Sunday 7th Sept. 2008
It’s 6pm and I’m in my room watching the dark sky lit up by flashes of sheet lightening every few seconds. It started to thunder around 4.30 after Mark’s Movie club where we watched ‘The Green Mile’, a truly awesome film as Mark would say. That’s a film that never fails to move me; even more than ‘Brief Encounter’! Two sodden tissues. Anyway, as I heard approaching thunder I decided to come home before the rain. I should have moved quicker! As soon as I stepped outside, the heavens opened and even wearing my water proof jacket I was soon drenched. So I just enjoyed the cooling downpour, wading through the rivulets in the road like Gene Kelly in ‘Singing in the Rain’. That’s how it rains here although I hear it’s been doing much the same at home recently!
As soon as I got to my room I stripped off, only to discover a shortage of towels, which necessitated a trip down to reception with only a beach sarong to cover my modesty. I don’t use the internal phone as no one here speaks English and the only Vietnamese I’ve learned so far is... ‘Lam on’; please, ‘Gam on’; thank you, ‘Xin chao’; hello, ‘Tam biet’; goodbye, ‘Tot lam’; well done and ‘Toi khong biet’; I don’t know. If I can remember them at the right time and pronounce them right, otherwise my attempt at please could mean, ‘open the door’.
Mark holds the Movie club in the school Library every two weeks; well actually this was the second one. Although The Green Mile is three hours long, it’s worth seeing and I found it riveting even though I’ve seen it two or three time before! It will be interesting to hear what the students made of it in their next lesson.
Actually, I was very glad of the English subtitles, essential for foreign students of English. I’m beginning to realise how much dialogue I miss in American films; they don’t talk properly like we native English. Ever since Marlon Brando mumbled his way through ‘On the Waterfront ‘ the clarity of dialogue in films has deteriorated in the interests of ‘realism’. Can’t argue with that. Oh for the great films of Cary Grant, Charles Laughton, James Mason and Deborah Kerr; English actors all! Those were the days. (Yes, I’m kidding... sort of!)
Actually I think today’s movies are amazing with all the benefits of intelligent direction and modern technology, not to mention huge investment. Telling and acting out stories is just as important now as it was when we sat around camp fires and cheered or booed players in the market place. The best way to teach is through story, which is what I try to do in teaching English, which brings me back to what I’m doing here, especially getting kids to comprehend the foreign words they’ve been learning in books and songs, which painfully reminds me of learning French at school at which I did not excel. Hope I do better here.
2 comments:
Interesting post.
I must say that my knowledge of English (whether it is good or bad) owes a lot to the fact that Charles Laughton was my favourite actor when I was in School: there were not a lot of films in VHS, and practically no books about him in Spain, so I had to get myself British videos and books in English to learn more about him. Plus, he collected two anthologies of British literature, and recorded diverse records with literary readings... so he truly is responsible for the best part of my English learning.
However Laughton is not the only guilty one (if certainly a main contributor: There were also the Fab Four from Liverpool (yes, more Northern lads!) from which I learned a less academic English, and American comic books also added a great deal of colloquial expressions to my knowledge.
Hello Pat
You sound as though you're having the time of your life - are you teaching only the small children or adults too? What an opportunity of a lifetime!
I'm almost there with you in your blogs.
I've only just caught up with them because my laptop is down and I have to beg and borrow time on line. I don't have your or Mark's email address any more as they're on the laptop but please pass my good wishes to Mark - he looks so well and happy in the photos - there seems to be some Karma going on for both of you.
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