Christmas Holidays are Nearly Here!

Almost Christmas time. I can't believe how fast the first half of this academic year has gone. Just amazing. We have 2 more days at school. Well, it's really 1.5 days because we finish at 12 on Friday. Then we have buses to take us into town to a place on Singapore River for our Christmas do. Quite looking forward to that:)

Term 1 felt kind of short. Teachers were at school for most of 10 weeks but the students were there for 8 weeks. We had quite a few new teachers starting this year and there was a nice positive vibe about the place. This was a good thing because there was a little bit of negativity at the end of last year. In general the negative have people moved on.

We went to Japan for the first term holidays. It was the first time we had gone back to Japan since we left 9 years ago. Mel & I were both really excited to be going back. We had a good time visiting the places we used to hang out although some places had closed down. The place I took Mel for dinner on our first date had moved and was difficult to find. We were really disappointed to find it only to find out that it had closed in April. We didn't do lots of sight seeing but we did manage to catch up with lots of people which was really cool. Tilda loved playing with the other kids. It was interesting to note that we (the parents) didn't really seem to have changed much. But the kids had grown up lots! We did quite a bit of shopping for things that we can't get outside of Japan. I also bought new lens for my camera which was very exciting for me:)

Kobe from the Ropeway

Nunobiki Waterfall

Tilda loved the ropeway!

Funky roof at Sorakuen Gardens

Term 2 has absolutely whizzed by! Which is both good and bad. It means that the holidays are here already. But it also means that the last 2 or 3 weeks have been crazy busy with all kinds of things to tidy up before Christmas. One of those things was our first Days of Nexellence event. This is a day when we take all our Year 7-9 students off timetable and give them are series of activities to complete related to a central theme. Our theme for this event was a murder mystery.

Although it was a lot to organise, it was worth it because it was an awesome day! The kids loved it. There was a really positive feeling all day. It was great to see the "too cool for school" kids get dragged into participating in the activities by the others. Our school is a Mac 1:1 school so ICT is a big thing for us. The whole event was based around digital technology. It was cool but the online activity was massive to the point where our server was starting to become overloaded. We had live stream TV to broadcast breaking news and to share information with students, clues hidden in a Minecraft world and we used a Twitter hashtag (#daysofnexus) to share information vis Twitter. Several of us were tweeting solidly all day and just as we were finishing up, #daysofnexus was one of the top 10 trending topics on Twitter in Singapore which was really cool. And as of 9:30ish tonight, it was still in the top 10:)

We are heading back to NZ for Christmas on Sunday night. Mel is looking forward to being able to drink wine at a decent price and Tilda is really excited about seeing the animals and Granddad's digger on the farm. I'm looking forward to chilling out and not thinking about school for a while:)

Well nothing much else to say so I'll be off. Merry Christmas and all the best for 2014!

Holidays

So the holidays are coming to an end. We have to be back at school on Thursday. I guess it's not so bad as the kids don't start until the 12th. We have 5 or 6 days at school to get prepared which is good. Especially as they're broken up with a weekend and a couple of public holidays. Not everyone agrees, but I don't mind spending a few days getting organised. It means I can not worry about school for most of the holidays which is what I did. I'm quite looking forward to the new school year. Last year was pretty tough with a lot of ups and downs. I think we'll be better prepared this year and as the second half of the year was generally positive, hopefully we can maintain that positivity.

Our holiday has been good. We spent time in Vietnam and Thailand. Vietnam is a really interesting place. It was funny to walk around and hear Vietnamese people saying "g'day mate" in fake Aussie accents. Equally funny were the people who would say "oh c'mon mate" when you said "no" to whatever it was that they were selling. 

After a couple of days in Saigon, we spent five days in Hoi An on the central coast. Hoi An is an old port town that has a world heritage listing. It was an important port until the 18th century when the river it sits on changed course and the port was silted up. The central part of the town has been preserved in a sense, though once the world heritage listing was granted a lot of locals sold their properties and moved out. The shophouses are now mostly bars, cafes, restaurants and souvenir shops, with the odd museum thrown in.

 

Old shophouse in the old town of Hoi An

 Looking out the window at Green Mango in Hoi An.

Boats on the the Thu Bon River. The eyes are supposed to help the boats see danger:)

Cultural Festival on the banks of Thu Bon River.

We enjoyed Hoi An. We found a good tailor and had some copies of clothes made. The lady in the shop was totally besotted with Tilda. She has two boys already and is desperate to have a girl. When we picked up our clothes she was so stoked to get a cuddle from Tilda that she gave her a wee dress, which was really nice of her. And of course Tilda loved the dress because it was mostly pink.

After leaving Hoi An, we flew back to Saigon from Da Nang. Tilda missed out on her sleep so she was a bit grumpy on the plane and didn't settle for a while when we put her to bed at the hotel in Saigon. We flew back to Singapore the next day and she missed her sleep again. So she was pretty worked up when we got on the plane. She was so tired that she fell asleep as we taxied on the runway and slept for a third of the trip. She woke up suddenly and was upset again but some snakes helped settle her and she was good for the rest of the way home. It was really interesting to see Tilda's reaction when we got back home. She so happy to see her bed and toys again. We got her bed early (not long after 6pm) and she didn't make a peep until about 8 the next morning. 

About 10 day later we were off again, this time to Thailand. We went to Khao Lak, a place we'd been before so it was really nice to go back again. We didn't do much except swim and sleep. It was awesome for the first 5 days or so. Then Tilda picked up some kind of tummy bug and was really sick. The poor wee thing couldn't hold much down, so we took her to see a doctor in Khao Lak village. After three tries we finally found a doctor that was open. She gave us some medicine to stop the vomiting, which help a bit. Unfortunately that evening Mel got sick too. I suspect it was because she was holding Tilda when she threw up a couple of times. Needless to say, the last full day we had there was pretty quiet. Such a shitty way to finish our holiday. Oh well, our trip trip to Vietnam went really smoothly. And in all the travelling that Mel and I have done over the last 12 or 13 years we haven't had too much go wrong besides the odd cancelled/delayed flight and lost luggage.

Since we got back from Thailand, we've mostly just been hanging out. We've visited some of the museums in Singapore. Perhaps more of that soon:)

That's it for a bit.

Ciao

Tone