This week at Thanh Xuan was really a different experience in a really great way. There were two new volunteer teachers who was temporarily there for two weeks, and they had all sorts of activities planned for the kids. It was really nice to see the kids actually doing something and not just sitting at their desks for 3 hours, and the activities all seemed pretty appropriate for the kids though there was a slight language barrier as one was Australian and the other Japanese and did not know any Vietnamese, perhaps even less than myself. The kids seemed to really like her, however, especially when she sang. Their new favorite song is Little Baby Bumblebee which is really adorable when they sing it as none know the words but they all have the motions down pat. The only problem I had with the new teachers was when I was discussing our purposes at Thanh Xuan Peace Village with the Australian teacher, she seemed more interested in padding her resume with international teaching, than really anything else. Her enthusiasm was very high, don't get me wrong, but I couldn't believe that she would state that as her main purpose for being at Thanh Xuan. I didn't really get to converse much with the Japanese teacher though, so I didn't get her opinion on the matter.
What I was really surprised about, however, was how easily the classroom space was relinquished to these new teachers. On Monday the teacher was nowhere in sight the entire time we were doing our service. All these new teachers had to do was walk in with a curriculum and the space was given to them right away, which means that as soon as Mai and I come up with a viable curriculum we will be able to have the whole floor. It is also interesting how in the physical therapy room, once a certain time is reached Peter and Irene are basically allowed to entertain the kids how they would like, and the space is basically theirs. How kid time is structured is really confusing to me, as there seems to be no real structure, but maybe that's just because I come in the afternoons when the real learning time is over.
In terms of physical space, the most of the village seems very communal and not by choice. The living quarters are right next to classrooms and bathrooms shared by everyone have no doors to separate stalls or toilets from showers. The bedrooms are large and have quite a few beds per room, and I am unsure of where most of the kids private belongings would go as there is nothing else in the bedrooms besides beds. I wonder if this would have any effect on how secretive the kids are in order to simply get a moment alone. There are also locks on many of the bathrooms in the village, ones that are further away from the classrooms where supervision is harder, which is an interesting concept. I don't understand this decision at all as these kids are capable of and trusted to sit at a desk and learn all day yet are not allowed to go to the bathroom, while downstairs the bathrooms by the special education classroom and unlocked and available. Hopefully the bathrooms here were just broken temporarily and are now openly available.
The open area is quite large and has a few play structures, which look a little antiquated and some broken. Last week I noticed that here, on the platform of a slide structure, there were two kids who were sharing a moment hugging and talking as I presume this was as private of an area as they could find. Interesting because this was actually open and public space, but no one came across them (except I guess myself) or intruded on their private moment. I'm sure if this same scenario had occurred inside, someone surely would have come across them and said something, so the very obvious publicity of the outside was actually being used to disguise a more private moment.
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