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- Hi, my name is Jacklynn Blanchard,
I'm 24 years old.
I'm from Littleton, Colorado,
and I'm currently teaching English
in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.
I did the online TEFL course
through the International TEFL Academies.
I have my bachelor's degree
from the University of Colorado at Boulder,
where I studied English with an emphasis
in creative writing and graduated with honors.
This is really my first time outside of North America.
I went to Nova Scotia about 10 years ago,
but other than that, my traveling has
mostly stayed within the United States,
so this was a really big deal to me.
I chose to get my TEFL Certification through
the International TEFL Academy because I read
really good reviews about it.
It was affordable to me, and also I was working a lot,
so it would have been impossible for me to take off a month
and go and do an in-class class,
so I felt that it was really great
that I could do the online certification
and have it still be a quality experience.
(peaceful music)
And that's where I work now,
it's called Seemeo, and I'm really enjoying it so far.
I've gotten to, I worked there for about a month-and-a-half,
two months, and I've gotten to work with students
ranging in age from like four
or five-years-old up through teenagers,
which has been a really good experience.
Most of the students I've worked with
have been roughly eight to 10,
and it's really nice to be able to still use the games,
but also have them understand English to a level
that you're able to do a little bit more complicated stuff.
My TEFL training helped me in my job as a teacher,
because it really went over lesson planning,
and I think that having no experience with that before,
I felt more comfortable with it having gone over
that pretty extensively within my course.
Also, it was really helpful to have
a lot of games to be able to do,
and a lot of different activities for different age groups.
I did both of the additional courses
offered through International TEFL Academy,
a business course and the young learners course,
and I worked with students in a business capacity
and in a young learners capacity, so I think that it
was really useful that I took advantage
of everything that they had to offer,
but I also wanted to go somewhere very different than
the suburbs of Colorado, and I think I probably found some,
I think that Ho Chi Minh City is extremely different
than the suburbs of Colorado, so in that regard,
I got exactly what I wanted.
I did have a bit of culture shock initially,
like I said before I hadn't really been outside
of North America before, and this was a huge change,
but now I feel pretty well-situated.
I really like my living situation here.
The first month that I was here,
I lived in a homestay situation
that I found through Airbnb.com,
and I did that for a month,
and that was a really good experience
to really get to know Vietnam.
I stayed in District 8,
which is pretty much 99% Vietnamese,
so there wasn't a lot of English being spoken.
The house that I was staying in had only one
of the family members spoke English,
so I think that it was good for me
to be really thrown into the deep end,
so that I could, I really get above water here,
and now I feel a lot more comfortable.
Perhaps if I had stayed in an area where
it was mostly Westerners and I wasn't really interacting
with Vietnamese people all the time,
I would feel less comfortable than I do now,
but I think that having lived in District 8
for a month was really a good experience for me,
and then I moved to District 1,
which is more centrally located and closer
to the Pham Ngu Lao area,
which is where a lot of people like to go out,
and the downtown area.
I live within walking distance of Seemeo, which is nice,
and there's also a lot of buses.
I take the bus a bit,
I've figured out the buses some, which is good.
I also take mototaxis.
They're called Xe Oms here,
and they're a really good resource.
I haven't driven motorbikes on my own yet.
I'm a little bit worried about it (laughs).
Traffic in Vietnam is rather chaotic.
International TEFL Academy was helpful.
They helped me with this process through telling me
like how I should be approaching schools,
and they looked over my resume.
I completely reformatted it, based off of what they said
was appropriate and what would be
more suitable for where I'm teaching.
I would recommend Vietnam to someone
who was interested in teaching abroad.
It's a really friendly and interesting country.
It's, if you're from the U.S. like I am,
it's very, very different than anything
that you've experienced in the U.S.
Ultimately, I think that it's a really great
character-building experience.
I think that everything that I've encountered here,
experiences good and bad, have really
made me feel more comfortable
in my ability to do things solo.
I came here alone, I didn't know anyone,
I didn't have a definite job set up,
and this probably sounds insane (laughs),
but it ended up working out.
In the end, I'm really happy with where everything is,
and I'm grateful to the International TEFL Academy
for their help along the way,
and I'm looking forward to the rest
of my time here in Vietnam.