the agent, tried to call. The TV wasn’t tuned in properly, and the ADSL broadband won’t let me access Facebook Touch let alone the full-blown version. For now I have to wait until I get to work, which I’ve never liked doing. Facebook, to me, is for ‘off-time’ not ‘work-time’.

Facebook is banned in Vietnam. But so far, unlike the other teachers here, I haven’t managed to by-pass the block. When I try to change the network settings in System Preferences I get a pop-up message saying ‘Your network settings have been changed by another application’ which keeps popping back up no matter how many times I click on ‘OK’ and prevents me from doing anything to the point that I can only close System Preferences via ‘Force Quit’. Any ideas?

At some point in the past, someone in the apartment has succumbed to plastic, cutesiness. There’s the 101 Dalmatians tile frieze all the way round the top of the splashback in the kitchen. And there’s the grinning sheep plastic coat hooks (most of them broken) stuck to every imaginable wall surface. Many of the fittings and odds-and-ends of utensils I’ve found lying around the flat seem to be cheap, plastic, Japanese ¥100 shop style stuff which might have seemed great when I first went to Japan but just don't fit with the swanky expensive apartment I have in my head here.

In my more rational moments I can see that the place just needs a damn good clean – a process I started properly yesterday. But it has taken me the best part of a week to reach this point, and I still have wobbles about the place, fearing that I have jumped into it too quickly, and worry about the consequences of breaking the contract, leaving and losing all that deposit money. Still, I am resolved to give it some time to settle in, and won’t be pushed out just yet despite the best efforts of the ant, the resident gecko (who was completely freaked out by my cleaning frenzy yesterday) and a couple of ambitiously high-rise cockroaches. How do cockroaches reach the 12^th floor? Do they do it in stages over several generations?

At least now I’m not so tired, and my teaching seems to be picking up strength again with all three kids’ lessons on Sunday going pretty well. Still haven’t got to grips with the TA thing though.

Ants in the Sugar – Part One

(Tuesday 9^th – Thursday 11^th November)

Well, there had to be a down sooner or later and the sudden acquisition of the apartment was it. Having spent a sizeable chunk of my day off yesterday cleaning the kitchen, I’ve just got up to find ants in the sugar. A further twist in the, so far, rather tortured relationship I have with the apartment.

I was so excited when I found it last Tuesday night. Then overnight the panic set in. For a start, it’s in a different area of the city to where I’d been looking before, and slightly further away from school. Then it’s at the top-end of my budget ($600), which I suspect is possibly a little on the high-side - although yesterday I stumbled across a website offering it for $700! Plus, while the rest of the apartment has been redecorated to suit modern Western tastes, it seems someone forgot the bathroom, which doesn’t look as if anyone has bothered much about it since the place was built. And the building is, to put it kindly, not exactly in the first flush of youth.

It was also the last place the agent showed me on that evening, and after a varied assortment of potential-definite no’s, plus one definite maybe, I was getting tired and depressed. The guesthouse was wearing me down through noise and lack of sleep, and I just wanted out. The thought of having to repeat the process of house-hunting again on my next day off was demoralizing. So agreeing to take this place and paying the landlady a holding fee to stop her showing it to anybody else was followed by a sleepless night worrying that I had rushed into it. I probably should have called the agent and slowed things down.

But by then I was so tired I wasn’t thinking straight. And I had to get the deposit together before signing the contract on Thursday morning. And, of course, I’d be at work for half of Wednesday.

Now, getting your hands on two months’ deposit plus a month’s rent in advance, in cash, in a foreign country can be complicated at the best of times. Add in the landlady’s insistence on payment in dollars – the ATMs, unsurprisingly, spew out dong - and you’ve got the added hassle of calculating exchange rates, commission charges and, indeed, finding an exchange bureau willing to handle those kinds of amounts. (‘Why you want change so much dong?’; ‘We don’t have that much dollar’.) It’s all enough to make an English teacher’s brain curl up and die, whimpering.

Vietnamese ATMs generally only impose a transaction limit and not a daily limit – so with only 36 hours to get the money I hightailed it up to the two convenience stores on Bui Vien when I got back to Backpackerville that night, and duly stood there putting card in, taking money out, putting card back in and taking more money out. Unfortunately, someone forgot to mention this helpful little service to Santander who declined my request when I went back to repeat the operation on Wednesday morning. With only 24 hours and several million dong still to go, and the agent emailing me a copy of the draft contract (no mention of cooling off period) panic was added to doubt and tiredness. By the time I left work on Wednesday night I was tired to the point of tears, although they didn't actually come until Friday night.

Luckily, cash-flow had been restored by the timely appearance of the HR Co-ordinator bearing bank cards stacked with our relocation allowances. And Santander had merely imposed their own daily limit so come Thursday morning I was back in business. So much so that I actually ended up with too many dollars, and at some point I’ll have to go back and change them back into dong.

Flat hunt - Mission Accomplished (fingers crossed)

I've found a flat!!! Hurrah! Not one of the brand spanking new ones like Steve and Louise's - in fact from the outside the building looks a bit tatty. But inside its lovely!! I'm so excited. Move in on Thursday morning. In the meantime, have to race around the ATMs and foreign exchange bureaux getting the dollars together for the deposit. xxx

Saigon Sci-Fi Orange

Sunday 7^th November

My teenage students asked me tonight why I chose to come to Vietnam, and didn’t I think I would find the pollution, climate and all the other problems of living in a developing/communist country too difficult and challenging. They seemed to accept it when I explained that I’ve only spent one of the past six years living in Britain, so although Vietnam may be more difficult to live in than Italy or Japan, it's a challenge that I do have some experience of.

Ironic then that, following a massive electrical storm this evening, I arrive back in Backpackerland to a power cut. I’m writing this (in Word to copy, paste and upload later) by the light of a single candle. A candle, moreover, which has just started spitting alarmingly. Excuse me while I go and move that plastic bottle sitting next to it…

… Talking of electrical storms and things spitting alarmingly, the rainy season here continues, and has even apparently settled into a pattern over the last few days of bright, clear, hot mornings with beautiful blue skies, broken around 3-4pm by torrential rain, gloom and lightning. Those of you on Facebook may have seen my status update yesterday. Just before dusk the sky turned orange. Saigon Sci-Fi Orange. I have never seen anything like it. It was a lurid, dark, acidic something-very-unpleasant-and-acrid-is-burning-somewhere orange. Luckily, this weekend the rain has pretty much stopped by the time I finish work at 8.30pm, leaving me to splash home through the puddles in my flip-flops; there being nary a taxi of any kind – two or four-wheeled – to be had when its wet.

Of course, although I did tell my students some of the story of how I found this job I didn't divulge the shallow truth that I was dazzled by the pictures of Vietnamese beaches on the ILA recruitment website. Strange, really, considering I’ve never been a beach baby. I did, however, tell them the main thrust of the story. That after a particularly bad, stressful week in Italy, Baggy and I both spent the weekend on the Internet looking for other jobs. And the aforementioned website made it all sound too good to be true. Okay, I didn't tell them that exactly either. I actually said it waxed lyrical about how wonderful Vietnamese students are. Which it does.

And, so far, I haven’t any reason to contradict it. Sure the kids can be lively, and much of Induction week was taken up talking about classroom management issues, and the kinds of discipline/rewards systems teachers here use. But compared to some classes I’ve taught (naming no names!) they are quite easy to control. Plus with all kids classes (including the 18 year olds, for heavens’ sake) you have a TA (Vietnamese teaching assistant) in the room with you – two in the 4-6 year old classes.

This probably represents one of the biggest teaching challenge for experienced teachers. Although in Italy the teachers we work with on the PONs are in and out of the classroom all the time, somehow this more permanent presence feels different, and slightly awkward at first. The TA’s role includes not just sharing the responsibility for discipline, but also all the attendance registers, admin and, even setting and marking homework. For the teacher, this feels double-edged. On the one hand, you're freed up from the irritating paperwork following each lesson. But on the other, it feels oddly as if you’re not completely in control. And, of course, the TA’s vary in what they do and how well they do it. The previous lesson notes for the kindergarten class I covered yesterday said simply ‘colouring activity’. In a two-hour lesson?!! I think there might have been more to it than that!

I also wonder how far their presence in the classroom gets in the way of you’re developing a relationship with the students. We shall see…

For me, too, there is the swing back to the more games-orientated approach to EFL in Asia, after the necessity of keeping the wild animals in their seats in Italy. How many board races can you fit in to a lesson before the kids get bored (probably long after you yourself have)? And, if you do a grammar presentation, is the TA sitting there ready to bitch about the lack of games?

Away from the classroom, my main challenge is now finding an apartment, and the next question is can I afford to stretch to somewhere as plush as Steve and Louise’s? Whatever, the answer to that one (and all advice welcome) I am getting really tired of the guesthouse now. The noise, the hit-and-miss cleaning, and the still living out of a suitcase. I do know that I won’t really feel settled here, and by extension won't be as happy at work, until I do find somewhere permanent of my own.

However, compared to the dull hum Steve reports hearing from their 16^th floor apartment, the noise here can, at times, be almost entertainingly surreal. I was woken up before seven the other morning by what I can only describe as sounding like a deafening New Orleans-style Jazz funeral procession with extra drums! I have no idea where or what it was coming from. I was still too close to unconsciousness by the time it stopped to drag myself out of bed and find out. It was one of those times when you gradually become aware that the noise isn’t part of your dream but is coming in from outside. And yet, I have a feeling it made more sense in the dream…

Well, the candle is burning down, my laptop battery is running low and the power shows no sign of coming back on. In fact, there was a huge bang outside about half an hour ago. I think ‘tis time to call it a night. Tam biet for now. xx

HCMC - the first ten days

So, after a slighter longer delay than anticipated, here goes - and I apologise if I repeat anything anyone has already read in an email...

Been in HCMC now about ten days, acclimatizing to the weather (hot and humid, interspersed with torrential downpours); the school (awesome - 9 storeys, 64 classrooms, 100+ teachers, 5000+ students - just this school NOT the whole company - and more resources and supplementary materials than most TEFL teachers ever imagined possible in a single location); the hawkers who refuse to take no for an answer no matter how many times you point out you’re already wearing a pair of sunglasses; the traffic (analyse it a little and it’s not quite as insane as it looks) and the dress code for taking xe om (motorbike taxis) to work – short, straight skirts are not a good idea!

The company put us up in a guest house right in central Backpackerland for the first week, which is adequate but not ideal. Its noisy, doesn’t always have hot water or a working internet connection and you run the gamut of the aforementioned hawkers and xe om drivers every time you step out of the front door – even when you’re just crossing the road to get some breakfast from the coffee shop opposite. Most of us have stayed on after the first free week was up merely out of tiredness and unwillingness to move for the sake of moving, preferring to stick it out a bit longer until we can find a permanent place (although the owner, who seems to have taken a shine to me, has just offered me a ‘better’ rate if I stay on next week, which I will…)

I am, however, more or less, actively engaged in the hunt for a place of my own – or rather, so far, I’ve been tagging along with a couple of other new teachers, Steve and Louise, who also happen to be looking for a 2-bedroom apartment at a similar price range, and are rather more proactive about it than I am! Indeed, I spent most of yesterday wandering with a silly grin, giggling to myself after I went with them on their second viewing of their preferred choice. OH. MY. GOD! Brand new, gorgeous, tastefully decorated, flatscreen TV and wifi installed as standard. Put it this way, there was a massive red Ferrari parked out the front of the building. The same apartment in London would be costing them at least triple (?) the $650USD a month they’re paying here. I’ve told the estate agent I don’t want to pay that much, but if he has any one-bedroom places in that block all my wannabe visitors will be consigned to backpacker hell!!

Steve, Louise and I seem to have formed the main flank of the ‘Older/experienced’ guard of this month’s newbie teachers. There are nine of us in all, and we all seem to get on really well (we shall see…) but most of the others are still in their first year of teaching, so we were the ones doing most of the talking during induction. Steve and Louise already have Cambridge examining experience, as well as contacts at the British Council out here, so the three of us are beginning to make enquiries about Cambridge and IELTS examining here – which, apparently would involve travelling as well as getting paid! And examining, obviously, is one form of moonlighting the company don't mind us doing, as it reflects well on them.

Meanwhile, the Delta seems to be bringing me a certain amount of kudos too. The company run it in-house for existing employees but I think it’s quite unusual for someone who already has it to turn up on their doorstep. Maybe it was the jetlag, maybe just my fevered imagination, but were the Academic Managers (DoS’s and ADoS’s) and Academic Co-ordinators (Senior Teachers) coming up to me the first couple of days and saying, ‘Oh, you're Phillipa’ in strangely awed tones? Had word got out around the office to approach with caution?!

But it has provoked a lot of interest (thank god – it is, after all, still too soon after finishing the Delta, for me to have developed a life and the social skills required to talk about anything else). Tagg (yes, that’s her real name), my main AC, is just finishing Module 3, and Sandra, one of the other ACs, is just about to start. Tagg is also about 8 months pregnant. I mention this only as background explanation for her rather sick Halloween costume on Saturday – a blood-stained t-shirt with doll body parts ‘emerging’ from it! I dread to think what the kindergarten kids made of it!

Anyway, I think that’s about all for now. Click the link or the photo on the right here to see the first few photos of HCMC and the Reunification Palace. After a week of increasing hermit-like reclusivity, I finally emerged and managed an hour or so’s touristy stuff yesterday before the heavens opened. Your attention is also directed to my friends’ blogs – particularly ‘On the road with a toad’ in which Matt and Debbie (bless ‘em) recount their adventures as they embark on a pedal-powered pub crawl from Cambridge to Cape Town!

Speak soon xx