So after completing the motorbike ride from Ho Chi Minh to Hanoi, P and I went our separate ways. I was struggling to sell my bike on and quite frankly, was rather skint until pay day (the end of the month) or sale/transaction of said bike.
I had a look on Workaway and was contacted by a homestay teaching project in Hanoi. The concept was to live with the other teachers and students in a large house, teaching casual classes in the evenings (split into basic and advanced levels), and the rest of the time you would hang out, chat, cook, go on outings etc.
So I decided to give it a shot, I’d done my TEFL certificate and as a native speaker, they were more interested in my conversational skills than the actual teaching part.
I stayed at the project for three weeks, in this time we did various outings to the Ethnology museum
Ho Chi Minh’s mausoleum (containing his embalmed corpse, eep!)
the war museum
we went to markets, hung out in cafe’s, sang karaoke, went to the cinema
and even on a camping trip…
Nearly every day, our wonderful students would make us delicious meals and we would all sit down to eat together and eat
Even though I didn’t feel particularly comfortable executing the lessons (I’m much better at planning I think) it was still a fantastic experience, one that I will never forget.
Each of my students was welcoming and kind; I immensely enjoyed their company and that of my fellow teachers.
You can read my honest experience here if you want a deeper understanding of how I felt teaching.
To be honest, I’m not sure if it is something I would try again, which is absolutely no reflection on the students, but I think it just isn’t for me!
The Gypsy Heart Travels 