Our new school!

Lacey:  We met with Miss Trieu, the director at Morningstar before we started, to talk about more expectations and her thoughts about what needed to be accomplished. We found out that she had fired the principal she had hired because I don't think they saw eye to eye and she liked Lance a lot more! Lance's position at the school is something like Operations Manager/Activities Coordinator/Miss Trieu's right hand man. He is in charge of fixing all the problems on the schools website, lining up parent meetings, setting up the schedule for the extra curricular, making a new student/teacher/parent handbook and anything else that Miss Trieu desires!  They just opened up this elementary school and I am the 1st grade teacher. Miss Trieu pushed to get the school open in time for the new school year and didn't have much time to get enrollment, so I am starting the school year with 3 students! 

In the future we will have 2 programs: A full international program, with English all day and a Bi-lingual program (which we are doing now), where there is English in the morning and Vietnamese classes in the afternoon. I am in charge of teaching basically every subject in English: Math, Science, Social Studies, Language Arts, Computer and Health. Lance will help me with P.E. and some Fine Arts such as music, drama and theater. My Vietnamese assistant does the Art class.  Because they are just starting this elementary, they only have the Standards and Curriculum to go off of. My job in the afternoons is to do Curriculum Mapping and to make lesson plans. Unfortunately, we do not have all of our books and curriculum in yet, so I am doing what I can until then!

We have finished our first week of school and we are so much more happy! We don't come home angry and frustrated in the evenings and snap at each other! There aren't as many rules and restrictions and we feel we have more freedom at this school. 

Miss Trieu and Lance are working hard at increasing our enrollment to solidify our jobs for the future! She is very wonderful because she invites us to talk with her if we have needs or concerns. It's kind of fun to take a bit of ownership in the school beings that we are helping it grow from the start!

My first day of classes I had some things prepared and I came to find out that these 1st graders seem to be fairly proficient in English! I don't even need a translator! I was excited about this, but it meant that I'd have to totally change my plans about how and what I teach! Now I can focus more on content than teach basic English skills!

 Lance: Morningstar International School is now accepting applications for grades 1 & 2. If you are interested in your child receiving the best education in Hanoi please contact me. We have a great curriculum from the state of California in the U.S., and we only hire fully-qualified  attractive, strawberry blonde teachers with spunky personalities. Our facility is freshly redone so we can offer your child a great education. There are 8 spacious classrooms, computer lab, large outdoor play area,  kitchen with large dining area, library, and rooms for P.E., dance, music and art. So yeah....this is what my first week has been like with typing up information sheets, handbooks and doing some odd jobs to make sure our school functions well. Haven't missed the classroom yet, but then again I haven't had to deal with upset parents yet.

Ups and Downs....

Lacey:  

After 3 weeks of working for Maplebear, we decided enough was enough. There were too many things that we found them to be dishonest about and not willing to help us out on. For starters, we both thought (because we were told) that we were teaching kindergarten. As you already know, that was not true because I ended up "teaching" 2-4 year olds. We were also unhappy about our super long school day, when all the other teachers days' were almost an hour and a half shorter. There were also some monetary issues that we were frustrated with. 

It was on Sunday, August 26 that we decided we can't do this and need to start looking for other options. We were happy and excited about the possibilities we had started to find and wanted to feel more comfortable in our positions. The next day at school we had parent meetings. We had to make presentations for the parents telling them a little bit about who we were, what we are currently doing in the classroom, what things we will cover and our goals.  I had a nice little power point with some pictures of places I had been in Vietnam and explained my goals, etc. This was all very hard, beings we had made the decision to not continue to work there!  Unfortunately, the parents loved my presentation and wanted to know how long my contract was for, how they could get me to stay longer and that if I needed anything to just ask them!

The head Vietnamese lady from our school and the Canadian principal were also there for my presentation and were telling me they needed to find ways to get me to stay as well. Take the knife out of my back! I felt terrible!!!

The next day, we had set up a Skype interview with another school, Morningstar, over our lunch break. We talked to the director, the head teacher and another lady from Administration. We felt very good about the interview and about the school. Miss Trieu, the director, really wanted us to come see the school before next week when we would start. We told her that we were employed currently and didn't know if that would work. We thought about it more and decided to both take a sick day on Wednesday!  This was a very wise choice because it was imperative to get a feel for the school. That day we discussed salary, holidays and the works and ended up signing a contract that day!

When we reflected on that, we felt that was a pretty bold move beings that we had been at Maplebear for almost a month and still hadn't signed a contract (because there were things we needed changed and they wouldn't do it!)!  It was actually a HUGE blessing that we didn't sign a contract because it made our parting of paths immensely smoother! We weren't legally obligated to x, y, z because we never signed. 

After signing our contracts we went and looked for new apartments because this was in a different part of town. When we were finished there we came back to the school for a parent night, where we got to meet some potential parents. Morningstar has been operating as a kindergarten since 1995 and has a great reputation and they are now opening an elementary school, starting with 1st grade and adding on every year after that.  

We decided that it was probably time to tell Maplebear that we were quitting (since we had new jobs that were starting the following week!).  Being good Mennonites, we were NOT exciting about the confrontation that needed to happen!  We waited outside the school Thursday morning for the principal. We were all supposed to get on the van to go to our school, but we told her we had to talk. We basically told her that we weren't happy and could not continue to work at Maplebear. We told her we had a resignation letter to send her. To say the least she was shocked, but took it like a champ! There was no yelling or hard feelings. She seemed to be very understanding. She told us that we should finish out the week, to make things look better. I said there was no way I could go to school after this. Long story short, we did not finish out the week, but instead looked at more apartments! 

The one unfortunate thing about this situation, which we accepted beforehand, was that we didn't get paid 1 single DONG for our 3 and a half weeks of work at Maplebear!

Lance: The word freedom comes to mind when I think about our choice to switch jobs. All jobs have some aspects that are annoying or require a little gumption to complete job requirements. However, I feel it was our lack of control and the fact that our concerns went unheard, that made our existing at MB impossible. It is part of a large corporation and it really treats its teachers that way, it felt very controlling. I do not want to say purely negative things as there are so many friendly, helpful and genuinely concerned people at Maplebear. But, it is in the end, a corporation and does not have the ability to meet the needs of different teachers with different needs. After 3 weeks of long days in which we really didn't enjoy our day, we decided we needed to look around. We are finding that less stressful, shorter days sure make us happier and a lot easier to see each other after the schooll day!! The fact that Morningstar has one person in charge and she gives plenty of creative freedom makes this new job very exciting. Expectations are high, so we will have to work hard and keep thinking of ways to improve our new school. Which isn't hard when you are enjoying yourself.

Ha Long Bay...in sickness and in health!

Lacey:  Lance and I made plans to go to Ha Long Bay with some of the other teachers from Maplebear school. Lance had been talking about going to Ha Long Bay, after looking at my pictures, for months and months!  We were excited about getting away for a bit, after quitting at Maplebear and before starting at Morningstar. We got up very early to meet at the tour agency to catch the bus.

While waiting for the bus I decided to join some locals on the street for breakfast and enjoy some Pho soup and Tra Da, green tea! The Vietnamese are shorter for the most part but I have found they must be very flexible because you see these mini chairs everywhere!

It was a 4 hour bus ride that took us to a dock to get on our boat where we had lunch. There was a nice upper deck where we could sit and enjoy the scenery. We took a short tour around the bay and then stopped to check out a cave. It was a really cool cave, minus the 500 people and fake neon lights!

These beams of light coming in to the cave reminded me of lights coming from heaven!

 

 

We spent more time on the boat around the bay and drove by some fishing villages, where people live right on their boats on the water. It was quite impressive. What a sight to wake up every morning to the big beautiful karsts and water around you! We got to spend some time kayaking around the bay through some caves and around the bay which was very relaxing!

 The fishing village.

 A lady selling fruit from her boat. Even though it seems that fruit seems to be in abundance here, it seems to be quite expensive. It's all sold by the kilo and most of the fruit (I assume at the foreigner rate) is about 50,000 Dong a kilo, which is $2.50/kilo...which is about $5 a pound! I think we need to work on our bartering skills and on some key Vietnamese phrases!!!

Unfortunately, Lance was not able to enjoy this trip as much as he was hoping to because his immune system decided to give out! Lance woke up the 1st morning with aches, pains, chills, sweats and some sinus issues. He was a trooper though and made it through the day until we got to the island where we were staying that night. He had wanted to go to the doctor, but that didn't seem to be a high priority for the guy running our tour!  Lance missed out on some great trekking and sight seeing.  

We arrived on Cat Ba Island and Jordan and I made the steep trek up to the top of a mountain to get a look at the scenery. At the top of the mountain was a rickety old tower that we climbed to get even higher in elevation to get a better look! 

Some of the terrain on the way up the mountain!

 Jordan and I successfully made it to the top!

 Looking down from the top of the tower we climbed up!

 You can barely see the tower on the top of the mountain in the background, but that's where we got to!

 Once we were done with that we got to Monkey Island, where Lance went straight to our little bungalow and tried to sleep off his sickness. Our friend Jordan was nice enough to share some of her drugs with Lance to try to help him ease his pain!  Jordan and I hadn't had enough trekking and climbing so we ventured off to get some more glimpses of our surroundings from higher up!

This trek was as hard and steep but we were also surrounded by and climbing on the sharpest of rocks! We were very careful to not make a wrong turn or slip!

 A view from the top of Monkey Island! Unfortunately we did NOT see any monkeys on our trek!

 

 Our hut for our over night stay. We were very happy that we didn't see a big spider about 4 inches in diameter like some girls a few doors down!!! We did get to enjoy an awesome thunder storm during the night though!

We enjoyed getting to spend some time with and getting to know our friends a bit more!

 Lance and I decided that we will have to go back to Ha Long Bay when he is not sickly!

Lance: I remember some beautiful karsts, a little karoake, a rat in our wall of the boat and then lots of hours of sleeping with a fever. That really wasn't the experience I was hoping for, but next time I will be up for some trekking and great views!