Wednesday October 6th

By Dan

Thought of the day: President Teddy Roosevelt: “Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.”

The Nguyen Binh Khiem group leaves minus its quintessential organizer and leader, Roberta, who is under the weather. Her students miss her. Al and I have two tenth graders preparing for mid-terms next week. The written material is the same for both classes, but one class is taught entirely in English and the other in Vietnamese. I am impressed with the written material and concluded that some of it would be a challenge to American students,. The eleventh grade class was a Q and A regarding the 1000th anniversary celebration of the founding of Ha Noi. There was the usual challenge of getting the students to speak up, but with a little patience, most students were able to carry on a simple conversation. Again, students generally read well and write well; speaking and pronunciation are other issues – maybe best saved for the evaluation.

Seija’s sixth grade students were captivated by a US National Park Service brochure of the White House. Seija mentioned that Francoise lived near the White House and the students wanted to know if Francoise visits with President Obama.

The Foreign Trade university group gave lectures to and received lectures from their students. Global Volunteer lectures included topics concerning contract negotiations, leadership, e-commerce, and team building. Terry’s students presented twelve lectures to include the topics of the use of the telephone, internet shopping, stress at work, and the positive and negative aspects of stress. Terry remarked that some of the lectures would have received an “A” in an American university.