Hinthada Here I Come!

In a few days, I'm off to the town of Hinthada, Ayerwaddy Region to take on a challenging short-term teaching gig. Our client is the United Nations Development Program, who employ or help fund a sizeable group of Myanmar all over the country. Starting next week, they're bringing 60 or so of them together and another teacher and I will be delivering an intensive, two and a half week, English course. 

I say it's going to be challenging due the hours of instruction. Six and a half hours a day, six days a week. Now, most of us are used to working 8 hours a day, and so 6.5 hours may not sound like a big deal. Teaching is a bit of a different type of work, however. I like to have at least half an hour of prep time for each hour I teach, so it's not like I just show up and work. Then of course there's the difficulty for the students. Sitting in a classroom for that amount of time learning the same subject is going to be tough on them. Point being, it's not an ideal situation pedagogically. 

An 1855 watercolor of Hinthada

Hinthada itself I know very little about. It's sort of an odd place to bring together all these people. It's a small city of about 200,000 people along the banks of the mighty Irrawaddy river. There's a university there, two hotels and lots of river traffic. How it got chosen as the venue for this assignment is unknown to me.

Still, it looks like a pretty town, and of course, it's nice to get out and experience a new place on occasion. Badger will be staying where he stayed when I was Indonesia. 

Videos to come!