Matt and I teach a corporate class at a small investment bank three days a week. Until recently, this class was my crown jewel– my favorite class to teach. The students were quick and their English was very good. They all seemed very interested in my lessons, which had veered from a mundane set of handouts on “Friendship” and “Free Time”, to discussions about rhetoric and salesmanship. Everything was going well. Until they invited us to a wedding.

I had misgivings. First of all, they didn’t invite us, they invited Matt. We had heard that we needed to experience a Vietnamese wedding, and so when the opportunity arose, we jumped at it. I’m told that a followup email invited me, along with the rest of the group. As a rule, we don’t tend to do well in public as a group.

Travel involved not only spending a weekend with my adult students, almost all of which are older than I am, but also a 7-hour-each-way trip in a small van, meant for no more than 10 people, let alone 20+. My grip on authority in any classroom is tenuous at best, and letting my students know that I’m human is probably the surest way to disolve it altogether. We had no idea how right that would be.

Me at a Vietnamese Wedding