I returned to Khanh Hoi A this week, and found it to be exactly the bombed-out public school I posted about. This time, I took care to notice the intended layout of the building. It seems from the pattern of rubble that the building originally stood in a rectangular horseshoe around a central courtyard, though at present, only the furthest ell still stands. Its 3 stories are connected on either end by wide, plaster staircases that have been well worn by students’ footprints. The landings and floors have been mostly chipped away. Tables and chairs are thickly covered with drawings, carvings, names of couples, and what I can only assume is Vietnamese profanity. Previously, I was warned that students may get bored by my lesson and begin drawing on the walls impromtu.

As decayed as this school is, the students there are sharp and well-behaved. Today, I taught 4 classes– 2 ninth-grade classes intersperced with two eighth-grade classes. The lessons revolved around genetics, for the ninth grade, and introductions, for the eighth grade. Looking these over last night, I decided to warm up with a game I found on Dave’s ESL Café called “Alibi“. The gist: Four people in class are suspected of robbing a bank last Saturday (take four volunteers). They must leave class to come up with an alibi, while the rest of the room separates into groups (one group per suspect) and comes up with a list of questions. The suspects return to the room and each group questions one. At the end, we check their stories as a class for consistency.

As you might guess, the rules to this game are difficult to explain, so I play it with three classes and switch to a different game. The second warm-up game is called “Brainstorm Rummy“, in which six teams come up with different words for a given category. As it so happens, the category “fruit” carries the class through an entire 45 minutes. Turns out this class, my most challenging last time, has a pretty extensive vocabulary around fruit. After an entire class, we were down to two teams tied for first place, and I taught the class about “sudden death”.

With representatives from each class up front, I drew two boxes and told each student to write a fruit that wasn’t on the board when I said “go.” The first to finish, wins. It took awhile and some translation in Vietnamese, but eventually they began. As they walked away to their seats I noticed that one had written “loganberry” (which, oddly enough was already up there), and the other hadn’t written anything. The tie was very anticlimactic, and I died a little inside.