Blog Reading

There are a couple of people from our last VTF team who blog and I have some friends elsewhere who occasionally post to blogs. Problem is, I never remembered to check them regularly.

Then I found Google Reader, which checks their updates and puts them all in one place. Very cool. Now I can stay up to date.

But I also had to remember to check Google Reader regularly to see if they had posted anything new.

Then I found Google Reader Watcher, which is an add-on to my Firefox browser (which I switched to mostly because of the Adblock Plus add-on that blocks banner ads and lets my slow internet work a little more quickly). This little add-on puts a small icon on the lower corner of my browser that tells me whether my Google Reader has any unread postings waiting for me.

Very cool! Now I can stay up to date with everyone. Maybe even ScribeFire will help me keep my postings up to date. We'll see.

You may already know all this, but I've been behind the curve on this blogging stuff.

Games Wanted

We're looking for some word games that we can bring back to use with our students = things like Catch Phrase, Scattergories, Taboo, Boggle, Mad Gab...

I've also got a friend who would like a couple English-language science books so he can up his vocabulary in that area. I think that a couple of used NYS Regents exam review books might work.

If you have a game or book that you don't use anymore that's in good shape, or you'd like to donate a new one, let me know and I'll give you info on where to send it.

Amazing Speed

Internet: We've been in Orlando for about a week now and I've been newly amazed at the speed of US internet access - a 53 minute "Car Talk" podcast that would have taken at least 10 minutes to download on SE Asian "ADSL" took about 90 seconds!

Summer Break: It's scary how fast this is going by already.

Cars: They really can go faster than 50 km/hr!

School Year Ends

The school year ends for us, anyway. Freshmen still have a couple more weeks but they've finished their classes with the foreign teachers. As I write, our team has already begun to head off in different directions: one to the USA, one to Africa to visit a friend, and the other three traveling around SE Asia before heading home or to new responsibilities in Hanoi. Our plane takes off in less than eight hours.

Our summer is short, compared to those in the University Teaching Program (UTP), but it's enough to visit family for a few weeks. In July we'll be back in Hanoi to welcome a new group of teachers and begin their training. This year's training will look a lot different than last year when we trained with the China teachers. Because of the heavy Olympic traffic, teachers in China have been asked to delay their arrival till September. That's too late for the Vietnam school year, so VTF will join the UTP teachers for their training. It will mean more work and more expense for the VTFers, but they'll be a lot more confident at the beginning of their teaching year after the extensive training. And they'll get their TEFL certificate (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) from Wheaton College after successfully completing the coursework.

Part of my summer will involve getting ready for VTF's training and helping to revise some of the university's curriculum, but now it's time to start my summer vacation.