Come Fly With Me

Last night I was doing my happy teacher dance. What is a happy teacher dance? My personal rendition is a derivative of the touchdown dance with 80s pop music.

The more important question is what on earth would prompt a straight-laced bookish scientist type to break out into outdated arm flailing? The test I just graded!

I should preface this by saying that of my three classes my Wednesday class has always struggled. On every test their average was a full mark (10%) or more lower and their standard deviations were always at least half a mark to 3 marks higher then their peers in the other two classes. The test I just graded was great – it was almost the highest test, ever. But what prompted the dancing and euphoria was that my Wednesday class had a HIGHER AVERAGE than Tuesday and a lower standard deviation than Tuesday. Thursday remains untouchable.

That means that the past seven months of seeming intractability and stubborn test scores of my Wednesday class are over! They are with their peers. No strike that – doing better then some of their peers.

You have to understand – for 7 months Co Dung and I have been overhauling our lesson plans, handouts, activities and everything to try to reach these students and test after test we were getting nowhere. On Test 6 we saw a glimmer. But then last night when I graded Test 7 – oh baby! I was stunned, flabbergasted, shocked, god smacked and utterly deliciously elated!

This test was also the best test in Thursday's class EVER! This feeling just makes it all worth it. For seven months I have been wondering if I have gotten through to 90% of my students and I can clearly see that they are learning and retaining – from me their teacher! That’s right I am actually teaching and my students are remembering and performing with critical thinking skills.

I swear to God I could hug every single one of them – and I just might this week when I pass back these tests of pure beauty (of course I had some bad grades but only like 6 out of 80, tis the gray lining of the silver cloud). I am going to miss these guys and gals so much – so freaken much.

Apparently it took 7, almost 8, of 9 months for us to gel as foreign teacher/student but we are finally simpatico.

I also got coffee with some students this weekend. It’s the first time since I have been here that I have seen my students off campus. I think it was because at first I was new, and they weren’t confident in their English skills. But now I have some brave ones who are ditching the dictionaries and talking to me about their lives! Seriously is not what Fulbright is all about?!

A brilliant and much admired writing professor at PhilaU told me in one of my darker teaching moments many months ago that when you teach you plant seeds – and some of those seeds will take root. For the first time since I have been here I am seeing that and I can’t believe it was me who did it (with tons of help from Co Dung). Me! I am a seed planter and an intellectual nurturer – I can TEACH! This is such a high, this is so worth all the struggles I have endured (personal and professional) in these last 8 months. And I can’t wait to pump out these last 7 weeks of teaching and ride this blissful wave.

In less awesome news I had another fainter this week. I watched her go from upright to on the floor. So like last time she was carried to the nurse, students where shuttled back to class, etc. etc. I think I might need to build in some syncope/recovery/refocusing time in my lessons L.

Also I attempted to ride my bike again. To be clear I can ride a bike. What I struggle with is riding it in Vietnamese traffic. I have described the traffic before, and mentioned that I was run over by a motorbike, and mentioned my first attempt when I got to Cao Lanh 7 months ago on my brakeless bike. Ever since I have walked everywhere. I love to walk and it just makes me that much more fascinating and odd to the locals – who walk nowhere. Seriously they will get on their motorbikes to go 20 feet, I’m not kidding.

But being an ambassador I figured that perhaps in those 7 months I might have picked up some traffic negotiation skills (through osmosis) and that some of Nam, just a morsel, was imbued in me. Well, like the first time it was an episode of I Love Lucy (and I would be played by Ms. Ball, of course, as only she could do the rendition justice).

The argument for biking is simple. The mighty little bicycle is cleaner, sleeker and more economical than a lumbering, fuel-powered motorbike or car. In fact, it is one of the most efficient machines on the planet. Knowing this on an esoteric level I figured that with less then 2 paltry months left I shouldn’t cheat myself of this sterling investment in my health and well being just because the first time I barely lived and it was, well, scary.

On some level all transportation is scary. Even walking is scary – as proven by my "little" accident. Vietnamese traffic is manic enough that even children in strollers wear helmets. Not only are you faced with cars without side mirrors, death-seeking teenagers, porous traffic laws, meandering food carts and motorbikes carrying sheet metal, glass doors, mattresses and live ducks (and on one occasion an entire live sow), you are obliged to share the road with two generations of motorists whose code of conduct includes:

1. ·      Never back down
2. ·      Never yield
3. ·      Never say it can’t be carried
4. ·      Never look anywhere but directly ahead, because peripheral vision is for wimps 

Curiously, bicyclists are not subject to the traffic laws all other vehicles allegedly are and the law of the street says the biggest vehicle is always at fault (except buses, who may each merrily slaughter several people and untold potted plants per annum). This means bicyclists are forgiven for the most erratic behavior and other vehicles try desperately to avoid whacking them, particularly at intersections, in direct sunlight and while in the proximity of potholes and women with baskets of peanut sticky rice. And if they do hit a bike, they drive away really fast and no one blames you, the cyclist, for anything, even if you were checking your text messages and weaving down the wrong side of the road at the time you were clocked.

Keeping this in mind, then bicycling safely in Vietnam shouldn’t be overly difficult (all experiences to the contrary) – but these are a few suggestions that I think kept me alive both times I tried:

Scream

Bicycles have no motor and no horn. Drivers used to listening to traffic rather than looking for it may not realize you are coming. Try singing as you ride and, when things get tight: shriek. Don’t worry about language or words; just go for volume. Belt out your best blood-curling yelp to God.

Location

Like real estate before the bubble burst it’s all about location. Beware of the far right-half lane of death. In Nam traffic is a Darwinian social experiment and poor cyclists are expected to fight for a space amid rubbish, parked vehicles, vendors, broken glass and pedestrians. They also share a lane with busses (to some urban planner’s sick and twisted delight). But the real peril of this lane is the nonsensical right hand turn. You must watch for vehicles turning right. Nine times out of ten they will do it immediately in front of you, without signaling, just when you are boxed in by traffic and have no outlet other then a nosedive into a curb, open sewer, or mango seller. Upon completion of said nosedive you must purchase all the damaged fruits at lofty expat prices.

Aim for Pedestrians

As a child you were taught to look left-right-left before crossing the street. This is because you, unlike Vietnamese people, had no knowledge of Jedi mind tricks. I have seen small children benignly toddle through traffic. And their granny muttering to herself and running after it with a bowl of goop porridge. They both know that they’re not in any danger. They can stop cars, bikes, buses, Vespa’s all at will. And after eating the child will spend time bending the spoon it ate from.

The average pedestrian in Nam tends to veer randomly and confidently across congested streets, complete without regard for oncoming traffic and the bounds of their own mortality. Mothers, whether pregnant or nursing, waddle complacently into the crosshairs under the assumption that the world revolves around them and their protuberance. Children kick their football into the street and dash off immediately to fetch it, unaware that there is some real possibility that the motorbikes zooming by were not paying attention to their game. Were Darwin still alive he would be totally befuddled, and most likely quaking on the corner with other expats and nervously shuffling across traffic after taking ten minutes of delusional self-motivation.

Plus mowing down pedestrians is a social good. See, a pedestrian creamed by a speeding bicycle will suffer just enough to learn his or her lesson. Therefore, it naturally follows, that the more pedestrians you hit, the fewer there will be imperiling themselves and others and the safer everybody will be.

I have noticed, much to my disgruntlement that schoolgirls in their white ao dai and usually with a pineapple in their basket sail serenely through red lights and ride five or six or seven abreast, chatting merrily at rush hour. I think they excite motorists’ protective instincts and thus are an oasis of safety and calm in what is an otherwise perilous expanse of bloody asphalt.

Of course as a man I don’t think I could pull of such a gender-reversal rouse, but these schoolgirls do posses a striking power.

Thus I have decided to enjoy my perch on teaching cloud 9 from the safety of my own two legs. Call it un-ambassador-like if you wish but I must leave Nam with my life, limbs and digits all in one piece. I have given it a go twice and I have come too far to get plastered to the side of a bus or kiss the pavement. I have learned a lot in 8 months – and only learned how to cross the street on foot with confidence and dignity, not weave amongst on wheels. That must be in the two-year long expat experience.