First day teaching in an unknown Vietnamese village

I left on foot from our volunteer house at 7:45AM with a CSDS guide and an 18-year-old female volunteer from Scotland. The CSDS guide, Julian, quickly veered off the main rode I was accustomed to and headed into a side alleyway no wider than a motor scooter. We walked for a half mile through these narrow corridors dodging motor scooters, people, and vendors setting up shop in their doorways. This adventure was worth every penny, but there was so much more yet to come.

We emerged from the vast network of interconnecting back alleyways onto the main street and waited for the 35A or 53b connecting bus line. Within five minutes the 53b bus arrived, and slow rolled along the bus stop curb area with its side doors opened. I watched mesmerized as both persons I was with jumped onto the bus. They shouted for me to get on or be left behind which woke me out of my stupor. I found an empty seat, paid the 7,000 Dong to the attendant and thirty minutes later we arrived at the main bus station. We quickly exited, ran (not walked) to the 74-bus beginning to back out of its stall, and fortunately I found an empty seat. The bus ride was 9,000 Dong due to the fact it was an hour ride to our destination. Fortunately, this gave me time to collect my thoughts in the near silent bus. No one spoke a word, nor talked on their cell phone, but they did take the time to stare at myself and the girl I was with.

We travelled west out of Hanoi, passing neighborhoods and areas which seemed frozen in time. It was obvious when we left the city limits because the jungle seemed to swallow us whole. Traffic dissipated, women wearing conical hats were a more common sight, rice fields spread out across the horizon, and construction workers seemed to be working on projects to nowhere. 

An hour later, we were dropped off at an unmarked bus stop. I asked Julian where we are at and he said, “I don’t know.” I was dumbfounded once again. I thought he was our guide, and I was told the prior day by the program director that Julian knew the area well. Julian was astute enough to see my confusion, and added that the villages where we were located usually didn’t have a name. We walked along a cement road for approximately one mile with nothing but jungle, rice fields, and murky lakes for scenery. Not that it wasn’t beautiful, it was, but the immensity of the situation started to weigh down on me. While pondering my purpose in life; one maybe two scooters passed. The lone riders gawked at the tattooed guy (me), young white girl and smartly dressed Vietnamese young man walking along the roadway.

The village itself contained one- and two-story cement houses; simple in design with few windows and fewer people to be seen. To be honest, I couldn’t’ tell it was populated until we arrived at our school which was a recently built one story one room building with a bathroom.

The children arrived promptly at 8:30AM. There were 19 seven- to eight-year-old students who entered through the doors excited to interact with us. They were rambunctious, energetic, and eager to learn. The schedule for the day was to teach for 1.5 hours and then have a three hour break. After the three hour break, we would teach two more 1.5 hour classes to differing age groups. My time teaching and interacting with these children was magical. We played soccer inside because it was literally roasting outside (101 degrees with 100% humidity), engaged in basic reading, writing, listening, and speaking English skills, laughed, some cried due to the fact they were hit in the face with the ball, and by the end I was dripping from head to toe with sweat. Like I said earlier, I couldn’t ask for a better moment in my lifetime.

For lunch, a local vendor brought us sugar cane juice (OMG it is beyond good!), soup, rice, boiled, fried celery and carrots mixed with just a hint of garlic, a perfectly seasoned egg omelet, and minced pork. Julian told me the villagers grow the sugar cane and beat it with wooden mallets to extract the juice which we were drinking. Words will be a clumsy vehicle to describe this delectable juice: sweet, refreshing, deeply nuanced, earthy, balanced, and unique beyond all description.

Can you tell I fell in love with this drink? By the end of the day, I was joyfully tired. The mile trek back to the bus line was challenging for two reasons. First, there were more locals on the road we were walking and their stares were a mixture of transfixed awe, wonderment, and get off the road because you shouldn’t be here attitude emanating from their person. Second, the bus heading back was filled with more riders; therefore, I had to fluctuate between standing and sitting depending on who entered and exited the bus. The combination of deteriorated roadways and the driver excessively shifting and braking left me exhausted from trying not to launch headfirst through the front window. When I arrived back at the volunteer house at 7:00PM, I was asked by several people how my day went. What could I say, it checked every single box for someone with wanderlust floating in their heart. All said it was a good day; NO-a great day!