High heel shoes

As a woman everyone wants to be graceful and have a nice figure. High heel shoes contribute to that. As teachers we want to show students not only that we have expertise/competence but also that we have a style. After a long time no high heel shoes, my feet were very tired of being in my shoes all day at work in the last week. Even the shoes are old. Strange. Perhaps, my feet get used to comfortable casual sandals, not like the forms of the shoes any more. :-). Time to change.

Work again

Summer holiday ended, which means new school year started and it started at the beginning of this week. So nice to meet colleagues and friends again. I and my best friends meet quite often this semester.

I am responsible for teaching students of second and third year. Most of my classes major in architecture. Therefore, boys outnumber girls. Anyhow, they are so nice: not good at English but interested in it. :-)

Four days of teaching consumes a lot of my energy, I think. Life of a teacher. In this photo, you can see our main campus, high buildings with dark green roofs. We have another two but they are rental buildings and not very nice. I teach here on Wednesday and Friday.

Lao Cai trip

Long time no new entry in my blog. Busy with my new responsibility and freelance interpreter. Actually, I would like to write whenever I have feelings. Sometimes impossible.

As assigned to be a leader of the group of teachers responsible for teaching students of architecture and electrical engineering and mechanical engineering. Whoa, two different types of people: architectures are thought to be artistic and engineers precise and not artistic. I had to search for two kinds of English books to

teach those students. It took me a lot of time to do that work. Maybe a week. Book stores in Hanoi and online and my friend offered to help me to search in books stores in Bangkok. What I searched was English for Architecture and English for Electrical and Mechanical Engineers. Finally, I possessed some books I need, made teaching timetables and I suffered low blood

pressure for a day, as a result of working too much. What remains is some more ESP for architecture students in their last semester. I will have to assign other teachers in my group to prepare soon.

Besides, new English programme used for students cohort 15 contributed to my busy time. I had to go to university three times to get it installed in my computer. Poor me. The first time, I did not bring the cord. So one third of the new programme was installed because of low battery. The second time, 4 of the total 8 modules were not installed. And the third and last time, everything left was installed. My friend was so surprised when I still went to work during my summer holiday.:-)

And at the beginning of August I got another contract to be an interpreter for SNV's mission in Lao Cai. Interesting and tiring trip. I had chances to activate my English, to understand more about how NGOs help to reduce poverty in Vietnam, to widen my knowledge about tea production, to visit ethnic minority people, to admire landscapes in the mountainous areas, to try local food, to work with and to meet nice people and of course to increase my income.:-) However, it was tiring when you had to travel long ways. Luckily I did not suffer any carsickness, unlike the first time to Lao Cai. What impressed me most was the poor and disadvantaged people living in remote areas. So sad that most of them are illiterate and living in extremely poor conditions. They live mainly on cultivating activities and their knowledge is so limited. However, what they have but we do not have in the city is beautiful landscapes and pleasant climate. Here is some photos about my trip.