SIDL - End of Season awards night - Al Fresco, district 2

Saturday night was our end of season darts award ceremony and as you can remember my team, the Tavern, once again won the league which means we have now won back to back promotions and will now play in the top tier of the Saigon darts league next season.

The party was at a place called Al Fresco in district 2 and had free flow beer and food all evening. We all got to go up on stage and collect our trophies. Also a number of the rest of my team won awards for things such as 'most 100s' and 'highest checkout'.

As you can see we got a lot of trophies so built a tower out of them (see below). It was a very enjoyable evening. the new season will start again in a month or so and its going to be very tough in the big league.

RMIT End of learning English graduation ceremony

Just a quick post to inform you about a nice event we hold for our students at RMIT. As you know I teach English to students to get them ready for university. There are seven different levels at RMIT from 1 which is beginner (what's your name?, how old are you?) to level 7 which is advanced plus (getting them to research and reference work, improving critical thinking skills). I teach level 7 which is the last level before they are good enough to study at University. So finishing this level is a big thing as it means they are done learning English and can move on other things. 

Class S71502A

Because of this we hold a graduating form English ceremony where they get a certificate and we all take photos. As I teach the last level I get to go along and be part of it. Its always nice to see the students after they have finished and without the stress that is on them and me during the semester with writing reports and assignments.

Class S71502B

Anyway, here are some photos of me with my two lovely classes that I had last semester.

Nice food

SIDL Division 2 Darts Champions.

You may remember that four games into the new darts season for my darts team, the tavern I dropped out because of DELTA commitments, I wasn't playing that well and we had enough players. Well that was a few months ago now and the decision to drop myself had been a good one because the team started to play very well and were challenging of the league title, with two games left I went back to watch them and it turned out that two of the players couldn't play in the last game so my services would be required. More importantly we needed to win to win the league title! This would mean back to back league titles!

The Tavern team, Champions again

I'm happy to say that I won both my doubles and singles match. I also played really well in my singles, winning 2-0. It was a great night as the win also secured the title for the Tavern. This means I get another winners trophy!My final end of season stats are below P5 W2 L3

As you can see it was a very close season as all the teams were pretty evenly matched. It will be very difficult in division one as the players are very good. I'm hoping I'll be able to play but will need to see as I'll be full time studying for two months in September and October.

Delta Module 3 completed

Today is a great day as I get to submit my Delta module 3 assignment. This is a 4,500 word assignment I have been working on for the past three months. For the assignment you get to choose a specialized area of English language teaching and design a course from beginning to end. This includes needs analysis and diagnostic testing to designing a course and assessment. I chose the specialism of English for Academic purposes as its what I teach at my University.

Although I learn a lot doing it I can't say it was much fun. Working and studying takes a lot of motivation and weekend sacrifice. Anyway, its done now and provided I pass this (I get the result in two months time) I will only have one module left which I will begin in September this year. This module will be full time for two months.

FA Cup final in HCMC - Arsenal vs Aston Villa

So last night was the FA Cup final and for the second consecutive year my team, Arsenal are in the final. I have a few Arsenal mates in Vietnam so we managed to co-ordinate things so we would all watch the game together. As it started at 5:30pm in the UK it meant it would start at 11:30pm Vietnam time. 

Happy Gooners in Ho Chi Minh City

We arrange to meet at a bar called O'Brien's at 8pm (Yep, an Irish themed bar) before moving onto another bar called The Orient in advance of the game. It was good because we also had a couple of Aston Villa fans with us.

As I'm sure your all aware by now it was a great result for Arsenal who won 4-0 and played some very nice football. The game was also made better by us all putting some money in a pot and predicting the first scorer. I chose Theo Walcott who didn't disappoint and scored first which netted me 550,000vnd! By the time we'd watched them get the trophy it was about 2am but that didn't stop us staying out until about 4:30am. I'm not really sure where we went after the match as the rest of a night is a bit of a blur.

A disappointed Villa fan

 

Anyway, it was a great night had by all (expect the Villa fans). I hope Arsenal keep this tradition of getting to the final up so we can do it again next year!

Four years since leaving England!

Not much to report here so will use this opportunity to mark my four year anniversary away from England!!! I know I say this every year but doesn't time go quickly?!

May 17th 2011 was the day I left on a plane from London to Bangkok to start this adventure after quitting my job in a Bank. So much good stuff has happened since then and long may it continue.

Not much else to report. Work-wise, a new semester has started, socially, I've started playing football again and study-wise I've nearly finished the Delta module 3 as the deadline is in a few weeks time.

Nha Trang, food and beer

Tomorrow we go home from Nha Trang. It's been a really nice relaxing break with a great hotel and lots of nice things to do. One final post is that we've had some great food and beer since arriving. 

Firstly the beer has been very good. There is not much of an ale scene in Vietnam which was my beverage of choice back in the UK. Fortunately that is changing. Nha Trang had two very good beer places that we visited. One was on the beach from called Louisiane Brewhouse and the other, which was in the touristy area was called beerfest. Links to their websites are below but they are definitely worth checking out if your here and into that sort of thing. The pictures below are from Louisiane Brewhouse which was a great place to go to at the end of the day. The picture above is from beerfest.

Louisiane Brewhouse in Nha Trang weblink

Beerfest in Nha Trang weblink

Also there were some pretty good bbq places around our hotel that we went to most evening. Most of them were all you can eat for $10 and the food was good. There were all sorts of meats and seafood.

 

 

 

We've had a great time in Nha Trang but its back to Ho Chi Minh City tomorrow and back to work on Monday.