Relaxing mornings... and Fansipan

Horizontal max out, pre-curry and ginger tea Dinner in Pai

Historically I equated productive mornings off with rushed breakfasts, pre-dawn approaches, and all days hikes/climbs.  While they will never completely escape future morning repertoires, I have fully prioritized sleep while still rising early to eat a bowl of pho, blast through pages of a good book, stretch, sip a strong Viet cafe, and write in my journal.  There are too many things to do and my nature is to attempt them all - a recurring feeling, similar to that of my first semester in college.  However I am learning to prefer slower, deliberately-paced exploration that builds in time for naps, massages, breathing, and yoga - activities that make the new experiences feel less hurried and equip my brain for appropriately dealing with inevitable hiccups.

Pad Thai and Green Curry food coma - Pai

While in Northern Thailand on our autumn break from school, I found the value in being a full blown tourist - on a guided tour.  From the elephant park to the street food tour, I found full value in being a team tourist - I fired off questions in between full group announcements and found myself at the heels of the guides when we were moving, awaiting another question.  Am I that annoying student who is too engaged?  Maybe.

Intimate with elephants

We rented a motorbike and slowly made our way to the hippy town of Pai after the most stunningly green and windy drive.  The 130 km drive took us nearly 6 hours after our stops to hilltop coffee shops, huge double waterfalls, and random streetside temples.

Scooter senorita

Moloi hiking with Manoi, the 34 year-old Elephant rescue

Moloi - stretching it out after a refreshing soak in the Mork Fa waterfalls

Following our week in Thailand, we were blessed with the opportunity to lead a week long school trip with each other and two awesome St Paul friends.  The main itinerary for the 5 days? Embark on a 3-day trek to Fansipan, deemed, "the roof on Indochina" at 3,140 m.  We had 27 students ranging from never-hiked-before and never-been-actually-dirty-before ninth grade Korean students to Vietnamese Seniors who considered this a standard vacay.

Our three Vietnamese guides, all of whom I grilled about life as a mountain guide in Vietnam after growing up a H'mong villager, led our not-so-motley crew up the mountain.  The hike started meandering through the Villages and their people - piglets, chickens, ankle deep mud puddles and a drizzle so thick it looked as if it would never stop (which it didn't) - welcomed us into the trip.  The students were HUGE troopers, but were exhausted arriving into our lunch site at 3:30pm, 7 hours after beginning the hike.  Immediately myself and the other teacher chaperones questioned the guides and their ability to estimate the needs and abilities of our group.  A boiled egg Bahn My lunch and a short afternoon, followed by two raging fires and 9 hours of sleep on a wooden floor brightened our spirits for day 2, although not for long

Putting on wet muddy shoes was soon forgotten by meandering through more green, mossy, narrow bamboo-lined mountain spines.  During our 5 days on the trip, there was only a 15-minute span when we could see more that a couple hundred meters across the valley.
Settling into camp 2 was an oxymoron - 8 people crammed in a 12 foot wide platform with soaked clothes, a fire only hot enough to dry the soaking wood, and students visibly getting sick from the conditions.  It was a challenge even for us teachers to hold it together.

Day 3.  I hoofed it to the summit 1.5 hours before the rest of the gang with our one student who rolled her ankle the day before and was being piggy backed by a constant alternation of six porters and myself.  The terrain those gentlemen can traverse in broken flipflops almost rivals that of the late and great Uli Steck.  In the end, we all made it to the top and safely back down in the 6.2 km cable car in under 20 minutes.  Our students impressed us.  They cried for home but didn't stop moving.  They didn't like the food much, but ate it anyway.  I could see a few of their bodies changing and their minds becoming more acute by the day compared to their academic selves.  Not often do these students get to physically challenge themselves like this and transfer this grit and perseverance to other parts of their lives.   It was all worth it.  

The eerie forest leading up to Fansipan with 27 partially stoked students

Weekend motorbike getaway to Tam Dao.

Electrical Fire, Typhoon Doksuri

Tuesday 12/9/17.  I step into the hall of the third floor of B building to say goodbye to my Chemistry students and welcome the first batch of 9th graders for the day into my room.  The halls are well lit and the sun often casts a warm glow through the clounds, fog, or smog as it brightens the orange-cream painted concrete walls.  This time, the smog was inside.  It smells like burning plastic and the air was thick.  Did I leave on a hot plate in the lab? No.

What is that smell?  Mr Blackburn asks a student

I think there is a fire in the art room upstairs, the student casually replies.

Is it out? Is everything okay? 

I think so, says the student

It obviously wasn't a big enough concern for me to deal with at the moment, so I begin my class with my timid group of English Language Learners as I usually do - telling them how glad I am to see them, and how glad I am that they are here.  The two cute Korean girls in the front smile, and the wily Vietnamese boys puff their chests.  Those physical responses make my morning.

After 10 minutes, the fire alarm sounds.  Not having ever seen or heard of the evacuation plan, I tell my students to grab their backpacks, and calmly follow me out into the hall.  We proceed through the thickening smoke and into the field with the other 500 students and staff.  It's a sunny 85 degree morning.  People immediately start sweating.  Friends congregate, only a handful of them breaking the typical social barrier between the Koreans and Vietnamese.  An hour passes.  Students start playing games and doing push-up competitions, their patience being tested.  The Vietnamese fire department arrives with great awe from students and staff.  One truck, seven dudes,  zero supplies.  My question was, do these guys have training to decide if the building is safe for us enter?  Training to mitigate an electrical fire with smoke pouring through the ceiling tiles of a 4 story building?  That would be great.  It's almost lunchtime and our students are hot and hungry.  With little collective experience navigating this type of situation at our school, we as a staff made the call to resume school and disperse the learning that was to take place in B building for the remainder of the day.

The conversation to open my rambunctious 5th period class that afternoon started with mindful breaths and sharing gratitudes about the important things in life.  Their minds were struggling to make sense of the mornings chaos.  I shared what I think about when things are unplanned, potentially dangerous, and scary.  If the people I love and I are safe and healthy, then everything else is details - at least in that moment.  I shared with them how glad I was that everyone was safe and healthy.  I let them know its hard to learn with those need aren't met.

Friday 15/9/17.  All after school activities were cancelled in preparation for the impending rain and mild wind from the outskirts of Typhoon Doksuri that is now blasting Hanoi with decimeters of rain.  I had planned a 2 hour after school lab with my AP Chemistry students, but due to the change of plans, some of them had to take the bus home immediately.  The two who live within walking distance of school stayed with me in the lab for over an hour, discussing the culture of St. Paul, the implications of the academic pressure placed on many Korean students, and what it is like a part of an international education system.  The two students who stuck around are Seniors, working hard to get into top-tier American schools next year.  The soon-to-be-graduates are exceptional people and poster students.  They are open-minded, polite, inquisitive,  driven, interested, athletes, and freakishly intelligent.  Perfect SAT, soccer-team-captain, science-debate-champion type kids.  These off-the-clock conversations with students are worth their weight in gold.  They shared with me that Doksuri means Eagle in Korean.  We are the St. Paul Eagles.  Typhoon Doksuri was making the Eagles a stronger community.  Cool.

Friday 15/9/17.  I joined a small crew of friends at one of their lovely apartments for brews, games, conversation, laughs, and a 30th birthday celebration.  11pm quickly turned into 2am as we became lost in a debate about the philosophy of educational leadership.   It was worth every minute and it feels great to have a crew of coworkers who share passion for work and play.  I gave a friend a ride home through the deserted wet streets of Hanoi, only to realize I forgot the "late night" key to my apartment.  Exhausted, and not wanting to disturb my neighbors, I fell asleep on the landing of the marble staircase to the sound of the rain pelting the street and pond.   I woke at 4:30, miserable, hot, and thirsty.  I hopped on my motorbike and cruised through Hanoi, stopping at hotels, waking up receptionists asleep in their chairs, nearly begging for a room.

Full, one said.  The rain bring everyone in at 1 & 2am.  

F.  

No no.  Cannot accept money.  Need credit card, said another.

Double F.  

I searched 6 hotels and advertised homestays and finally found one at 5:30, just as the first light was hitting the city.   I woke at 11am grateful to be safe and healthy.   I could have avoided this with proper planning.  Instead I chose piss-poor performance.  There is always next time.

Gettin' Schooled

The number of times people told me the first year of teaching was difficult could have tripled and I still would have been floored by how much time it takes to plan and assess.  We wake at 6 to the iPhone's new bedtime feature alarm, which is quite nice by alarm standards.  Out the door within 15 minutes, cold oats, a banana and a scoop of PB in tow, and we are off on our 30 minute ride to school.  We usually beat the morning  traffic, but are frequently slowed by a torrential downpour.  You know how water  fills your goggles when you swim for long enough?  Well that's exactly how my contacts feel when I drive in the monsoons, so Mol usually takes the helm.  Before our final turn into  school, we pull over to this woman's tent on the side of the road.  She smiles at us as we hand her our tupperware.  She fills one with rice noddles and the other with little meatballs and a fermented, sweet, garlicy, fish sauce broth topped with a handful of fresh mint, all of which we pack away for a nice light lunch for 2 bucks.  Her other customers are workers from the nearby development who probably worked all night and sleepily watch us perform one of our morning routines.  The woman knows us now and is very happy to serve us.

My students are awesome.  As any demographic of a school will be, they are varied, unique individuals.  On the whole, however, they are polite, they listen, they want to learn and a few even ask for homework every night because they don't want to get rusty.  So I give it to them.  And I stay awake at night thinking about how I can differentiate for all learners and make the material accessible to my 11th graders who speak and read English at elementary levels.  I care about my profession deeply and I want to always practice being a better teacher.  The beauty is, there is no ceiling as a teacher - there is always room for growth.  The first month of school has been at full pace trying to patch together the years worth of curricula I seemed to have acquired over the last 14 months.  I am so grateful for the generosity of teachers as they share years of hard work in a single click of button.  This act of selfless kindness has prevented me from "getting too schooled" at St Paul.  What has been the biggest lesson for me has happened outside the classroom, and was more solidified over our soon-to-end 3 day weekend.

On Friday, we split directly from school to Mai Chau in the Hoa Binh Provence to the west of Ha Noi.  We scooted the 140km on our dodgy motorbike.  Our first night in the Hostel was restless due to the cacophony of roosters, dogs, and cows all night and a mattress that made cardboard feel soft.  This trip wasn't about roughin' it, so we upgraded for an extra buck for a private room with AC.  Worth every penny.  On Saturday we ran around the Lac village, which is has traditionally styled homes with open first floors for dinning and storefronts and a bamboo platform upstairs for sleeping.  That evening we dined liked royalty in the village among the other Vietnamese tourists who were celebrating Vietnam's National Day - their commemoration of independence from France in 1945.  Rice wine flowed through the small bamboo straws like the water through the terraced rice fields.  Sunday morning I was searching for a ustual pho breakfast before we roped up for a rock climb.  Molly was searching for some fruit, so I dined with a group of tourists from Hanoi.  We spoke each other's languages poorly, but enjoyed laughs figuring out simple things about each other.  After our pho was gone, they invited me over to the next table for tea.  The generosity of people inviting foreigners into their space is noteworthy.

This morning on our way home we stopped at one of the many storefront/homes on the highest pass between Mai Chau and Ha Noi. We put our fingers to our lips as we motioned to the family we were looking for food.  With massive grins they sat us down at their table, brought over steamed rice in a bamboo casing, and started to grill us pork. They offered corn, tea, and coffee during our 20 minutes there, and we returned the generosity by telling the young woman how pretty her daughter was.  These folks live with very little income and access to resources.  They live on the highway in a bamboo hut, cooking over a fire.   They were happy, and more importantly, they were generous with their space and their resources.  Another example: when we were pulling into Ha Noi, our bike finally died and the security guard's friend standing on the sidewalk spent 30 minutes diagnosing it with his personal spark plugs, tools, and time, before he communicated to me it was above his pay grade to fix.  These are just half the examples of generosity that I experienced today throughout this country.  For these folks, happiness and self worth is derived from giving.  Moreover, giving to someone who looks different and butchers their language.  Someone who has more opportunity and wealth, all of which could easily be a sources of resentment.  This is the schooling I'm talking about.

Pictures from the trip to come soon.