MY FIRST FEELING ABOUT VIETNAM

My first days in Cổ Lễ and Dao Su Tich secondary school.

Hello everybody, my name is Juan Manuel and I'm from Spain. My EVS project is in Dao Su Tich secondary school in Cổ Lễ, Nam Dinh province in the north of Vietnam.

The first days in the country, I was always watching my backpack and my stuff, just in case somebody wanted to steal me, like in Spain. After some days, I realized that all people was super kind with us, and they are always trying to help tourists.

In my project, the teachers are really nice and kind with us. They offer us any help we may need for our work here, or personal things. They asked us, if the food was appropiate for us, and if we were comfortable with the acommodations. The impression they have given me is that they take great care to make our stay as comfortable as possible. And I suppose somehow to thank us for the work that we are developing here.

Students in English lesson

Students in the yard.

In the town, everybody greets us in the streets, a lot of young people, and others not so young, stop to take a picture with us. Some teachers, invite us to their houses, or to do some leisure activity during our free time, such as playing football, or going for coffee.

Regarding the labor issue, during the first week, we are dedicated to accompany the different teachers in their English classes for students to know us, and for us to know the teaching methods they use.

On the second week, they gave us a specific timetable about how was going be our work and with what kind of students. As are two volunteers, we divide the work. Two whole grade for me, and the other two for my partner.

Our work schedule is from monday to friday, start at 7:00 to 11:30, the school morning schedule, and the weekends off. Inside this timetable, our lessons vary each week. In the evening schedule, some days we prepare our next lessons, and other days, we have the vietnamees lessons with one of our tutors.

In summary, the sensations that have left us this first month here, have been sensational and very pleasant. Feeling that we are part of the community and making the stay to more than 10,000 kms far away from our families and loved ones, is more bearable.