It’s about 9:30am Saturday morning here – Thao and I had big plans to get up at 6:00am and go ride our bikes before it got too hot, but it didn’t happen. I’ve gotten very good at turning off the alarm clock and immediately falling back to sleep.

I’ve got to go in to work today. I have a new class on Tuesday and I need to prepare for it. I’m teaching the third semester of the four-semester Graduate Certificate in Tertiary Teaching and Learning program. Completion of that program is required to teach at the university-level in Australia, so all RMIT teachers have to take it. I completed it last year. Semester 3, which I’ll be teaching, is about using instructional technology to enhance your teaching, so that will be fun for me. My goal is to introduce a lot of different tools to the teachers with the hope that some of them actually implement one or two of them. I’ve got some good ideas about this already – just need to get them into presentation form.

Thao is getting ready to start studying English seriously again. She took a break for our wedding, and then that break extended through the Tet holiday. The next class at her level starts next week, but today she is going in to some open study sessions they have at her school. Her English has gotten noticeably worse over the past few months. I guess the studying and practicing really does help.

Yesterday was our two-month anniversary. Woo-hoo! We made it!

I’m flying up to Hanoi tomorrow. I’ve got a couple of meetings at RMIT’s Hanoi campus on Monday, but because of flight availability I could not fly up and back on Monday (it’s about a 2-hour flight). So I’m flying up Sunday afternoon and back Monday afternoon. I haven’t been to Hanoi since my first trip to Vietnam in 2001, so even though it’s a short trip I’m looking forward to it.

This week was the first week of the new semester (and new academic year for that matter). I’m not teaching Commercial Law this semester, only two groups of my negotiations skills class and the new Grad Cert class mentioned above.

That’s all I’ve got.