Hanging in Vietnam

We are on school holidays at the moment so enjoyed a quick trip to Vietnam last week. We found cheap air tickets with Tiger Air a few months ago so headed away with four other friends. We began with a few days immersed in the chaos of Ho Chi Minh City, whilst staying in a small guest house in the centre of town. Ho Chi Minh is a bustling place with around 7 million Vietnamese people and about the same number of scooters. With recommendations from our work colleagues, we found a few excellent places to eat. A French/Moroccan place, an alfresco barbecue restaurant and a one very vietnamese place with authentic local cuisine. The tourism side of the city was a bit disappointing, we visited the historic centre of town where a tank busted through the gates of the palace to reunite North and South Vietnam in the late 1970's. On the last morning we visited the Cu Chi Tunnels to the north which was a little dull.


We then moved on to a quaint place called Hoi An in central Vietnam, via a flight to Denang and then a 30 minute taxi ride south. The coastline from Denang to Hoi An is a long line of newly built resorts, Greg Norman golf courses and other foreign owned investments. It is a unique juxtaposition to see the poverty and traditional long houses on the opposite side of the road to the glam and manicured lawns of the resorts. Nevertheless we dived off the main road to the ancient town of Hoi An, which was once a trading village with French, Japanese and Chinese influences. The town is now a protected UNESCO site with little traffic and renovated buildings. We enjoyed lots of great food in different styles alongside the river (Cargo, Mango Mango), plenty of art galleries and the ubiquitous tailors.



We spent plenty of money on tailored clothes at about $20 a piece and struggled to bring it all back to Singapore. It was good to spend a substantial amount of time in one place. We managed to spend 6 days in Hoi An with friends which was a nice contrast to travelling every day from place to place. Will definitely be back to Vietnam at some time and try to do some of the northern parts, Halong Bay, Sapa and Hanoi.


The rest of our photos are here... http://picasaweb.google.com/ajmccarthynz/Vietnam2010

A preview of our wedding photos

After a long time searching...

After a long time searching we located the piece of art that was the one! This is it’s story:

Andrew saw a picture he liked in Greytown only a few days after the wedding. He apparently showed me it but I didn’t remember a thing, I was still stuck up on cloud nine also know as wedded bliss. When I had finally come back down to earth Andrew and I started our serious hunt for the right piece of New Zealand art. We both knew this was going to be a challenge, as it had to comply with a list of criteria. A= has to the work of a New Zealand Artist. B=It has to be an original C=It really should show a landscape or something New Zealandish. And finally for the hardest criteria of all. D= we both have to like it!

So the hunt began, Andrew searched the internet and I, well….. I went shopping with mum to Queensgate. However, I did suggest that we go the Gallery over in Eastbourne at Days bay on our way to visit some friends. The Van Halen Gallery always has a variety of artwork on display. And there it was…….I saw the picture that I knew we had to have. The only bugger was that it was a print. With all of the generous contributions from friends and family we could hardly buy just a print. Or could we? I called Andrew over to show him, fingers crossed that he also liked it. That is it! Yelled Andrew. I know it’s perfect isn’t it! I am so glad that you like it.

So to cut a long story short. The Gallery rang the artist Debbie Hoare, an Eastbourne local and asked if she still had the original for sale. She said yes but it is in a gallery over in Greytown. So it turns out that Andrew had seen the original over in Greytown. They arranged to sent the painting over to Eastbourne and we managed to take it with us to Singapore all with a day to spare.

Today this wonderful scene of Wellington looking from Eastbourne hangs proudly in our home in Singapore. It reminds us of home and all of our friends and family that shared the best day of our lives with us. Thank you all so very much. xxx

The Singapore Zoo

We have just enjoyed a long weekend so decided to head to the zoo. Rach was keen to see the animals and I was keen to try out my new birthday present camera.

The Zoo is a very polished tourist experience and rather humane for a Zoo. Lots of the animals are wandering or climbing around without fences. The monkeys were all free to roam around, with I guess some well thought out strategies to keep them from straying too far. The orang-utans where handing out on this island where you could walk through on board walk.

Its taken us nearly a year and think we have finally done most of the local attractions. We need some more long weekends to explore a little further towards Indonesia or Malaysia. Lots of friends headed off to resorts over the weekend, and to nice beaches a couple of hours north in Malaysia.

It is now exactly a year since we moved out of our place in Claremont Grove and began our shift. How a year flies by.

Teaching with laptops

Since moving to Singapore, Rach and I have both been teaching in a full laptop environment. Each kid in our Grade 9 and Grade 11 classes have laptops which are linked to the wireless network. The laptops have sure altered the way we both teach. Rachel is now a convert to you tube and enjoys finding geeky videos for Geography. I now use a variety of blogs and school ICT stuff to make the learning a bit more interesting.

For both of us it has been an excellent opportunity for developing our craft as teachers and will be a nice string to our CV's when we eventually move on. I have recently presented a bit of research on the effectiveness of laptops. The conference was for all of the Singapore schools and it was a great chance to network, and to also begin the path towards maybe beginning my masters.

Evaluating The Effectiveness Of Laptops In The Classroom

View more presentations from Andrew McCarthy.

Cross Country racing

I took my gaggle of cross country runners to the Singapore International Champs this week. It was held at the American School of Singapore which was a bit too urban for a cross country race. Nevertheless heaps of kids from the other schools competed. The race was dominated by the kids from the American School. The school has about 3,000 students and a very modern and bling campus. Wouldn't mind having a full athletics track, Olympic size pool and artificial turf at our school. We didn't have many kids running. Our school has about 550 students, which is tiny compared to the seven big schools here with between 2000 and 3500 students.

Our Under 14 girls team with their 3rd place medals (plus random Curtis sneaking into the pic)

A weekend workshop in Bangkok

A few week ago we headed to Bangkok for a weekend of curriculum training for the International Baccalaureate. Both Rachel and I are now teaching a middle years class ( Grade 6 - 10) so spent three days in a workshop learning about Humanities / Social Studies, assessments and or sorts of other dull teaching material. This is about as close as we will ever get to a business trip so we made the most of it.

Our workshop classroom at the New International School of Thailand, boring.

We stayed in a great hotel in central Bangkok in the district of Sukhumvit, about a 10 min walk from the school where the course was run. The hotel was amazing value compared to the some of the hotels that was stayed in whilst in Europe.

Our hotel suite, huge lounge, kitchen and the king size bedroom.

We enjoyed the chance to network with some other teachers from around Asia. We met teachers who work in Beijing at a rather prestigious international school, the Western Academy of Beijing. http://www.wab.edu/ We also befriended people from Laos, Thailand and Indonesia. The growth of international schools in Asia is exponential at the moment especially in India and China with more multinational companies setting up in those parts of the world.

Lumpini market and food courts, the girls are out shopping.

We didn't get a huge chance to tour the city but did escape on Saturday night to the night markets in Lumpini. On the same afternoon, 30,000 red shirt anti government protestors where heading into central Bangkok a year after the riots when the airport was closed for week. We managed to get across town on the subway system which is brand new and very efficient. From what we heard Bangkok is not quite the wild west of Asia that it used to be. Still plently of interesting stuff that contrast against sterile Singapore. Think we might head back for a long weekend soon to do some shopping and check out the temples and attractions.