New year, fresh start

Last Tuesday was the first day of school.  This year, our class has 16 students (10 girls and 6 boys).  There are students from Vietnam, China, Korea, and the USA.  I'm very happy with our class so far this year.  I also have a new teaching partner, Ms. Thuy Anh (pronounced like "twee ann") who I really like.

Last week, the school owners took the staff out for dinner to a Brazilian steakhouse restaurant.  The food was probably pretty expensive, but luckily we didn't have to pay for anything.  I had never been to this type of restaurant before.  The servers come around with huge slabs of meat on these big skewer things and they put it on your plate and shave off the meat.  It was really good!

Next weekend is Vietnamese National Day, so Monday is a holiday.  A large group of friends are going to Mui Ne again for the long weekend.  We went there last year for the holiday, and it was a lot of fun.  I hope this year we'll have another great trip there.  It's nice to have a holiday so early on in the school year... looking forward to hitting the beach next weekend!

Back for another year!

After about 24 hours of being in and out of airports and planes, I arrived in Vietnam on Saturday evening.  The first flight from Toronto to Seoul was 13.5 hours, and daylight the whole time.  Even though people shut the window covers to block out the sunlight, I couldn't sleep.  I think the whole daylight thing tricked me into thinking I should still be awake.  I didn't sleep on either flight and went to bed pretty late in Vietnam... awake for over 30 hours but not tired at all!  Luckily, I'm not waking up at 3:30am every morning and falling asleep at 7 like I was when I arrived in Canada.

This week we started orientation at school.  The new teachers are nice, and everyone is looking forward to setting up their classrooms and starting the new school year.  Class lists have not been finalized yet.

The new apartment is great, but we haven't unpacked everything yet.  It's awesome living in such a nice space!  The other day I went with my rental agent, My, by motorbike to some small police station down a road full of wandering chickens a few minutes away to register my name in the "police book" for this apartment.  By law, everyone living in an apartment must register with the police.  Definitely a different system here than in Canada!

The weather here is still very hot and humid.  Rainy season is coming, and we got a small taste of it yesterday.  Welcome back to Vietnam!!!!!!!!!!

Lazy Summer

Here are some photos from this summer, so far!!!  :)

Blueberry picking, visiting Pelee Island for the first time, Vanessa's grad party...