1. I taught my last class of the week at the Home of Affection street children night education center. This is the most challening placement because the kids are not as used to normal school behavior as the kids in the other schools, because they only go to school at night, and because they lack parental and adult guidence in general. Additionally, there is a wide range of both age and ability levels in these classes.

The first day was very much a challenege, because when we got there, we realized that although the students had supposedly learned the content up to page 48 in the workbook, they remembered very little of it. While they might recognize some of the vocabulary words, the were certainly not able to use them in a sentence or pronounce them correctly. Last month's volunteers stopped taking notes on their lesson plans for this class very early in the month, so there is no way we could have known this ahead of time.

However, each day marks a marked improvement in the quality of the class, both in terms of student behavior and in my own ability to teach. Today, we reviewed the parts of the body, and left/right, and they all had fun dancing along to the hokey pokey.

2. Tomorrow, I am attending a Home of Affection class as a student. On Monday through Wednesday, I teach English, but on Thursday and Friday, the class covers Vietnamese and English. I have memorized the packet of useful words and phrases that they gave out at the orientation session, and I would like to continue to learn more Vietnamese. Though I am in Vietnam, because I am participating in a program with other English-speaking people, I don't feel that I have picked up the true benefits of language immersion. But I really just want an excuse to spend more time with the street kids, and to get to know them better. I think that they are clearly the population here that have the most need that I am actually able to really help. The kids in the fishing village elementary school are definitely quite poor, but at least they come from good families and they are generally well looked after by adults. I hate to say it, but the disabled orphans at the social support center are generally beyond help - though I am very happy to do some physical therapy to help make them more comfortable and bring them some happiness, there is nothing life-changing that can happen with most of them. Because of their medical conditions, they will be unable to communicate and unable to move independently despite the best of our efforts. So, I really do believe that the street children education center is the best place for me to focus most of my efforts.

3. I am not very happy with how one of the other volunteers in the house has been treating me. She treats me like I am incompetent or stupid, quickly dismisses my own ideas, and presents her own teaching ideas as if they were revolutionary. I don't know what happened, because at the beginning of the month, we were getting along quite well. I don't think that I have done anything to provoke her attitude, but maybe she is mad that I haven't been spending much of my free time with her. When we get back to the house, I usually just go to my room and practice new Vietnamese vocabulary or read one of my books, and that is what I will continue to do. I think that her attitude comes from arrogance. She is going to college to become a teacher, and she feels like she is vastly more qualified than the rest of us for the volunteer position. However, I think that all of us are considerably out of our element in teaching to poor kids in Vietnam, and we all have both things to learn as well as talents to share. She is consistently rude and disrespectful, and unfortunately, she is also staying next month.