V2-2010

Today was an incredible day. Early morning breakfast, off to the school to work on a retaining wall, lunch, back to the retaining wall, and then off to our next assignment....teaching English at the vocational school.

But then.....

As usually happens in the land of Vietnam, we were thrown a curve ball. On our way to the vocational school, our guide received a call from the teacher.

Apparently, the English classes had finished and they had moved on to information/technology. So all of the sudden instead of teaching English we had an hour to prepare to teach a computer class.

No problem. The team strategized and mobilized. We were ready to teach everything we knew about computers.

Then we got to the school....

Apparently they weren't teaching about computers in general but more specifically they were entrenched in a month long training on Excel.

What!!!??!?!???!

From English to computers to excel.

15 minutes before class now. Panic is setting in. But we are here....the Americans.....and we've got to say something.

Deep breath. Kevin and Karen go in to stall for another 10 minutes while Chris, Kimberley, Jon and Bryan brainstorm and prepare a 1 hour curriculum to teach 30 students while their teachers and other staff from the school look on.

Yen, our translator, is sweating.....and she NEVER sweats.

So....15 minutes in Kevin and Karen run out of clever things to say and all the conversational English phrases they know.

In comes the team....stage left.

Chris Hanson begins. He talks about his financial planning business and how Excel is an essential tool. He teaches the students about budgets.

Jon Kopler continues. He talks about his work as a scientist, he teaches about plotting and again emphasises his uses of Exel.

Bryan Marshall is next. As a business owner of a technology and information systems business he explains the various uses of Excel for his company.

Then Kimberley Gibson is introduced as a student (which the whole class applauds -- and by the way, no one else got applause) who uses excel as well.

It was amazing. The curviest curve ball we've ever been thrown and we hit it out of the park.

We high-fived each other. We were very excited. They asked us to come back on Monday. OH NO!

We have nothing else to say about Excel. But we at least have two days to figure something out instead of 15 minutes.

Wish us luck!