if you are in the mood for dancing

Video Courtesy: The Little Garden Kindergarten, Hanoi

morning Mondays

I have about 3 Mondays per week.

Eh?

Colloquially they are known as Monday, Wednesday and Friday. On these three days every week, I usually snooze the alarm for half an hour or out-snore it. No matter how well I plan, I am never able to decide on what to wear to school earlier than the morning of it. To get into the groove of the kinder chaos, I usually mail the to-be-printed documents before going to school. This rushing doesn't make much sense. Except that it is necessary.

Kids can and do switch from crying for their mothers to dancing to music in about 15 minutes time or less. Not me. If I am not AWAKE before the time I leave for school, I might as well be forgetting to take the worksheets or, deadlier, I might forget to take my pen-drive.

The pen-drive is my fuel. On all my Mondays, an enthused batch of kids dance and rock to, fall over each other at the end of, and, smile at the rhymes and songs this pen-drive holds. It is the magic wand that makes a wailing toddler stop crying. It is the mystery box that the kids wait for me to open.

I have very busy Monday mornings thrice a week, specially because it takes me a while to wake up. But, as my xe-om approaches my Little Garden, I am smiling ear to ear, much like a funny looking teddy bear. 

Photo courtesy: The Little Garden Kindergarten, Hanoi, Viet Nam.

Post Script: Did I mention, most Mondays I travel to school by xe-om?

firsts' forever

I entered my first kindergarten in my thirtieth year. When I was of the age to attend kindergartens, I refused to attend any.

My brother is about two years older than me. When I was of the age to attend pre-school, he was in his first grade. I vehemently opposed the humiliation of attending a school in the neighbourhood when my brother had the privilege of travelling to school by bus. Even before I knew my ABCs, I told my parents I want to go to a school that needs travelling by bus. So I did.

I still travel to school by bus. Only on Monday mornings do I take my express mode of transport - the Ha Noi xe-om (motorbike taxi).

To be precise, this is not a school. It is a kindergarten. It caters to Vietnamese kids and I am the English teacher to the toddly-wobbly curious batch of 2 to 5 year olds.

The batch is magnificent in more ways than one. The youngest ones can barely walk but will always charge forward for the high-fives at the end of the class. The elder kids are jealous when a younger kid manages to attend the entire English class while sitting on my lap. They discipline each other, fight with each other and the next thing you know - they are charging towards the teacher with the welcome pin-her-to-the-wall focus.

When I joined as a kindergarten English teacher, I didn't know what to expect from the job. The last thing was to expect finding the possible vocation of a lifetime. There are truly firsts' for everything. The joy of finding a job that makes you happy is possibly the rarest of its kind.